Sons of Belial: How Worthless Men are Killing You

By Matt Watson

Introduction

Judges 19 is a difficult text to write on, let alone preach on. And in these times when reason gives way to passions, I find myself timid like Gideon. This won’t be the nicest thing you’ll read today, but hopefully, it’ll be the most truthful.

I write this with some trepidation because I expect loud objections from both people who I am friends with on social media, but have not spoken to in a long time, if at all, but also from people whom I care about deeply but who will not find the bitter taste of medicinal truth palatable. This includes family, for I have gay or affirming family members whom I will undoubtedly offend. But as Allie Beth Stuckey has reminded us, the most loving thing we can do is agree with God.

Let me not be more afraid of them than I am of God. Let me not be fearful of an unfollow, an extensive DM debate, or an uncomfortable Thanksgiving for stating what the Bible says and applying it.

Charles Spurgeon once compared the gospel to a lion, saying that we need not defend it, but just let it roar and it will defend itself. That’s what I am aiming to do: let the gospel defend itself. It is capable of dividing soul from spirit, and bone from marrow, while also soothing the wounds of our sin.

Let’s roll.

Brutal, Horrific, and Shocking

Judges 19 is about a Levite and his concubine who traveled through the lands of Benjamin and needed to stay the night in a town called Gibeah. There was no room in the inns, so they intended to sleep in the town square. An old man came upon them and insisted they stay with him that night because it wasn’t safe in the square. It’s almost as if he knew something they didn’t know about the town.

Later that night, the men of Gibeah came to the old man’s house and demanded, “Bring out the man who came into your house, that we may know him,” (v. 22) which is the Bible’s way of saying “have sex with him.” As we see, it wouldn’t be the consensual kind, either.

The old man offered them his own daughter, as well as the Levite’s concubine as bribes to the men, saying, “Violate them and do with them what seems good to you,” (v. 24). Eventually, they forcefully pushed out the concubine into the crowd of men where she was gang raped all night until she died. The next morning, her husband opened the door, found her there, and said “Get up, let us be going” (v. 28). But she was dead. He took his concubine home, cut her dead body up, and sent the pieces to all the tribes in Israel to show them what the men of Gibeah had done.

Yes, all the adjectives you are thinking of here are valid. I’ve offered three in the heading; feel free to add your own.

A non-Christian, or perhaps one that is to the left politically and still uses the term Christian, may read this story and see all the evidence they’ve ever needed about oppressive systems like patriarchy. Their premise is correct—that is some really evil stuff done by “men”—but their conclusion is wrong because it’s evil regardless of the gender, or color, of the person gang raping the other person (I threw in the race card so they didn’t have to).

A legalistic Christian, such as your crazy Christian aunt on Facebook, might recall that this story is awfully similar to Genesis 19. They may point out that those people, who lived in a little town called Sodom, got nuked from orbit by God, just as they deserved, and so should the men of Gibeah. Again, right premise, but a little off-target on the conclusion because it misses your aunt’s sin and her need for God’s grace too. See below.

Certain Sons of Belial

How could this happen? How could a dirty old man try to sacrifice his virgin daughter to a horny mob? How could a perverted pastor with a concubine for a wife (was she his wife that he treated like a concubine, was she someone else’s concubine that he stole and took for a wife? The text isn’t super clear on that) callously let her be brutally murdered by way of gang rape? And let’s not forget the horny mob themselves. All the men here failed. They didn’t do their job to glorify God by protecting and defending their daughter and wife. The main sin of the mob wasn’t that they wanted gay sex any more than the main sin of the old man was bribery. Their primary sin was their disregard for God’s Word, will, and ways.

The ESV describes these men as “worthless fellows” which is quite lame. Other translations say wicked men, good-for-nothings, and that “perverse lot.” But the KJV says “certain sons of Belial.” Without getting too much into the weeds regarding ancient Hebrew, second temple literature, and textual criticism, know that “sons of Belial” is a Hebrew idiom used in the Bible for “wicked men,” and that Belial became associated as a personal name of Satan. Whether you want to attribute the actions of these men to a certain demon, or just the nature of human depravity, either way, they were worthless and wicked.

The sons of Belial show us what their culture was like at that time. As the men go, so goes the culture. How do men become worthless at best, and wicked at worst? They forsake and oppose God. When a man, or a group of men, or the men of a town or city, or the men that make up a culture at large, forsakes and oppose God then you have the shocking public practice of sin including but not limited to gang rape, pride parades, and drag queen story hour with children (yall were waiting for it to get spicy, and now it should kick in). You have men like the old man in this chapter who caved to cultural pressure and its demands attempting to appease his neighbors’ passions with his virgin daughter. You have men like the Levite who callously neglected this woman and let strangers use her for their pleasure.

