Judges: Chapter 13

 

The nameless space

between a woman and her man

expect wonders and the wild

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After a spate of minor, short-term judges, we arrive at another definitive period of 40 years: this time  of oppression rather than leadership. This definitive break indeed sets the stage anew. We open a story about a woman who "is barren and has born no children," taking us back to the nation's prehistory, to the barren matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel. 

Once again, we have a scene of annunciation, with a mysterious figure that hovers between angel and man, announcing the birth of a longed-for child. Yet if Sarah overheard the message spoken to Abraham from "within the tent," this time the message is given directly to "the woman", as she sits in the field. The chapter revolves around and accentuates this tension, as Manoach expects the message to be given to him; "prays" (va'yetar, in an echo of Isaac's prayer for a child in Genesis 25) to God for the message to be given to him;  and yet the "man" of God appears once more to "the woman". Monoach receives the message only because "the woman" runs to call "her man", and the angel repeats his instructions. 

The woman is a nameless "wife of," yet even as Manoach tries to override her role as intermediary, only she can receive this message of hope and warning. Indeed,  her namelessness aligns her with the angel, who "gave no name" and warns Manoach not to ask for his name (in another primordial echo of Jacob's battle with the angel at Penuel).  

The message consecrates the to-be-born child prior to birth, dedicating the woman's body.  The boy is to be a Nazarite "from the womb until the day of his death." This instruction already sets into place a toll of doom, with death present before the child is even conceived. He is only to "begin to redeem Israel from the Philistenes"--he will not be able to complete the job. The abstention from wine and wild hair, are double edged, for in limiting the body, they make the body more present. This child is to be very corporeal. God "pulses" within him, squeezing him like a heart.

"My name is wonderous" (pilli פלאי), says the angel in response to Manoach's request for a name. The root p'l'e returns us to the original definition of the Nazarite as someone who "goes beyond" (yafil יפלאי), his very abstention borderline transgressive, requiring a sin-offering. This child-to-be-born will be a wildcard--wonderous,  transgressive, and doomed. 

The laws of the Nazarite appear immediately after those of the Sotah, the wayward wife, and the two sections are full of intertextual allusions, the Sotah's wild locks (p'r'e) a precursor of the Nazarite's wild mane (p'r'e). The two are presented as inverted transgressions, mirror images of how we deal with the issues of boundaries and bodies.

Within this context, the focus on Manoah's "woman" and "her man" (the two leitwords of this section) takes on primordial force. We are entering a story that returns us to the primal relationship between ish and Isha, defined all the way back in the Garden of Eden. The angel, defined by Manoach as "the man who spoke to the woman" becomes borderline transgressive, creating a proto-Sotah triangle, except that in this case, the "man" does not become jealous. There is trust to counter the dangers of intimacy.] 

  

Judges 12: In Writing

All day they watch with gimlet eyes

measure every atom of cake

clock the syllables of speech.

Her piece was bigger!

I should get two.

Why did his have chocolate?

every crumb filed and accounted for.

I didn’t get pita, so I should

get for lunch and they shouldn’t

get any –the not-get

more important than the get. 

My Imma, the baby smiles

with gleaming milkteeth

shoving his sister off my chest.

I love you into the shark's mouth

and all the way up to the sky, she says

heart against my heart

as her leg draws back

to kick her brother–

behind every offering, the buried dagger.

Why does your face fall? 

God asks Cain.

Whose picture do you like better?

Winter swallows the sun early

I want to go home, 

my daughter whines

but every home is a warzone’

about to detonate from within.

Judges: Chapter 12

 

Capture the crossing

make breath into death

the sibilant tongue, a knife's edge

[For full chapter, click here

The figure of Jephtha is introduced with ominous parallels to Abimelekh, raising the essential question: will he be loyal to the Father or to the Son, a recreation of the heroic Gideon, or of his faithless bastard? 

Initially, Jephtha aligns himself with the Father, tying every action to the Lord who will "listen", fashioning himself as a recreation of Moses. 

Yet in this chapter, the question moves center stage, as Jephtha finds himself in a replay of Gideon's situation. Like Gideon, who fought along the liminal, definitive banks of the Jordan, Jephtha is at the fords of the river, with a leitword of a'v;r, passage, crossing. As in the case of Gideon, the men of Ephraim "call" (va'yatzek ויצעק, a direct echo of 8: 25)  an urgent gathering, and attack him for not calling them to join the fight. This time, they are more violent in their denunciation, threatening to burn the house down upon Jephtha (something that ironically Jephtha has already done to himself, in promising to sacrifice his one and only daughter as a "burnt offering"). 

