1. In those days there was no king in Israel; there was a man, a Levite, who dwelled as a foreigner in the remote areas of the hill country of Ephraim. And he took for himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah.
2. But his concubine felt repugnance toward him, and she left him and went to her father’s house, to Bethlehem in Judah; she was there some four months.
3. So her husband set out, and he went after her to speak tenderly to her, to bring her back. He took with him his servant and a pair of donkeys. And she brought him to her father’s house, and the father of the young woman saw him and was glad to meet him.