Bible Strands
Judges 20:5
And during the night, the men of Gibeah rose up against me and surrounded the house. They intended to kill me, but they abused my concubine, and she died.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The Levite husband of the murdered woman addresses the assembled Israelite congregation, recounting the attack that occurred while he and his concubine were staying overnight in Gibeah of Benjamin.
The words — The Hebrew verbs וַיָּקֻ֤מוּ (wa-yā-qūmû, "they rose up") and וַיָּסֹ֧בּוּ (wa-yā-sōḇû, "they surrounded") describe the coordinated action of the citizens of Gibeah against the Levite’s dwelling.
The thread — This narrative of a hostile mob surrounding a house to commit violence parallels the account in Judges 19:22, where the wicked men of the city gather around a dwelling, and echoes the earlier pattern in Genesis 19:4 where all the men of Sodom surround Lot’s house.
Why it lands — The text records the perpetrators' explicit intent to kill and their lethal abuse of the guest, demanding the reader recognize how this specific breach of hospitality directly precipitates the communal judgment and military response that follow.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And the men of Gibeah rose against me, and beset the house round about upon me by night, and thought to have slain me: and my concubine have they forced, that she is dead.
Cross-references
- Judges 19:22 While they were enjoying themselves, suddenly the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they said to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house, so we can have relations with him!”
- Judges 19:25 But the men would not listen to him. So the Levite took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go.
- Genesis 19:4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men of the city of Sodom, both young and old, surrounded the house.
- Deuteronomy 22:24 you must take both of them out to the gate of that city and stone them to death—the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he has violated his neighbor’s wife. So you must purge the evil from among you.
- Ezekiel 22:10 In you they have uncovered the nakedness of their fathers; in you they violate women during their menstrual impurity.