  

Yet here the parallel between Jephtha and Gideon breaks down. Even as Jephtha tries to fashion himself as a new version of Gideon who "put my soul (נפש, nefesh)  in my hand, and crossed to fight the sons of Amon", in an echo if Gideon who "send his soul (נפש, nefesh) forth to save you", his reaction to Ephraim's accusations is diametrically opposed to Gideon's. Gideon does not punish an excess of involvement. Instead, he soothes Ephraim by lauding their achievements. Jephtha, by contrast, hurls back accusations. 

"I summoned you, but you did not save me" he counters--a childish non-sequitur that once again reveals his almost naked vulnerability, his damaged psyche as a rejected child. Ephraim, after all, did not ask to lead the war and "save" Gilead--they asked why they were not summoned to join the battle once it was happening.   In contrast to Gilead who uses his "word" (d'v'r) to "defuse their spirit when he spoke this speech" (בדברו הדבר הזה), Jephtha rallies Gilead to "slaughter" over 40000 members of Ephraim in a murderous spree that puts Abimelekh to shame.  

There is a  price to Jephtha's fanatical commitment to the reality of language. Gideon can use language diplomatically, to sooth and loosten. Jephtha, by contrast, destroys.  In the previous chapter, his commitment to the "blurting" of his mouth cost him his daughter. Here, he makes pronunciation itself a matter of life and death: Ephraim are judged on the literal placement of the tongue, as saying an "s" instead of "sh" condemns them to slaughter.

It is ironic and telling that this first civil war takes place between the "sons of Joseph", the twin tribes  who throughout the Book of Joshua hover between two and one, so close they are almost a single entity, as alike as the almost interchangable "s" and "sh".  "You are fugitives of Ephraim," the Ephraimites taunt, "Gilean is within Ephraim and within Menasseh." 

To Jephtha, a fugitive betrayed by his own brothers, this taunt is unbearable. Unable to appease his brother-tribe, he seeks instead to assert a demarcation as clear as the definitive river, as life and death. In doing so, he moves the Book of Judges to its darkest point yet.]

Judges 11: In Writing

 Why are we talking about this? you say

Because I remember it, I say

searing replay in infinite regress

myself seeing myself hearing and hearing it again

There are words, I say

that are etched. When someone tells

you who they are. You need to remember

to believe them.

You shrug. Look away. 

We can't keep going back: 

it's a new day. And I wish

we couldn't. Wish

we could delete, restart.

Walk the circle counterclockwise

to before. Uncross the crossings.

Crawl back into the childhood bunkbed

curl under the blanket,

and leg my legs dangle over darkness

as I sit, fishing the hurts from the emptyness

winding them into a tight ball of string

that can be bunched in a fist

and thrown away.

Judges: Chapter 11

 

Who listens?

Who speaks?

And can you return?

The blurt of your mouth

the trace that is gone

[For full chapter, click here

"Let whoever is first to fight the Amorites be chieftain," the elders of Gilead promise, scrambling for leadership. The cliffhanger ending of the previous chapter, where God's response is left uncertain, is resolved here, as we discover the existence of Jephtha, a  "great warrior" who is a son of Gilead. Salvation is at hand. 

Yet the chapter is dense with intertextual allusions, setting up a complex movement between hope and dread. Gilead searches for a leader, any leader, but it is unclear what kind of leader they have found. Jephtha's introduction is replete with parallels to the story of Abimelekh. Like Abimelkh, Gideon is a disenfranchised bastard. Like Abimelekh, his position is defined by his mother: the opening verses are full of references to women "a prostitute woman" "the wife of Gilead" "you are the son of an alien woman". Like Abimelekh, Jepthah leaves his father's home, and his brothers. Is Jephtha to be another faithless, murderous tyrant?

Yet in contrast to Abimelekh's active rejection of his father in favor of his mother's kin, Jephthat's break with his fatheris not a matter of choice. He is forced "to flee," and camps in the outer periphery until the elders of Gilead come to fetch him, like a discarded shoe. "For you have hated me, and banished me from my father's house, why do you come to me now when you are troubled (tz'a'r צר)?" he erupts, defining himself as a rejected exile who still sees himself as linked to his lost family home. 

