Samuel: Chapter 1

 

Watch for the lips--the edges

where the bitter inside

pours forth 

See me, and remember.

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"There was a man...from the hill country of Ephraim"--the opening of this book echoes the opening of the final section of Judges, a perfect replica if not for the additional detail of the hometown of Rammatayim. Indeed, the chapter is dense with intertextual links to the closing of Judges, the juxtaposition acting as an implicit commentary. 

As in the case of Michah, the story of the "man" very quickly becomes a story about his relationship to women--in Judges, Micah's mother; here, Elkana's two wives. We are given two levels of reality: the official story of the "man", and the teaming complex story of the family. The House of God in Shilo--which animates the backdrop of Judges as the  option rejected by the Dannites, and as the home of the abducted dancing girls--here moves center stage. Now, for the first time, it plays the unifying role Moses envisioned, presented as a locus of pilgrimage miyamim yemima (another direct echo of the closing of Judges).  As in Judges, we have a story of barrenness, and the promise of a Nazarite from before conception, whose hair will never be touched by a razor.  As in the closing of Judges, this is a story that places vows at the center.

Yet these very similarities highlight the essential differences. 

If the closing of the Book of Judges utterly reduces women to their reproductive function, here, relationship is placed at the center: Penina has children, yet it is Hanna who is beloved, "though God had sealed her womb." "Am I not better to you than ten sons?" Elkana pleads. 

If vows, up to this point, have been the most potent expression of patriarchal control, with a father and husband given the right to undo a woman's vows, while men's vows act to suppress female freedom, here it is a woman who makes the vow--and her husband acquiesces. "Do what is good (tov) in your eyes," Elkana says--the very expression is a subtle variation of the closing refrain of Judges "each man did what was just (yashar) in his eyes." From a "man's" search for justice, we move to a woman's search for "good".

At the center of this chapter is an act of prayer--one utterly different than what we have seen before. In the Book of Judges, the nation screams and weeps to God, at times with implicit blame. Hanna, by contrast, engages in an initiate conversation. From the "bitterness of her soul", she is mitpalel--the first use of the reflexive form that eventually became the standard Hebrew word for prayer: to intercede/ judge oneself. The reflexive act implies that this conversation acts not only on God, but on Hanna's deeper self. "Hanna was speaking to her heart", discovering her own interiority and "hard spirit." "Her lips moved, but her voice was not heard" outwardly--only within. See me, she pleads. "Remember me, do not forget." 

If in the story of the concubine, speaking to a girl's "heart" implies manipulation and coercion, here it becomes an act of intimacy and strength. If Jephtha is destructively committed to the "utterings of his mouth," here the vow remains outwardly unuttered, existing as an internal promise. 

This act of prayer is so radically new, Eli, the high priest, does not know what to make of it, mistaking it for intoxication. "No, my lord. A woman of hard spirit am I,"  Hanna responds with quiet strength. This prayer is not an act of imbibing, but rather of pouring fourth. And Eli recognizes her authority, granting her request.  

If the closing of Judges depicts widening ripples of dissolution--from family, to tribe, to nation--this chapter presents an opposing movement: a growing interiority, reflected in a supportive relationship, which ripples outward to impact the House of God.

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?"

 

Judges: Chapter 11

 

Who listens?

Who speaks?

And can you return?

The blurt of your mouth

the trace that is gone

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"Let whoever is first to fight the Amorites be chieftain," the elders of Gilead promise, scrambling for leadership. The cliffhanger ending of the previous chapter, where God's response is left uncertain, is resolved here, as we discover the existence of Jephtha, a  "great warrior" who is a son of Gilead. Salvation is at hand. 

Yet the chapter is dense with intertextual allusions, setting up a complex movement between hope and dread. Gilead searches for a leader, any leader, but it is unclear what kind of leader they have found. Jephtha's introduction is replete with parallels to the story of Abimelekh. Like Abimelkh, Gideon is a disenfranchised bastard. Like Abimelekh, his position is defined by his mother: the opening verses are full of references to women "a prostitute woman" "the wife of Gilead" "you are the son of an alien woman". Like Abimelekh, Jepthah leaves his father's home, and his brothers. Is Jephtha to be another faithless, murderous tyrant?

