Samuel: Chapter 14

Cross over

the split between 

known and unknown

climbing up, standing still

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The leitwort of the chapter is "crossing" (a'v'r), and the story is replete with doublings: two craigs, two camps, a lottery that splits between two sides. We are arriving at an essential demarcation. 

The Oedipal hints introduced in the previous chapter now burst into the open. Jonathan "son of Saul" crosses to once again attack the Philistines--"but he did not tell his father." It is he who breaks his father's vow--and upon finding out that he has done so, criticizes his father for making it.  Saul's relation to his son is equally fraught. When Saul searches for the source of sin, his son's name is first on his lips, and he is quick to threaten death, revealing an underlying violence: "You shall be put to death Jonathan!"

For where once it was Saul, now it is Jonathan who goes on a quest with a "naar-boy" at his side. Jonathan, whose "heart" defines victory. If Saul was once given a series of three intimate signs from Samuel, Jonathan now defines his own sign--and is answered immediately. If Saul once channeled Samson's power by tearing apart an animal, it is Jonathan who now eats the honey, and Samson-like, attacks the Philistines in a lone quest.The prism of  Jonathan's story casts a different light on Saul's own. Saul set out on a quest for his father; Jonathan initiates. Saul asked his naar for advice, borrowing his money; Jonathan takes the lead, his naar following behind. Saul came to Samuel for guidance; Jonathan charges forth with faith. So quickly is Saul, the bright young hope, dimished. 

Retroactively, Saul's search for a seer becomes a dark portent, introducing his fatal flaw: the need to know (y'd'a)--another key word of this chapter. If Jonathan sets his own sign, Saul's camp revolves around petitioning for external knowledge, with the Ark, priest, and Urim veTumim all in attendance. The repeated invocation of the Ark of the Covenant, along with the reference to Pinchas's tragic son Icavod, takes us back to Israel's great defeat at the hands of the Philistines, when the Ark was taken, tying these two battles together. Back at that great defeat, Israel's fatal mistake was the attempt to force certainty, to contain the unknowable God of Knowings through the Ark. Saul, scrambling for the Ark and Urim, even as the war rages around him, is stuck in the same conception,.  Saul's indecisiveness in this battle is a perfect mirror of his previous failure to stand fast: both point to lack of negative capability; a breakdown of faith. The king is here exposed as stunted, unable to respond in the moment.

Even when Saul finally turns away from the priest to join the fray, he remains caught in his personal struggle. Like Jephtha before him, he tries to overcome uncertainty by making language binding--and the vow focuses wholly on himself, ignoring the need of his soldiers: “Cursed be anyone who eats any food before night falls and I take revenge on my enemies.” This self obsesisons weaknes the army, and the vow, like Jephtha's, redounds on his head, almost cutting off Saul's own bloodline. This time, the fatal consequences are headed off by the Israelites' redemptive intervention. Yet  if Saul doesn't actually kill Jonathan, he does stanch and block Jonathan's miraculous  victory, rendering it as diminished as he.

  

 

Samuel 13: In Writing

Indetermindable

moments between the vibrating

phone, the blaring alert,

the siren that might--

might not--sound

I want to go,

my daughter whines--

I want to go down. I gulp down

the still-dewed air, breathe 

in jasmine like I'm drowning. 

It's too far, she scrambles towards the steps.

I'm scared.

Hunker underground. Between concrete slabs. 

My dove, in the crevice of stone

the shelter of the step--

She says, I always dream 

we keep sleeping

And then the missile hits.

I dream I am buried alive

in the endless expanse 

before the All Clear.

Samuel: Chapter 13

Fractures. Learn to stand fast--

or you will not stand. 

For full chapter, click here.

The kingship has only just been established, and hairline cracks are already spreading.

Saul was a year old when he was crowned, indicating something shiny-new. Yet the Saul introduced as a dutiful son is suddenly a father, with Jonathan holding the fateful Geba, using it as a springboard to attack the Philistines--while Saul gets the credit. We are once again in the Oedipal realm  between fathers and sons (be they Eli with Chofni and Pinchas, or Samuel with his unnamed children), returning to the central tension that defined the Book of Judges.

Now Geba, locus of civil war, is launching a war with external enemies--yet the Israelites join this war less willingly than they joined the war against their kin. Some join because they feel they have no choice, others hide in caves, tunnels, cisterns, while yet others cross the Jordan.