This loaded accusation parallels two other pain-filled verses, which set into place the thematic matrix of this dense chapter. First, it is a direct syntactic echo of God's own accusation to Israel in the previous chapter: "For you have left me... let the gods you have chosen save you in your time of trouble (tz'a'r צר)." "That is why we have come to return you" the elders of Gilead respond, using the loaded term that also denotes "repentance." This parallel highlights that Israel are mercenary in their appeals to both God and Jephtha; they are using God and man for their own safety, oblivious to the hurt and wrong they have done. Jephtha seems aware that he is aligned with God's role: "God will listen between us" he says, demanding a deeper loyalty. He then takes on God's role in recounting the history of the covenant. In highlighting the role of the divine in salvation, Jephtha links himself to the Father--to Gideon rather than Abimelekh. Like Gideon, he insists that salvation is found not in might, but in divine intervention.  

Jephtha's pain-filled cry also directly echoes Isaac's cry to a different Abimelekh, back in the nation's prehistory, in Genesis 26: 27: "Why have you come to me, and you hated me, and sent me away?" This cry introduces the first human covenant in history, as Isaac and Abimelekh king of Grar "swear" to do no harm to each other, a covenant tied into place by "the blessing of God." 

And indeed, Jephtha is obsessed with the question of vows and human faithfulness. How can language be made binding? The leitwords of this chapter are d'v'r דבר, speech, sh'v, return, repentance, sh'm'a, to listen. Jephath "speaks" (דבר) his "speech" (d'v'r) "before God," trying to give it reality. His first act of war is to send the "speech (d'v;r) of Jephtha" to the King of Amon, fighting with words before he fights with weapons. If Israel, in the previous chapter. had lost their connection Moses and to Joshua, Jephtha here attempts to recreate it by focusing specifically on the power of Moses' words, on the messages that he sent. Yet these efforts are alas, in vain. Just as the kings did not listen to Moses, the king of Amon does not "listen" to Jephtha's words.  In the end, it is physical battle rather than words that matter.

Or is it?

There is a dark side to the attempt to make human language binding. "The first thing that comes out to greet me when I return (sh'v) in peace  I will dedicate to God," Jephtha swears. It is his daughter who comes to greet him, "with timbrel and dance", echoing Miriam's primordial timbrel and circle dance in the aftermath of the splitting of the sea. "You have destroyed me," Jephtha accuses his daughter. "I opened my mouth to God and cannot return" (sh'u'v).

Perhaps rather than seeking to reify language and make it binding, Jephtha would have been better  served by turning to women's speech, and connecting to his rejected mother. "This is the word (d'v'r) that God has commanded: if a man makes a vow... he must carry out all that crossed his lip.. if a woman makes a vow... and her father restrains her... none of her vows shall stand, and God will forgive her." The laws of vows are introduced by making women's vows dependent on relationships--be they with father's or husbands. Here, Jephtha's commitment to the blurting of his mouth overpowers the relationship to his daughter, and undoes the promise of redemptive return that lurks beneath the surface of this chapter.

The redemptive dance and song that could have connected to Deborah's own recreation of the Song of the Sea,  turn instead to a dirge, as the "maidens of Israel go every year, for four days a year, to chant dirges for the daughter of Jephtha". ]

Chapter 10: In Writing

My baby spins

burnished gold 

etched in time

by the dying light.

Please don't uproot the rooted

don't forget the hope

the children sing, oblivious

as mothers weep into their hair.

Return me, and I will return

each word overripe with import.

The planes'  overhead whine

mingles with the oud's dirge.

when will we manage

full confession?

In this golden hour

I give chocolate.

In this golden hour,

I give juice

I give all the sweet

that is too sweet

unable to hold back.

Let us fall into the hands of God

for his mercies are great

the music beats

as the wide-wombed

evening embraces all of us. 

 

Judges: Chapter 10

 Who do you choose

and for how long?

Abandonment

[For full chapter, click here

After their disastrous flirtation with monarchy, the Israelites retreat from centralized authority. Leadership is provided by two minor judges, summed up in less than two lines each, each ruling for an uneven, non-symbolic number of years (23, 22), contrasting to Gideon and Deborah's sonorous 40 years of peace. The nation is reduced to begging someone--anyone--to lead: “Let whoever is the first to fight the Ammonites be chieftain.”

 The lack of leadership is spirtual as well military, as the nation descends to "serving the Baalim and the Ashtaroth, and the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines." Only one god is left out from this comprehensive list: the verse ends with the drumroll chiastic closing: "and God they did not serve." In losing leadership, the nation also loses the link to Moses, to Joshua his successor, and to God. 

