¹⁶ Then at evening there was an old man coming from his work in the field. The man was from the hill country of Ephraim, and he was residing in Gibeah. (The people of the place were Benjaminites.)^(A)

The Levite’s Concubine

19 In those days, when there was no king in Israel, a certain Levite residing in the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim took to himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah.^(A)

¹⁰ For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: anyone unwilling to work should not eat.

¹¹ to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you,^{(A) 12} so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one.^(B)

²⁸ Those who steal must give up stealing; rather, let them labor, doing good work with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.

¹² Sweet is the sleep of laborers, whether they eat little or much, but the abundance of the rich will not let them sleep.^(A)

¹³ I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to humans to be busy with.^(A)