The Ones We Avoid, but God Refused to Leave Out
A reflection made on one of the most horrifying chapters in the Bible (Judges 17-21) by Esther Kim
Some stories in Scripture are hard to read, because humanity is cruel and it seems like God is silent. Judges 17–21 is like walking into a room where every light has gone out. It is dark, unsettling, and inhumanely brutal. Yet God chose to preserve these chapters for thousands of years. Why? Because even in the darkest narratives, His faithfulness shines more clearly than ever.
These chapters show us what happens when a nation forgets the Torah – when God’s Word is no longer the center of life, identity, or worship. But they also reveal a pattern: no matter how far Israel drifts, God is already working on their rescue. And this pattern is not just ancient history. It’s a promise for us too.
1. Micah and a Homemade Religion: The Quiet Beginning of Spiritual Collapse
Judges 17 does more than introduce a strange household. It reveals a spiritual diagnosis. What looks like a small, private mistake is actually the first visible crack in a collapsing foundation of an entire institution. It begins with a family drama. Micah steals silver from his mother, returns it, and together they use it to make an idol “in the name of the LORD.” There is confusion. They are still using God’s language, but they’ve forgotten His commands.
Micah builds a shrine, fashions an ephod, and appoints his own son as priest. Every detail echoes how far Israel has drifted from the Torah. They aren’t trying to worship other gods. They are trying to worship the true God in a way that seems right to them. The Torah gave detailed instructions about worship, not because God is rigid, but because right worship protects right understanding. Israel’s danger was never that they would stop worshiping; it was that they would worship incorrectly. Their problem was not atheism. It is syncretism. When Micah builds a personal shrine, he unintentionally creates a miniature version of Israel’s national crisis.
Notice that Micah does not hate God. He misunderstands Him. That is far more terrifying. It means Israel’s crisis is internal. Their enemy is not Philistia, but a slowly eroding memory of who God is. Micah is a portrait of a nation that still wants blessing, but no longer wants obedience. They want God’s comfort, but not God’s commands.
This teaches us something about spiritual drift: it rarely begins violently. It begins quietly, with good intentions, confused theology, and the slow replacement of God’s truth with our own preferences. Micah is not the villain of the chapter; he is the warning sign. It’s the subtle danger of forgetting God’s Word: when we reshape Him to fit our homes, our preferences, and our feelings.
2. A Levite for Hire: Leadership Without the Anchor of the Torah
A wandering Levite enters the scene. Levites were supposed to be teachers of the Law, guardians of Israel’s spiritual life. Yet this one is drifting from town to town with no direction. Micah offers him a salary and a place to stay, and the Levite agrees.
The wandering Levite represents far more than an unemployed priest. He embodies the collapse of Israel’s spiritual structure. Levites were designed to be living reminders of God, walking embodiments of Torah instruction. They had no inheritance because God Himself was their inheritance. Their role was to maintain the people’s memory of truth. So when a Levite is drifting without purpose, it means the entire spiritual structure of Israel has broken down. The people are no longer supporting the priesthood, which means they are no longer supporting the teaching of the Law. In a nation without Scripture, spiritual leadership becomes a career, not a calling. The Levite accepts the job because he has no anchor. And why should he? The nation he serves has abandoned the very system designed to keep him faithful. When the congregation forgets the Word, the leaders will forget it too.
Micah believes he now has God’s favor simply because he has hired a Levite. This is what worship becomes when it is detached from God’s Word: empty rituals trying to manipulate blessing. It is a heartbreaking moment: spiritual leadership becomes a commodity, worship reduces to transaction. Blessing becomes something to be bought. Where the Word is absent, spiritual authority becomes empty, and religion becomes transactional. Israel is losing not just truth, but the ability to discern truth. The Levite’s compromise foreshadows what is about to unravel in the rest of the book.
3. The Tribe of Dan: Idolatry Becomes a National Identity
In Judges 18, the tribe of Dan, still faithless in taking the land God gave them, discovers Micah’s shrine. Instead of correcting idolatry, they see potential. You could almost hear their thoughts, “wow, a whole religion starting pack set up is right here!”. They steal Micah’s idol, ephod, and Levite. The priest goes willingly, choosing status over calling.