The people's fear is reflected in their king's irresolution. Here he is, back in Gilgal--site of the "renewal" of the kingship, where he and Israel felt joy; recreating the meeting point point that Samuel anounced back when he gave Saul a series of signs that God is with you (10:7): After that, you are to go down to Gilgal ahead of me, and I will come down to you to present burnt offerings and offer sacrifices of well-being. Wait seven days until I come. Yet now the man who stood head and shoulders above Israel is unable to stand and wait. After holding on for seven days, he cracks, and brings the sacrifices just before Samuel appears. 

In a recreation of their first meeting, he meets the prophet just as he arrives, with the same evocative use of ve-hineh, "and behold." What is beheld this time is dissolution rather than establishment. GOD would have established your dynasty over Israel forever, but now it will not stand. If Saul's heart was once transformed, as he drew the true-hearted in his wake, now he is no longer chosen by God's heart, his heart insuffincently willing. The doubled pair of Saul and Samuel splits--and with it the triangulation between Saul-Samuel-God and Saul-Samuel-the people.  The monarchy is falling before it ever fully stood, disintegrating from its very core.

Samuel 11: In Writing

 "History rhymes"

my friend posts

it doesn't repeat

exactly

it does merge, mix, echo

Same lined walls,

same gym mattress in the corner

same wail. Same pile of shoes by the door. 

When it rained, the perichor

slippery stones

and lights blinking through the clouds

marked which year it was

which round

but now it is the same sullen heat

Fallen figs smashed into the floor.

Swim through the same menace,

watch the same dusty sky. 

But now my baby can run halfway

and my daughter can cross the street.

There are two new rabbits in the school petting corner

a new row of graves in the military cemetery

and I am more tired, and sad and heavy

body the clock tracking history

Samuel: Chapter 11

 

Push the bounds

to find the story 

tell it anew

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This chapter continues and intensifies the Book of Samuel's redemptive dialogue with the closing of the Book of Judges. If the opening chapters revisited the relationship to women and to vows, here we return to the painful linchpins of the closing of Judges: the relationship of individual to tribe and national framework. These issues come to a head in the final stories of Samson, and Pilegesh bGiva--the rape of the concubine at Geva and its aftermath. If Samson represents the extreme of individuality, the story of Geva exemplifies its opposite: nameless characters acting within a context of mob rule.   

Samson is consecrated before birth, a nazarite who is set apart. The "spirit of god pulses within him"--he is never "like one of the people." In his superhuman strength, he is the archetypal superhero, his fight against the Philistines that of a lone vigilante. He is a leader who dies, as he lived, separate from his people. It is only after death that he can p be brought back "to his fathers" for reintegration.

On the other side of the pendulum is the Israelite response to the incident at Geva, in which "all Israel, brothers" unite as one to fight Benjamin. This is a model of national identity sans individual leadership, where the people themselves seem to spontaneously self-organise into a cohesive national group. Yet it is a group that allows no individuality, with every dissent ruthlessly destroyed.   

Both these stories are framed by the refrain: "In those days there was no king in Israel."

This chapter returns to these painful stories, to recontextualise them in the context of "a king in Israel."

Here, the tragedy of Geva seems to run in reverse, as though time can be turned back and redeemed. The allusions to Geva introduced in the previous chapters become more explicit and insistent. Now it is Jabesh Gilead, destroyed in the aftermath of the war on Benjamin, that is attacked. As in the case of the concubine, there is a threat of mutilation.  The people of Yabesh, like the Levite in Geba, send messengers to "all the border of Israel"--yet this is a message that seeks help, not revenge. As in  the case of Geva, there is a response of helpless weeping. 

Ironically, help comes when the message reaches Geva itself. This time it is Saul who acts the part of the Levite, tearing apart flesh--but this time of animals, rather than a woman. Like the Levite, he sends these body parts to "the borders of Israel" to call in the people for war. Yet this time, it is not just a wordless horrific message, but an explicit command.  And the people come, "as one." In this iteration, the rejected tribe of Benjamin comes to the rescue of the city it indirectly destroyed, rewarding Yabesh's hesitancy about joining the civil war. This time, Saul takes responsibility, and the weeping is turned to "joy" (a leitword repeated several times at the closing of this chapter.)