The chapter is indeed structured as the dark mirror of the final chapter of the Book of Joshua, with its closing covenant binding God, Israel, and the two sides of the Jordan. Like that covenant, the chapter opens with the root y's'f,--to gather, to add. If Joshua is "ye'asef" (gathers) the nation, here the nation yosifu (continues) "to do what is evil in God's eyes" and God promises not to "continue (osif) to save you." The two sections are tied together with shared keywords: "Choose" (b'h'r); "worship, serve" (a'v'd), and "abandon, forsake" (a'z'v), as well as with a shared focus on the "alien gods" that are "in your mists." Both emphasize clear-cut boundaries, as embodied by the river: "On the other side of the river lived your forefathers," Joshua opens his address. Here, the chapter focuses on attacks on the far side of the river, which gradually move from the periphery inwards.  

"If it is bad in your eyes to worship God,choose this day which gods you are going to serve..." Joshua demands, in his final address to the people. After an overview of God's shared history with Israel, he demands a choice as clear-cut as the two banks of a river: either God or the alien gods must be abandoned.   “Far be it from us to forsake (la'azov) the Lord and serve other gods!" the people respond.

Yet here, in an exact inversion of their earlier promise, Israel "forsakes (va'yaazvu) God, and did not serve Him." If before,  Israel reviewed their shared history with God, here it is God that must remind them of all the prior salvations. "You have forsaken Me," He concludes, once again highlighting the inversion of the promise, "and served other gods." A different choice has been made.

Back at that definitive covenant, Joshua warned, “If you forsake God and serve alien gods, He will turn and deal harshly with you and make an end of you, after having been gracious to you.” And indeed, the end seems nigh. After a tepid repentance, with a partial confession ("We have served the Be'alim", Israel admits, with no mention of the plethora of other gods), God seems ready to "make an end": "No, I will not rescue you again," says God. Referring back to that primal choice demanded by Joshua, he tells the people "Go call to the gods you have chosen." 

The sacred stone of covenant inscribed by Joshua has been overturned, the oak uprooted. What will bind the people to the land now? 

Yet at the very moment that all seems lost, there comes a wildcard, overturning Joshua's vision of a jealous, relentless God. In a stunnigly anthropomorphic verse, God's nefesh (soul, breath, lifeblood) "cannot stand Israel's miseries." Almost despite Himself, God relents. Yes, there is the covenant, and its promises and curses. And then there are the deeper currents, the lifeblood stirring, the breath connecting God and humanity, beyond any local circumstance. Like a parent faced with a child's pain, God is carried away by overwhelming empathy. 

Though the chapter ends on a cliffhanger, with Isreal scrounging for leadership, this moving, strange and haunting verse gives the closing a hopeful cast. There are currents to the relationship between God and Israel that even Joshua cannot understand, a shared breath that reaches beyond the official bonds of covenant.]   

  

Judges 9: In Writing

 My old garden was guarded

by the silver-scaled armor

of two olive trees, that lobbed

globed black grenades all over the floor

which my baby stuffed in his mouth

black grease bursting on my fingers

as I forced them out. 

No flowers grew by those gnarled roots

poisoned by the trees' bitter solitude. 

The man who planted that garden

gathered the olives carefully in jars

mixing some with garlic

some with the bright red peppers 

he grew in pickle jars on the sill. 

The first year I diligently gathered

them in a pillowcase.

washed them in the rain,

and watched white mold bloom.  

In my new garden,

I dreamt of figs, open-palmed

and generous. The fruit, 

purpling and swelling

till they burst with milk,

and the sweet scent of green.

But my neighbor warns their roots dig deep

overturn the floor.

They need to be planted far away, he says.

No where near a home. 

So now I look at vines,

how they curl their fingers around every support

gripping for dear life

how they climb and climb

covering every scar

in riotous green and clusters

redeeming the ruin. 

Judges: Chapter 9

 

We sprout

from the earth's navel

dragging along the hills, trees and thorns

in the ever-battle 

of fathers and sons

[For full chapter, click here

If the previous chapter set Gideon within a wider family context, this family now takes center stage, as the Gideon saga continues to resonate forward and backwards in time. Certain key elements of his story are retroactively highlighted when seen in this broader context.
Abimelech, the son of Gideon’s concubine, introduced at the closing of the previous chapter, moves to the center, as he acts decisively  to take the kingship his father had rejected.  In an Oedipal drama, Abimelech moves to his “mothers family’s”, claiming their kinship and brotherhood, while murderously turning on his brother’s-through-his father.

This Oedipal killing of the father highlights that Gideon’s journey simlarily began by killing his father’s sacred bull. The initial, sublimated, struggle ended up bringing father and son together: Yoash defended his son, and brought to his symbolic rebirth as Jerubal.

