Judges: Chapter 12

 

Capture the crossing

make breath into death

the sibilant tongue, a knife's edge

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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.]

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: Chapter 3

 

We are porous

sucking and seepingץ

Seize the passage and threshold

learn to lock the door

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As in the previous chapter,  the focus here is on "generations", on the changes that happen when a whole population changes and forgets what it "knows" (one of the leitwords of this chapter). A process of change that happens by a changeover of populations (much like Khun's idea of paradigm shift in  his Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

The chapter opens with an ominous list of all the "nations that God left to test Israel" (1:3) in a crucible of war. These nations press from within and without, the external enemies matched by the nations among whom Israel "dwell" and intermarry, in an echo of that original dangerous encounter with the land's inhabitans, back when Shechem stole Jacob's daughter, so many generations ago. If in the original encounter, Shechem's plan to "let us take their daughter's to wife and let us give them our daughters" (Genesi 34: 21) is undone by the brother's violent assertion  that Dina is not for the taking, here it indeed comes to pass, as Israel melds into the surrounding populations and "forgets" the lord.

The first to rescue them from the consequences of God's wrath is Otniel,  who has been waiting like Chekhiv's gun since he was introduced by name in the first chapter. His fairytale like marriage to  Ahsa stands in contrast to the melding into local populations via marriage. 

The story of the second judge, Ehud ben Gera, makes the dangers of ingestion grotesquely corporeal, as he faces off against the fattened-calf (egel) King Eglon. The fleshy Eglon seems to have swallowed Israel into his gargantuan body, and his body swallows  Ehud's two-sided dagger up to the hilt,  and "the fat closed around it." While Eglon ingests the dagger, so it cannot be extracted, the "filth" does seep out. Ehud wins by controlling the entrances (p't'kh is another leitword), shutting the porous door,  and in the end  capturing the passages over the Jordon. Only in asserting boundaries does Israel find itself again]. 

Joshua: Chapter 22

What runs between us

can you bridge this river

of time?

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This is a chapter that closes a circle--and an era--and inaugurates a new sense of history and nationhood.

After all the other tribes have "approached" to receive their allotment, Joshua at last "calls" the Eastern tribes: Reuben, Gad, and half of Mennasseh. These were the first of the tribes to swear obedience to Joshua, promising to be the shock troops that precede their brothers to battle. Now, at last, they are told that they can return home, tying together the beginning of the inheritance, inaugurated by Moses, with the rest of the inheritance, completed by Joshua. 

Yet just as the circle closes, completing the story of the inheritance of the Land at the national center in Shilo, things fall apart. Upon returning to the banks of the Jordan--the liminal river that so defined Joshua's rise to leadership--the Eastern tribes build an altar. This seemingly innocent action is seen as a declaration of succession, an attempt to establish a rival national center. 

In response, the nation acts as a single unit, sending a delegation of "one prince of a father's house, for all the tribes of Israel." They have learned well the lessons of history. Recalling the aftermath of the sin of Ahan, they declare that rebellion and succesion are not private issues. The nation is judged as a single unit. "You rebel today against God, and tomorrow he will be wrath on the whole congregation of Israel." Heading the delegation is Pinhas, the man who speared (literally) the response to "the iniquity of Peor", and with his action stopped the plague that ripped through the nation as a whole. 

The Eastern tribes respond that mutuality runs both ways. If their actions will bring down punishment on the rest of the nation, the rest of the nation's possible rejection of their children will cause them to "cease fearing the Lord."  In a situation where God judge's the nation as a whole, the nation's rejection of a part will bar access to God.

The altar, rather than being a rejection of the central altar at Shilo becomes an assertion of its importance, a linkage of the periphery to the center,] 

Joshua 4: In writing

Feel your feet

sink the sand

into a small round space

Feel your weight

against the roaring weight

of the wall behind

Anchored in sand

like a ship drifting 

against the current

Feel the water

seep between your toes

sweep the floor from beneath you

Disintegrating grains

 water fills the void

left by your passing

Joshua: Chapter 4

Recreation. 

Take the inside out,

bring the ourside in

Stable in the swirl

foot sunk in sand--

then disconnect at let the water back in.

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This chapter followes seemlessly from the last: it is the actualization of the plans and commands.  If the previous chapter ends with the announcment that "all the nation passed through the Jordan," this chapter begins at the moment after "and it was, when all the nation passed through the Jordan." If in the previous chapter, God promised Joshua that "I will begin to magnify you in the eyes of this nation, and they will know that as I was with Moses I will be with you" (3: 7),  in this chapter it has become a fact: "on that day God magnified Joshua in the eyes of all of Israel, and they feared him as they had feared Moses, all the days of his life" (4:14).

Continued is the theme of transition, here embodied in the Jordan River, the literal passage between before and after, inside and outside, As in the case of Rahab and her window, there is something sacred about the liminal space, and about the right of passage. The men that Joashua "prepared" before the passage must go back and take stones from the bedrock of the river, by the very feet of the preists. These stones are to be set up in the first "resting place" that Israel finds within the Land (again, an allusion to Moses and his experience at the "resting place" [malon] on his way to Egypt], continuing the presence of the passage. These are to be "speaking stones", arousing testemony. And even as teh Jordan is moved into the Land, the outer edge is moved into the Jordan, as twelve stones are set up within the river, to permenantly link the before and after. Thus, the desert experience is linked into teh transitional space of the river, and the river is moved into the "resting place" at Gilgal.  

Holding the passage open are the feet of the preists, rooted within the watery mud, causing the river to pile up on one side, and dry up on the other. "As soon as the soles of the preists' feet were lifted to the dry land, the waters of the Jordan returned to their place, running between its banks as before" (4:18). The transition from Moses to Joshua, from desert to the Land, revolves around literal movement: around learning to walk in a new way.]

Joshua 3: In Writing

At the edge

your toe traces the line

between water and mud

Blue above, waters below.

In the distance the yellow ripening

of sumer  wheat

. 

Step and watch 

the waters gather. The earth emerge

mud and glistening,

As it sprawled out

on the second day.

See the wall of waves

brood above you

the drying trickle

eging its way to the salt sea

Joshua: Chapter 3

The moment of crossing 

Waters gathered

Waters dried

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"This day I will begin to magnify you in the eyes of Israel, and they will know that as I was with Moses, I will be with you" (3: 7) God declares to Joshua, as the nation prepares to cross the Jordan river into the Land. Indeed, the crossing of the river is set up as a prallel to the three of Moses' greats acts. The "three days" (3:2) days of waiting echoe the lead up to the revelation at Sinai. The splitting of the Jordan is set up as a recreation of the Splitting of the Sea. And the choice of "twelve men, a man for each tribe" (3:2) alludes the the  initial senidng forth of the spies.

Throughout, the chapter focuses on the act of crossing (a'v'r), and the liminal edges between one state at the next, the literal "edges" of the river.

This crossing that Moses could not make marks the transformation of the people of Israel from wandering nomads into a settled nation (goy). TCutting off the last vestiges of connection to Moses and the encampment he had so carefully set up, what hapens next, No longer do  the "pillar of fire" and cloud show the way. A new "path" (derekh) must be found, and this chapter picks up on the key words of the opening chapter--teh nation as a whole must learn to walk with Joshua.

The Ark of Covenant moves into prominence. Rather than being carried in the middle, as it was in teh desert, it leads the way, a physical marker that God's presence will accmpany Israel in this passing. "a living God is amongst you" (3: 10). 

The closingof the chapter, with the waters piling up on one side, while drying on the others, is a graphic presentation of this moment of transformation.]