The invitation to eat, also in Judges 19:8, is directed only to the Levite. Strengthen your heart [with a morsel of bread]
is, in the original Hebrew, a masculine singular imperative. And the observances of the imperative are telling. Judges 19:6, The two of them sat and ate and drank together
; Judges 19:8, They ate, both of them.
This certainly differs from the they ate and drank
in Judges 19:4, which at least at that time could have well included the woman. But now and in Judges 19:8, it is definitely the case that only the girl’s father and the Levite are the ones who are eating and drinking. It makes us wonder whether the girl is eating at all. The men are having such a great time that she is nowhere to be seen.1
5 And on the fourth day they arose early in the morning, and he prepared to go, but the girl’s father said to his son-in-law, “Strengthen your heart with a morsel of bread, and after that you may go.”