The Three Stories of the Anointing of David: 1 Samuel 16-17

This post is part of a revolutionary Bible commentary by the Church of the Orange Sky.

Like several other parts of the Old Testament, there are actually three stories about how future king David meets disgraced king Saul and begins his long climb to the top of ancient Israelite politics. The Bible doesn't actually explicitly separate them, and in fact the first two can potentially be combined so that we have two stories. But even if we do that, the remaining incongruent details are such that you pretty much have to pick one or the other.

It's interesting that the same book is putting a very different spin on the same events - the sort of thing that happened in the two creation accounts at the beginning of Genesis. Later on, different views tended to be separated: for example, the quail stories differ dramatically in Exodus and Numbers, but the perspectives in those stories generally reflect the very different theological and social assumptions made by those two books.

The Divine Calling of David

In the first story (verses 16:1 through 16:13), which is less well known, the prophet Samuel goes to Jesse's house to choose the new king, following orders from God. He picks David, the youngest son, whom Jesse thought such an unlikely candidate that initially he didn't even bother to call David in from the fields, where he was working. Once again, in choosing the youngest, God and his prophet display a complete disregard for the notion of inheritance. This is the priestly narrative of the calling of David: Samuel goes to find a future king, God helps him choose one, and ultimately David is the nominee. Samuel anoints him with oil and "the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power." God chooses David directly through his priestly intermediaries.


The Political Calling of David

In the secondary story, which is least well known, we start off with the fact that king Saul has gradually become demented since God left him during the war - or, in the words of the Bible, Saul is being "tormented" by an "evil spirit" sent by God. This story begins at 16:14 and goes until the end of the chapter. Saul's attendants, worried about the king, ultimately conclude that as long as he's listening to music, the evil spirit will stay away. I'm a bit skeptical of the logic, but anyways, it seems to work. So they begin searching for the best musician in Israel, and lo! it's David. Saul eventually comes to like David so much that he promotes him from chief musician to armour-bearer.

This story legitimizes the calling of David on the basis of his acceptance by the royal court, i.e. the political structures of Israelite society. It isn't God's prophet Samuel who goes out to find David, but rather "one of the servants" of the court. We know that servant couldn't be Samuel, because the relationship between Samuel and Saul is at this point so bitter that they're not even on speaking terms.

It's possible to harmonize these two stories of the calling of David, because they're not mutually exclusive. In other words, it's perfectly reasonable to say that God sent Samuel to anoint David even while he allowed the Israelite court to select David for other reasons. It does seem mildly improbable - after all, if Jesse wouldn't bother presenting young David even to the chief prophet of Israel, how the hell is this anonymous servant going to have any clue whatsoever that David is a harper? But it could happen.

Ultimately, though, what's most significant is not that these accounts don't jive well but that they signify different things. The first is meant to legimitize the accession of King David on the basis that he was chosen by God's priesthood; the second, on the basis that he was chosen by the royal cabinet. 1 Samuel is a political campaign tool for King David and, just like political campaigns today, they tend to play fast and loose with the facts in order to broaden their coalitions. Just like Stephen Harper or George Bush want to reach out to the religious right and to big business at the same time, or the New Democrats want to ally themselves with environmentalists and unionists at the same time, so 1 Samuel wants to portray David as the friend of both the religious and seculars powers that be.


The Military Calling of God

The third pillar of the new David propaganda tool is the military, and it serves essentially the same function in a new context, though the details are somewhat more difficult to reconcile with the details of the first two stories. Of course, according to my hypothesis, the details aren't important: the main point is (or is supposed to be) that you should love David, because everyone else certainly does.

This time, David's calling occurs in the middle of a war, and it follows the traditional militarist understanding of divining God's will: i.e. military victory equals divine blessing. The Philistines have an enormous veteran soldier named Goliath, supposedly about ten feet tall (the NIV says "3 meters or 9 feet," which aren't exacty the same, so I've rounded up). Goliath wears thick bronze armour and carries a spear with an enormous 15-pound iron point. Goliath challenges the Israelites to single combat, with the victor being the winner of the war, but no one will fight him.

Enter David, who in this story must overcome far greater adversity than he did in the first two. David's elder brothers are in Saul's army already. David brings bread and cheese to his brothers in the army but they dismiss him, saying he has come because he wants to watch the fighting like a child. David decides to prove himself, or perhaps decides he wants a piece of the prize for killing Goliath - rumoured in verse 25 to be wealth, the king's daughter in marriage, and permanent freedom from taxes, which just goes to show you that the priorities in ancient Israel were pretty much the same as they are today.

Undeterred, David goes to Saul on his own initiative and offers to fight Goliath. Like Gideon's army, he makes himself even more vulnerable than you'd think would be militarily feasible - he wears no armour and carries only his sling. As we all know, David famously kills Goliath and then leads the Israelites in routing the Philistine army. Intrigued, Saul asks his general, named Abner, to find out who David is.

The fact that Saul doesn't actually know David, along with the fact that David is a mere shepherd at the beginning of chapter 17, are the key clues that we are dealing with a different story here - remember, in chapter 16 David became armour-bearer on the basis of his musical abilities, and Saul already knew him well before it came time to fight Goliath and the Philistines.

Rather than a coherent chronological account, what we're dealing with is the third of three different stories, possibly originating from different sources but certainly combined here in order to establish David's legitimacy as king of Israel - and, by extension, the similar legitimacy of David's descendants, we must assume.

David is chosen first by the priesthood, and second by the court, and finally by the military. It's not always clear which of these choices is more important, but we can guess - the military story gets a lot more space and time than the other two. It should be noted that all of these at least implicitly suggest that David's anointing was divinely inspired; rather, they just see the sources of that inspiration in different places. The first sees divine inspiration in a ritual of anointing, performed by God's chief prophet. The second sees it in the recognition of the existing political structures of authority. And the third sees it in military victory. Each major social institution in ancient Israel gets to choose the story of David's origins which best fits their own ideological perspective on the government, and everyone's a winner!
Continue reading

The Clash of Church and State, Part 2: 1 Samuel 13-15

This post is part of a revolutionary Bible commentary by the Church of the Orange Sky.

===========

First off, a note on why the New International Version can be hideously biased sometimes.

What's up with verse 13:1? The original Hebrew and early manuscripts in other languages are missing a word! Later Septaguint manuscripts say that "Saul was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned over Israel forty-two years." But the older forms just say "Saul was years old." Naturally, the NIV translators assume God must have meant for that "thirty" to be in there and so they add it in anyways.

What follows, however, is even more inexcusable. The actual text of verse 13:1 says that Saul was ruler of Israel for "two years." Whoops! Acts 13:21 says that Saul was king of Israel for forty years. The NIV translators, laying aside even the slightest pretence of scholarly objectivity in favour of defending the supposed "inerrancy" of God's word, naturally inject an extra "forty" into 1 Samuel. Appallingly, the footnote doesn't even pretend otherwise: they freely admit that "Hebrew does not have forty-. So the solution is to turn "2" into "42"? That makes the Book of Acts wrong through imprecision, and the First Book of Samuel wrong through false inclusion.

What the fuck? Come on, NIV. I know it's important to believe in inerrancy if you're theologically conservative, but this is just bordering on open deception here. I'd curse the NIV further for it, but they're not the only ones playing fast and loose with God's "Word" - pretty much all English translations engage in some form of wild speculation coated in the garbs of "truth." This page offers further explanation. Thank God for the Jewish Tanakh, which actually translates the verse faithfully:

Saul was . . . years old when he became king, and he reigned over Israel two years. (Footnote: The number is lacking in the Heb. text; also, the precise context of the 'two years' is uncertain. The verse is lacking in the Septuagint.)

