SEV Biblia, Chapter 19:1
¶ En aquellos días, cuando no había rey en Israel, hubo un levita que moraba como peregrino en los lados del monte de Efraín, el cual se había tomado mujer concubina de Belén de Judá.
Clarke's Bible Commentary - Judges 19:1
Verse 1. There was no king in Israel] All sorts of disorders are attributed to the want of civil government; justice, right, truth, and humanity, had fallen in the streets. Took to him a concubine] We have already seen that the concubine was a sort of secondary wife; and that such connections were not disreputable, being according to the general custom of those times. The word glyp pilegesh, concubine, is supposed by Mr. Parkhurst to be compounded of glp palag, "to divide, or share;" and gn nagash, "to approach;" because the husband shared or divided his attention and affections between her and the real wife; from whom she differed in nothing material, except in her posterity not inheriting.
John Gill's Bible Commentary
Ver. 1. And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel , etc.] The same is observed in ( Judges 17:6 18:1) and refers to the same times, the times before the judges, between them and the death of Joshua, during which time there was no supreme magistrate or ruler in Israel, which is meant; and this is observed, as before, to account for wickedness being committed with impunity, such as adultery, sodomy, murder, etc. afterwards related: that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of Mount Ephraim ; in a city that was on one side of that mountain; it seems not to have been a Levitical city, because he was only a sojourner in it; perhaps he chose to reside there, as being near to the tabernacle of Shiloh, which was in that tribe; who took to him a concubine out of Bethlehemjudah ; the same place from whence the wicked Levite came, spoken of in the preceding chapters, and who was the means of spreading idolatry in Israel; and here a wicked concubine of a Levite comes from the same, and was the cause of great effusion of blood in Israel; which two instances may seem to reflect dishonour and disgrace on Bethlehem, which were wiped off by the birth of some eminent persons in it, as Boaz, Jesse, David, and especially the Messiah. The woman the Levite took from hence is in the Hebrew called, “a wife, a concubine” f390 ; for a concubine was a secondary wife, taken without espousals and a dowry: some think they were espoused, though there was no dowry, and were reckoned truly wives, though they had not all the honour and privilege as others; and that this woman was accounted the wife of the Levite, appears from his being called her husband frequently; and her father is said to be his father-in-law, and he his son-inlaw; nor could she have been chargeable with adultery otherwise.
Matthew Henry Commentary
The wickedness of the men of Gibeah.
--The three remaining chapters of this book contain a very sad histor of the wickedness of the men of Gibeah, in Benjamin. The righteous Lor permits sinners to execute just vengeance on one another, and if the scene here described is horrible, what will the discoveries of the da of judgment be! Let each of us consider how to escape from the wrath to come, how to mortify the sins of our own hearts, to resist Satan' temptations, and to avoid the pollutions there are in the world __________________________________________________________________
Original Hebrew
ויהי 1961 בימים 3117 ההם 1992 ומלך 4428 אין 369 בישׂראל 3478 ויהי 1961 אישׁ 376 לוי 3881 גר 1481 בירכתי 3411 הר 2022 אפרים 669 ויקח 3947 לו אשׁה 802 פילגשׁ 6370 מבית לחם 1035 יהודה׃ 3063
