The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing,
majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of
him and what came to my mind and heart in Judges 20:48,
"The men of Israel went back to Benjamin and put all the towns to the
sword, including the animals and everything else they found. All the
towns they came across they set on fire."
The other tribes of Israel turned on the tribe of Benjamin and
destroyed it almost completely. I read in the census of Benjamin just
prior to their crossing the Jordan, they had 45,600 men that were
twenty years old or older, Numbers 26:41. In the aftermath of the
murder of a Levite's concubine by homosexuals in Gibeah, one of the
towns of Benjamin, Israel slaughtered all the men, women, children,
animals of Benjamin - everyone save 600 men who fled into the desert.
It started off with the rape and murder of a Levite's concubine in
Gibeah. When the tribe of Gibeah refused to hand over the culprits to
the whole nation for justice, and decided to defend them, they wound
up being slaughtered as a tribe. Certainly a poor and foolish decision
on their part. Only 600 were left.
It really is an astonishing account. Sin by a few wicked homosexual
men in Gibeah ultimately resulted in the deaths of probably 250,000
boys and girls, men and women. All their towns destroyed by fire, even
the animals all put to death. All these other folks who knew nothing
of what happened on that fateful night in Gibeah when these men
gathered at an old man's door to have their way with a man traveling
through with his concubine and his servant.
What happened in Gibeah, in Benjamin? These homosexuals felt entitled
to rape a man, rape a woman to the point she died. How did it all
start? One thing is certain, they had turned their backs on God. They
had rejected what the Lord had commanded and took upon themselves
whatever they felt entitled to. Drifting from God brought them right
into homosexuality and an aggressive predatory disposition.
When these men started turning up with the perverted desires of
homosexuality (having rejected God and his law) did they demand
acceptance in Gibeah, in the tribe of Benjamin? When the first ones
came forward to demand a change in the cultural acceptance of
homosexuality, how did they approach the rest of the folks? Apparently
Benjamin acquiesced to this newly "evolving" position from the one
they held when Joshua was still among them. If so, that acquiescence
eventually turned into a felt need to protect these predatory perverts
as they refused to hand them over to the other tribes of Israel for
justice. They must have felt it was their moral duty to protect this
"alternative lifestyle." I wonder if Benjamin's desire to protect
these murderous perverts was based in a misguided moral imperative to
protect the inclusion of all "sexual orientations" in the society of
the day.
What these Benjamites learned the hard way was that perversion always
spirals downward, and the drift into homosexuality led to the
acceptance of murder and other violations of innocents. There is
possibly a lesson here for the fools and half-wits of our society, a
cautionary lesson, that abandoning God in favor of what he finds as an
abomination will ultimately bring consequences for all kinds of
people, including those not even involved with the atrocities that
perversion inevitably brings. Just ask the folks of Benjamin of that
day what they now think of their "broad-minded" outlook.
One thing is certain, when sin is embraced in a society, all people
suffer, including everyone sitting in their pews on Sunday morning...
everybody.
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share
what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to
hear from you!
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
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