Thank you, Jewish scholars, for being honest about the Scriptures. A pity the Christians couldn't be as helpful.

===========

Saul is not a very competent king. For no apparent reason, he and his son Jonathan start a war with the Philistines using the remnants of the army they used to rout the Ammonites. Saul first demobilizes all but a much smaller, probably more mobile force of three thousand, then takes his new force and proclaims war on the Philistines. The Bible is a bit unclear on the nature of Israelite-Philistine relations at the beginning of the war. The Philistines appear to exercise hegemony over Israel, but on the other hand, it seems to be a fairly peaceful hegemony - like the U.S. and Canada, say, rather than the U.S. and Iraq. The Israelites have agreed with the Philistines not to train their own blacksmiths - but on the other hand, the Philistines are apparently happy to let the Israelites visit Philistine smiths for their metal-sharpening needs. The Bible helpfully even supplies a short price list, just in case anyone's thinking of going into the ancient smithing business and wants a standard for comparison.

Saul and Jonathan don't like this, though, and raid some Philistine outputs. The Philistines respond by mobilizing a massive army: three thousand chariots and "soldiers as numerous as the sand on the seashore." Given that Saul can mobilize 300 000 on a week's notice, this really ought not be critical - but it is, because he's just finished dismissing the main bulk of his armed forces. On the other hand, some Hebrew manuscripts say there's thirty thousand chariots, which is considerably more serious, though also quite implausible given that the largest chariot battle in the historical record, the 13th-century Battle of Kadesh, involved only 5000 chariots.

I've been hinting at tensions between church and state, so to speak, for some time now, and now matters come to a head. Saul summons Samuel to perform some good-luck sacrifices in the face of this new danger, but decides after a few days that Samuel isn't coming and conducts the sacrifices himself. Samuel is outraged, although Saul actually offers what seems like valid reasoning: he wanted to "seek the Lord's favour" before going into battle. This, Samuel declares, is not permitted. As a result, Saul's kingdom is going to collapse and at some point Samuel is going to come back, fire Saul, and anoint a new king. Essentially, this newly claimed power of hiring and firing kings is an attempt by Samuel to claw back a little bit of the power granted to the state and return it to the priesthood.

In the midst of his dispute with Samuel, Saul loses control of his army, most of which deserts, leaving him with only six hundred men. Undeterred and hoping - like all good crafty politicians - to re-win Israelite domestic opinion through a popular diversionary war, Saul organizes what's left into raiding parties and attacks the Philistines. His son Jonathan, alone except for his personal armor-bearer, sneaks out of the Israelite camp to attack the "uncircumcised fellows" of the Philistines all on their own. They challenge an outpost to single combat and kill about 20 men. In a very Joshua-ish moment, God inexplicably decides to bless Jonathan's boldness and strikes the Philistine army in a holy "panic," causing most of them to desert. Saul seizes the initiative and attacks, taking advantage of the confusion to win a key victory.

In the process, however, he's made the same foolish blunder as Jepthah and the non-Benjamite Israelite elders did way back in Judges. To ensure the loyalty of his troops, Saul promises to curse any who won't fast for the day and eat only in the evening, after the fighting is done. Jonathan and his armor bearer don't know this, of course, so stop to eat some honey on the way home. Some soldiers see him and tell him what he's done.

Jonathan isn't impressed, saying that "my father has made trouble for the country" and pointing out, quite logically in my opinion, that the army would have been much more effective in battle if the soldiers weren't faint with hunger. It gets worse: at the end of the day, the famished soldiers plunder livestock from the surrounding farms and eat them with the blood still in the flesh. This is a grave sin and Saul tries to make amends with God by building a new altar. When God refuses to answer Saul's demand for military advice, Saul realizes something has gone wrong and vows to kill whoever broke the fasting oath. He seems quite intent on carrying out this promise even when it's revealed to be his own son, but at the last moment, loyal soldiers grab Jonathan and carry him off to safety.

If we were to go by the yardstick of Joshua, in which God's will is made known through military success, then Saul is a very successful king. He fights "valiantly," the Bible says, against every one of the old enemies: the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Zobahites, the Philistines, and the Amalekites. But the author of 1 Samuel is less convinced, noting that the Israelites have received all the suffering that Samuel promised them so many years before: "all the days of Saul there was bitter war... and whenever Saul saw a mighty or brave man, he took him into his service."

This story is vague enough that one could draw two possible conclusions from it - either God has had mercy on Saul and blessed him despite not killing Jonathan the way he promised to (as demonstrated by Saul's continuing wars against Israel's enemies, according to the Joshua militarist yardstick), or, alternatively, God has withdrawn his blessing from Saul and left Israel to fight wars on its own (as demonstrated by the fact that God never does speak to Saul again after the Jonathan incident and none of these wars ever seem to lead to a moment's peace).

What follows, however, is considerably less ambiguous. Samuel makes one less effort to wrest control of the state back, this time in terms every Biblical reader should be familiar with by now: a holy war. Don't forget, this is the one exercise in which the priests and the military were once able to gain mutual benefit. The target this time is the Amalekites, and Samuel offers up the traditional Torah-style call for genocide: "attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." Saul obediently mobilizes an army of 220 000, marches on Amalek, manages to break up an Amalekite-Kenite alliance, and easily defeats the Amalekites. He is, however, not capable of following through on orders (yet again): he lets his men keep "everything that was good," i.e. all the good livestock, and himself spares the life of King Agag of Amalek.

God has had enough and decides to fire Saul. For the task he chooses Samuel once again, and the latter walks up to Saul's camp. Saul offers the excuse that the living livestock that were taken are intended for a massive sacrifice to God, which Saul doesn't think is outside the instructions. Once again, Samuel says that Saul is not authorized to make those sacrifices - and, in any event, God doesn't want them! This is because "obedience is better than sacrifice." So much for the Levitican sacrificial order! What is the priesthood going to do? Samuel furiously sends Saul away, personally murders the captive king Agag, and never speaks to Saul again.

I said I liked Samuel before, but that was before he turned into chief warmonger. Still, the results are intriguing. Samuel has demolished the state structure he himself put in place, and in doing so he may also have done considerable damage to the legitimacy of the priesthood. After one last attempt at a good old-fashioned genocide, Samuel washes his hands of the king experiment and leaves Saul to continue his unending wars alone.
Continue reading

Why I Prefer Samuel to Moses: 1 Samuel 11-12

This post is part of a revolutionary Bible commentary by the Church of the Orange Sky.

The middle chapters of 1 Samuel are a somewhat confusing combination of the stories of Saul, who's coming into his own as military leader; and Samuel, who's nearing the end of his career as prophet.

First, the Ammonites invade Israel and besiege Jabesh Gilead, where, you may recall, the Israelites slaughtered their brethren and illegally abducted virgins way back in Judges 21. King Nahash offers a truce to the Israelites, on fairly brutal terms: each man must gouge out his right eye. The Jabesh Gileadites strike a bargain which makes you seriously question Nahash's intelligence: they will agree to gouge out their eyes, but only after they are allowed to send messengers to all of Israel explaining the situation, and then wait seven days to see if there's a response.

