In this video listen to Judges 19 read by David Alley, followed by comments and prayer. In Judges 19 is a story spanning three chapters. One writer Campbell called this narrative the “sewer of scripture.” It outlines how low people could get without proper guidance, and with hearts that did whatever they felt was right.
This story was also in the early period of the Judges, after Joshua died, but before Phinehas died, according to the Pulpit commentary. So it indicates that things were bad early on, and only got worse. A Levite went to try to win his concubine back from her father’s house. Her father kept encouraging him to stay longer. That apparent strange behaviour is completely understandable in a world with no communication.
He was probably not going to see his daughter again for a very long time. Even so, the Levite ends up leaving late in the day, which turns out to be a very dumb decision. While he knew there was danger travelling so late, he assumed he would be safe in Gibeah, an Isreaelite city, but it was the men of Gibeah who were the unsafe ones. And in Gibeah we have a very similar story to that of Sodom and Gomorrah. How could such a thing happen?
Later the prophet Hosea to these things in chapter 9:1a & 9. “Do not rejoice, Israel; do not be jubilant like the other nations. For you have been unfaithful to your God… They have sunk deep into corruption, as in the days of Gibeah. God will remember their wickedness and punish them for their sins.” Some people have used these types of things in the Bible to say the Bible approves of such things, but its a retelling of what actually happened, not a condoning of it, as is obvious if the entire Bible is taken together.
Also, what type of spiritual adultery takes place in the hearts and minds of people today? People use the internet, and their popularity to push things into others which rob God of his glory. Also, the stranger, weirder and odder people get, the more attention they get, and rather than controlling themselves and glorifying God that way, they seek to glorify themselves.