Judges 19: What's the moral?

As I usually do some mild reading, I happened upon an interesting chapter in the Old Testament. What is the moral in Judges 19?

christiananswers.net...

Very interesting when the old man handed over his daughter and the man's concubine to be gang raped just to protect a guest in his house.

So gang rape and murder is okay if it's to protect a guest? Interesting.

Here's the LOLCATS version for those who can't get to grips with the old language.

www.lolcatbible.com...

reply to post by MacDonagh


Hi

The moral is very simple. People's moral standards decline when they turn their back on their Maker and His Laws.

This period in Israel's history is described as follows:

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes".

(Judges 17:6)

It's just a matter of reading the context.

he avoided the other city because it was gentile but instead pressed on to a city that of one of the tribes. these people were suppose to be his people, his brothers.

them doing such a vile thing showed just how bad things had gotten. notice the parallel to sodom and gomorrah.

You have to be careful in saying that something is acceptable just because it happens in the bible. Many things happen in the bible which are unacceptable, and indeed condemned elsewhere, which we should not consider to therefore be acceptable, or indeed a contradiction.

Even the great men of the bible do things which we must consider as unacceptable. David is first lazy and then commits adultery and then commits murder and ties them all up with lies. Just because David does these things doesn't make them OK. Noah gets drunk, Abraham lies repeatedly, Aaron makes an idol, Moses disobeys God, Joshua gives way to pride and cowardice and there are plenty more.

The actual episode in Judges must, as p4t has suggested, be considered in context. The book shows the degeneration of the country as they reject God. This is one of the episodes that are shown in the book which are not to show good practice but how broken the society has become. Just read how the people continually reject God and turn to other gods and then must be saved by each of the judges. The whole of the country falls apart morally.

Interestingly, at least to me , a similar thing is happening now in the western world, and certainly here in the uk. God is something that is to be rejected and every man, or woman, should live for themselves. Romans 1 gives a description of society when it rejects God and it can be seen in Judges and it can be clearly seen now. Of course to those who want to reject God then this sort of thing wont make a jot of difference and other reasons will be given, as always.