Scholars have often noted the close
parallels between the stories of Gen 19, where divine emissaries lodge
overnight in Sodom in the house of Abraham’s nephew Lot, and Judg 19, where a
Levite sojourner from Ephraim and his entourage lodge overnight in Gibeah with
anther Ephraimite who is temporarily resident in this Benjaminite town.
Especially of note is the violent episode that happens once the evening
proceeds in both tales: men from Sodom, in Gen 19:4-5, and Benjaminites from
Gibeah, in Jug 19:22, come to the residences where the visitors are housed in
order to demand that the divine emissaries (in Gen 19) and the Levite (in Judg
19) be sent forth “so that we might know them/him.” The language here draws
on the Bible’s well-known use of the verb “to know” (yāda’) as a sexual
euphemism meaning that what the Sodomites and Benjaminites each seek is to
assert their dominance over the strangers in their midst by subjecting them to
homosexual rape. (Susan Ackerman, Gods, Goddesses, and the Women Who
Serve Them [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2022], 59)
