I realise that my summary of Judges 19 is a pretty unpleasant addition to your Twitter stream.

In a way the summary sounds worse than the chapter itself - much colder - but it actually misses one of the worst details: the Levite voluntarily offered his concubine to the men of Gibeah because they initially wanted to rape him.

It's hard to see anything praiseworthy in the whole story. Perhaps there isn't.

We're at a key turning point for Israel. After successive bouts of apostasy and repentance under the judges we're now moving towards the time of the kings.

The repeated phrase in these chapters of Judges is, "In those days there was no king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes." The book is deliberately presenting the problems in Israel, and suggesting that having a king would be the answer.

Although the context in no way lessens the awfulness of the events in Judges 19, it's a relief to realise that we're supposed to find it awful.

It's a dark time for Israel. Things can't stay as they are.

One happy thing about Bible Summary is that I'm never very far away from a milestone.

I've just passed 30000 characters for the project. In the last two weeks I've also passed 5000 words, 18000 followers and finished the book of Joshua.

It's surpising how much these kinds of things encourage me.

I still feel a bit daunted when I think about the fact that I won't reach the New Testament until 2013, but the small milestones make the project very concrete for the next couple of weeks.

That brings Joshua to a close. I think Joshua has been the most straightforward book so far by quite some way. But next we have Judges...

Judges is probably the darkest book in Scripture. It certainly contains some of the most lurid tales.

I once read through each book of the Bible asking, "If this were the only book I had to learn about God and the universe, what impression would I have?" The picture in Judges was definitely one of the hardest to understand.

I can't believe I'm about to lead a tour of Judges for 18,000 Twitter followers. But here we go...