SEV Biblia, Chapter 19:29
Y al llegar a su casa, tomó un cuchillo, y echó mano de su concubina, y la despedazó con sus huesos en doce partes, y las envió por todos los términos de Israel.
Clarke's Bible Commentary - Judges 19:29
Verse 29. Divided her-into twelve pieces] There is no doubt that with the pieces he sent to each tribe a circumstantial account of the barbarity of the men of Gibeah; and it is very likely that they considered each of the pieces as expressing an execration, "If ye will not come and avenge my wrongs, may ye be hewn in pieces like this abused and murdered woman!" It was a custom among the ancient Highlanders in Scotland, when one clan wished to call all the rest to avenge its wrongs, to take a wooden cross, dip it in blood, and send it by a special messenger through all the clans. This was called the fire cross, because at sight of it each clan lighted a fire or beacon, which gave notice to all the adjoining clans that a general rising was immediately to take place.
John Gill's Bible Commentary
Ver. 29. And when he was come into his house , etc.] Having taken the dead body of his wife from off the ass, and brought it in thither, and laid it in a proper place and order: he took a knife ; a carving knife, such as food is cut with, as the word signifies; the Targum is, a sword: and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces ; cut off her limbs at the joints of her bones, and made twelve pieces of them, according to the number of the tribes of Israel: and sent her into all the coasts of Israel ; that is, to every tribe, as Josephus says f405 : there was now no supreme magistrate to apply unto for justice, nor the court of seventy elders, and therefore he took this strange and unheard of method to acquaint each of the tribes with the fact committed; this he did not out of disrespect to his wife, but to express the vehement passion he was in on account of her death, in the way it was, and to raise their indignation at the perpetrators of it. Ben Gersom thinks he did not send to the tribe of Benjamin, where the evil was done; but Abarbinel is of another mind, and as Levi was not a tribe that lay together in one part of the land, but was scattered in it, pieces might be sent to the two half tribes of Manasseh, as the one lay on the one side Jordan, and the other on the other, and so there were twelve for the twelve pieces to be sent unto. So Ptolemy king of Egypt killed his eldest son, and divided his members, and put them in a box, and sent them to his mother on his birthday f406 . Chytraeus writes, that about A. C. 140, a citizen of Vicentia, his daughter being ravished by the governor Carrarius, and cut to pieces, who had refused to send her to him, being sent back again, he put up the carcass in a vessel, and sent it to the senate of Venice, and invited them to punish the governor, and seize upon the city.
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
ויבא 935 אל 413 ביתו 1004 ויקח 3947 את 853 המאכלת 3979 ויחזק 2388 בפילגשׁו 6370 וינתחה 5408 לעצמיה 6106 לשׁנים 8147 עשׂר 6240 נתחים 5409 וישׁלחה 7971 בכל 3605 גבול 1366 ישׂראל׃ 3478
