His aged wife, or sister, or companion, YHWH alone knew which, had tended the small fire well, and it crackled with a cheery flame, nicely heating the tiny space. It was a farmer’s house, various implements of that life leaning against the shadowy walls, two hoes with metal tips, an old bronze sword, dull and ill-used, several clay jars, poorly made and weathered with cracks, leaking liquid down their sides. A wooden bench served as the only place for a seat, and the old man fell heavily onto it, the woman scurrying to bring the food to the large wooden table, three rough boards held together with what looked like camel ropes, replacing the metal clamps that had long ago rusted away.
As they were eating a small meal, bread from gritty flour, a few dates and olives, meat from an unknown and stringy animal, the people of Gibeah encircled the house of the old man and began pounding on the door. “Bring that man who is visiting you outside now. We wish to have our way with him!” But the old man bravely confronted the mob, and said, “My neighbors, do not act with such wickedness. This man is my guest; you well know the demands of hospitality. When a stranger comes, the custom stipulates their complete protection and safety. I have a virgin daughter and this man has a concubine. I will bring them out to you, and you can do with them whatever your filthy imaginations can conceive.” The crowd was plainly a depraved lot!
But the mob would not listen, so the Levite pushed his screaming concubine out to the mob and slammed the door after her. The old man, his daughter, and the Levite retired to bed, while the cruel mob of Gibeah, the men, the women, and even some children, attacked the concubine all night long, raping her and assaulting her in ways too appalling to recount. (At this point in the telling, how graphic the details became was dependent on the character of the teller and on the number of cups of wine consumed.) As the sun rose, they let her go, throwing her down on the ground, not knowing or caring whether she was dead or alive. The poor woman crawled feebly toward the house, stretched out her hand to grasp its threshold, and collapsed unconscious.
And in the morning, the Levite got up and opened the door. There, lying on the threshold, was the concubine, bloody and bruised, her tunic ripped, most of her body exposed to the sun’s first light. “Get up,” he said to her, “We are going.” He offered no comfort; he expressed no surprise; he showed no anger at the monstrousness of the deed. He merely wanted her to get up and go with him to his hut.
But she did not answer. Was she dead or just nearly dead? Some say one, some the other. In any case, the Levite lifted her limp body onto his donkey. And then he did the thing that so terrifies young and old whenever the story was told. When he arrived back at his hut in the mountains, he grabbed the concubine, and taking a huge knife, the one with which he regularly butchered his meat, he cut her into 12 pieces, limb by limb, and sent the bloody chunks throughout all the land of Israel. He commanded each man who carried a piece of the concubine as follows: “Say this to all Israelites; ‘Has such a thing ever happened since the day the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt until this day?’ Consider well, take careful counsel, and then act!”
With every telling of this unforgettably brutal story the Levite became larger, uglier, more terrifying. But the upshot of the Levite’s action was particularly well remembered. Israel had nearly descended to outright civil war, its tribe of Benjamin almost wiped from the earth. Because of all this it was crucial that any would-be member of the territory be closely investigated; it would hardly do to be neighbors with anyone who did not ascribe to the very highest standards of morality, and morality was identical to village custom. They needed no more mobs to deny the sacred rights and agreed upon customs of a respected Israelite village. It was that story that lay behind the elders’ careful questions of any newcomer.
So they questioned Kish closely as he applied to join the elders in Gibeah. Carmi wanted him to repeat that long list of unknown forbears, but Abior quickly rejected the idea as unnecessary, thinking to himself that he simply could not listen to the vapid names one more time! Shmuel asked about Kish’s religious beliefs, although one could always say the name YHWH enough times to convince anyone that he was safe enough as a believer. Abior asked if there were any more questions, and hearing none, asked for a vote. On certain occasions, when the council was badly divided they would cast lots, ancient animal bones that the priests said could reveal truths that simple humans could not, but in the case of Kish, there was no need for the rattle of the bones. They finally accepted him, nearly unanimously, but, as usual, some with reluctance. The elders always acted with reluctance whenever anyone asked to live in their Gibeah, clearly the best village in all of Benjamin, if not in the whole land. But Kish was accepted at the last and found a good plot of land quite close to the village, no more than half a morning’s walk. Kish , his wife, and young sons, soon made their way to their new farm and settled in to a fresh life on the outskirts of Gibeah.
2
The decision worked well this time for both sides as Kish’s flocks and herds expanded and his fields were thick with grain at the times of harvest. He had numerous sturdy sons, all of whom were strapping boys, strong workers, devoted to Kish and to Kish’s God, YHWH. It was particularly important that Kish and his family prove themselves devotees of YHWH, the mysterious God of the far-away mountain who had created everything and who offered to the faithful the riches of the land. The elders had built a shrine to YHWH at the highest place near the village, and all were expected to bring appropriate offerings to the God as well as to learn of the many demands that YHWH had laid on those who would be the God’s followers. It was no problem for Kish to be regular in his sacrificial practice for in truth he grew deeply devoted to YHWH, the often hidden deity, in response to the increasing successes of his farm. Kish was careful to speak often of YHWH to his family, and easily had YHWH’s name on his lips whenever any of the elders came for a visit to Kish’s farm. And Kish and his sons made regular trips to the shrine, bringing with them gifts of ripe grain and on special occasions like spring lambing season, a pure animal for sacrifice. Kish and family soon became respected members of the village, and he was elected to the council of elders as quickly as any new comer ever had.
One of Kish’s sons stood out from his brothers in nearly every way. He was very good-looking, any girl in Benjamin could tell you that. Years of hard farm labor filled out his arms and shoulders, and since his particular job was plowing behind the yoked oxen, his legs became heavily muscled as well. Walking in the muddy fields, trying to keep the huge oxen straight in the rows, forced arms and legs to strain almost every minute, so the boy became a chiseled figure of a man. All commented that this boy, Saul, was very pleasing to the eyes of all who saw him. But that was not the most noticeable thing about him. He was no doubt handsome, but most of all he was magically tall. No one could remember seeing a man as tall as he; four cubits (that is the height of a very tall camel, a cubit representing the distance between the middle finger and the elbow) at least he was. It was something of a joke as the boy grew, how he first towered over his mother by age ten, and then dwarfed his father by age fifteen. Carmi and Doeg took bets on just how tall Saul would finally become, while Abior wagered with Carmi, ever the one for a wager, on just when he would stop growing. When he grew nearly a span (the space between last finger and thumb) in his fifteenth year, he would cry out in the night because of the pain in his legs, the bones and sinews stretching and stretching.
Old Kish, his father, first beamed with pride at his enormous and handsome son, but as his growing continued, he became fearful that perhaps his boy was some sort of freak, a misfit in a shorter, more normal world, a monster to terrify little children, the stuff of scary stories in the night. Saul was special, all right, but he was also odd, peculiar, and could not be treated quite like Kish’s other children. He could not share a sleeping place with anyone else, since he took up the whole of any normal sleeping rug. His appetite was prodigious; Kish’s wife had to cook more and more food for the family as Saul ate enough for three or four children, and eventually enough for three or four adults. Of course, he was very handy about the farm; only Saul could handle alone the great team of oxen that was so essential to the work of plowing and planting; only Saul could lift the enormous stones that the plowing always turned up. It was often said that stones were the finest product of the fields of Israel, so stone moving was a central job when working the land.
