Acts of Xenophobia in Judges 19: 22-26

Abstract

The scenes in Judges 19:22-26 are horrifying at various levels. the hospitality an old man in Gibeah offers to a Levite stranger and his entourage provokes a xenophobic reaction from some townsmen. In this article, I examine three elements of the story – the significance of the townsmen’s intended homosexual act against the Levite, their refusal of the host’s substitute daughter, and the eventual brutal abuse of the Bethlehemite concubine of the Levite stranger – as acts of xenophobia. I offer an interpretation of the text through an anthropological framework suggested by Girard’s theory of mimetic desire to explain the significance of the record of xenophobic stereotypes that existed in the writer’s community.