Ava Dickerson

ENG-L 367
A Woman Divided: Characterization, Ambiguity and Dissonance in Judges 19
The reticent narrator of the Bible leaves many gaps in the characters thoughts and
motives, as well as in the stories themselves As the reader progresses chronologically
through Genesis and Exodus, God removes himself from direct sight and, eventually,
direct communication with humans. He eventually opts for a system of representatives,
called judges, to act in his absence and save the Israelites from their evil deeds. Because
God has been the center of all action up until this point, as well as humanitys moral
judge, the passing of moral and social responsibility into the hands of humans themselves
creates a previously unseen challenge for the Israelites. The movement away from a
decisive binary of right and wrong, along with the lack of detail given to the reader by the
narrator, forces the reader to come to his or her own conclusions about characters and
their intentions. The reader essentially plays the role of a judge, especially in chapter 19,
the story of the Levite and his concubine. According to the characteristically terse story,
the Levite travels to reclaim his concubine after she leaves him and on the way back, they
are accosted by perverse men in the city. The concubine is thrown out to be raped and the
Levite finds her body the next day, which he cuts into a dozen pieces and sends
throughout the tribes of Israel as a message. The Levites concubine is used as a catalyst
to explore the Levites character by introducing an ambiguous, unknown element.
Through her presence and treatment, the reader is able to see the gaps in the narrators
description of the Levites character and is encouraged to fill them in a variety of ways.
After her death, the Levite retreats from the foreground and regains his previous role as a
military leader.

The Levite appears in only two chapters of the bibles entirety, much like many
other male characters that are simply mentioned and forgotten. However, the concubines
presence renders the Levite an outlier from this parade of flat male characters. From the
beginning of the story, the Levites character and identity are inseparable from the
concubine, which is both unusual and emasculating. Unlike other male characters in
Judges who are introduced to play a strictly military role, the Levites introduction simply
tells us that he took to himself a concubine (Judges 19.1). This immediately makes him
more domestic than the slew of men whose sole purpose is to fight one another, as does
the fact that he resides in the remote parts of the hill country (Judges 19.1), away from
the main action of the civil war. In the next verse, however, this domesticity becomes
emasculation as his concubine becomes angry (Judges 19.2) with him and leaves for
her fathers house for four months. Not only is it unusual that a woman in the bible would
willingly leave a man without being sent or called away and be allowed to do so but
the Levite furthers his emasculation by following her in order to speak tenderly (Judges
19.3) to her and bring her back. While this upsets the traditional gender roles of the bible,
it also illustrates how little reader knows about the relationship between the concubine
and the Levite, on both a personal and a historical level. Marital situations were often
quite complex and drastically different from modern monogamy, especially when
concubines were involved. Though generally considered secondary to the wives, no wife
is mentioned in relation to the Levite and the concubines father is called his father-inlaw. While this is in part simply a cultural difference that modern readers would find
hard to understand without extensive historical research, it also introduces this story as
something out of the ordinary and upsetting.

The concubines identity is introduced far more passively than the Levites, which
foreshadows her passive yet crucial role in the story. Though she is described as taken to
[the Levite] (Judges 19.1), she then asserts her agency in Judges 19.2 by actively
becoming angry with him and leaving him. Though she does not ask her husband to
pursue her, the fathers reaction to his son-in-law seems to imply that it was expected of
him to attempt to bring her back (Judges 19.3). This visit leads to the next
disconcerting aspect of the tale: the Levite will not spend another night at his father-inlaws and leave in the evening. The Levite would have known the danger of traveling
through strange lands at night, so his decision to do so anyway marks the beginning of
the ambiguities in his character and lack of motives in his actions. Meanwhile, the
concubines presence is merely implied by that of her father until Judges 10, when the
narrator mentions that as the Levite leaves, his concubine was with him. Again, this
highlights the very passive nature of her character, from the use of passive voice to the
fact that she has absolutely no presence in the Levites decision to leave her fathers
house with her. The Levite discusses his decision to pass by the city of foreigners
(Judges 19.12) with his servant rather than his concubine, again illustrating her complex
status both socially and in relation to her husband. When asking the old man to offer them
shelter for the night, the Levite simply calls her the woman (Judges 19.19). She is
identified by her title in relation to her husband, the concubine or the woman, throughout
the story, again stripping her of an identity apart from her husband. Though the Levite
also does not have a name, he is referred to by his cultural identity that gives him more of
a semblance of personality and identity than his woman.