When "the spirit of God descends upon him," Saul not only acts the part of the Levite. He also channels Samson's preternatural power in tearing apart the lion.  Similarly, Nahash's threat to poke out the right eye of the people of Jabesh  echoes Samson's prayer to be "avenged of one of his eyes."  The book of Samuel evokes Samson from its very opening, with the figure of Samuel--also a Nazarite consecrated before birth--recreates his vast powers, yet places them within the safe confines of the Mishkan. Now Saul also channels the inspired. charismatic leader, yet his power is placed within a national context, as the cleaving of the animal is used to call the nation together.  

Saul's first battle as king weaves together the two sides of Judges' pendulum, placing the individual within the national structure, while placing a leader at the head of the faceless masses--a leader who heads off threats of violence. 

 Yet Saul can only play this part via Samuel. The merging between himself as Samuel continues in this chapter, as there is a consistent pattern of triangulations--between Saul, Samuel and God; and between Saul, Samuel and the people. The people follow "after Saul... and after Samuel... and fear God." The people go to Samuel to initiatite the recrowning of Saul. Samuel, as prophet, continues to enable linkage and communication.  

 

Samuel 10: In Writing

Everyone is a prophet these days 

betting on the end of days--

will it be today, or tomorrow

can you make the wedding

and how many low-flying

wings make a divination?

I lower the shutters. 

Burrow deep in bed. Know 

that always there is more 

to lose. Every call a beginning

of a new loss. Better

to crouch between the bags

that you pack--or don't pack--

for the shelter. Think of what to take

or not take. Bite your tongue.

Don't answer. Silence is always 

the best measure. 

Samuel: Chapter 8

 

Hear the sounds beneath words

The breathing spaces

What was put, what is given, what is asked

Who listens, who screams.

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After the heights--the fall. If the previous chapter portrayed Samuel's greatest triumph, as he "restores" what was lost in a great victory over the Philistines, this chapter portrays his decline. The youthful beloved usurper now becomes, in turn, "old" like the aged Eli, and like his mentor, he too cannot control his children, who waywardly do not "follow in his ways." As in the case with Eli, alternative leadership must be found: "Appoint (sima שימה) upon us a king, so we might be like the other nations.")

Yet if the problem is one of a lack of continuity between father and sons, then appointing a king is counterproductive--it is, after all, defined as hereditary leadership: "rule over us, also you, also your son, also your son's son," the nation begged Gideon, the last time they requested a king--and learned to their detriment the problems of such leadership.  

And indeed, the demand for a king is driven by something far deeper and more visceral than the failures of Samuel's sons. "It is not you they are rejecting, but Me...Like everything else they have done ever since I brought them out of Egypt to this day—forsaking Me and worshipping other gods—so they are doing to you," says God, creating a clear and shocking camaraderie between Himself and Samuel.  Idolatry and the desire for a king are presented as driven by parallel desires--for distance, for control, for the estratz. And indeed, Gideon responded to the initial request for kingship by returning power to God--"No I will not rule over you,God will rule over you"--before slipping himself into idolatry. 

Here, the rejection of Samuel makes the problem more acute. Throughout, the chapter emphasizes Samuel's role as intermediary between God and Israel by  repeated dedicated sections that highlight that  act of communication per se: "Samuel prayed to God" "Samuel reported all of God's word to the people"  "when Samuel heard all that the poeple had said, he reported it to God" "And God said to Samuel... and Samuel said to the poeple."

What begins as a demand for an alternative judge--appoint us a king to judge us like the other nations--is quickly revealed to be something far broader: "'No' said the people, we must have a king over us so we may be like the other nations: he will judge us and go out at our head and fight our battles." What the people are rejecting is not Samuel's sons, but Samuel's mode of doing battle: his demand to look into their "hearts" and "remove the alien gods." 

The biblical command to appoint a king does not define the king as judge: the Levites and judges are clearly differentiated from the temporal power of the king, who is appointed (שימו) by the people themselves, not set up by the judge. The people's confusion and slippage between the position of judge and king, spiritual leader and warleader, reveals a deep ambiguity.

The rejection of Samuel expresses a desire to not be led by a prophet. To not be in constant dialogue with a hidden voice. The people don't want to be exceptional. They want a leader "like all the other nations", with all the accoutrements of power that can be respected, mocked and resented. Samuel's very warnings about the dangers of worldly power evoke the crie de cour: let us be like everyone else.