Saul learns about the siege while he's working his fields in Gibeah (an interesting moment, this - why is "king" Saul still doing his regular farming chores?). He takes two oxen, slices them into pieces, and sends all the pieces around Israel, with the warning that any clan that fails to send soldiers to help him fight the Ammonites is going to be cut apart just like the poor oxen. State coercion in the service of military conscription! It's an old story, although these days most countries don't use oxen as examples anymore. Literally killing the oxen to scare the people, which isn't quite as nice as the way the Chinese put it (killing the chicken to scare the monkeys) but evidently gets the job done. Saul raises an army of 330 000 - an astonishing figure which should be more than enough to make Israel the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of the United States, albeit without a thermonuclear reserve - and, in a daring night raid, ransacks the Ammonite camp. Saul and Samuel hold a grand celebration afterwards, which is used to reaffirm Saul as King of Israel.

Samuel is leaving, however. This is highly symbolic: as the power of the state rises, the status of the prophet declines. I kind of liked Samuel: he was honest, he had integrity, and he didn't appeal to the people through military victory (à la Judges, Joshua, or for that matter Saul), or through the economic bounty of the fabled Promised Land (à la Moses). He did anoint the state, though at least according to the narrative, he did so reluctantly (as did God). He delivers one final sermon in chapter 12 in which he prophecies that the Israelites will one day regret establishing the king, but by and large it's lacking the pessimistic ramblings that characterize the later chapters of Moses's swan song in Deuteronomy. He also doesn't kill people left and right, preferring persuasion to bloodshed. Of course, he doesn't have long lists of tedious laws to his name, which I guess is why Moses still trumps Samuel.

(Of course, the speech is still riddled with warnings about divine judgement and punishment - I think I've just been desensitized by Numbers and Deuteronomy.)

Two things are interesteing about Samuel's last speech, aside from what I've noticed above. First, there's an increasing level of tolerance, or even pragmatism, to the threats about divine punishment. Back in Joshua and the Torah, an enormous deal was made out of the seemingly minor sins of even individual Israelites (recall, in the first chapter of Joshua, a witch-hunt to locate just a single Israelite who'd taken unauthorized booty from a raid.) Now, Samuel is more serene than Moses and Joshua were, then. Here, Samuel acknowledges that all of Israel has done many evil deeds, not least among them creating a state. But that's okay, he says. They can still "serve the Lord with all your heart." God isn't going to reject the Israelites, because, Samuel reasons, they're God's people. (This God is much preferable to Moses's God, who on more than one occasion came perilously close to wiping out the entire nation in his uncontrolled rages.)

Second, although Samuel is effectively high priest and therefore still represents that elite institution, it's noteworthy here that he completely bypasses the usual political and social authority structures in delivering this speech. He is speaking to "all Israel." He is not speaking to the king; he is not even speaking to the elders. Obviously we must assume that not "all Israel" was really present at this speech, but whoever was, it doesn't appear to have been the king - Samuel devotes a lengthy section of the speech to criticism of the monarchy, but it's addressed to the people, not to those in power.
Continue reading

God the Joker: 1 Samuel 9-10

This post is part of a revolutionary Bible commentary sponsored by the Church of the Orange Sky.

Okay, I take it back. God wasn't bargaining completely in good faith. He personally directs Samuel in locating a complete bumbling idiot to become king of Israel.

The story of future King Saul gets off to a particularly ignoble beginning: Saul the Benjamite is off looking for some lost donkeys which belong to his father. On the advice of one of his servants, he goes to a prophet for advice, and of course the prophet turns out to be Samuel. This ridiculous notion of prophets as finding aids, which verse 9:9 seems to imply was common in ancient Israel, does a great disservice to the title "prophet" as it's later applied to the writers of the later books of the Old Testament. "Find my donkey" was apparently the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of "God, find my keys," and naturally prophets were available for this, just as direct prayer to God is available for much the same purpose today. Of course Samuel is God's prophet, so the donkeys are found.

Samuel, thanks to God, is expecting Saul, and promptly invites him into the dining hall for a great feast. The next day he sends Saul on a bizarre, intricately detailed treasure hunt involving Rachel's tomb at Zelzah, the great tree of Tabor, three goats, three loaves of bread, some winekins, and the Philistine outpost at Gibeah. Saul follows the instructions and, as his reward, gets to spend some time delivering prophecies at Gilgal.

In the meantime, Samuel summons all the tribes to meet at Benjamin, where he brings forward the tribe, then the clans, then the family of Saul. Saul, of course, has chickened out, being the dubious and incomptent leadership candidate that he is, and Samuel has to send men to find him "hiding among the baggage."

Once he's been found, Samuel proudly declares to the people, "Do you see the man the Lord has chosen? There is no one like him among all the people." This might be supposed to be a dramatic moment, although it really seems more sarcastic than anything. Indeed, is there no one so unqualified for kingship "among all the people"? Indeed, the people who know Saul best - the men of his hometown, Gibeah - mutter among themselves that "this fellow" won't able to "save us."
Continue reading

God Hates the State: 1 Samuel 7:1 - 8

This post is part of a revolutionary Bible Commentary by the Church of the Orange Sky

Ask a Christian for Biblical views on government, and you're not unlikely to hear some reference to Romans 13, especially - but not exclusively - if you're talking to an evangelical or a conservative (or a conservative evangelical, for that matter). That chapter is easily interpreted as conservative, fawning praise for state institutions, commanding obedience from we the loyal subjects - this is in fact a misinterpretation brought on once again by the atrocious numbering in Romans, but we'll get there in a few months). In the meantime, here's a considerably more pessimistic view of human government.

Samuel leads a popular uprising against the Philistines after the military and priesthood both demonstrably failed to "protect" the people, as they were supposed to, in the first several chapters of the book. The revolution is successful and Samuel symbolically plants boundary stones at the edge of Israelite territory. For some reason, the Amorites are still around, but there's no war with them during Samuel's lifetime.

Samuel plays the role of judge, like all the incompetent buffoons in Judges did, and by all accounts he's a good one, but the people are dissatisfied. They fret that if Samuel dies his sons might gain enough political support to become the new judges, and they don't like those sons - the Biblical writer says that they "turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice." So we can add Samuel to the list of Biblical heroes who were also horribly failed fathers. Take that, Promise Keepers!

The elders come before Samuel in a closed-door meeting and tell him he needs to set things right by appointing a permanent "king" for Israel. A significant footnote: the word here apparently is the same one which is translated "judge," which actually means "ruler" according to the first footnote in Judges, so we have a strange wandering translation going on here as Biblical scholars try to impose upon the Bible some arbitrary distinctions between "judge," "ruler" and "king." At least in this case there's something to it: the elders specify that this new king will be like the ones that "all the other nations have."

This is intriguing because the Israelites have basically proposed the creation of a state. It's not particularly original for the time period in which the Biblical events are supposed to have happened, but it is interesting from the perspective of the Biblical account, because it's not a social order supposedly imposed by divine choice. In Genesis, we had a patrimonial family system which failed completely; then a priesthood was created in Exodus through Numbers, but it was supplanted by the military in Joshua; and then there was a system of temporary Judges, which was clearly a complete farce in terms of political stability or ethical integrity.

So far each of these systems has failed, but, perhaps predictably, God is not thrilled to learn that the Israelites want to create a permanent state. The problem, God reasons, is that the Israelites don't have faith in him: if they did, they wouldn't need a state. Moses, you may recall, prophecied that such a demand would be made eventually (he did this way back in Deuteronomy), and created some rules to make sure the kings would be righteous. Here, however, God is not at all pleased at the prospect of a king and not at all optimistic about the king's righteousness. He furiously orders Samuel to deliver an angry speech to the Israelites, one which is not at all like Romans 13, would warm the heart of any anarchist, but fails to impress the Israelites at all.

