Rousseau writes most of this text in 1762, whereas he flees Montmorency after the judgment of the Emile. The Levite of Ephraïm will be published in Ouvres posthumous, in 1781. The particularly cruel argument of this work is borrowed from the biblical account which one finds in the Book of the Judges: the Levite offers his concubine to the men of the tribe of Benjamin, who wanted to dishonor it and who kill it.

The dreadful crime committed by Benjamites involves their massacre by Israëlites; but the need for not letting die out this tribe obliges the Jews to entrust to the survivors virgins of Jabès and Silo.

Rousseau proposes in this text a description of the brutality of the men who, definitively left the state of nature, did not conclude an authentic pact yet from government. Indeed, many analogies can be raised between the text of the Levite of Ephraïm and this late period of the history of humanity, such as the end of the Speech on the origin of the inequality draws the picture of it.

But it should not be forgotten that persecutions whose Rousseau starts to be the victim make it very sensitive to the pains whose biblical account carries testimony. This autobiographical aspect undoubtedly explains why Jean-Jacques remained very attached to this minor work: “The Levite of Ephraïm, if it is not the best of my works will be always cherished the most of it”.