There is a desperation in this cry. And because it's desperation, it cannot be ignored. Samuel hears "all" their words, the text and subtext. "Listen to their voice" commands God, despite his anger. There are inner necessities that become external realities. In a parallel construction to God's command to Abraham to listen to Sarah, God closes: "Listen to them and appoint them a king." 

 

 

Samuel 4: In Writing

Within the darkness

that presses its nose

against the window

a baby screams

and screams

her father humming

desperate sursuration

Not mine. Not now 

Not today. 

Lights out. Bedtime

On distant lit pathways

a stroller appears. Disappears. 

I’m scared to go to the army,” my son says.

What if I don’t like the food?

And also--I might get killed. 

Crouch in a ditch. Pray. 

So many promises I want to make.

But nothing to say. 

I tell him of the Davidka,

the canon that couldn’t aim

but saved the city with its roar

The siren shriek

haunts the night

but my children have learned

to barely flich. 

 

Today my son has an earthquake drill;

last night, a missile.

Saferoroms sprout like mushrooms

before the rains. 

Two helicopters circle 

locuslike overhead.

encircled in the angry

howl of aircraft. 

I will have mercy

on whom I have mercy

And grace 

on whom I have grace.

Yet how we long to lock

salvation in a box

to shoot at will

Samuel: Chapter 4

 

When words fail...

The center

does not hold.

What will the future birth? 

For full chapter, click here,

"And Samuel's word went forth throughout Israel"-- a triumphant announcement of Samuel's ascension. Yet this opening verse also contains a hint of threat. For if Samuel's "word" is trustworthy, then the destruction he prophesied must and will come.

And come it does: the decimation of Israel's army, the capture of the Ark of Covenant, the death of Hofni and Pinhas, the heartbroken death of Eli. Only in his death do we learn the extent of his greatness--he is one of the few pivotal judges, who like Otniel, Debora and Gideon led Israel for a definitive 40 years. Yet there is no hope for his family's future, as even birth turns deadly: Pinchas' wife dies in childbirth, naming her child I-Kavod, No-Honor--a fulfillment of God's initial prophecy "For I honor (kavod)  those who honor Me, but those who spurn Me shall be dishonored."   

Between Samuel's definitive "word" (davar) and the "word" (davar) brought by the soldier of Israel's defeat is a collection of wordless cries: the army "trumpets" (tru'ah) in triumph as the Ark is brought to the encampment; the city screams (tza'aka) and shrieks (zaaka) as the terrible news of defeat spreads. Language becomes a chaotic cacophony (hamon; homeh).

The breakdown of speech into primal screams creates a need for interpretation:  “Why is there such a roar in the camp of the Hebrews?” the Philistines ask; What is the meaning of the uproar?" asks Eli.  Functionally, these sounds echo Samuel's prophecy: a warning coming to fruition. There are no true surprises--everything has its "herald", if we but learn to listen.

Intertextually, these wordless cries return us to the moment Moses descends Mount Sinai after the creation of the Golden Calf, to be greeted by wordless cries demanding interpretation:

"When Joshua heard the sound of the people in its boisterousness, he said to Moses, “There is a cry of war in the camp.

But he answered,

“It is not the voice of those who scream in mastery, 

neither is it the voice of those who scream for being overcome: 

the voice of screaming do I hear.” (Exodus, 32: 17-18)

The linkage to the Golden Calf is illuminating. 

The Calf was created out of Israel's inability to deal with existential uncertainty--out of a need for safety, a desire for a god they could control. “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for we do not know what has happened to that man Moses" (Exodus 32: 1). The Golden Calf is God without the terrifying Otherness; the intermediary without the originator. 

This is a role that parallels that of the Ark of Covenant here: “Why did God put us to rout (nagaf) today before the Philistines?" the Israelites ask--the word "rout" n'g'f synonymous with "plague", suggesting a defeat by divine order. Yet rather than attempting to answer this question by turning to the terrifying, unknowable God of Knowings (as Hanna named Him), they decide to "fetch the Ark of the Covenant of God  from Shiloh, to be present among us and deliver us from the hands of our enemies.”

The identity of the savior here is ambiguous--is it God, or the intermediary Ark? 

