Who is Your Neighbour?

When he entered his house he took a knife, and he grasped his concubine and cut her into twelve pieces; and he sent her throughout the whole territory of Israel. All who saw it said, “Nothing like this has ever been since the Israelites went up from the land of Egypt until this day. Take note of it, consider it, and speak up.”
Judges 19:29–30 LEB

Hatred towards other people has been with us through all of recorded human history and likely since the first group of people existed. We have an account of Cain murdering Able as one of the first acts of hatred and violence recorded in the Biblical creation account. We know families, tribes, countries and other groups of people have hated each other from the beginning and often have resorted to violence with each other.

There is a Biblical account that I have never heard any priest, pastor or preacher base a sermon on probably due to the sheer gruesomeness of the story. The entire tribe of Benjamin was almost completely annihilated because of what happened.

20 And the old man said, “Peace to you. I will take care of your needs; however, you must not spend the night in the open square.” 21 So he brought him to his house, and he fed the donkeys; they washed their feet, ate, and drank.

22 While they were enjoying themselves, behold, the men of the city, the perverse lot, surrounded the house, pounding on the door. And they said to the old man, the owner of the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so that we may have sex with him.” 23 So the man, the owner of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my brothers, do not act wickedly; since this man has come into my house, do not do this disgraceful thing. 24 Here is my virgin daughter and his concubine. Please, let me bring them out; do violence to them, and do to them whatever you please. Do not do this disgraceful thing to this man.” 25 But the men were not willing to listen to him, and the man seized his concubine and brought her out to them; and they had intercourse with her, and they abused her all night until the morning; they let her go at the approach of dawn. 26 And the woman came as the morning appeared, and she fell at the entrance of the man’s house where her master was, until daylight.

27 In the morning her master got up, and he opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his journey, and behold, his concubine was falling at the entrance of the house, with her hand on the threshold. 28 And he said to her, “Get up, let us go,” but there was no answer. So he put her on the donkey, and the man got up and went to his place. 29 When he entered his house he took a knife, and he grasped his concubine and cut her into twelve pieces; and he sent her throughout the whole territory of Israel. 30 All who saw it said, “Nothing like this has ever been since the Israelites went up from the land of Egypt until this day. Take note of it, consider it, and speak up.” (Judges 19:20–30, LEB)

There is so much wrong with this account and it sounds barbaric, but I am convinced a similar thing could happen almost any place in the world today in 2026. How were these men so perverse that there would be a group of them wanting to do this? Then the response of the home owner was to send out his daughter? After the crime was committed the traveller determined that cutting the women into twelve pieces to distribute amongst the twelve tribes of Israel was the logical course of action? What a bizarre account. It sounds similar to the story in Egyptian mythology where Set cut up the body of his brother Osiris into the amount of pieces according to the number of provinces in Egypt.

The next course of action everyone thought made sense was to kill 26,000 men from the tribe of Benjamin. This was not that many years after they stood at the foot of the mountain and heard the voice of God tell them the Ten Commandments.

15 “Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your countrymen, and to him you shall listen. 16 This is according to all that you asked from Yahweh your God at Horeb, on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘I do not want again to hear the voice of Yahweh my God, and I do not want to see again this great fire, so that I may not die!’ 17 And Yahweh said to me, ‘They are right in what they have said. 18 I will raise up a prophet for them from among their countrymen like you, and I will place my words into his mouth, and he shall speak to them everything that I command him. 19 And then the man that will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I will hold accountable (Deuteronomy 18:15–19, LEB)

The Israelites rarely took heed of the commandments of God that they heard on the mountain and even God realized that they couldn’t handle His thundering voice from the mountain. By the time of the above story in the book of Judges you had a Levite throwing his girlfriend out to the crowd and then cutting her up after they abused and killed her. This “prophet like Moses” God was going to send to correct the situation was identified as Jesus by the Apostle Peter in Acts chapter three.

19 Therefore repent and turn back, so that your sins may be blotted out, 20 so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and he may send the Christ appointed for you—Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the times of the restoration of all things, about which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from earliest times. 22 Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You will listen to him in everything that he says to you. 23 And it will be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet will be destroyed utterly from the people.’ (Acts 3:19–23, LEB)

Jesus told a story to demonstrate how we should treat people we are told to hate. The Samaritans were a people the Judeans hated. They were descendants of Ephraim, from the northern kingdom of Israel, that remained in Judea after the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE. These people were one of the two sticks that God was going to make one again spoken about by the prophet Ezekiel.

25 And behold, a certain legal expert stood up to test him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do so that I will inherit eternal life?” 26 And he said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered. and said, “You shall love the Lord your God from all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”

29 But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 And Jesus replied and said, “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who both stripped him and beat him. After inflicting blows on him, they went away, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by coincidence a certain priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he vpassed by on the opposite side. 32 And in the same way also a Levite, when he came down to the place and saw him, passed by on the opposite side. 33 But a certain Samaritan who was traveling came up to him and, when he saw him, had compassion. 34 And he came up and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine, and he put him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And on the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him, and whatever you spend in addition, I will repay to you when I return. 36 Which of these three do you suppose became a neighbor of the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 So he said, “The one who showed mercy to him.” And Jesus said to him, “You go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:25–37, LEB)

In this parable Jesus tells us how to inherit eternal life. “Do this and live”. It was the same message the Father had on the mountain. Love God and love your neighbor. Jesus called these the two greatest commands upon all the law and prophets were based. Loving God is learning what He said to do and living that way. We are not supposed to hate and kill people. And it will be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet will be destroyed utterly from the people.

Yet today there are many sects of Christianity that say we do not have to do what both the Father and Jesus said to do. That “we are in the age of grace” and “Jesus did away with the law”. The “law” they refer to includes the instructions about how to live and navigate this earth. Justice and mercy are at the top of the list with loving God and loving your neighbor. The result of this deception is the continuation of killing, stealing and hating, justifying it somehow as right.

We must not descend into the debauchery that the Levite and town’s people did with his girlfriend followed up by almost complete genocide of another group of people, or actions like the Levite and the priest passing by the Samaritan left to die on the side of the road. Jesus was showing us God’s instructions are still relevant today. Do not be deceived by the doctrines of Christianity which are leading us to be a lawless people oppressing and warring against others. Some of these heretical teachings tell Christian’s that we are not to follow the teachings of Jesus and the other apostles and that the gospel of Paul is only for the church. This is called dispensationalism theology and it is a form of the teachings of Marcion in the first century. It places a separation between the Israel of God and the “church” and it has led us to much of the problems the world faces today.

Dispensational theology results in Senators like Ted Cruz in Texas, and the ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, confusing a country created by a UN resolution in 1948 with words written in Genesis 12 talking about Abraham. Some of this is ignorance and confusion from being raised in churches that teach dispensational theology, but it is promoted and exploited by people in powerful places for more power and money.

11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the stratagems of the devil, 12 because our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:11–12, LEB)

Do not be deceived by warmongers of this world pretending to fight in “the name of God” to empower themselves. It is simply a replay of the Crusades using modern theology to convince the masses unaware they are being used for evil. Be like the good Samaritan that helped a person where others passed by.

Please check out my first book on Amazon titled, Finding God in Organized Religion. It is the story of my life focusing on my involvement with three major denominations, from my childhood to present, describing the good and bad, and what I learned during the process. This link is for the Canadian Amazon marketplace. It is also on many other Amazon international marketplaces.