Study Desk

They turned aside there, to go in to lodge in Gevah: and he went in, and sat him down in the street of the city; for there was no man who took them into his house to lodge.

Behold, there came an old man from his work out of the field at even: now the man was of the hill-country of Efrayim, and he sojourned in Gevah; but the men of the place were Binyamini.

He lifted up his eyes, and saw the wayfaring man in the street of the city; and the old man said, Where go you? and whence come you?

He said to him, We are passing from Beit-Lechem-Yehudah to the farther side of the hill-country of Efrayim; from there am I, and I went to Beit-Lechem-Yehudah: and I am [now] going to the house of the LORD; and there is no man who takes me into his house.

So he brought him into his house, and gave the donkeys fodder; and they washed their feet, and ate and drink.

Behold, here is my daughter a virgin, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble you them, and do with them what seems good to you: but to this man don't do any such folly.

But the men wouldn't listen to him: so the man laid hold on his concubine, and brought her forth to them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go.

Her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way; and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold.

He said to her, Up, and let us be going; but none answered: then he took her up on the donkey; and the man rose up, and got him to his place.

When he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, limb by limb, into twelve pieces, and sent her throughout all the borders of Yisra'el.

All the people arose as one man, saying, We will not any of us go to his tent, neither will we any of us turn to his house.

Now the men of Yisra'el had sworn in Mitzpah, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter to Binyamin as wife.

and see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come you out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Binyamin.

It shall be, when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, that we will say to them, Grant them graciously to us, because we didn't take for each man his wife in battle, neither did you give them to them, else would you now be guilty.

The children of Yisra'el departed there at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they went out from there every man to his inheritance.

In those days there was no king in Yisra'el: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

It happened in the days when the judges judged, that there was a famine in the land. A certain man of Beit-Lechem-Yehudah went to sojourn in the country of Mo'av, he, and his wife, and his two sons.

The name of the man was Elimelekh, and the name of his wife Na`omi, and the name of his two sons Machlon and Kilyon, Efratites of Beit-Lechem-Yehudah. They came into the country of Mo'av, and continued there.

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law, that she might return from the country of Mo'av: for she had heard in the country of Mo'av how that the LORD had visited his people in giving them bread.

Na`omi had a kinsman of her husband's, a mighty man of wealth, of the family of Elimelekh, and his name was Bo`az.