The slipage becomes more pronounced in the reaction of the Philistines, who declare: "God has come to the camp!" making Him plural: "These are the same God who struck down Egypt..." The plurality that Hanna identified in God--whom she named Lord of Hosts;  Lord of Minds, multi-faceted and unknowable--is here reduced to an idolatrous merging of God with the "Ark of the Covenant of GOD of Hosts Enthroned on the Cherubim." The priests, Hofni and Pinhas, play a role parallel to that of their ancestor, Aaron, creator of the Golden Calf. Their "taking" of the Ark reflects Hofni and Pinhas's initial sin of seeking to force the divine: "Give it to me or I will take," they say, grabbing the gifts meant for God; reducing God's "hosts" (tzva'ot) to the women who "congegate" (tzovot) around Shilo, or to the literal Israelite and Philistine armies (tzvaot); 

The attempt to force and manipulate God via His tangible symbol becomes here the source of destruction. If the priests thought they could "take" the Ark at will, they leave it  to be taken. The wordless jubilation at the coming of the Ark, which echoed the wordless celebration of the Calf--becomes the screams of mourning at its taking--in a separation of the symbol from the symbolized. 

Judges: Chapter 12

 

Capture the crossing

make breath into death

the sibilant tongue, a knife's edge

[For full chapter, click here

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 5

Awaken from the dephths

the mother seeking 

the ferocious core

[For full chapter, click here

The chapter reiterates and crystallizes the themes raised in the previous chapter. Reiterated is the spatial dimension, the leitwords "falling" "to go" (l'kh). Intensified is the focus on gender, and on the role and leadership of women.

The intertext of Deborah's Song is Moses' Song of the Sea, continuing the Book of Judges dialogue with the Book of Exodus. Both are replete with water imagery and the downfall of horses and chariots (Then the horses’ hoofs pounded / As headlong galloped the steeds ) . 

Az yashir, "Then sang" open both these iconic songs. In Exodus, the singer is the male Moses, while Mirian "the prophetess" (Exodus 15:21) only takes up the chant at the end with the band of dancing women, declaring "Sing to God." Here, Deborah takes up Miriam's imperative form, but it is "the woman prophetess" who is the primary singer, with the male Barak as secondary. Deborah is the speaking heart, Barak her physical arms: "Awake, awake, O Deborah! Awake, awake, speak  song! / Arise, O Barak; Take your captives, O son of Abinoam!").

The  poem switches to first person, as the prophetess calls on herself to speak: "I (anochi), to God, I (anochi) will sing," The song is a claiming of women's speech: "Awake Deborah...speak (Dabri) song"  as Deborah puns on her name to claim the authoritative speech (dibur) that is usually the preview of men. And the song is indeed structured around  the power of femininity, subverting female archetypes. History itself is redefined in feminine terms (in the days of Yael). It opens with the rise of Deborah, "a mother in Israel" (5:7), and closes with Sisera's mother, sitting and awaiting the return of her son. Between the bookends of these maternal figures is "Most blessed of women Yael, wife of Heber the Kenite, most blessed of all women in tents" (5:24). These three women are the structuring principle of the song, reaviling the hidden female matrix of warfare. Each woman drives the war in her own way: Deborah by ordering Barak to battle; Yael by seducing Sisera to supposed safety in order to assassinate him; and Sisera's mother, who raised her son to revel in the sexualized violence of war, where he can claim "a womb or two for every manhead (5:30). The male "taking of captives" is the muscle power playing out these deep drives. 

 

Western society has traditionally divided women by different traits: nurturance vs. sexuality, the mother and the whore. In this song, these female paradigms are intermixed, so no woman is one or the other. Deborah the mother is Deborah the speaker, calling, judging, "exploring the heart."  Sisera's mother, sits inside sniveling and worried, but is revealed as ferocious and predatory, reveling in rape. Yael exits the traditional female space of the tent to beckon Sisera in, in language that is sexually suggestive: "Between her legs" Sisera rises, falls, and collapses, rises and falls and collapses again, to be utterly destroyed.  Yet the seductress is also maternal, offering nurturing  "milk" as she soothes him to sleep. Has the rapist between her legs been birthed or undone? 

The maternal emerges as a dangerous, ferocious, and celebrated  power.]