Yet in contrast to Abimelekh's active rejection of his father in favor of his mother's kin, Jephthat's break with his fatheris not a matter of choice. He is forced "to flee," and camps in the outer periphery until the elders of Gilead come to fetch him, like a discarded shoe. "For you have hated me, and banished me from my father's house, why do you come to me now when you are troubled (tz'a'r צר)?" he erupts, defining himself as a rejected exile who still sees himself as linked to his lost family home. 

This loaded accusation parallels two other pain-filled verses, which set into place the thematic matrix of this dense chapter. First, it is a direct syntactic echo of God's own accusation to Israel in the previous chapter: "For you have left me... let the gods you have chosen save you in your time of trouble (tz'a'r צר)." "That is why we have come to return you" the elders of Gilead respond, using the loaded term that also denotes "repentance." This parallel highlights that Israel are mercenary in their appeals to both God and Jephtha; they are using God and man for their own safety, oblivious to the hurt and wrong they have done. Jephtha seems aware that he is aligned with God's role: "God will listen between us" he says, demanding a deeper loyalty. He then takes on God's role in recounting the history of the covenant. In highlighting the role of the divine in salvation, Jephtha links himself to the Father--to Gideon rather than Abimelekh. Like Gideon, he insists that salvation is found not in might, but in divine intervention.  

Jephtha's pain-filled cry also directly echoes Isaac's cry to a different Abimelekh, back in the nation's prehistory, in Genesis 26: 27: "Why have you come to me, and you hated me, and sent me away?" This cry introduces the first human covenant in history, as Isaac and Abimelekh king of Grar "swear" to do no harm to each other, a covenant tied into place by "the blessing of God." 

And indeed, Jephtha is obsessed with the question of vows and human faithfulness. How can language be made binding? The leitwords of this chapter are d'v'r דבר, speech, sh'v, return, repentance, sh'm'a, to listen. Jephath "speaks" (דבר) his "speech" (d'v'r) "before God," trying to give it reality. His first act of war is to send the "speech (d'v;r) of Jephtha" to the King of Amon, fighting with words before he fights with weapons. If Israel, in the previous chapter. had lost their connection Moses and to Joshua, Jephtha here attempts to recreate it by focusing specifically on the power of Moses' words, on the messages that he sent. Yet these efforts are alas, in vain. Just as the kings did not listen to Moses, the king of Amon does not "listen" to Jephtha's words.  In the end, it is physical battle rather than words that matter.

Or is it?

There is a dark side to the attempt to make human language binding. "The first thing that comes out to greet me when I return (sh'v) in peace  I will dedicate to God," Jephtha swears. It is his daughter who comes to greet him, "with timbrel and dance", echoing Miriam's primordial timbrel and circle dance in the aftermath of the splitting of the sea. "You have destroyed me," Jephtha accuses his daughter. "I opened my mouth to God and cannot return" (sh'u'v).

Perhaps rather than seeking to reify language and make it binding, Jephtha would have been better  served by turning to women's speech, and connecting to his rejected mother. "This is the word (d'v'r) that God has commanded: if a man makes a vow... he must carry out all that crossed his lip.. if a woman makes a vow... and her father restrains her... none of her vows shall stand, and God will forgive her." The laws of vows are introduced by making women's vows dependent on relationships--be they with father's or husbands. Here, Jephtha's commitment to the blurting of his mouth overpowers the relationship to his daughter, and undoes the promise of redemptive return that lurks beneath the surface of this chapter.

The redemptive dance and song that could have connected to Deborah's own recreation of the Song of the Sea,  turn instead to a dirge, as the "maidens of Israel go every year, for four days a year, to chant dirges for the daughter of Jephtha". ]