Judges: Chapter 4

What is up
will topple down
and what is out 
be gathered in.
Stand at the linen

[For full chapter, click here

A chapter that is both highly gendered and spatial. The leitworts are "arise" "go down" and "go".   Whereas time here is fuzzy and simultaneous (they did evil and Ehud died; she was judging Israel at that time) space is defined and prominent. Deborah, the "women prophetess" who is the "wife/woman of Lapidot"  (gender emphasized a three-rung gong) sits "beneath" the palm in the hills of Ephraim, where all of Israel "goes up" to her to be judged.   The upward motion is emphasized 4 times. The woman-prophetess calls upon Barak son of Avinoam to "go" (l''kh) and fight Sisera and the Canaanites. This vectored motion is repeated 7 times, as Barak insists that he will only "go" if Deborah "goes" with him; she assents, but warns him there will be no glory on the path on which he "goes". "Afes"--literally "zero": for if she accompanies him, salvation will be given to "the hands of a woman."

From here, all motion moves downward, and the army "goes down" to attack Sistra's forces; Sisra "goes down" from his chariot. We are descending towards ground zero. With Barak hinging all his actions on Deborah's presence, we have entered fully the realm of the female. 

Yael, the wife of Hever the Kennite, is the embodiment of that realm, as she exits the feminine space of the tent to draw Sistra inwards. "Turn into me," she tells him. and he turns in (va'yisar) "in unto her, into the tent." Sisra gets sucked inwards, then covered (ve-techsehu) , in a double hiding--in and in again. "Go to the doorway," he commands, attempting to control the threshold, to straddle the line between out and in; between the masculine battlefield, and the dark, protected, milky tent (she opened a bottle of milk... and covered him). Instead, Yael takes the peg that roots the tent to the earth, and uses it to drive Sisera into the ground: he "collapses"; he "falls", utterly engulfed and destroyed by the female space.  

There are links here to the opening chapters: if the initial salvation in chapter 3 returns us to the transitional figure of Otniel ben Kenaz, salvation here comes through one of the Kenites, who join the tribe of Judah at the opening of the book. We are still in the transitional period from the Book of Joshua, though the linking sinews are becoming thinner.]  

 

Numbers: Chapter 11

To bear the weight

of another's Being

Sucked dry

till you are 

light as air

Scattered

Gathered

[For full chapter, click hereAfter the heights of the integrated travel-encampment, disintegration. (The key word is asaf , "to gather")
The hint of vulnerability betrayed in Moses' plea for his father-in-law not to leave ("Do not leave us... you have been our eyes") sets the tone for this chapter, reverberating and intensifying. Upon joining Moses, Jethro warned: "This is too heavy for you... you will not be able to bear (s'a'a) it alone." Now, after Jethro's leave-taking, Moses echoes his words: "I cannot bear (s'a'a) this people alone. It is too heavy for me." If the opening of this book focused on the Nissim -Princes--lit. "those who carry"--and on the burdens of the Levites, this chapter turns to the burdens of Moses. Being a leader is imagined as literally bearing the burden of another's being: "Did I conceive this people? Have I birthed it, that you say to me, Carry it (s'a'a') on your breast, as a nursing-mother bears a suckling?"
The imagery of nursing/pregnancy reconfigured the relationship of Moses-God-nation as a family triad, with God as the impatient father, Moses the worn-out, exhausted mother, and Israel as a spoiled, bawling baby that will not stop demanding: "and the nation were as complainers" " "and they fell into wanting"  "and Moses heard the people weep."
  The chapter revisits in small Moses' major interactions with the people, but with a darker hue: the provision of the Manna, which is here rejected by the people; the provision of the quail, which here becomes deadly; the appointment of elders to help spread the leadership, which is triggered here by the exhausted Moses' nearly hysterical begging for death: "kill me now, please kill me."
Reverberating in the background is Moses' great prayer for the people in the aftermath of the Golden Calf : "if I have found favor in Your eyes, show me now Your ways, that I may know You, that I may find favor in your eyes, and You will see that this nation is your people." Here, "finding favor" serves as a demand for distance, not closeness: "Why have I not found favor in Your eyes, that you lay the burden of this people upon me?"The chapter closes with God literally feeding the people of Moses' spirit: 'And God came down...and took of the spirit that was upon him, and put it upon the seventy elders." This is a move towards greater independence for Israel-child, and Moses accepts it:  "would that all God's people were prophets, and that God would put his spirit upon them." Yet the threat is not removed. The chapter closes with the people dying of surfeit, choking on the food they demanded. Is forgiveness possible when one grows up? ]

Exodus: Chapter 18

The return of the past
what we do comes back
sink beneath the burden of loneliness



Stand between
and beyond












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This chapter in some ways follows seamlessly from the previous one. We return to the leitworts of “standing” “sitting” and “weight”. Moses’ “heavy hands” here become the crushing “weight” that must be “lightened” with the help of judges.  As he did when he climbed the mountain, Moses stands in a liminal space “before God,” both part of the nation, and apart.

Yet in some ways, it is a discontinuity, as Moses’ old, personal life abruptly breaks in with the appearance of his family: his father in law, his wife, and her two children (no longer referred to as “his”, perhaps to indicate the gaping gulf).  We return to the beginning of Moses’ mission, with the repeated word “hatzel—to save”—recalling both Moses’ initial meeting with Tzipora, and his accusation that God has “not saved” His nation. Now the initial linkage that God set up between “hearing” “seeing” and “knowledge” is complete. “Now I know,” says Jethro. There is a poetic beauty in the completed Exodus, with the Egyptians destroyed through their very instruments of oppression: “in the very thing with which they had acted intentionally.”

Yet a price is paid. Moses sits “alone”. “It is not good” Jethro says, recalling the primal “not good” of the Bible: “It is not good that man should be alone.” “You will wither, you and the people with you.” A system of judges is set up to relieve the burden. Yet while Moses no longer acts alone, he is even more isolated, lacking intimacy even with the people who “come to seek God.”]