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Apr. 5th, 2010 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easyJudges 19, repeats part of the Sodom story: an immigrant hosts a traveller, only for his house to be surrounded by his neighbours demanding to "know" the stranger. Instead, he leaves his concubine to their mercy, and they "know" and abuse her to death. (Lot only goes as far as offering his virgin daughters, who are saved by the angels' intervention.)
The same Hebrew word is used twice in the Gibeah story, a verb with multiple meanings. Scholars point out that it's only occasionally used in the Bible to mean "to have sex with". Some therefore conclude that the crowd were intent on raping the stranger. But I wonder if it's a blackly humorous pun on the part of the storyteller: if we can't know him, we'll "know" her. It's also possible that what the crowd really wanted all along was a bribe.
The same Hebrew word is used twice in the Gibeah story, a verb with multiple meanings. Scholars point out that it's only occasionally used in the Bible to mean "to have sex with". Some therefore conclude that the crowd were intent on raping the stranger. But I wonder if it's a blackly humorous pun on the part of the storyteller: if we can't know him, we'll "know" her. It's also possible that what the crowd really wanted all along was a bribe.
