Misinterpretations of this verse often wrongly depict the Levite as xenophobic or endorsing ethnic discrimination by avoiding Jebus solely due to its inhabitants' ethnicity, overlooking the biblical mandate for Israel to conquer Canaanite cities like Jebus and the narrative's point that greater wickedness occurred in Israelite Gibeah; others might extract it to justify modern travel biases or insularity, ignoring the broader context of Judges illustrating Israel's failure to uphold God's law internally during the chaotic judges era.
Judges 19:10
King James Version (1769)
10 But the man would not tarry that night, but he rose up and departed, and came over against Jebus, which is Jerusalem; and there were with him two asses saddled, his concubine also was with him.
In Judges 19:10, the Levite and his concubine, traveling from Bethlehem to Ephraim, refuse to stay in Jebus (Jerusalem), a city still controlled by pagan Jebusites, choosing instead to press on a few more miles to Gibeah in Israelite Benjaminite territory, reflecting the cultural and religious preference for lodging among fellow covenant people amid a time of moral chaos in Israel where 'every man did that which was right in his own eyes,' setting the stage for the horrific events that expose Israel's internal depravity surpassing even that of foreigners.