A king, Samuel tells the Israelites with "the words of the Lord" flowing from his mouth, will not serve God - in fact, quite the contrary, he will draw the people away from God. He will conscript the young men and turn them into foot soldiers, running before his chariots (probably the most vulnerable position, especially in early conscript armies which hadn't mastered phalanx-style formations); he will hire the young women as perfumers and cooks; he will take the best of the food and wine and give it to his bureaucrats and cronies; and the people will become "slaves" of the state. The king will even demand a tithe of his own - in an immensely significant passage, Samuel says that the king will demand one-tenth of the produce, which given the context of ancient Israelite society implies that the state is going to try to replace - or even become - god.

The people, however, don't have much faith in God, who, let's be honest, hasn't been all that good at custom-designing societies so far. (It pains me to admit that because I'm quite partial to the political criticism of 1 Samuel 8.) They say they don't care and they want a king to "be like all the other nations, with a king ot lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."

In a stunning act of democratic good faith, God says that's okay with him. He seems to be withdrawing again, like he did in the late chapters of Genesis. The God of Numbers probably would have blown up the Israelite council of elders and buried their families alive.
Continue reading

The Army, Useless, Idolatrous: 1 Samuel 4:2 - 6:1

This post is part of a revolutionary Bible commentary sponsored by the Church of the Orange Sky.

In the previous post, I argued that the first chapters of 1 Samuel attacked the position of the priesthood. Now, it's time to attack the position of the military (at least for the time being; this will change later). The Israelites fight a major military engagement with the Philistines (yes, them again) and suffer several thousand casualties in an unexpected defeat. Displaying a strange new attitude about God as divine good-luck charm, they decide to bring the Ark of the Covenant from Shiloh to the front lines in the hopes that it will bring them victory.

Eli's sons, Phineas and Hophni, lead the triumphal procession from Shiloh out to the main encampment, after which the Israelites hold a large and excited rally. The Philistines, displaying a courage their enemies rarely seem to possess, are initially taken aback that "a god has come into the camp," but they rally, attack the Israelites anyway, and win an even more resounding victory. This time, the Israelites lose tens of thousands of soldiers, the priests themselves are murdered, and - worst of all! - the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant.

In a series of bizarre and unlikely accidents, God continues the punishment behind the lines by killing off the rest of the priesthood. Father Eli learns about the death of his sons from a Benjamite deserter; stunned and grieving, he falls from his chair, breaks his neck, and dies on the spot. Phineas's wife goes into labour early and also dies. Her last words, after giving birth to a son, are that "the glory of the Lord has departed from Israel."

After proving that the Israelite military and priestly orders obviously can't properly defend the nation, God takes matters into his own hands. (After a fashion, anyway - initially his presence can't seem to extend far beyond the immediate proximity of the magic Ark.) The barbarous Philistines triumphantly carry the Ark into their own temple, devoted to the god Dagon, and set it before the idol of Dagon, symbolizing Dagon's dominance over the Israelites' own god. God dislikes the symbolism, naturally, and during the night knocks over Dagon's idol. The priests set up the idol again in the morning, so God repeats the act several times, gradually upping the stakes by lopping off poor Dagon's head and hands.

Once again, the theistic symbolism here is a little unclear. Dagon's body is said to be prostrate before God. Is the suggestion that God is the only god, or that Dagon is clearly an inferior God to the Israelite's very powerful LORD (as it is usually spelled in the Bible)? Obviously both we and the Jews have moved far enough into monotheism to make an answer seem obvious, but the original readers may or may not have shared our assumptions.

At any rate, Dagon is destroyed and God resorts to the more time-honoured custom of Numbers: plague. In this case, it's hemorrhoids - or possibly "tumours in the groin," according to the NIV. The Philistines, already unnerved by the damage done to their god in his own temple, reach what seems like an illogical conclusion: they will send the Ark on tour!

So, the Ark goes to Gath, but they start getting hemorrhoids too, so it's moved to Ekron, with much the same result. The Ekronites are incensed and hastily send the Ark back to the priests. But the priests don't want it either, so after some hasty consideration, they send it on its way back to Israel, along with a peace offering of five gold rats and five gold tumours - a very strange offering, you'd think, and I'm having trouble picturing the gold tumours. Miraculously, when the Ark is put on a wagon and the wagon hitched to a couple of cows, the cows march straight into Israelite territory and stop at Joshua's field, where the Israelites discover it, sacrifice the poor cows (so much for gratitude), and rejoice at having recovered the Ark. This comes at a price - 70 of the locals look into the Ark, and so God kills them all. It's so nice to see the old wrathful God again after all this time.
Continue reading

The Priesthood, Useless, Corrupt: 1 Samuel 1-4:1

This post is part of a revolutionary Bible commentary sponsored by the Church of the Orange Sky.

Another book, another polygamous marriage gone sour. That's right, it's time to return to traditional patriarchy after a brief if flawed foray into women's standpoints in Ruth. The temple priesthood doesn't come off well in this one, either - in fact, in the beginning they seem pretty much useless. Perhaps this book is going to try to justify some alternative social order on the grounds that the priesthood is failed in its responsibilities.

An Ephraimite named Elkanah has two wives, one barren whom he loves, one with children whom he loves... less. Hannah is apparently emotionally abused by fertile Peninnah. After one particularly stressful festival in the holy city of Shiloh, Hannah goes to pray to God, vowing that if he lets her conceive a son, she will make sure he serves God forever as a Nazirite. Another Nazirite! Hopefully this one turns out better than Samson. Unfortunately, she meets Eli the priest, who is seated on a chair next to the tabernacle. He sees Hannah praying and decides she must be drunk, so he berates her about her drinking habits. Hannah protests that she was actually "pouring out my soul to the Lord." She is polite to him, but this must be a difficult episode - escaping her abusive co-wife and now being attacked by a priest. Eli decides to bless her anyways and she goes away cheerful. She gets the kid she asked for.

Significantly, everything about Samuel concerns his mother: Elkanah wanders around a bit but takes no action. After Samuel is born, Eli is going back to the temple for the annual sacrifice, but Hannah tells her husband she won't be along: she's going to stay home with Samuel. Another insult for the priesthood! Hannah makes up for it by taking her son, after he's been weaned, and leaving him at the temple, swearing his live over to the Lord. This is a bit of a strange decision given that it looks like one of the themes of 1 Samuel is that the professional clergy are going to be corrupt and unlikeable, and it's also another disappointing episode for opponents of modern save haven laws, I'm sure. Hannah sings a song about her kid - it's usually women singing songs in ancient Israel, interestingly - and then Samuel is left to grow up under Eli. Let's see how that works out:

Eli's sons are "wicked men" who have "no regard for the Lord." Among other things, the priests have started taking an excessive commission in meat from sacrifices. This sort of price gouging was a "very great" sin, 1 Samuel tells us. What's probably worse, however, is that they are having sex with the female interns who "serve at the entrance" to the tabernacle. Eli discovers one of them in the act and is most irate.

Meanwhile, Samuel has helped minister for them and "grows up in the presence of the Lord," even though he's an Ephraimite. This, too, tells us that the Aaronite priesthood has fallen, since the Levites have let outsiders perform religious duties. He's more righteous than they are.

Eventually, an anonymous prophet foretells the complete doom of the Aaronite high priesthood. He appears to Eli and declares that God has had enough with the priests. He will only honour those who honour him. Eli's sons are going to die - on the same day, no less - and a new "faithful priest" will be appointed directly by God.