Joshua: Chapter 14

Halves that connect

Who we were then

Who we are now 

Follow your heart

[For full chapter, click here

This chapter continues directly from the last, with narry a break in the Masoratic text. Whearas the last chapter decribed the allotment of the two and a half tribes on the eastern side of the Jordan, this chapter introduces the allotment of the remaining tribes by Joshua on the western bank. Again and again, the two half tribes of Menasseh are emphasized--two parts of a whole that weave together the two sides of the Jordan, a glue holding the nation together.

The new allotment begins with the tribe of Judah, as the next section of the introduceds a new doubling. Joshua's old comrade, Caleb, "comes close" (g'sh'n)--a root with deep resonances, alluding to the historic reapproachment between Joseph and Judah in Egypt--to ask for the inheritence he was promised. The scions of Judah and Joseph meet again, the first interaction we have see since both spoke in favor of the Land all those years ago in "Kadesh Barnea".

"You know the thing that God spoke to Moses...concerning me and concerning thee in Kadesh Barnea," Caleb says, creating a sense of the deep intimacy between these two men. Yet immidiatly after asserting the bond, we also begin to see a split: when Caleb speaks of the experience scouting out the land, his "bretheren" are the other spies, not Joshua. Joshua does not appear in Caleb's story at all. 

Caleb's story rather revolves around the relationship to the "heart." Caleb.  (literally "ka-lev", "like a heart" or, midrashically, "all heart") "brings back what is in his heart", while the other spies cause the "heart" of Israel to melt.   Joshua's defense seems to have been driven by something else.

The whole-hearted devotion with which Caleb is "full after God" seems to give him an everlasting youth. In contrast to Joshua, who is "old and coming into days," unable to continue the battles, Caleb is "as strog this day as I was on the day that Moses sent me, as my stregth was then, so is it now, for war, to go in and come out."

Underscoring the disparity between Caleb's vigor and Joshua's withering, the chapter closes by repeating the refrain from chapter 12: "and the land rested from war"--the war this time led by Judah's Caleb, rather than Joshua.]

Yehoshua: Chapter 13

What is left undone

The negative spaces before the quiet 

What lies between the name

[For full chapter, click here

From the uplifting soaring of poetry, we land back into the nitty gritty of prose. And discover that the triumphant listing tells only a small part of the story. The land has not "rested from war" (11: 23). What is left is an uneasy truce, and an incomplete possession. In this chapter, we are presented with an alternative map to the victorious presentation of Joshua's victories: the anti-matter map of what has not been possessed; the negative to define the positive. Almost every name mentioned in the course of the description of the battles of 11-12, are here mentioned again, demarcating lines between conquered and unconquered territory. 

As Joshua grows "Old, coming into days" what he sees are the things undone, a landscape of incompleteness.  

All that is left is to assert the virtual possession declared in the last two chapters, and alott the land as though it is already possessed. The assigning rather than possession will be Joshua's final achievement.] 

Joshua: Chapter 11

Aftermath and the ripples

spraeding in time

spreading in space

[For full chapter, click here

"And it was, when Yavin, the king of Hatzor, heard..." This chapter continues directly from the last. As news of Joshua's victories spread, so does the war, as more kings join in to the original five. Once again, God assures Joshua of victory (Joshua is no longer the terrified new leader he was, and no longer needs to be told not to be "dismayed.") Once again, Joshua "surprises" the enemy encampment, and decimates the army that is arrayed against him.  There is a greater emphases on the destruction that follows the victory, this time with a focus on the inhabitatnts. Only one city is burned, like Jericho and Ai, but all the living are deprived of their "breath / soul" (neshama). 

On the one hand, this is repeatedly justified as fulfilling the commandment given by God to Moses; on the other hand, the chapter ends by emphasizing that none of the inhabitants agreed to make peace, other than the Gibonites. In an echo of Egypt and Pharoah, God "hardens their heart, to make battle against Israel, that they might be utterly destroyed." Would Joshua have made peace if they had not come in battle? The question is left hanging.

What stands out is the mood from specificity to generality. What begins as a specific battle againts four kings mentioned by name, becomes a generalized description of a years-long battle that spreads from the north down to the south--and indeed, at the end we find out that the war has lasted "many years."

The initial battles described in the book have the intensity of archetypes: Jericho and miracles; Ai as the move to strategy; the five kings as the first synethesis of human and divine action. Now we deal with the rippling after effcts of these intial shocks. The battles run one into the other, over a period of many years, until the land "rests from war."] 

