Consider It, Speak

Transcript

My friend, thank you for being here today. This is By God's Call — day 77, Consider It, Speak.

I'm going to be honest with you from the very first sentence: today's text is one of the darkest in all of Scripture. Judges 19 recounts the violence suffered by a woman, the concubine of a Levite, in an episode so brutal that the sacred text itself records the reaction of those who heard about it: "Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak." Judges 19:30.

I'm not going to walk through every detail of this story here, because that's not what this moment calls for. But I need you to know enough to understand why this verse matters: a Levite man was traveling with his concubine, they stopped in a town called Gibeah, and there, wicked men of the town surrounded the house where they were staying, demanding to abuse the traveler. In the end, it was the concubine who was handed over to them, and she died because of the violence she suffered through that entire night.

I need you to understand something important about the Bible in this moment: it does not hide this. It does not skip this chapter. It does not soften the details to make the reading more comfortable. Scripture records evil with brutal honesty, precisely because it does not exist to shield us from the reality of human sin — it exists to confront us with it, so that we learn to call evil by its right name.

And look at the phrase the text uses: "such a thing has never happened or been seen." That is not rhetorical exaggeration. That is the sacred text itself acknowledging the scale of the horror it has just narrated. Because minimizing evil — saying "it wasn't that bad," or looking away too quickly — is always the first step toward tolerating it. The Bible does not do that here. It names the horror for exactly what it is.

This episode sits within a section of Judges marked by a repeated refrain: "there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes." That is not merely a historical note about the absence of government. It is a spiritual diagnosis. When a society loses God as its final reference point of authority, every person becomes their own law — and the result, sooner or later, is exactly this: violence no one can contain anymore, because no one recognizes a standard higher than their own will.

But the verse doesn't end in despair. It ends with a call: consider it, take counsel, speak. The text isn't asking for impulsive revenge — and the following chapter, in fact, shows how uncontrolled vengeance brings its own tragedies too. What the text asks for is deliberation. Collective voice. A refusal of silence in the face of injustice.

And here is the application I need to make to you, with all the seriousness this text demands: societies don't collapse all at once. They collapse slowly — one cowardly decision after another, one averted gaze after another, silence piling up on silence. Indifference is never neutral. It is always, in some way, complicit.

So here is what I'm asking of you today: think of one real injustice around you that you have stayed quiet about. It doesn't have to be the size of Gibeah — it can be much smaller, much closer to home, much more ordinary. But there is something you've been avoiding facing, avoiding mentioning, avoiding confronting. Today, take one concrete step — a word, an action, a conversation — to stop being merely a silent witness.

Because the text ends exactly like this: consider it, take counsel, and speak.

I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.