Judges 7: In Writing

Night

fear wells from a bottomless spring

and anxiety swarms like 

cicadas covering the sky

chirps deafening.

Three watches split the night. 

In the first, the donkey brays.

In the second, I listen with the dogs

to the planes swooping overhead

the distant sirens that threaten

to grow close and loud.

Patter through the house.

Check the windows.

Turn off the lights.

Listen to the kids breathe.

Watch their chest rise and twitch.

Listen to their dreams 

that whisper

of vanishing.

Check the doors.

Even as you know how easily

this house can all be flipped

shaken like a laundry basket

contents crumbled and dirty on the floor.

Judges: Chapter 7

 

Rise, to go down

Hold dread in check--

a dammed river

and know it can all

flip in a moment

[for full chapter, click here

This chapter continues smoothly from the previous (indeed, with no break in the Masoretic text). It shares the keywords of yad -arm, and the focus on the spatial tensions between downward and upward motion. Like the previous chapter, it is in dialogue with the exodus, with the locus-like enemy camp and a "night" of redemption; as in the previous chapter, Israel's primordial blessings (I will make you like the sand of the sea that cannot be counted) has been appropriated by their enemies. Gideon's fear is still an underlying force: the people camp in Ein Harod, עין חרוד, a verbal play on the later reference to "all that fear" (כל החרד), so that it can be read as camping on the "spring of anxiety." Yet Gideon keeps his promise and does not question God\, keeping his anxiety in check--even as God slaughs away his men.

In reward, God of His own volition offers a new sign to assuage Gideon's fear--and opens a new intertext. Gideon, we are reminded, is not just a lesser iteration of Moses for a fallen age. As a Mannasite, he is also a descendant of Joseph, the master of dreams. Like Joseph, he is offered someone else's dream, in virtually the same language: "Behold, I have dreamed a dream." As in the case of Joseph, who interprets a dream of bread loaves, Gideon hears of a loaf of bread, swirling like a dervish. This flipping source of nourishment opens the possibility of sudden reversal, where Israel's fallen, starved state can suddenly flip, just like Joseph's in the pit. 

Inspired and renewed. Gideon prepares for battle, while returning to the opening, miraculous battle that started the conquest of the land: like the settled Jericho, the nomad Midianites will be brought low by the sound of surrounding shofars, and God's will rather than by brute physical force.]

Judges 6: In Writing

The sun beats merciless

on all heads.

Buses splash

all passersby

when the gutters flood.

Sometimes I wish for a circle of shade

within the blinding sun.

Sometimes I wish for a finger of sun

to  massage my neck.

To squeeze  my shirt

and find cool water in the desert heat,

or wrap myself in a coat that stays dry

in all a world of wet.

Do not head the wayfarers' prayers,

the high priest declares.

But some days, some moments

I so wish You would.

All day long, humming menace.

Distant drilling, or is it a drone?

The walls shudder.

I wait for night. Try

to breathe. Suck on chocolate

I bought just for me. 

 

Till my daughter wakes crying

she's scared. Why

are you scared? I ask.

As though the earth's

maw isn't full of fangs.

Dont be angry, she says.

Just scared,  she says. 

Stay next to me,

I rub her back.

Whisper I'm here. 

Like I can create that cacoon. 

That one safe cave

in the murmuring dark. 

Judges: Chapter 6

 

To be clothed in God's spirit

or be its clothes

and feel rain fall, while the earth cracks sear

or see earth drink, as the cloth stayes dry

As if the rain did not fall on all, 

or every day

[For full chapter, click here

Forty years of peace--the count of a generation, as transformative as the forty years wandering in the desert to birth a nation capable of independence. But the end of this forty-year cycle is breakdown, not rebirth, as "Israel does what is offensive to God", and are delivered to the Midianites for a symbolic 7 years--seven, the number that structures the covenant and its abnegation, creation and destruction.

And indeed, this enemy is destructive--the leitwort is ש'ח'ת, destroy, as the nomads come to pillage, not settle, and strip the land "like locust".

If the previous chapter returns to the Song of the Sea, in complement and echo, this chapter is in dark dialogue with the Exodus story, as the mighty hand that God once employed against Egypt crashes down on Israel. The "living" (מחיה) that Joseph provided for his brothers is here taken away (they left them no מחיה ), and if once Israel called (ve'yizak) and their voice rose to God, now the only thing that rises is the enemy, while Israel's cry dangels, unanswered. And indeed, when God does send a "man prophet" in place of the "woman prophetess" Deborah, his message is now an accusation of how they have failed the Exodus: "I rescued you from Egypt...yet you did not obey Me" (Judges 6:9-10).

The message ends abruptly and hopelessly, in a seeming rejection of Israel's pleas for help. "If God is with us, why has this befallen us? Where are all the wonderful deeds with which took us out of Egypt?" Gideon demands, giving voice to this hopelessness. Yet an angel is waiting under a tree to appoint a new redeemer. Gideon's initiation is replete with intertextual allusions to Moses and to his initiation: "Bi adoni", Gideon says, echoing Moses' double "please sir" as he tries to convince God to send someone else; I have sent you (שלחתחך), God says, echoing his appointment of Moses. Like Moses, Gideon is given multiple "signs" (ot). Like Moses, he asks "if I have found favor" (Exodus 33:13). If Moses was the only prophet to see God "face to face", Gideon declares "I have seen an angel face to face."