This is no longer just one confused household. An entire tribe adopts man‑made religion as their identity. Worse, the Levite leading them is Jonathan, Moses’ own grandson. The message is sobering: spiritual heritage cannot protect a nation that abandons Scripture. Not even Moses’ lineage is immune. Even spiritual heritage cannot preserve a nation that has abandoned the Torah.
Dan’s violent conquest of Laish, a peaceful settlement, shows how deeply Israel has absorbed the ethics of the nations. The people chosen to reflect God’s character are now behaving indistinguishably from the Canaanites. In abandoning Torah, Israel hasn’t become free. They’ve become formed by whatever is expedient, powerful, or convenient. Spiritual confusion is no longer a family issue. It is institutional. Dan’s new religion is not merely misguided – it is a betrayal of covenant identity. Torah was meant to tell them who they are. Without Torah, they become whoever convenience allows.
4. The Levite and His Concubine: A Journey That Ends in Horror
Judges 19 is not simply brutality. It’s the ultimate demonstration of what happens when covenant ethics is abandoned .The Levite, a spiritual representative, abandons covenant ethics. The people of Gibeah abandon compassion, hospitality, and justice. This is not an isolated evil. It is the logical conclusion of a society that has forgotten God.
A Levite goes to retrieve his concubine after a broken relationship. Her father pleads repeatedly for them to stay longer, signaling that danger waits outside. Eventually, they set out late and decide to spend the night not among foreigners but in Gibeah, an Israelite town. Hospitality, once a hallmark of Israel, is nowhere to be found. Only an old man welcomes them. This should have been an early signal of the moral state of the town. And as expected, the night unfolds like a nightmare. The men of the town surround the house, echoing the story of Sodom in Genesis. The Levite pushes his concubine outside, and she is abused until morning. At dawn, she collapses at the threshold, reaching toward the door.
This story is an embodiment of everything Israel has abandoned by abandoning the Torah: hospitality, marriage covenant, protection of the weak, sexual morality, justice, and dignity.
She is the perfect symbol of a nation severed from its moral and spiritual lifeline. She is not just a victim – she is a mirror held up to Israel. Israelites, people who were supposed to be a light to the nations, now cast a shadow darker than any other nations. This is not just a warning about sin. It is about what happens when covenant identity is untethered from covenant instruction. Without Torah, even God’s people become indistinguishable from the nations.
It is one of the darkest stories in Scripture, and it is meant to be.
5. Outrage, War, and More Tragedy
The Levite cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends them throughout Israel to shock the nation awake. Israel is horrified and gathers to demand justice. But Benjamin refuses to surrender the guilty men. A civil war erupts. Tens of thousands die. Benjamin is nearly annihilated. Then Israel panics: they vowed not to give their daughters to Benjamin as wives. Their solution? More violence. They destroy a town for wives and kidnap girls from Shiloh.
Israel’s reaction to the concubine’s death reveals a nation still capable of outrage but incapable of righteousness. Passion is not the same as holiness. Benjamin’s refusal to surrender the guilty, Israel’s disproportionate retaliation, the rash vow, the massacre for wives, the kidnapping of girls, each action exposes the same truth: without the Word of God, zeal becomes violence and justice becomes destruction. Israel is passionately moral and utterly misguided. They are not evil because they lack conviction. They are dangerous because their conviction lacks truth.
Every attempt to fix the problem creates more brokenness. Every decision reveals how completely Israel has lost its moral compass. This is the final picture the author wants us to see: Israel’s real enemy is not the nations around them. It is the spiritual amnesia within them. Their greatest threat is not the Philistines or the Canaanites, but their own distance from the God who once led them.
