1. In those days, when there was no king in Israel, there was a Levite residing in remote parts of the mountain region of Ephraim who had taken for himself a concubine from Bethlehem of Judah.
2. But his concubine spurned him and left him for her father’s house in Bethlehem of Judah, where she stayed for some four months.
3. Her husband then set out with his servant and a pair of donkeys, and went after her to soothe her and bring her back. He arrived at her father’s house, and when the young woman’s father saw him, he came out joyfully to meet him.
4. His father-in-law, the young woman’s father, urged him to stay, and so he spent three days eating and drinking and passing the night there.