Judges: Chapter 13

 

The nameless space

between a woman and her man

expect wonders and the wild

[For full chapter, click here

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.]