The old man who took the Levite and his traveling companions in for the night evidently had moved to Gibeah temporarily, perhaps as a farm laborer ( Judges 19:16; cf. Judges 19:23; Genesis 19:9). The contrast between this stranger"s hospitality and the Gibeahites" lack of it stands out in the text. The writer of Judges used a tragicomic literary style to emphasize the terrible moral and spiritual climate in Israel at this time. [1] One wonders if the men of Gibeah knew that the Levite was a Levite. Was their refusal to grant him shelter as a servant of Yahweh a deliberate act of disrespect for the Lord? Judges 19:19 shows that there was no reason for the Gibeahites to refuse the Levite hospitality. [source][source][source]
Beginning with Judges 19:21 this story begins to sound like a replay of what happened to Lot in Sodom (cf. Genesis 19:1-3). Gibeah proved to be New Sodom. [2][source]