Judges: Chapter 21

Bound in widening spirals 

of language and blood--

close like a vise

then dissipate.

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Having won a decisive victory, the self-righteous bloodlust of battle withdraws. And now Israel is faced with what they have wrought: a tribe decimated, with only a handful of survivors left hiding in the desert. The escapees have been picked off along the way, all women and children slaughtered. 

The utter destruction triggers consternation, but not self-awareness. Israel weeps–and helplessly asks Oh God of Israel, why has this happened in Israel, that one tribe must now be lost from Israel? It is as though their own actions were a force beyond their control, something that "happened." There is no confession

Yet within this helpless cry is a new development. For the first time, the nation sees itself as an entity. They are “Isael” (repeated three times) rather than scattered tribes; they sense that the loss of a tribe–even an enemy tribe–will damage this entity of “Israel” irrevocably. 

But despite the emerging national awareness, helpless weeping has a troublesome history. The people wept in the desert all night after the Spies' report–and lost their tights to the land. At the opening of this book, the people weep at the angel’s rebuke, instigating an iterative cycle of breakdown and betrayal. National weeping indicates an abdication of responsibility,  self-indulgent self pity. Now they weep a "great weeping"–and seek a solution that does not reflect on their own culpability. 

On the contrary–they seek to solve the problem of Benjamin with the same authoritative murderousness with which they decimated Benjamin. Gabah was condemned, no questions asked. Then the tribe of Benjamin as a whole, men, women and children, wereslaughtered. Now, Yabesh Gilead is also to be put to the sword--except in this case, the virgins are preserved (the term hay in an eerie echo of Pharoh’s exemption of the females from his genocidal decree to kill the baby boys), to provide wives for the womanless sirvivirs of Benjamin. 

For the people, united in  their single voice, had all sworn to not “give their daughters to Benjamin”. Having killed all the Benjaminite women, they have condemned the tribe to oblivion. The intertextual links with the Jephthah saga are striking–and illuminating.

If the previous chapter was in dialogue with the primal battle of Ai, this chapter is in dialogue with a more recent saga: the story of Jephtha–intigator of civil wars,  . 

Jephtah of Gilead was the first to break the taboo on internecine warfare. Instead  of dissipating the tribal tensions that permeate the book, he slaughtered Ephraim.  It is this direct brush with civil warfare that makes the people of Jabesh Gilead wary abut joining the gathering against Benjamin. 

Jephtah is not only the instigator of civil wards, he is also aspeaker of dangerous vows. The parallels between Jephtha's and Israel's vows  are numerous. In both cases, the vow revolves around daughters, and their ability to marry. In both, the vows create bareness, cutting off the future. Jephtha condemns his  "only issue" cutting off his family line; here, the vow cuts off the tribe of Benjamin. Yet in both cases, the speakers refuse to take responsibility for their speech act, seeing themselves as victims of an external force. 

And in both, the aftereffects, particularly for women, are  tragic. Jephtha's treatment of his daughter initiates mass female mourning, as the women head out to the hills miyamim yemima to commemorate her loss. Here, Israel's solution to the vow ostracizing Benjamin is to provide captive brides. The nation lean on another  “great vow” to offset their first vow: in addition to cutting off Benjain, the people had also vowed to execute all those who did not join the national assembly. Thus, they annihilate the city of Jabesh Gilead, preserving the captive virgins as wives to the Benjemenite survivors.  When these are insufficient, the men of Benjamin are instructed to lay in wait (the word “ambush” Arev is particularly resonant, as it was an ambush that destroyed the tribe), and kidnap the girls who go out dancing in the vineyards, miyamim yemima. 

This serves as a reminder that vows, from their very introduction, are  inexplicably related to issues of genderl: a man’s authority over women is expressed in his ability to undo her vows, to control her speech. As history unfolds, vows are used more directly and explicitly to control women’s physical being: blocking marriage, controling fertility, and here, triggering kidnapping and forced marriage.The very dance  (meholot) that during the Exodus expressed Miriam’sredemptive power, becomes subverted. Jephtha’s daughter is undone by her dance towards her father; the dancing here renders the women  vulnerable.   

It is telling that the battle that supposedly began over a brutal gang rape ends in sanctioned abduction and rape. The objectification of the concubine with her penetrable, dissectible body, here move to the national level, as women become faceless vessels of reproduction. The vows grant a vise-like control over words and narrative, preventing all questions and change. A key divergence from  the  Jephthah’s saga is  illuminating: Jephtha makes a neder–a vow that sanctifies something to God; his commitment to the “utterance of his mouth” is part of a lifelong quest to infuse human language with God-like accountability by bringing all questions to this ultimate Other.  The Israelites, by contrast, make a shevuah–a vow that focuses on the human relationship to objects. The consequence of breaking this vow are not God's wrath, but a human curse: “yet we cannot give them any of our daughters as wives,” since the Israelites had taken an oath: “Cursed be anyone who gives a wife to Benjamin!” (21: 18). The newly self-consiouce Israel  are caught in a language loop where their vows are reinforced by their own imprecations, each  amplifying the other.    

Something new is indeed born in this final section of the Book of Judges, bookended by its repeated refrain: In those days there was no king in Israel. A unified national identity is coming into fruition. Yet it is a monolith vision, that speaks as “one man” and squashes all dissent with death. Its assertion of authority is lumbering, dangerous, and blind, calling to mind's Yeat's haunting description of a time when "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." Indeed, "what rough beast, its hour come round at last / slouches towards Bethelehim to be born?"