Two incidents have been recorded which throw a lurid light on the manners and character of the age which immediately followed the settlement in Canaan. In one of them we hear of a Levite of Mount Ephraim ‘who took to him a concubine out of Beth-lehem in Judah.’ Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, had succeeded his father Eleazar as high-priest at Shiloh (Judg. xx. 28), where ‘the ark of the covenant’ had been placed. The concubine proved unfaithful to the Levite, and eventually fled to her father’s house in Beth-lehem. Thither the Levite followed her, and persuaded her to return with him to his home. The woman’s father, however, highly pleased at the reconciliation, continued to press his hospitality upon his guest, and it was not until the afternoon of the fifth day that the Levite succeeded in getting away. The evening soon fell upon him, and, rejecting the advice of his slave that he should spend the night in Jerusalem, on the ground that it was ‘the city of a stranger,’ he pressed on with his concubine to Gibeah, which belonged to Benjamin. It had been better for him, however, to have sought hospitality from ‘the stranger’ rather than from his own people; for, in spite of the fact that he had with him food in plenty both for himself and for his asses, he was left to spend the night in the street. But at the last moment an old man, who was not a native of Gibeah, came in from his work in the fields, and seeing the Levite in the street, asked him and his companions into the house. While they were eating and drinking, the rabble gathered about the house and demanded that the man should be brought out to them that they might ‘know him.’ It was a repetition of the scene enacted in Sodom when the angels visited the house of Lot, with the difference that the actors were Israelites instead of Canaanites, whom the Hebrews had been called upon to destroy for their sins. In vain ‘the master of the house’ intreated his fellow-townsmen not to act ‘so wickedly,’ offering them his own daughter as well as his guest’s concubine in place of the guest himself. Finally, however, they were satisfied with the unfortunate concubine, whom they ‘abused’ all night, and then left dead on the doorstep of the house. The first thing ‘her lord’ saw when he opened the door in the morning was the woman’s corpse. This he placed on his ass and carried to his home, where he divided it into twelve pieces, which he sent ‘into all the coasts of Israel.’[281] The horror of the deed, or perhaps of the visible proofs with which it was announced, aroused the Israelites, and they demanded the punishment of the guilty. The crime had been committed against a Levite, whose brethren were to be found wherever the Israelites were settled, and who had on his side the priesthood of the central sanctuary at Shiloh. He was, too, a Levite of Mount Ephraim, and the sympathy of the powerful tribe of Ephraim was accordingly assured to him. The Benjamites, however, refused to hand over their