Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 19:24-25

"Behold, here is my daughter a virgin, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not any such folly. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man laid hold on his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go." — Judges 19:24-25 (ASV)

Behold, here is my daughter ... —The main horror of these verses lies, and is meant to lie, in the nameless infamy to which these men had sunk, of whom we can only say,

“Non ragionam di lor ma guarda è passa.”

But we must not overlook that the conduct of the old man and the Levite, though it is not formally condemned, speaks of the existence of a very rudimentary morality, a selfishness, and a low estimate of the rights and sacred dignity of women, which shows from what depths the world has emerged. If it was possible to frustrate the vile assault of these wretches in this way, it must have been possible to frustrate it altogether. There is something terribly repulsive in the selfishness which could thus make a Levite sacrifice a defenceless woman, and that woman his wife, for a whole night to such brutalisation. The remark of St. Gregory is very weighty: “Minus peccatum admittere ut gravius evitetur est a scelere victimas offerre Deo.”