Christians whats the moral of this story?

Question

Found in: Judges 19:22-30
A man and his concubine are wandering the streets when they decide to seek shelter for the night, and find a man kind enough to let them stay. That night however, a group of men turn up at the door and demand to see the guest so that they may have sex with him. The owner is unwilling to let his male lodger be raped and so offers up his virgin daughter instead. However, this is still not good enough for the men, so the owner offers them his guest’s concubine and the men accept. The men brutally rape the woman and leave her on the doorstep where she bleeds to death. If that is not enough, when she is found by her husband, he chops her up into twelve pieces which he sends to each of the twelve tribes of Israel.

The moral of this story?

Answer 1

The moral of this story is that the Bible contains stories that are immoral.

Answer 2

You'll get the rest of the story by reading all of chapter 19 (short), and then chapter 20. Chapter 20 includes a decisive moment: "12 The tribes of Israel sent messengers throughout the tribe of Benjamin, saying, “What about this awful crime that was committed among you? 13 Now turn those wicked men of Gibeah over to us so that we may put them to death and purge the evil from Israel.” But the Benjamites would not listen to their fellow Israelites. 14 From their towns they came together at Gibeah to fight against the Israelites."



Instead of holding the rapists/murderers to account, the Benjamites endorsed their acts and defended them....



The passage you cite reminds one of the angels sent to check out if the city Lot lived in should be spared, but....it was as brutal and vicious as ever, and a mob came demanding Lot yield the two up to be raped. A very similar situation. You know the rest.



Perhaps the ultimate moral of such a story is that when a whole city tolerates and endorses evil, participates, it isn't something that's easy to sweep under the rug..... the cries of the innocent, the murdered, are heard....one way or another, justice will happen eventually.

Answer 3

Well...that's far short of the whole story, isn't it? The moral of any story that has a moral is typically not found near the beginning of the story, and this story is no exception. Read the rest of the story. You've read only the beginning, and the moral (there is actually more than one) will not be evident until you have finished the story.

Answer 4

There is no moral to that story. I mean, what's the moral of the story when your history book tells you about the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The Bible contains moral stories, sure - but a lot of the Bible is just history (as it was understood by the authors). But the point of the man's actions (and the reason it was recorded in the Bible) is to shame the tribes of Israel for allowing such a terrible act to occur in their nation in the first place.

Answer 5

I may not have the answer you seek, but just some thoughts.



From the following chapter, we see that she was dead by the morning, and before she was chopped up. From first reading of your account, I thought he might have killed her himself, but then I read that she was already dead when he found her.



The sending of her pieces to the twelve tribes was apparently a testament to all of them of the grave wickedness that existed in that land (the whole mob thing where they raped the woman to death, unabashedly). It seems like an odd way of doing it for us, but it was a different culture at that time and I suppose this was a good way of getting the message across (and the twelve tribes came up to war against this people, so I guess it worked).



Edited to add: I thought this was evident, but apparently not (from looking at the other answers). This was an account of very bad people who did very bad things. In the following chapter, you'll see the people who are not doing very bad things coming to punish/put an end to the bad things going on here. It helps to read the whole story, if you're trying to make sense of it.



I could describe further, but Halbhh gave a very good answer that clarifies the point succinctly enough, so I'll leave it at that.

Answer 6

There is no moral to the story as far as Christianity is concerned; in fact

it has nothing to do with Christianity at all.

Answer 7

you did not finish the story you only told the first part. there is a lot more to the story



the moral is were not to let evil people practice immoral deviant sexual behavior

Answer 8

I love how atheists twist things to push their agenda.



"some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house"

This suggests it was evil people doing this in the first place.



Then line 30 says it was evil.



The Bible is not promoting this, it's just simply stating history.

Answer 9

The essence of the Bible is

Love God and Love your others as yourself.



Look at Jesus' life and receive Him as your Lord to go to heaven.

Answer 10

it means that men are more important than women, even your own daughter. Live with it, helpmeet

Answer 11

http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=15145&commentView=itemComments

Answer 12

Dont be a hooker.