Samuel: Chapter 5

 

Watch for the portal

Enflamed limen

between here and there

you and me

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As the Israelites scream in despair, the Philistines triumphantly carry off the Ark of Covenant--Israel's great hope--to the Temple of Dagon. We are returned to another nadir in Israel's history, when Samson, who had "begun to redeem Israel from the Philistines," was publicly debased in Dagon's temple. Yet the intertextual link contains a hint of hope: the very triumph of the Philistines may be their downfall, bringing their temple down upon them. 

If in the previous chapter, Israel was punished when they celebrated their prowess and control over the Ark, now the Philistines' turn has come.  As in the previous chapter, the emphasis is on the word "take" lakakh, highlighting the physical manipulation of what should be sacred, beyond human ken; the human propensity to grab. The Philistines "take" the Ark from Even HaEzer, they "take" it to the Temple of Dagon, and they "take" Dagon when he topples at the foot of the Ark. 

In response, God severs Dagon's "hands". There will be no handling. The public debasment of Dagon is followed by a private debasment of the Philistened. God's "hand" spreads throughout the Philistine city in a plague (echoing the Exodus,when the "hand of God"  kills the livestock ). The Israelites had hoped for a Lord of (military) Hosts Who fights in the open, "trumpeting" the arrival the Ark to their camp, as though it were a weapon.  When the Ark finally acts against the Philistenes, it is specifically through the hidden, the invisible. The Philistines are struck with hemeroids, their most private bodily functions made public in a general outcry (homeh) that echoes Israel's despairing cry in the previous chapter. The Ark is avenged through shame, the debasement of the Philistines both elided and inscribed in the text by the difference between the written and read form of the word for "hemeroid"--read as t'horim (hemeroid), written as afli (sahdowed, dark), as though the word is too shameful to be written, but highlighted by its very absence. The "dishonor" (I-kavod) experienced by Israel in the previous chapter is countered here by the " very heavy  (kaved) hand of God".   

As in the case Samson, who carries the gates of Gaza on his back, the interaction with the Philistines, Israel's closest neighbors, revolves around liminal spaces. Dagon's severed hands and face are found on the threshold of his temple; the priests of Ashdod avoid the temple doorway; similarly, in the previous chapter, Eli dies at the entrance to the Mishkan, his neck broken when he strikes the doorpost. God here attacks the Philistines through the most hidden limen of all, the portal through which the body excretes what does not belong, a passageway between self and not-self.   The battle between Israel and the Philitenes takes place in this charged space between self and other, feeling for boundaries.