Chapter 15: In Writing

Wails. She is curled on the floor.
She pushed me first! he says,
upright in his righteousness.

and now the baby is crying
Hurt me! Hurt me! 
pointing forlornly. 

He’s half your size! I say. 

Look at him!
But he stole my truck, he retorts. 

 
Gangly, he towers above the kindergarten, 
Look how strong I am, 

he boasts, 

Yes, I say, yes you are, 

don't say, 

and even when you were two

they called you a bully
as youngest–but largest–
you shoved for your turn.
 
By now she has picked herself up,

picks up the small metal dump truck
and hurls it at him

it smacks his face, 

scratching the corner of his eye.

When he screams,

she rushes at him, kicking. 
A millee,  all wailing together
as my hands close over my ears  

Judges: Chapter 15

 

Strong as a lion
wily as a fox
the multitudes within
flaring out 
to burn the spaces between

[for full chapter, click here

Samson continues on his trajectory, a figure of ever-growing extremes. In this chapter, he acts completely alone, freed even from the human framework of his parents. Now he is a rogue, closest to his animal familiars. If in the previous chapter, his doppelganger was the lion he tore apart, here he expresses himself through the medium of the 300 foxes he uses as weapons. The lion embodies his inhuman strength; the foxes his strange, playful intelligence. Yet in both cases,  the animals also embody the contradictory tensions that defined him even before birth: the powerful lion is filled with sweet honey; the wiley foxes burn with uncontainable fire.

Just as the lion is torn into two, the foxes also are riven in two directions. Samson connects them in pairs, and the fire flares out  between the tails, destruction coming from two forces pulling in opposite directions. 

Like Whitman, Samson is "vast" and "contains multatutes." The story is dense with intertextuality. If Samson's annunciation echoes the story of Sarah and Isaac, and his descent to Timnah alludes to Judah's journey, here his story recalls Jacob's, as he is offered one sister in place of another. Yet unlike Jacob, who must accept the logic of replacement after stepping into his own brother's shoes, Samson insists on the specific choice of "what is right in his own eyes." In some ways, he is closer to Jacob's twin, Esau, utterly overwhelmed by his own appetites. Esau exchanges his birthright for a bowl of soup; while Samson is willing to exchange his life for water. Like the twinned foxes. Samson holds both primordial twins within him. 

The fire that has haunted this text since Ephraim threatened to burn down Jephthah's house around him here burns fully, destroying everything around it. Samson's twinned foxes destroy the fields and vineyards and olive groves. The Philistines respond by avenging themselves on Samson's faithless wife, "burning the house down" on her and her father. For nothing did she betray Samson to avoid the companions' threat to "burn down the house around her," The fire, like Checkov's gun, was burning already, and only waiting to be unleashed. 

Samson sought marriage to the woman in Timnah as a pretext to battle the Philistines. Now the political reality of ruler and ruled becomes instead tit-for-tat, with each side promising to do to the other as was done to them.

Yet despite this intensely personal and unstable relationship, we are told that Samson "judged" Israel. Even though Judah gives him over to the Philistenes as a lone-wolf vigilante, somewhere, somehow, Samson achieves a level of leadership. ] 

Judges 14: In Writing

Too cold, she says

snatching back her hands

I add hot. No

More. Too hot, she says.

Pours the cup out.

The tights are too tight

and the wrong pink

and have lines.

She puts on the blue

pale bulb of her right toe

exposed.

They're torn, I say, 

and don't match.

It's what I like, she retorts.

Back up dress in her bag--

just in case. Water

bottle exactly full 

Hold me, she says

I need you to hold me. 

On the couch. Exactly 

in the regular spot,

her slight body

burrowing into mine.

So hard, to face the world

As flayed as Marsiyas

insides exposed

to the wind's every tremor.

Judges: Chapter 14

 

Between up and down,

predator and prey

rough and sweet

strong and weak--

how not to be torn in two

[For full chapter, click here
And Samson went down to Timnah. The prophesized Samson has grown into maturity--and domination. No longer is the story about Manoach and his wife, or about the woman and her man: the former protagonists are now simply "his father and mother", Manoach as nameless as his wife.

With Samson's growth into manhood, the ambiguity introduced before his conception comes into full expression. The chapter is taught with the tensions between contradictions: Samson rises and goes down; he is physically strong and psychologically weak; he riddles about sweetness and terror. The striking image of the lion carcass dripping honey embodies these contradictory forces. The fact that the carcass is riven in two adds a dark undertone of doom. Samson skirts the edge of possibilities, walking through vineyards he is forbidden to drink from; marrying a woman he cannot really have. His inability to withstand his wife's nagging hints that these tensions cannot always be contained.

The opening movement toward Timnah returns us to Judah's journey toward Timnah in Genesis 28, where he too discovers duality. The two scenes are in dialogue: Judah's journey begins when he "goes down" from his brothers; he too discovers a woman, in language that is crude and sexual; both scenes contain a kid goat. The allusions to Judah's encounter with Tamar introduce the possibility that Samson's descent to the Philistines will also be redemptive: Judah's apparently illicit encounter with Tamar led to life after repeated death (and to the birth of Peretz, eventual forefather of the Davidic dynasty). Here too we are informed that Samson's "request was from God." Yet in contrast to Judah, who "goes up" to Timnah, Samson repeatedly "goes down," implying that the movement is more than spatial--and that perhaps these journies have different metaphoric trajectories. ]

Judges 13: In Writing

Morning, and the light is

laden with meaning.