So what's the priesthood for? When the new high priest is appointed, God claims, the remnants of the old priesthood will come before him and ask for jobs so that they "can have food to eat."

In due course, God appoints Samuel to be the new high priest, even though he isn't even a Levite. Eli is old and nearly blind. God calls Samuel, but in what must be a deliberately humorous passage, Samuel initially mistakes the calling for the voice of Eli. The third time he makes this mistake, Eli concludes that it must be God. God prophecies that Eli's entire house will be shamed for what they have done to the priesthood. A reluctant Samuel tells this to Eli, who seems unhappy but lets Samuel step forward as the new prophet of God.

Despite the pro-priesthood clauses of Leviticus and Numbers, much of the Bible has continued to be notably skeptical of the professionally and genealogically religious (which, among other reasons, is why I expressed surprise when God supposedly established an inherited priesthood under Aaron during those books back in the Torah). It looks like we're going to continue the skeptical trend, with a certain cynical tinge: priests assuming that praying women are drunk, pastors' kids hooking up in the sanctuary, God choosing an outsider as his new prophet, and so on. I don't remember most of the Samuel books being about the priesthood, so presumably this also serves as a quick way to get the priests out of the way so we can focus on the prophets again.
Continue reading

Commas aren't Christian

I was killing time fighting for pacifism on the Christianity.com forums today and just about fell off my chair when I came across this post (#7 at link, and yes, I'm aware of the militaristic metaphors I've just employed):

i would just like to say that i am not fond of paragraphs spacing at all i think it is overrated as is any sort of punctuation or period to end the sentence i have felt this way all of my life and believe that it is based on biblical evidence the bible is clear that commas and periods were not used at least when you see the original latin and greek versions i cain't always understand what they are saying but i can see with my own eyes that they did not put periods or commas in there that is an invention of king james people when they wrote the bible so that he would understand it better as he must have been not the smartest king either that or a tyrant as his people had to bow to his whim to make a book that he could understand though i kind of see his point because the hebrew and latin letters are funny and the alphabet doesn't seem as long and they don't have a word for and which i find is really silly much less having another word for silly and that brings me back to the fact that i do not personally believe that one should use punctuation nor should one put a space to show a new paragraph has started there is really no need to start a new paragraph because every word that i say is so important that it needs to be read putting a space in there would only actually take up more space on the page and i would rather fill those spaces with important words usually my own words and they don't have to be coherent or make any sense but to me they are golden and worth more than the internet...

Well done, sir.
Continue reading

Ruth as Pro-David Propaganda: Ruth 2-4

This post is part of a revolutionary Bible commentary by the Church of the Orange Sky.

Ruth starts working in the fields, doing something she has a legal right to in Israel but doesn't today (an interesting example of how society has become more oppressive): she goes into farmers' fields and begins collecting food left behind by the harvesters for the poor. By chance, she meets a wealthy landowner named Boaz who tells him she can stay with his servants and thus get more of the food (he also tells "the men not to touch you" and offers her free water). Ruth is shocked by the charity but Boaz, honourably says that he's heard that Ruth was nice to Naomi and now feels that Ruth deserves a "rich reward" from God for her good deeds. Boaz is clearly attracted to her, beacuse he then quietly orders his men to leave extra food and permit Ruth to gather "among the sheaves," which evidently is a social miscue. Naomi is pleased by the good fortune of her daughter-in-law, claiming that "in someone else's field you might be harmed" but she will be safe with Boaz.

Somewhat dubiously, Naomi then essentially suggests that Ruth should go and seduce Boaz. The Biblical account is innocent and vague, suggesting merely that she lay on his uncovered feet for the night, after which Boaz gives her some barley and sends her home. Presumably there are thick layers of euphemism here. Later, Boaz decides that he will marry Ruth (first he gently manipulates the lawful kinsman-redeemer, who would have had first claim to Ruth in marriage). Should I be pleasant or cynical about this sequence of events? At least nobody launches a holy war and demolishes the town, as probably would have happened in Judges.

This is where my positive feelings about Ruth end. Hopefully Ruth actually ended at 4:10 in its original because then it would remain the romantic short story that it's been so far. Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure how positive I would have been, really. This story may be about Ruth, but according to the story, being Ruth is all about being a good wife. She loses her husband and moves to Israel; she promptly marries and becomes a fully accomplished "young woman." Still, at least no one dies.

Unfortunately, the ending for Ruth is kind of weak. Either it used to end early and was later appropriated, or this was the goal all along, but with the last half of chapter 4, it comes to appear that the purpose of this book is not to explore the much more human story of a woman converting to Judaism, but to provide a heroic story to prop up King David (and, by extension, the descendants of David).

There's something interesting about royal genealogies. I'm not talking about the long, unbelievably detailed lists of legal heirs to the throne routinely updated by, say, the British Crown. No, I'm talking about the medieval and ancient genealogies routinely made by the very "objective" historians and genealogists of the royal court, in which, for example, various noble houses developed competing and almost certainly spurious "lineages" linking themselves to historical figures such as Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and even the rulers of Troy. (Others went the Christian route and linked themselves to David or even the family of Christ.)

This is essentially the role that Ruth is twisted to play for King David and his line of rulers. In a transparently self-serving move, some royal scribe from the Jerusalem court invokes the story of Judah and Tamar, as "the elders" of Bethlehem bless Boaz and Ruth and pray that they will have great "offspring." Immediately, she conceives a child, which the last author of Ruth takes as proof positive that Naomi, too, has redeemed herself from the tragedies of her time in Moab (after all, she's now a grandmother). The Bible carefully specifies, then, that this infant - named Obed - is the grandfather of King David.

And, just to hammer home the point that David is of good lineage, it closes with a completely patrimonial genealogy which has nothing to do with Ruth at all, since in fact it's Boaz's: it turns out, lo and behold!, that Boaz is the great-great-great-great-grandson of Perez, son of Judah. So David really is of direct lineage from Judah!

There are only two things that need to be said about this ridiculous genealogical addendum to Ruth. First, it ruins the story: the purpose clearly shifts from a story about Ruth to a story about the grand lineage of David. This is propaganda, contrived by some official historian of the later court of the Kingdom of Israel as an effort to provide some great historical "proof" that David and his descendants were indeed well qualified for leadership of Israel by their history of being humbly blessed by God.

Second, this genealogy is plainly wrong. From Perez's birth to Obed's, there has probably been about 500 years - 400 years in Egypt, 40 years wandering in the wilderness, and change. (We're not sure just how much change is left over because it's not clear at what point in the time of the Judges that this story occurs.) By my account, this would mean that every man in the genealogy was a good eighty years old when his wife bore the next link in the chain. Even by the rather lengthy lifespans of some of the old Israelites, this seems completely implausible. You have to wonder why a few more links weren't added to make it look real.

So, what to do with this little story? On the surface, most of it is kind of nice - until you realize that it's basically about Ruth finding a husband, which I suppose might be intended as very empowering by the Israelite who wrote this (given the sexism of the time), but now seems a bit sexist. Even that would be ok, except for the ending, which is clearly veering towards propaganda.
Continue reading

And now for something completely different...: Ruth 1

This post is part of a revolutionary Bible commentary by the Church of the Orange Sky.

Following the Christian canonical order, we come to Ruth next. There are benefits and drawbacks to this. In the Christian order, we get a book that I guess is as much social criticism of the Joshua/Numbers/Deuteronomy elitism as Judges is, but written so far more positively, which is probably why it's a lot more popular: this one is about how people don't need power to be good, not how people with power are always evil. On the other hand, the Jewish order places it within a later group of books - Song of Songs, Esther, etc. - where God is nearly silent and very withdrawn, which also makes some sense.

