‘She had it coming’: text, tradition and trauma in Judges 19

The horrific story of the rape and murder of a young woman in Judges 19 ends with a dismembered corpse and a call to ‘Get on top of it! Take counsel! And speak out!’ (19:30). In Shelly Rambo’s terms, her death haunts the life that follows, and the narrator seems to be calling us to ‘witness’ to the reality of life after the storm of this traumatic event.