Judges 20:4
And the Levite, the husband of the woman that was slain, answered and said, I came into Gibeah that belongeth to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge. And the Levite, the husband of the woman that was slain, answered and said, I came into Gibeah that belongeth to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge.
Though it stands in the final chapters of Judges, the account to which this verse belongs is set in the early part of the period of the judges. It is part of the record of Israel's fearful backsliding and resulting disgrace and punishment, showing how low Israel had fallen before Samuel the prophet was called. That low condition stands in mighty contrast to the goodness and mercy of God shown in the miracles and teaching of Christ.
The verse belongs to the account of the crime at Gibeah and the tribe of Benjamin's identification with the people responsible for it. The Levite came into Gibeah that belonged to Benjamin with his concubine to lodge, and there his concubine was disgracefully murdered. Gibeah of Benjamin, where these events took place, lay within an hour's walk from Jerusalem. Gibeah means "high"; it is 2,690 feet above the sea, about 200 feet higher than Jerusalem, and commands a fine view of the country even beyond the Dead Sea, far into the mountains of Moab.
Calling the Levite the husband of his concubine shows that a concubine was legally a wife, though inferior in rank and possibly a slave wife. The surrounding events treat hospitality as more important than a woman's virtue and tribal loyalty as more important than justice, but neither custom excuses sin. The events recorded in Judges 20 left Benjamin the least tribe and nearly exterminated it. Choosing the king from this weakened tribe showed divine wisdom designed to remove all grounds of jealousy among the other tribes.