Also significantly, this is the only book in the Bible that is named after and written about women. (Esther is named after a woman but is really more about her uncle, Mordecai.) I don't know which group of ancient Jews managed to sneak this into the canon, but it obviously wasn't the ones who pushed through the prayer "Thank you, God, for not making me a woman."

The Bible starts with Naomi, the widow of a Judean living in Moabite territory, and her two Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. Their various husbands have died before the story begins. Significantly, they aren't struck down by God for their sins: they simply die. It frames the story completely differently than what has come thus far, even counting the cruelly sarcastic "God did it!" tone of Judges: in this book, people make their own choices, and they're capable of making good ones, and living with bad ones. Naomi decides that with her husband gone, she's going to return to her home in Judah, and her two daughters-in-law agree to go with her. Initially Naomi is reluctant, saying that she thinks she's been cursed by God - by being a son-less widow in her old age - but that Ruth and Orpah are old enough to remain in Moab and re-marry.

Orpah agrees, but Ruth stays with Naomi. In a moment, she converts to Judaism: "where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." Naomi returns to Bethlehem during the harvest and seems to be greeted warmly, although she remains depressed, saying that she would prefer to be called Mara ("bitter") rather than Naomi ("pleasant").

Already the book has set quite a different tone than the dark cynicism of Judges. We have seen a genuine conversion to Judaism based purely on friendship and faith. There is no burning bush, no grand patriarchal "I shall decide for my household" declarations, no plague, no miraculous event whatsoever. No killing - which is how the Israelites usually deal with foreigners - and no deception - which is how the Gibeonites persuaded Joshua to let them survive. Not even a trade deal, conversion for intelligence - the sort of deal the spies made with Rahab in Jericho. The first chapter claims that Naomi and Ruth arrived in Israel during the time of the Judges, but the peaceful agrarian setting of Bethlehem has little in common with the gruesome political intrigue of the book of Judges.
Continue reading

Speaking of which...

Maxime Bernier, whom I spoke of in the previous entry, is gone already. The Church of the Orange Sky has spoken, and the Canadian government has responded!

Actually, in this case, Bernier is supposedly leaving because of "accidentally leaving classified documents in an insecure location," which is interesting for two reasons:

- under the excessively broad security laws imposed after 9/11, I think that might actually qualify as a crime if committed by an underling (I'm not really sure if it is, but I am sure of one thing, which is that either way, Bernier will certainly never be investigated on the subject)

- "accidentally leaving classified documents on the coffee table" is a code phrase for "leaked classified documents to a former girlfriend who is also an airport security contractor with possible ties to the Hell's Angels."

I'm not sure which is more disturbing from Harper's supposed "law and order" national regime - the fact that this corrupts the contracting process, or the fact that the Hell's Angels might have links to airport security. Seriously, what the fuck is going on here? And how can the Conservatives spout this claptrap about trivial accidents that, one the one hand, are not serious enough to warrant a real investigation, but on the other hand, are so serious that they require the immediate resignation of the minister? The contempt shown for the public through such propagandistic posturing is sickening. I hate them for thinking I have an IQ of 45. Even if there is nothing more to it, the slick used-car-sales-man-style delivery by the Prime Minister's Office would still make me suspicious, which is unfortunate for everyone involved, including me. (Paranoia is not cool.)

Media links:

- CBC
- CTV
Ministry of Truth
- Stephen Taylor

Update: Apparently the documents in question related to the Afghan mission and the woman in question refused to read them; they made her "uncomfortable." How nice. I guess our airport security is safe after all. Unfortunately, our foreign affairs aren't - Harper's given the portfolio to David Emerson, the semi-elected turncoat from Vancouver.
Continue reading

How many lives is democracy worth?

A Canadian journalist, Scott Taylor, has the gall to point out the obvious truth about the bombastic propaganda streaming from the Canadian government on the state of the war in Afghanistan:

The official NATO line on the Taliban’s use of a young boy in a suicide attack [last week] was that this is further proof of a desperate defeated foe. Last year, when the Taliban in Kandahar province abandoned any attempt at conventional attacks and began relying solely on IEDs, we were told this meant our tactics were working because we’d driven them underground. On May 6, when Cpl. Michael Starker was killed in a rare firefight with insurgents, again we were told this was a positive step forward because we were now driving the Taliban out into the open.

Consistency in explanations? What for?

Nor are we really in Afghanistan for the sake of building democracy, Taylor points out:

that rosy little picture was irreparably ruptured last month when Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier denounced the governor of Kandahar as a corrupt official. While I have little doubt that Bernier has concrete proof of Gov. Asadullah Khalid’s sticky fingers in the funds, demanding that Afghan public officials be shuffled and replaced on demand would make the Karzai government appear to be nothing more than puppets of the Western occupation force.

Actually, Taylor could have gone further - Bernier didn't just denounce the governor but openly called for his replacement. I'm pretty sure if an Afghan minister visited Saskatchewan and demanded that the premier be ousted by the armed forces, Canadians would have something to say about it.

The blessings of the Orange Sky be upon Scott Taylor. Actually he sounds like Noam Chomsky. I didn't know Taylor, but it's not what I would have expected from an editor of Esprit de Corps.
Continue reading

Power Corrupts: Final Reflections on Judges

This post is part of a revolutionary Bible commentary by the Church of the Orange Sky.

One of my friends has said that Judges was one of the greatest initial challenges to his faith in the Bible (a faith he's since lost, though not because of Judges). Another said the book made him feel sick. It's one of a very few passages in the Bible where conservative interpretations go out of their way to emphasize that the Bible isn't making moral judgements, just reporting the sinful excesses as they happen. It never made me sick when I used to read it, perhaps because I could comfort myself with the latter "interpretation" and also because too many years of political science and military history have thickened my skin when it comes to appalling human suffering.

Even in this reading, I've said some harsh things about the author of Judges. However, I've begun to change my mind. In retrospect, the author of Judges is actually quite skilled, if a bit morbid and gruesome. One of the biggest steps towards appreciating this is realizing that he is not really interested in providing a literal account of supposed history, nor is he all that interested in providing a story of how a powerful God is overseeing everything and making sure it all turns out for the better, complete with immediately obvious theological lessons for our lives today. Judges descends into moral lunacy if we hold the first of those views, and sheer absurdity if we hold the second. More so then any other book so far, we must read more carefully to see what is going on. When we do that, we see that the author of Judges is telling stories, not history - and is doing so to subvert and mock some fairly basic conservative ideas about God and society that have been taken for granted in Joshua, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

It's easy to draw simplistic moral and political lessons from Judges, and if we do that, the book turns out to be pretty conservative. Time and again, the Bible reminds us that "there was no king" in Israel at this time, which at first glance does seem to imply that if there was a king, everything would be ok. Too, when push comes to shove, God always comes to the aid of the Israelites against foreign enemies - so they are sinful people, but God's grace leads him to relent and help them despite their despicable evil.

For conservatives, the implications of this view are very, very convenient. The first leads to an unproblematic assertion that we need a worldly government - i.e. "a king," or the modern-day equivalent - to prevent moral decline. (You can see this today in the Western religious right, which is attempting to establish an authoritarian legal system to "maintain" moral order even while preaching the need for less public charity, lower taxes, and more rights to sinfully accumulate wealth and property.) The second reinforces the self-loathing inherent in evangelical Christianity: we are evil, we always sin, without God we do appalling things - but God is gracious and forgiving, and will be at our side when we repent and turn to him for help. (And indeed, God does seem to bless the Israelites when they go into battle.)

