The travellers arrive in Gibeah as the sun is setting. But they do not get the kind of welcome they expect: they sat down in the city square, but no one took them into his house.
This would have been shocking anywhere in the ancient Near East, but it is especially shocking in Israel. The social breakdown and dysfunction have infected the very heart of the community of God’s people. No one in Gibeah seeks the pleasure of a Levite’s company. Does this not show that the service of the Lord was reviled in that place? There is something ominous here.
15 and they turned aside there, to go in and spend the night at Gibeah. And he went in and sat down in the open square of the city, for no one took them into his house to spend the night.