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

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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

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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 

Judges: Chapter 8

Who stands back

and who joins?

Who leads. who follows?

Who birthed you 

and what do you birth?

We come to the closing of the Gideon cycle, as the young man who stepped into Debora's place achieves victory, providing, like her, for  a transformative "forty years of quiet."

As he chases the Midianites to achieve this decisive victory,  Gideon traverses the bank of the river, revisiting the stops made by his ancestor Jacob on his primordial journey back to Canaan: Penuel, Succot, and finally Shechem.

 Yet Gideon's trajectory here is the opposite of Jacob's.

If Jacob sends his children and wives ahead remaining "alone" to be rebirthed as Israel through a struggle with a mysterious assailant, Gideon's symbolic rebirth as Yerubaal took place before he approached Penuel. If Jacob's tumultuous life narrowed to the strains of Jabbok,Gideon's canvas widens. If before, we met Gideon alone, at night, in private dialogue with God and angels, here we see Gideon within the national context, as he interacts with the other tribes, and speaks to the Midianite kings.

 If Gideon's earlier struggles were with his own fears and doubts, here he struggles to placate those who wish for greater involvement (Ephraim), and to punish those who hold back (Succoth and Penuel). No longer does he carefully assuage fears. Instead, he ruthlessly and violently asserts national authority. Not for nothing does Israel offer him kingship. 

In place of the lone young initiate, we now see Gideon embedded within a family: suddenly he has "brothers, the sons of my mother," and a young son he is trying to train. Gideon's history begins to extend forward and back in time. As he retraces his forefather  Jacob's journey, and worries for his brothers, he is offered hereditary kingship, extending forward in time. "I will not reign over you, nor will my son reign over you. God will  reign over you," Gideon ceremoniously declaims, his every choice now reverberating through time.

 Yet this sudden tension between Gideon's rule and God's is dangerous, as the man who once was "clothed" in God's spirit now lays down a "dress" to gather gold (in a scene reminiscent of the creation of the Golden Calf). The money gathered serves to create an article of clothing (an "ephod") that becomes a gateway to idolatry, indeed competing with God.

Despite the achievement of the forty years of peace, the Gideon-cycle ends on a dark note. From one son we end with 70, and "many women" (precisely what Moses warned the king to avoid). The Israelites, we are  told, do not "deal kindly" with Yerubaal or his family. The hero who comes to deal with a post-Golden-Calf Israel gets trapped in their cycle of idolatry and sin).