Yet this very parallel highlights the essential difference. Moses asks to find favor in order to reject God's plan of an angelic intermediary, saying "Unless Your face goes before us, do not lead us from here. For how else shall it be known that I and Your people have gained Your favor, unless You go with us, so that we may be distinguished, I and Your people, from every people on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 34: 14-15). But having failed the Exodus so deeply, the angelic intermediary is all that remains. Gideon is the Moses of this angelic redemption, a shadow who communicates with angels rather directly with God; a postlapsarian redeemer who "wears" (לבש( the spirit of God, rather than feeling it intrinsically within him. For God, as expressed by the prophet, is indeed angry, rejecting Israel's call; but on a lower level, an angel can respond. If Moses ' signs are primordial--water that turns to blood, an Edenic snake--Gideon's are homely: let the earth get wet while the wool stays dry; let the wool be soaked, while the earth stays sere. Yet look closely, and this is his own version of Moses' request to be "distinguished": let there be, even at this lower level, some element of care. Show us we can still be special.]

Even though he is driven by fear, Gideon ends up echoing the redemption of the Exodus "at night", as he finally fulfills the commandment of breaking the altars, and destroying the Ashera trees. It is not that appointed, awaited "night" when God acts with no intermediary as he did in Egypt. But it is something.]

Judges 5: In Writing

 I, to God, I will sing

Seek "I"

pasty-faced in the mirror

while hands drum the door

Imma, I need you, I really

need you. 

Nur, nur, the baby pinches my shin

demanding milk.

From the corner of my eye

the hawk-swoop of my son's hand

and my daughter is wailing.

Motherhood is resisting

the blandishment

of rest. Constant

vigilance.   

Pull your mouth into a smile

Focus. Split 

your ears three ways.

Why did you hit your sister?

my voice a harsh caw. 

The casual kicks

swats and biting. Stop

I say. I am counting

They are wildwaters

bursting all dams

I the melting mountain.

His legs kick 

like a donkey's, just missing

my stomach,  

 I wonder how i ever

contained him

within me. 

Peer through the window

as the last lights fades

enumerate and engrave the finds of the day:

a smile, a cloud, a bird, glints on water

try to awaken tomorrow

to eke out a voice

and tell it sing. 

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.]

Judges 4: In Writing

 If you go with me, I will go

And if you will not go with me, I won't go

but stand in place

mule-faced, kicking the floor

I said, Get dressed!

You say: You're not helping me.

 

I say, We'll be late.

you hold out your arms, so you do it.

Legs outstretched like a mannequin

knees locked unyielding 

marionette with invisible strings

that twitch away from me. 

No glory in this path

mouth twisted to rictus

coaxing, cajoling, screaming--

nothing helps.

All you want is to fall

burrow deep into the floor

I want to go back into your belly, you say.

I want to be inside.

But if they kill you, you add

I'll die too. 

Judges: Chapter 4

What is up
will topple down
and what is out 
be gathered in.
Stand at the linen

[For full chapter, click here

A chapter that is both highly gendered and spatial. The leitworts are "arise" "go down" and "go".   Whereas time here is fuzzy and simultaneous (they did evil and Ehud died; she was judging Israel at that time) space is defined and prominent. Deborah, the "women prophetess" who is the "wife/woman of Lapidot"  (gender emphasized a three-rung gong) sits "beneath" the palm in the hills of Ephraim, where all of Israel "goes up" to her to be judged.   The upward motion is emphasized 4 times. The woman-prophetess calls upon Barak son of Avinoam to "go" (l''kh) and fight Sisera and the Canaanites. This vectored motion is repeated 7 times, as Barak insists that he will only "go" if Deborah "goes" with him; she assents, but warns him there will be no glory on the path on which he "goes". "Afes"--literally "zero": for if she accompanies him, salvation will be given to "the hands of a woman."

From here, all motion moves downward, and the army "goes down" to attack Sistra's forces; Sisra "goes down" from his chariot. We are descending towards ground zero. With Barak hinging all his actions on Deborah's presence, we have entered fully the realm of the female. 

Yael, the wife of Hever the Kennite, is the embodiment of that realm, as she exits the feminine space of the tent to draw Sistra inwards. "Turn into me," she tells him. and he turns in (va'yisar) "in unto her, into the tent." Sisra gets sucked inwards, then covered (ve-techsehu) , in a double hiding--in and in again. "Go to the doorway," he commands, attempting to control the threshold, to straddle the line between out and in; between the masculine battlefield, and the dark, protected, milky tent (she opened a bottle of milk... and covered him). Instead, Yael takes the peg that roots the tent to the earth, and uses it to drive Sisera into the ground: he "collapses"; he "falls", utterly engulfed and destroyed by the female space.  

There are links here to the opening chapters: if the initial salvation in chapter 3 returns us to the transitional figure of Otniel ben Kenaz, salvation here comes through one of the Kenites, who join the tribe of Judah at the opening of the book. We are still in the transitional period from the Book of Joshua, though the linking sinews are becoming thinner.]  

 

Judges 3: In writing

Daily weigh-in
needle fluctuating round and round
the set point. No way
back to before
when your body was wholly
your own.

Look down 
at mountains and troughs--
fleshy landscape of broken promises
to yourself. Your goal is
Today you will

eat only when hungry.
cut out
cake. Sticky seduction 
of sugar. Long nights.  
The pull of sleep.

Lie on a bed of flesh
spreading like ripples.

All those months carrying

bear down on your bladder

the weakened sinews 

weaving torso together

leave a groove down the center

separating before and after

Life made flesh--

weight of time and inertia.

It is hard, hard to rise

hard to pull yourself up by your arms

only to swallow

dagger and hilt

and feel the fat close on top of it. 

Judges: Chapter 3

 

We are porous

sucking and seepingץ

Seize the passage and threshold

learn to lock the door

[For full chapter, click here

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].