And here is the important truth: the darkness of Judges 17-21 is not God’s judgment. It is the world humanity creates without Him. And the book ends with one haunting line that has been repeated throughout the book over and over again:
“In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Judges 21:25
6. Ruth: God’s Whisper of Hope in Israel’s Loudest Darkness
But God doesn’t end the story in darkness. The very next book opens with:
“In the days when the judges ruled…” Ruth 1:1
While Judges gives us a nation in rebellion, Ruth shows us a foreign woman choosing faithfulness. While Israel forgets God, Ruth (an outsider), clings to Him. Her story unfolds during the same chaotic era, yet it shines with quiet obedience and covenant loyalty.
Through Ruth comes Boaz.
Through Boaz comes Obed.
Through Obed comes Jesse.
Through Jesse comes David.
And generations later… Jesus.
Right in the middle of Israel’s darkest failure, God is already planting the seeds of redemption.
7. The Pattern of God: Faithful Then, Faithful Now
Judges exposes a pattern, not of human sin, but of divine faithfulness.
Israel forgets God.
God remembers His promise.
Israel destroys itself.
God preserves a remnant.
Israel walks in darkness.
God prepares the Light.
This is how God works – consistently, patiently, relentlessly. When we study Scripture, we see the same pattern again and again. And this pattern becomes our assurance.
If God remained faithful to Israel in their worst rebellion, He will remain faithful to you in your worst moments.
If He worked behind the scenes when everything looked hopeless, He is working behind the scenes in your life right now.
If He brought redemption out of the chaos of Judges, He can bring redemption out of the chaos you’re facing.
God has always been faithful.
God is faithful now.
God will be faithful to the end.
Finale: Don’t Skip Judges. It Tells Your Story Too
It’s tempting to skip the painful parts of Scripture. These stories read like nightmares that we would rather not revisit. It paints a picture of God that we don’t want to see – it seems like God is silent or not present in these stories. We instinctively reach for Psalms, for the Gospels, for anything that feels clean and comforting. But God refused to remove these chapters… not because He is silent in the face of violence, but because He knows what we are prone to forget. The darkness in Scripture reveals the constancy of His faithfulness. The book of Judges is too important to avoid. These chapters reveal the truth about humanity and the deeper truth about God.
- They show us what happens when we walk away from God’s Word… and what God does when we walk away.
- They show us how dark things can become… and how determined God is to bring light.
- They show us that even when people are faithless, confused, violent, and lost, God is already writing the next chapter.
If you only read the triumphs, you will misunderstand the heart of God. Because He is not only the God of miracles and victories. He is the God who keeps working in the rubble, in the aftermath, in the ashes. He is the God who does not walk out when His people do
Judges 17-21 is not a story of despair. It is a story of a faithful God patiently working beneath the ashes until redemption bursts through.
Judges 17-21 is not preserved to traumatize us. It is preserved to warn us, to sober us, and ultimately to anchor us. It exposes the human heart without God, and it highlights the God who refuses to abandon that heart.
- When Israel crafted idols, God was crafting a lineage.
- When a Levite dismembered a concubine, God was forming a covenant.
- When an entire tribe imploded, God was preparing a king.
The book of Ruth is proof: even when the world burns itself down, God plants redemption in the soil of devastation.
- If God didn’t abandon Israel in their darkest hour, He won’t abandon you in yours.
- If He was patient with a nation in collapse, He will be patient with your confusion.
- If He could raise kings from ruin, He can bring beauty out of your brokenness.
This is why these chapters remain. They do not just tell the truth about Israel’s failure. They tell the truth about God’s character.
They remind us that Scripture is not a story of perfect people climbing toward God, but of a faithful God descending into the depths to rescue us again and again.
And if He did it for Israel…
He will do it for you.
So don’t skip Judges. Read it slowly. Sit with it. Let its ugliness tell the truth about humanity that forgot about God and the Torah, and the aftermath that tells you the truth about God. The horrors Israel chose could not stop the salvation God ordained, and nothing you have done will stop the redemption He is working in you.
That’s why these chapters remain and God preserved them. Because they tell the truth – not just about Israel, but about His faithfulness and His pursuit for YOUR salvation.
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