On the other hand, a more careful reading reveals that the author of Judges has no interest in either of these positions. He may say there is no king, but one of the basic premises of Judges is that everyone with power is corrupt and evil. Why a hypothetical king would be beyond this principle is beyond me - "power corrupts, but absolute power doesn't corrupt at all"? Look at the record in Judges: Gideon is given power to fight the Midianites, but then uses it to kill Israelites and build idols; Jepthah is given power to fight the Ammonites, but kills his own daughter and starts a murderous civil war; Samson is given power to fight the Philistines, but usually uses it fighting over women; and the whole of Israel is given power to punish Gibeah for the rape of the Levite's concubine, but they use it in a murderous rampage, and then, to make matters worse, try to paper over their sin by yet more killing and abducting of girls. Priests collaborate with the killers, the military engages in brutally excessive orgies of destruction, and the elders conspire and plot. The lesson of Judges is that authority exists to be abused.

The idea of a simple "us versus them" war in which God eventually comes down on the side of "us" in crushing "them" is also overly simplistic; the author of Judges deliberately and repeatedly subverts that simple dichotomy. In a way, despite his abhorrent subject matter, he's doing something that we still struggle with today: questioning the simple "inside/outside" propaganda strategies that go into justifying war. Again, this is a theme that isn't immediately obvious: the author of Judges deliberately frames the stories in ways that a simple reading permits a crudely moralistic conclusion that justifies military nationalism. But look below the surface, because the moral boundaries turn out to be pretty fluid in Judges:

- Deborah leads the Israelites in a heroic war to liberate themselves from the Canaanites. But, in doing so, she cruelly mocks the mother of an opposing general, whose son will never return from battle - and another "heroine" of the story, Jael, violates ancient sacred custom by failing to protect her houseguest, a refugee from the battle (not only does she not protect him, but she kills him herself with a tent peg through the skull).

- Gideon leads the Israelites in a heroic war against the Midianites. But, after doing so, he slaughters entire towns full of fellow Israelites, who have committed no sin worthy of death.

- Jephthah leads the Israelites in a heroic war against the Ammonites. But after doing so, he uses his forces against the Ephraimites, killing tens of thousands of fellow Israelites.

- Samson could have led the Israelites in a heroic war against the Philistines. But he preferred spending time with the Philistines himself, and when he is violent - usually brutally violent - it is for reasons entirely irrelevant to the well-being of Israel. He only kills Philistines for mistreating his Philistine wives.

- Israel punishes the Benjamites for raping a woman to death. But, regretting the extremism of their actions, they kill more of their own - families who had not sinned as the Benjamites did - and then abduct Israelite women into illegal sex slavery.

Throughout this whole process, the author of Judges plays fast and loose with the role of God. The "spirit" of God descends upon Israelite leaders and lets them win battles, but he spends most of his time lurking in the shadows as his children play. He basically just permits them to do evil. Not only do they repay him by worshiping idols, but they repay him by subverting his festivals to justify the abduction and enslavement of Israelite girls. God is either incredibly careless with his power, or the author of Judges is being deliberately sarcastic.

Today it's not uncommon for religious people to suggest that God's spirt "led" them to do something they were probably going to do anyway - like moving to a new city to take a higher-paying job. Pastors are notorious for this, but that's only because we listen to them at religious events more often: pay attention to the ways people legitimize decisions in religious circles, routinely attributing things to God for no other reason than that if something's happening, God must be behind it. The author of Judges may be deliberately mocking this silliness - or rather, the ancient Israelite equivalent of it - by claiming that the "spirit of God" is inspiring men when they perform even the most ridiculously and cartoonishly outrageous violence. This is most obvious in the story of Samson, in which Samson's God does nothing more than let him fly into a foaming rage and murder large numbers of random people.

Also, despite the extraordinary evil that is perpetrated in this book, often against people who have done nothing obviously wrong, the author displays a surprising ability to highlight, even briefly, both the suffering of those afflicted, and the righteousness of those who are traditionally silenced. Look at the Israelite women in this book: virtually all of them live up to some measure of righteousness. Not all of these measures are very liberating for them - the Levite's concubine, for example, displays her righteousness by returning to the master who let her be raped. Jephthah's daughter willingly submits to her own death to save her father's righteousness - she dies in order to save him from his own sin, and thus plays an early analogue of Christ in that story. Samson's mother recognizes God, but his father does not. At the end of the book, by the time the men of Israel have completely given themselves over into violent moral degeneracy, the women are still worshipping the Lord and keeping his festivals. We know they are, because the men use it to commit sexual violence against them. Here, the book closes on a note that is simultaneously dark and uplifting: the women suffer, but they do so because they have sided with God. The book of Judges is not just about immoral Israelites - there are moral ones, but they usually suffer immensely at the hands of those who are less restrained.

The themes in Judges can be seen more clearly when we realize that there are only a very small number of "story" elements in this book. It seems like we're progressing through a long period of history because the author retells them over and over, combining different elements each time and making each iteration progressively gorier, until the climax in the final chapters, when the Benjamites are slaughtered and there's a mass conspiracy of corrupted men against faithful women. (It's easy to be distracted by the brief and amusing little "judges" interspersed throughout the narrative, the ones with dozens of sons riding dozens of donkeys.)

We begin with a couple of righteous archetypes, ideal types put forward by Jewish militarism - Caleb, who treats his daughter "well" by giving her away to a victorious warrior; and Othniel, who defeats the Aramites - who are righteous men set up in opposition to the other stereotype of earlier books, the faithless and idolatrous masses of the average people. Then the author spins this out into successive retellings, each one more gruesome. Ehud's assasssination of Eglon is an exciting and somewhat amusing story of an Israelite hero leading his people to liberation. But then this becomes Deborah's and Jael's defeat of the Midianites - in which the Israelites still win against the foreigner, but in doing so must be led by women and violate a sacred ethical code. This becomes Gideon's defeat of the Midianites - in which the Israelites still win against the foreigner, but in doing so murder two of their own towns and build some false idols. This becomes Jephthah's defeat of the Ammonites - in which the Israelites still win against the foreigner, but then kill tens of thousands of their own in a limited civil war. Here, the author introduces a second element to the story: the betrayal of righteous women. This time, it's only one such woman: Jephthah's daughter is killed in a human sacrifice.

Now we move on to the story of Samson, where a righteous woman (his mother) is ignored but not sacrificed; Samson has the opportunity to liberate the Israelites from the foreign Philistines but ultimately ends up not doing so, because he actually prefers the company of foreigners, especially their women. The penultimate tragedy begins with the story of the Levite, where again a righteous woman is sacrificed. This time, however, there is no more foreigner: the offenders are Israelites. That doesn't stop the Israelites from killing them anyways, combining the act of fighting the foreigner and fighting oneself. And finally, as they sit among the bloody remains of the Benjamite tribe, the regretful Israelites have no enemy to fight, so they create one by killing Gileadites, and then once again harm the righteous women (in this case, they enslave them rather than kill them, perhaps less morally outrageous but nevertheless blatantly illegal under the law of Moses). With each iteration of the basic story - righteous Israelites rise up against an enemy, but then indulge in sinful excesses - the author of Judges makes their actions a little more outrageous, and simultaneously takes away a few more potential rationalizations for their actions, until by the end of the book, there is nothing left but rigid oppression and pure evil.