Caulking the walls

warming the trees.

Overhead, dark clouds lower

big-bellied and dark

with potential.

 

Watch the light trace the ominous 

dark in a halo.

Watch it outline the empty spaces.

Watch it fade in a flurry.

 

Sometimes the light entices

promising intoxication 

deeper than wine’s 

headache sluggishness.

 

On my knees

I dig a small hole

and drop a smooth bulb in.

No hairline roots

to burst the earth

like a crack

streaks a mirror 

before it shatters.

 

Pat the dark earth around,

sticky rot scent 

caking my fingers.

 

Imagine an arrow of red rising

to unfurl in a perfect 

cupped poppy.

Drunk, and not with wine.

Judges: Chapter 13

 

The nameless space

between a woman and her man

expect wonders and the wild

[For full chapter, click here

After a spate of minor, short-term judges, we arrive at another definitive period of 40 years: this time  of oppression rather than leadership. This definitive break indeed sets the stage anew. We open a story about a woman who "is barren and has born no children," taking us back to the nation's prehistory, to the barren matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel. 

Once again, we have a scene of annunciation, with a mysterious figure that hovers between angel and man, announcing the birth of a longed-for child. Yet if Sarah overheard the message spoken to Abraham from "within the tent," this time the message is given directly to "the woman", as she sits in the field. The chapter revolves around and accentuates this tension, as Manoach expects the message to be given to him; "prays" (va'yetar, in an echo of Isaac's prayer for a child in Genesis 25) to God for the message to be given to him;  and yet the "man" of God appears once more to "the woman". Monoach receives the message only because "the woman" runs to call "her man", and the angel repeats his instructions. 

The woman is a nameless "wife of," yet even as Manoach tries to override her role as intermediary, only she can receive this message of hope and warning. Indeed,  her namelessness aligns her with the angel, who "gave no name" and warns Manoach not to ask for his name (in another primordial echo of Jacob's battle with the angel at Penuel).  

The message consecrates the to-be-born child prior to birth, dedicating the woman's body.  The boy is to be a Nazarite "from the womb until the day of his death." This instruction already sets into place a toll of doom, with death present before the child is even conceived. He is only to "begin to redeem Israel from the Philistenes"--he will not be able to complete the job. The abstention from wine and wild hair, are double edged, for in limiting the body, they make the body more present. This child is to be very corporeal. God "pulses" within him, squeezing him like a heart.

"My name is wonderous" (pilli פלאי), says the angel in response to Manoach's request for a name. The root p'l'e returns us to the original definition of the Nazarite as someone who "goes beyond" (yafil יפלאי), his very abstention borderline transgressive, requiring a sin-offering. This child-to-be-born will be a wildcard--wonderous,  transgressive, and doomed. 

The laws of the Nazarite appear immediately after those of the Sotah, the wayward wife, and the two sections are full of intertextual allusions, the Sotah's wild locks (p'r'e) a precursor of the Nazarite's wild mane (p'r'e). The two are presented as inverted transgressions, mirror images of how we deal with the issues of boundaries and bodies.

Within this context, the focus on Manoah's "woman" and "her man" (the two leitwords of this section) takes on primordial force. We are entering a story that returns us to the primal relationship between ish and Isha, defined all the way back in the Garden of Eden. The angel, defined by Manoach as "the man who spoke to the woman" becomes borderline transgressive, creating a proto-Sotah triangle, except that in this case, the "man" does not become jealous. There is trust to counter the dangers of intimacy.] 

  

Judges 12: In Writing

All day they watch with gimlet eyes

measure every atom of cake

clock the syllables of speech.

Her piece was bigger!

I should get two.

Why did his have chocolate?

every crumb filed and accounted for.

I didn’t get pita, so I should

get for lunch and they shouldn’t

get any –the not-get

more important than the get. 

My Imma, the baby smiles

with gleaming milkteeth

shoving his sister off my chest.

I love you into the shark's mouth

and all the way up to the sky, she says

heart against my heart

as her leg draws back

to kick her brother–

behind every offering, the buried dagger.

Why does your face fall? 

God asks Cain.

Whose picture do you like better?

Winter swallows the sun early

I want to go home, 

my daughter whines

but every home is a warzone’

about to detonate from within.

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 11: In Writing

 Why are we talking about this? you say

Because I remember it, I say

searing replay in infinite regress

myself seeing myself hearing and hearing it again

There are words, I say

that are etched. When someone tells

you who they are. You need to remember

to believe them.

You shrug. Look away. 

We can't keep going back: 

it's a new day. And I wish

we couldn't. Wish

we could delete, restart.

Walk the circle counterclockwise

to before. Uncross the crossings.

Crawl back into the childhood bunkbed

curl under the blanket,

and leg my legs dangle over darkness

as I sit, fishing the hurts from the emptyness

winding them into a tight ball of string

that can be bunched in a fist

and thrown away.

Judges: Chapter 11

 

Who listens?

Who speaks?

And can you return?

The blurt of your mouth

the trace that is gone

[For full chapter, click here

"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". ]