The story of the raped and murdered woman of Judges 19 and the civil war and mass marriage that ensue in chapters 20-21 are hardly favorite tales of the Hebrew Bible. The chapters have often been dismissed as little more than an anachronistic epilogue, an awkward amalgamation of earlier stories or a «text of terror,» proof of patriarchal oppression. This book argues that, far from being a clumsy collage, Judges 19-21 is a carefully narrated tale that chronicles the descent of a nation into...