Given the interpretation I've provided here, it's rather striking to see Judges at this position in the Bible. It seems like a deliberate rejection of Joshua's militarism and Numbers's and Deuteronomy's priestly elitism: in Judges, those with power are always corrupt, those who are righteous will be oppressed by those who are corrupt, and God will not always leap to the aid of the righteous. The fact that this message has to be concealed somewhat is telling about the politics of Biblical writing, but the fact that it's so clearly there speaks to an interesting measure of balance in the Bible. The Jewish Old Testament provides books which take very different positions on the relationship between Israel and the divine. The Biblical canon is politically and theologically balanced: fair representation for a number of diverse viewpoints. They say you can prove anything with the Bible - and you can, because the books of the Bible are making very different arguments. The book of Judges may contain some particularly bloody and disturbing stories, but to me, its scathing social criticism - of power, of religion, and of gender - makes it far more interesting than any of the preceding books.
Continue reading

Sex and War, Part 3: Judges 21

This post is part of a revolutionary Bible commentary by the Church of the Orange Sky.

Whether or not going to war to honour the principle of women's sexual purity is probably debatable, but even so, the following story pretty much proves to me that the issue is once again one of protecting men's sexual and property rights, not one of protecting women, or even avenging them.

The Israelites assemble again at Bethel (the leaders go separately to Mizpah) and some people notice, as they "weep bitterly" about the battle, that one tribe is missing. They ask God why the tragedy has happened. Have they forgotten? They also vow not to give any of their daughters in marriage to the surviving Benjamites (as you may recall, there were a few hundred who managed to survive the fratricidal carnage in the previous chapter).

On the one hand, they want to punish the surviving Benjamites. On the other hand, at least some of those present, by the general crying and moaning, seem to regret indulging in mass murder. They feel sorry and want to somehow make up for their military excesses - today we'd call it ethnic cleansing - by taking care of the survivors. They want the Benjamite tribe to survive, even if in drastically reduced form, as a salve to their own consciences. So they decide on a novel and morally dubious solution.

The Gileadites, a quick count reveals, haven't sent anyone to either the memorial at Bethel or the summit at Mizpah. Therefore, the assembly rules, the Gileadites are no longer Israelites! They mobilize a new army of twelve thousand men and order them into Jabesh Gilead to kill everyone living there - "including the women and children," the Bible specifies helpfully. Only one group is permitted to survive: virgin girls. The army attacks, captures 400 girls, and brings them to the surviving Benjamites as wives.

It's a testament to the creativity of the author of Judges that this episode is not the most morally shocking moment in the chapter. The Israelites have killed the Benjamites, so they want to take care of the survivors. The way to do this is to give them females to have sex with - an incredibly ironic gift given that the war also started when someone gave the Benjamites a woman to have sex with. But they've taken an oath not to give their own daughters to the brothers of rapists. So the solution is to literally vote the Gileadites out of the tribe, thus making them legal foreigners, and thus subject to summary execution. Once they've been executed, there are some sex slaves freed up, which the Israelites can then give to the Benjamites. The morally twisted logic that allows the ritual banishment and complete slaughter of yet another clan simply to free up some unattached women is almost impossible to follow. This chatper doesn't mention the will of God, perhaps because even the author of Judges isn't willing to go so far as to suggest that "the spirit of the Lord" is descending on anyone in this fight.

But it's not enough! Only 400 girls survived the murder of the Gileadites, but there are 600 Benjamite men. So the Israelites need to find another 200 girls.

The elders therefore meet and decide on what can only be described as a covert black op. They note that there's an annual "festival of the Lord" which will be held in Shiloh in a few weeks, in which large numbers of girls are expected to come out and dance in the fields.

Now, the Israelites have agreed not to give their daughters in marriage to the Benjamites - but, the elders reason, abduction followed by marriage doesn't count as breaking the oath. So they secretly tell the Benjamites to wait in the fields and then, when the girls come out to dance and celebrate, rush in and carry off one girl each. In the meantime, the elders will pointedly look the other way. They fully expect other Israelites to be irate when their daughters are kidnapped, but they have an explanation ready: fathers and brothers will be "innocent" because they didn't "give" their daughters to the Israelites, they simply looked the other way while they were abducted and carried off into sex slavery.

Just as the slaughter of the Benjamites is a retelling of Jephthah's slaughter of the Ephraimites, so the abduction of the Israelite virgins is a retelling of Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter: the author of Judges is spinning out his story once again, trying to make it even more disturbing than the last time. This time, the entire leadership of Israel is complicit. It is quite literally a conspiracy of men against women.

There's no human sacrifice, but in a way, I think he's succeeded anyways. Every moral principle is subverted in this story except for the principle of men's ownership of women: the Israelites claim the non-existent right to banish clans from the nation for the dubious sin of failure to assemble in court (which isn't listed in the detailed commandments of the Torah, and certainly doesn't seem like a valid reason to engage in mass murder against an entire clan). They capture Israelites - women, granted, but still Israelites - as sex slaves, something that in theory can only be done to foreign women. They subvert the festivals of the Lord by using them as a means to engage in mass banditry, kidnapping innocent girls and carting them off into forced marriage. No one seems to care that the women are having their lives ruined in the process. The only things that remain intact in this sad story are men's ownership rights over women's bodies - and men's holy oaths.

When a man makes an oath, it is a sacred and holy thing. Much like in the Jephthah story, everything here can be explained by the Israelites' decision to swear an oath that they would not give their daughters to the surviving Benjamites. After making this foolish oath, they realize they don't want to let the Benjamite tribe die - so the Benjamites need wives. But they can't get wives because of the oath! So, the Israelite elders come up with a variety of creative ways to sneak girls to the Benjamites under the table, so to speak. First, they kill the men of Gilead - and with the men dead, no one is alive to "give" the women in marriage. They are captured, not given, and therefore no one has broken their promise. The price of the oath in this case is the lives of every man and almost every woman in Gilead.

That's not enough, so they plot a mass kidnapping of girls from Shiloh. Once again, the girls are abducted - their taken to marriage, not given by their fathers, and so therefore no one has broken their promise. In this case, however, the price of the oath is even higher: the men of Israel have conspired against the women of Israel and abused God's sacred festivals in order to do it. It is perhaps the most extreme and explicit example of the patriarchy using the divine to legitimize the oppression of women that we have yet come across in the Bible. By making that link the author of Judges also suggests that the men have, in the act of setting themselves against the women, also set themselves against God. On the other hand, God doesn't seem all that interested in coming to the women's defence.
Continue reading

A Basic Profiteer's Guide to Christianity

Steps for making Godly profit:

1. Locate a secular trend, program, or other profitable opportunity.

2. Insert appropriate Christian rhetoric about "bringing yourself closer to God," "improving your walk with God," avoiding "issues that can keep you from growing closer to God," and otherwise "surrendering yourself to God." Buttress with at least one additional inspirational Bible quotation that seems marginally relevant. More quotes are better, but only one is really necessary - look at what Wilkinson was able to do with capitalism via The Prayer of Jabez, for example.

3. Go to church, find a few susceptible assistants, and announce that you feel the Holy Spirit has been leading you towards something you think the church really needs in order to reach out to the lost.


An excellent case study can be found here, in an article from USA Today, published yesterday, about new Christian fitness programs. One of the group leaders, Kim Melchor, explains - à la Corinthians - that our bodies are "God's temples," and therefore we need to take care of them. Because, presumably, if you want to attract worshippers to your temple, you have to keep it in good condition.

Ironically, Paul was speaking against prostitution in that passage.

Unfortunately USA Today doesn't really explain what's especially Christian about the exercise involved. Maybe there's a special rhythm involved in jogging with Christ.
Continue reading