Abimelekh, by contrast, turns on Jerubal, killing his 70 sons on “one stone.” Yet throughout, he expresses and works through elements of his father’s own personality, revisiting key moments and struggles. Like Gideon, Abimelekh has a special focus on “the sons of my mother.” Both father and son are related to the symbolic number of 70, with Gideon’s 70 sons countered by Abimelekh’s 70 pieces of silver. Abimelekh seems to be the only of Gideon’s sons to have inherited his father’s military might and strategy—like his father, he “divides the camp.” Like his father, he leads by example, telling his men to “watch and do as I do.”Gideon retraced Jacob’s journey to Cannan via Penuel and Succoth; Abimelekh takes the next step to Shechem. Gideon externalizes Jacob’s interior and lonely battle in Penuel, turning Jacob’s mysterious  struggle where  he “sees God face to face” into a ruthless battle over his authority with the people of Penuel. Abimlekeh revisits and heightens the treachery and violence that Jacob found in Shechem (indeed, the chapter highlights the intertextual connection by openly alluding to “Shechem the son of Hamor”).

Abimelekh—“My father is king”—his very name refers to the troubled relationship with his father, and specifically around the issue of authority and power. Indeed, it is Gideon himself who “puts” (veyasem, rather than the usual “ve yikra”) this name on him, pointing to unresolved tensions in the issue of kingship. Gideon is first offered the kingship after he uses the very elements of the earth—brambles and thorns—to punish the people of Succoth who mock his authority. Abimelekh, described by Yotam as a  “thornbush,” fights Gaal from the “navel of the earth” (Tabur haAretz), and his army appears like the shadows of the hills. He later cuts down trees and walks with them (in a Macbeth-like scene) to attack the rebels in the tower. Whereas Gideon razes the tower of Penuel, Abimelekh is killed by a grindstone flung by a woman in the tower.   

“I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. God will rule over you,” Gideon declared. Yet once the idea of earthly authority was raised, it seems impossible to contain. You will be ruled, Abimelkh tells the people of Shechem. So better by me your kinsmen, than by Gideon’s 70 other sons. The people of Shechem accept this argument, and crown Abimelekh, who “acts with authority (veyesar) over them.” When they tire of Abimelkh’s rule, they turn to Gaal the son of Eved (lit. servant, slave), who explicitly centers the argument around the issue of avdut-slevery/ service. Why should we serve Abimeklkh, he asks, we might as well serve Hamor. The issue is only power and who wields it.

An alternative to this power-based vision of the inevitable domination of the strong is offered by Yotam, Gideon’s youngest and only surviving son. Yotam (lit “the orphaned one”) presents an opposing vision—both of kingship, and of Gideon. If Abimelkh expresses Gideon’s ruthless assertion of authority, Yotam highlights his vulnerability, his deep fear and bravery—how he “sent forth his soul to save you.” In a similar fashion, Yotam’s famous parable of the trees presents kingship as an insufficiency of self, rather than the right of might: the olive, the fig, the vine, are all too full of their own blessings to seek to lord over others. It is only the barren thornbush that is willing to rule, as it has nothing intrinsic to lose. What is more, kingship, Yotam argues, is a mutual system: if Abimelekh was raised justly, “rejoice in him and let him rejoice in you.” But if the rise of Abimelekh was unjust, “let a fire shoot forth from Abimelkh and destroy Shechem and a fire set forth from Shechem and destroy Ebimelkh.” The ruler and the ruled each define the other, building or destroying each other simultaneously. Rather than a hierarchal relationship in which one dominates the other, it is a circular relation of mutual definition.
Yotam delivers his parable from atop Har Grizim, location of the primal covenant with God, in order to “Make the people of Shechem heard to God.” This also introduced a fundamental difference between Gideon and Abimelekh’s Odeipal struggles: Gideon acts on God’s command, and fights on God behest. Though he asserts authority, he seeks to make “God rule over you.” Yotam and Abimelekh struggle over their father’s legacy, and Yotam calls God in on his side. The story ends with the victory of Yotam’s narrative: the fire indeed sets forth and destroys both Shechem and Abimelkh. “God repaid Abimelech for the evil he had done to his father by slaying his seventy brothers; and God likewise repaid the people of Shechem… so the curse of Jotham son of Jerubbaal was fulfilled…”.]

Judges 8: In Writing

Come, I say

but she hangs back

curling herself to a ball. 

Up the steps.

Two than four. 

I'm waiting.

She falls to the ground.

Screams, You come to ME! 

as I walk forward

hoping she'll be behind me

in a game of chicken

I will always lose

because I can't leave

and her screams 

could tumble a tower

Where's Mommy, asks each passerby

Mommy is here, I grit

Mommy is waiting

Knowing I should be grateful

they care. Wishing 

they were elsewhere. 

I'm waiting, I say

in our daily disemboweling

tug of war