This has been a book like no other.
I returned, after a long hiatus, to begin again against the backdrop of war. To work through this book at a time of loss, of chaos and confusion, of dilemmas with no clear answers, every choice murky.
The Book of Judges became a touchstone. Over the course of this long Bibliodraw project, my pace has gradually slowed. I began with learning, drawing and writing in a single day; then I split the various aspects among different days, so it took 3 days per chapter. Now, with this new start, it could take weeks. Yet throughout these weeks, my mind kept mulling the chapter, so that Judges permeated my days. The written sections changed tone: rather than dealing directly with the text, they turned personal, exploring its intersection with my life. The Book of Judges offers little comfort in this tumultuous time, but it does offer parallels through its archetypal enactment of confusion. This is a book of identity in crisis, of sporadic and broken leadership, of a nation lost, with each doing "what seems right in his own eyes."
Now I sit between missile attacks and try to review, after book and world together descended to violent self-sparagmos.
In my analysis of the opening chapter of Judges, I wrote “we move from the individual to the tribe.” In retrospect, this formulation is inaccurate. The focus is tribal, true--but the tribes have always been there, throughout the desert journey: the census was carried out by tribe, ; the Mishkan was inaugurated by the tribal chieftains, the journeys through the desert were taken in tribal formation, each of the spies represented a tribe. The tribes have always been the building blocks of the nation.
What has changed here is the disappearance of the broader network. In the desert, the tribes were held within the tight national framework of the mahane, of the desert encampment. All were placed around the Ohel Moed--the Tent of Meeting, or Tent of Witnessing, that could refer both to the Mishkan and to Moses’ personal tent. There was one clear leader and one locus of connection to the divine. Each had a set place in a spatial enactment of national interactions.
Moses foresaw that this tight framework would disappear once the people dispersed to the far-flung tribal allotments. Much of his final address in Deuteronomy revolves around how to create a parallel structure to the Mehane once Israel is embedded in its Land. The Mishkan will be recreated in the “place that God will choose.” Not only a center in place, it will also become a marker in time, as the people will converge there three times a year. The Levite cities, scattered throughout various tribal holdings, will create a vital network connecting the tribes to each other and to the Mishkan. Local courts will also converge, all leading to the one chosen “place".
Judges moves not from individual to tribe, but rather from national encampment to tribal diffusion.
The transition away from the Mahane begins in the Book of Joshua, which charts the movement away from the cohesive encampment to the new existence in the Land. As we were with Moses, we will be with you…, the tribal leaders promise Joshua. The "boy Joshua who never left [Moses'] tent" still draws on his teacher's authority, linking the people back to that unifying Meeting/Witnessing. With the land not yet allotted to individual tribal estates, the people still live in a semi-encapment, with the “elders” and priests readily available. The battles are national battles, fought by all the tribes together, and involve the open presence of the divine. Joshua and Caleb, as sole survivors of the generation of the Exodus, provide a line of continuity, embodying the journey from slavery to the promised land.
As
Joshua’s death approaches, he recognizes that he must establish the
infrastructure to integrate coming generations. He apportions the Levite cities as Moses mandated. He calls the people together in a final address, narrating their national history and identity. Israel are also cognizant of
the coming dissolution, terrified that the nation may fall apart. The erection of the altar of witness is to serve as a reminder
of shared destiny as the people become anchored in their land rather
than in the travelling presence of God-within-their-midst.
The Book of Judges opens as all the briges to the encampment disappear: Joshua is dead. So too the elders. The generation has passed, and the people have scattered to their different estates. The tribes are now unmoored from the overarching structure that gave them meaning and placement, and begin to act as agents in their own right. Caleb, the last link to Moses and his encampment, begins the next stage of the conquest--but this time he is defined not as a representative of his generation, but rather of his tribe. Judah shall go up first.
A book about tribes unmoored is also a book about unmoored fathers and sons, and burgeoning Oedipal tensions. For the tribe is the most patrilineal of structures, defined soley "by their father's house." Those who lack a paternal affiliation--from the "son of an Isralite woman" who blasphemed back in the desert, to the illegitimate Abimelekh and the alienated Jephthah--are left on the margins.
The primary Oedipal struggle of this book is between the rejected parental God and his rebellious children. Again and again, the Israelites "do not remember" God, symbolically killing their shared history; again and again, God storms against his ungrateful children, abandoning them to their enemies. This primal struggle is refracted in the lives of the individual Judges, from Gideon, who kills his father's scared bull, to Abimelekh, who murders his father's children, to Jephthah, who is banished from his father's home, to the wayward Samson, who is at last "gathered to his father" and the father-seeking Micah.
The submerged counter-current running beneath this patrilinear framework is the relationship to daughters. The opening story of Ahsa, lifted almost verbatim from Joshua, reads very differently in this new context, as it creates a frame structure with the story of the Isralite daughters that closes this book: Caleb promises his daughter's hand to the conqueror of Debir; the tribes of Israel deny their daughters' hands to Benjamin. Punctuating this overarching narrative of marriage and its denial is the story of Jephthah, who does not allow his daughter to marry at all, so that she “mourns her virginity”.
For daughters are a destabilizing force, threatening the parilinear tribe and estate.
Ahsa’s demand of her father places the issue of inheritance front and center. Immediately when Moses introduces the laws of inheritance, he hits this snag, as the daughters of Tzolfhad come to demand their father’s share in the absence of sons. In counter argument, their tribe protests that female inheritance will destroy the boundaries of the tribal allotment, as the land will eventually be transferred to the husband's family, The solution: to limit women’s marriage. The daughters of Tzolfhad must marry only within their tribe. For the unification of tribe and land to work, daughters' marriages must be controlled and curtailed.
And just as daughters are the wildcard in tribal structure, breaking the boundaries of the allotment, so too are they a wildcard in language: women break the ridgid--and viselike--validity of vows. The laws of vows--like the laws of inheritence--are introduced with a built-in contradiction: a father--and later a husband--may undo a woman's vow, and "God will forgive her."
"When a man vow a vow to God... he shall not hollow his words; he shall do according to all that proceeds from his mouth" God declares, an act if imitato dei and faithfulness that on the surface seems commendable. Yet in practice, as this book repeatedly demonstrates, giving such weight to the "proceeds" of a fallible mouth is dangerous and destructive. Jephthah cuts off his future; Israel wipes out a city, and almost eradicates an entire tribe. Without an ability to change the mind (nahem) there can be no comfort (nehama).
Women, in the few instances their voices break through, offer a more fluid and dynamic language model. Achsa speaks the first line of direct dialogue; Deborah sings; Yael cajoles and seduces; Jephthah's daughter and her friends lament; Micah's mother curses, then switches it to blessing.
There are times when the rigid boundaries of oaths and promises are not enough--as God Himself discovers. For Israel to survive, it must discover a different language. The repeated covenants between God and Israel all clearly demarcate the curses that come with faithlessness. “If you forsake God and serve alien gods, He will turn and deal harshly with you and make an end of you” Joshua warns. And indeed, after Israel breaks their vows and serve every other god but God, the end seems nigh. "No, I will not rescue you again," says God. The promise will be upheld, regardless of cost.