As the concubines presence becomes the crucial element in the story, the Levites
character grows more and more ambiguous. Though the reader had a glimpse of his
unusual nature through his strange introduction and his relationship to his concubine,
there have been no major remarks on his personality. The first glimpse of his questionable
behavior and dismissive attitude toward the concubines preservation appears in Judges
19.10, when he leaves his father-in-laws house at night and forces his concubine to
accompany him. This does not fit with the description of the Levite in the beginning of
the story as a husband who wishes to speak tenderly (Judges 19.3) to his concubine and
triggers the readers suspicion of his character. One wonders what he did to make her
become angry with him. The dissonance in his character only continues to grow as the
concubine becomes the center of conflict, beginning with the rape scene. The narrator,
reticent as always, refuses to give us any explicit commentary on the Levite and his
actions. However, the powerful description of the concubines rape shows the narrators
immense disgust for the act, as well as for the decision to throw her to the perverse lot
(Judges 19.22) outside. Though ultraviolent acts occur throughout the bible, they are
often reported objectively as inevitable occurrences. The concubine is wantonly raped
and abused all through the night until the morning (Judges 19.25), a particularly
gruesome and inhuman treatment. This condemning description implicitly illustrates the
narrators opinion of the Levite, a character who has repeatedly failed to show any regard
for the concubines well being.
By using ambiguous pronouns throughout the rape scene, the narrator encourages
the reader to explore the Levites character. When the old man and the Levite are
bargaining with the perverse lot (Judges 19.22), they decide to trade the women in

place of the Levite as sexual objects. The reader may note that the perverse men do not
threaten his life, but say that they want to have intercourse (Judges 19.22) with him. At
the crucial moment in this exchange, when they throw the concubine out to the men to
save the Levite, the pronouns become ambiguous and muddle the sense of the story. This
reflects the chaos and desperation of the situation, but also the narrators desire for the
reader to analyze the Levites character without direct narrative intervention. The text
says that the man seized his concubine, and put her out to them (19.25) but since there
are two men inside the house, the Levite and the old man, it is unclear as to which one
actually expels the concubine. If the man is the Levite, then he acts despicably, tossing
his concubine out to save himself. Even if the host sacrifices her in a misguided attempt
to protect his guest, the text says nothing about the Levites reaction at this particularly
violent sexual abuse. Either way, the Levite has little excuse for treating her this way and
only furthers the dissonance between the tender-speaking man of 19.3 and the man of
19.25 who uses a woman to protect himself, an act that furthers his cowardice and
emasculation. Ever faithful to her master (19.26), the concubine collapses on the old
mans doorstep after she is finally released. This devotion to her husband, even in the face
of his despicable dismissal of her, only further highlights the Levites cowardly selfpreservation and lack of loyalty to his concubine.
Even unconscious or dead, the pinnacle of passivity, the concubine pushes the
Levite to reveal his true nature, again shown through the narrators lack of detail or
specificity. When the Levite finds the concubine on the doorstep, he again betrays no
sympathy or emotion whatsoever. Whether this is from narrative omission or a
commentary on the mans coldness toward his woman companion, his further treatment

of her seems to imply the latter. Before inquiring about her health or even checking to see
if she is dead, he orders her to get up (Judges 19.28) because they are going, yet
another decision made without her consent. The choice of traveling to his home rather
than her fathers is yet another indication of the Levites disregard for the concubine, as it
might be in her best interest to see her father before she dies, if she has not already. The
Levites determination to bring her back (Judges 19.3), originally an act of tenderness,
becomes a twisted quest that he will accomplish at all costs, even the concubines life.
The concubines fragile state only seems to encourage the Levites violence and cruelty,
and their journey to his home (Judges 19.28) ends in atrocity. As soon as they reach his
house, he cuts her into twelve pieces without confirming that she is dead; the text simply
says that there was no answer (Judges 19.28) when he tells her to get up. The
gruesome, detailed description of her dissection, limb by limb (Judges 19.29), parallels
the horrifying detail of the rape scene and continues the disturbing tone of the story.
However, while the ambiguous pronouns used in the rape scene could make a case for the
Levites innocence, he is clearly the perpetrator of violence in this scene. He uses his
once-devoted concubine as a message to the people of Israel, demanding if such a thing
(Judges 19.30) had ever happened before. The narrator does not specify what this thing
is, so while it could refer to the wanton raping of the concubine, it might also refer to the
needlessly gory distribution of the concubine across Israel in twelve parts. Indeed, such a
thing has not happened before this chapter in the Bible; no one death has been this
ambiguous or gruesomely detailed.
The Bibles reticent narrator omits details throughout and rarely gives insight into
characters or their motivations, which creates many gaps and much ambiguity. The

beginning of Judges 19 begins strangely, emasculating the protagonist and marking his
concubine as a central figure in the story. Though she has no dialogue, her passive lack of
identity helps to highlight the disconcerting dissonance in the Levites character. The
oddly specific description of the rape and later dismemberment of the concubine sets this
story apart from the bloody battles and gory punishments typical of the Bible. Though the
reader might be suspicious of the Levites character due to his disinterest in his
concubines health, the condemnation falls at first upon the rapists. However, the focus of
the readers horror becomes the Levite and his actions by the end of the chapter, a feat the
narrator accomplishes by omission and implications rather than outright accusation.

List of Works Cited

Meeks, Wayne A., and Jouette M. Bassler. The HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised
Standard Version, with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books. New York, NY:
HarperCollins, 1993. Print.