Not much has changed. There are men today, just as then, who are worthless sons of Belial. They would exploit their teenage daughters, pimp their wives on Only Fans, sodomize each other, mutilate children, murder children in the womb, and do so all proudly while waving a flag of many colors in the name of freedom, daring anyone to oppose them.

Pride

Just as then, our country is a mess. Don’t mistake that sentence as an equation that Israel and the United States are the same. Boomers and dispensationalists have annoyingly made it necessary to clarify that now to the would-be middle-ground Christians who find biblical context awkward.

Recall the thesis for the book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg 17:6 ESV). There was no king in Israel then, and we deny we have a king today. We all just do what is right in our own eyes. We think the state is our king, one headed by the miserable choice between a president who paid hush money to a porn star and a president with dementia who may be a pedophile (or at least a really creepy old man).

“We don’t live in a theocracy!” I hear someone objecting. To that, I say of course we do. It just depends on who your god is. Your god can be the state, yourself, your pleasure, or actual demons with names, and they all have a banner to raise over you.

In San Antonio, our own mayor, backed by most of the city council, hoisted the pride flag over city hall on June 1 for Pride Month. That’s the banner that represents San Antonio now.

Like the men of Gibeah, we don’t care what God thinks in this city. Like the tower of Babel, we have started shaking our fists at Almighty God, becoming proud and arrogant in our sin, as individuals and as a people. We say there is no God, and we do what is right in our own eyes.

But the Bible says he opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble (Ps 138:6; Prov 3:34, 29:23; Matt 23:12; Luke 1:52; Jas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5). We flaunt our sexual sin before God, from things like homosexuality but also adultery, porn, prostitution, exploitation, and fornication. Please note that includes the sexual sin of those on the left and on the right. It all sucks and it’s all damnable.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, …
Romans 1:24-29a ESV

Why do we do this? Because we exchanged the truth of God for a lie. Worthless men, certain sons of Belial, have, like Satan, snuck into the garden and whispered lies that tickle our ears. And we fell for it. We bit down on that wriggling worm hard and are being yanked by the hook. We forsook God’s Word, his revealed will, and his holy ways, and made new ways for us to follow. We made new gods to worship, ones that will accept and affirm us for who we choose to be no matter what. We’ve discarded God’s law, casting it aside like toilet paper, and created a new law of intolerant tolerance. I could go on, but you’ve probably stopped reading this already.

Now What?

The Bible is clear that a lot of what our culture celebrates today is an abomination to a holy and righteous God. LGBTQ+ Pride and God are incompatible, no matter what the United Methodists or lesbyterians try to tell you. Likewise, child sacrifice in the name of “reproductive justice” is not compatible with God, the maker of every baby in the womb. Adultery and unfaithfulness between spouses are not compatible with God. Looking at porn, whether it’s the hard stuff or the low-octane temptations on social media, is not compatible with God. It is as incompatible as darkness is with light.

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?
2 Cor 6:14 ESV

Here is the good news at last. Jesus is far more gracious and wonderful than we imagine because he redeems sinners. Think about how utterly offensive the sins of those men in Judges 19 were, especially to the daughter and the concubine. As offensive as those sins were, how much more offensive is your sin against God? And Jesus died for that, in your place. That’s the level of grace I’m talking about here. Take the worst sin imaginable, including any from the examples I’ve provided above, and realize that it can be covered and washed away by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Faith in the saving work and lordship of Jesus is the only thing that converts lawlessness to righteousness and dark to light.

There is one way out of this mess: Christ. It’s Christ or chaos, and it always has been Christ or chaos. You either die to yourself and follow Christ our King, or you live long enough to see yourself become his enemy. As the trad influencers say, “Which way modern man?” Look around and see what people have chosen. Look around your life and see where your choices have brought you.

Write this off at your own peril. The solution to your sin and my sin, as well as the solution to the mass delusion that our country and the entire West are in, is to turn from our sins and turn toward God. Christ is king, there is no other. You want out of this mess? Repent. Do as the people of Israel did when they received the Levite’s care package containing his dismembered wife: consider it, take counsel, and speak.

Consider your sin, your need for a savior, and the goodness of God the Father in giving us one in Jesus Christ the Son. The Puritan pastor Thomas Watson said, “Till sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.” So consider your sin, taste its bitterness, and see its consequences. Then know the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, and his goodness ultimately revealed in Jesus.

This article was originally published by Matthew Watson with Awake! Put on strength!, and is used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.