Deuteronomy: Chapter 21

What do you bring in

When you go out

And what do you take out from within?

[For full chapter click here

The chapter is a mixed back of disparate laws. Its opening reiterates and intensifies the themes of the previous chapter, while its closing looks ahead, to a time after settling in the land, defining the relationship between parents and children in a society where inheritance is at stake.

The opening section reiterates the previous themes of “coming in” and “gone out,” yet complicates them. If in  the previous chapters, we established a sacred space “within” and then “went out” to war, here what is out is brought in, and what is in is taken out.

The opening returns us to the laws of murder, and the metaphysical responsibility for blood: “you must expunge clean blood from within you.” Yet the movement “out” has changed the responsibilities “within” (a key word in all these chapters). In chapter 19, we dealt with the laws concerning inadvertent manslaughter, and the need to provide refuge for the killer from vengeful relatives who seek to “redeem the blood”—a responsibility to those who fit “within” (k’r’v) the roads and center that define Israel. Here, the responsibility is instead to the anonymous corpse, to the outsider who has no relative to demand “redemption.” Literal closeness, physical proximity, creates a bond: “then your elders and judges shall come forth, and they shall measure the distance unto the cities which are round about him that is slain. And it shall be that the city which is next to he that is slain, the elders of that city shall take a heifer that has not drawn a yoke…”

The ritual of atonement enacted by the elders brings what is outside into the intimate sphere. The unbroken heifer is taken to a wild “river that is not worked,” and what is beyond human habitation comes to atone for human habitation. The ritual shares much in common with the enigmatic laws of the Red Heifer, which comes to purify after contact with death. Here, we restate the connection between inheritance and blood, but a level of primal rituals of contact with the earth.  The stranger is brought “within” the circle of responsibility, and the unmarked spaces beyond the roads are webbed in to the sacred.

After bringing the outside in, we once again move “out” to the laws of war (the two sections are connected by a word play on yi-matze—“find”-- and te-tze—“go out”). Yet if the previous section on war mandated complete destruction, so as to prevent “learning from their abomination,” here, there is a possibility of bringing a captured woman “into your home.” After following a ritual of mourning and symbolic severing “inside your home,” the outside can become intimate: “and afterwards she shall be your wife.”

Uniting these two sections is a focus on seeing and eyes: the elders must swear that “Our hands have not shed this blood, nor have our eyes seen it,” so that they will do “the right in the eyes of God.” The unseeing eyes then open  to see “among the captives a woman of beautiful form” (21:7). 

At the closing of the chapter, the focus on seeing shifts to a focus on hearing, as the breakdown of relationship between parents and children is defined by "he does not listen to us" (21: 20); and the son's death penalty is supposed to make "all of Israel listen." Here, what is closest is expunged, as the parents "take out" (ho-tzi-u) their son to the court.
  
There is constant pulsation between bringing in and going out, between closing the senses, and opening them.]

Deuteronomy: Chapter 20

To plant but not flower,

Promise but not have

Don't fall

consumed before consummation

Be like a tree

Heavy with fruit

[For full chapter, click here

From the protracted focus on "when you come in,"  we now turn around to "when you go out." After building the matrix of center, ways  and periphery, a unified "Israel," the nation can now move outwards to "cities very far from you" (20:15). But if the space within focuses on justice, and a concern for blood, the turn outwards shifts to the (brutal) laws of war.

Even as God promises to "be with you," there is a full awareness of danger. "The officers shall say to the army: 'Has anyone built a home and not yet dedicated it? Let him go home, lest he die in battle and someone else dedicate in it.  Has anyone planted a vineyard and not yet eaten of it? Let him go home, lest he die in battle and someone else eat it.  Has anyone betrothed a woman and not yet taken her? Let him go home, lest he die in battle and someone else take her” (20: 6-8). Here, the greatest tragedy--the one thing that must be avoided--is non-consummation. Whether in human interrelations, or in relations to the earth, what has been prepared must be possessed; what is planted  must see fruition. 

The linkage of the human to the tree--the betrothed to the untasted vineyard--is sounded again at the closing of the chapter, where the army is warned against destroying fruit trees: "for man is the tree of the field." Though war creates an absolute break between human and human, the basal connection to the earth is maintained.]