Judges 19 - So Vile a Thing

Here at the end of Judges we get a series of events that are quite alarming.  No doubt it is to show how low the Israelites have sunk.  Even after being given so many virtuous and heroic judges (we may even call them saviors) from God, the Israelites just keep falling into sinful ways.  In Judges 19 we see a new low, though really it's not so new.  The events of Judges 19 feel awfully similar to what we saw with Lot and Sodom in Genesis.  But what makes Judges 19 seem so shocking (at least to the Israelites living at that time) is that it is occurring not in the old and "wild" days of Genesis, but in the "new" days of the Mosaic Law, of the Promised Land, of a supposedly more pious time.  The crime I speak of, of course, is the rape and murder of the Levite's wife, as well as the men of Gibeah's initial intention of committing crimes against nature with the Levite himself.  We can also add to the list of sins the Levite's actions, as it was he who gave the malicious men his own wife to abuse in his stead.  Everything in Judges 19 reeks of corruption.  There are virtually no innocent figures.  Again it illustrates how bad things had gotten during the time of the judges, and we can see why the era of the kings felt so right and needed to better control the wildly sinful populace (and of course kings will do no better, which illustrates the point that men are simply weak and no amount of man-made solutions will ever do; only God Himself could remedy this situation, which He eventually will do upon the cross).  At the time, though, it appears this particular crime against the Levite's wife really sent shock-waves throughout Israel.  It is specifically said in Judges 19:30 that "There was never such a thing done in Israel, from the day that our fathers came up out of Egypt, until this day."  So it does appear that things are getting worse, and sinful acts once thought expunged from the land have made a return.  This will horrify the other tribes and set off a civil war of sorts aimed against the tribe of Benjamin, whose lands the crime was committed in.  It's a tough chapter to read, but it just goes to show how much mankind is in need of saving.