Women in judges – destruction of women

In this portion of our discussion of the women of the Book of Judges, we will deal with two nameless and victimized women – Jephthah’s daughter and the Levite’s concubine.  These two stories epitomize one of the chief trajectories of the Book of Judges – the destruction of women by men.  Both stories are found in the second half of the book, after we have already met a series of strong, assertive women.  In some of those stories, men were the casualties – but here we will be dealing with the lives of women as tragedy.

The Judge Jepthah (Judges 11 -12 is tainted from the outset – the son of a prostitute, he is disinherited by his brothers, gathers a gang of “low characters” and proceeds to live on the fringes of society as an outlaw.  Because of his reputation as a “tough”, he is invited back to face the threat of an Ammonite attack.   Stung by his initial rejection, he drives a hard bargain for his services.  His ego inflated, he makes a rash vow:

If You deliver the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me on my safe return from the Ammonites shall be the Lord’s and I shall offer it as a burnt offering.

As fate would have it, this promise backfires, when he returns victoriously and is greeted by his own daughter.  Here begins our exposition of the story within the story, the fate of Jephthah’ daughter, one of the many unnamed women in the book of Judges.

35 “On seeing her, he rent his clothes and said, “Alas, daughter! You have brought me low; you have become my troubler!  For I have uttered a vow (lit. opened my mouth) to the Lord and I cannot retract it.”  “Father, she said, you have uttered a vow to the Lord; do to me as you have vowed, seeing that the Lord has vindicated you against your enemies, the Ammonites.  She further said to her father, “Let this be done for me; let me be for two months, and I will go with  my companions and lament (lit descend) upon the hills and there bewail my maidenhood.”  “Go,” he replied.  He let her go for two months, and she and her companions went and bewailed her maidenhood upon the hills.  After two months’ time, she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed.

Following this laconic account of the events connected with Jephthah’s daughter, we return to the main story, Jephthah’s career as Israel’s judge. He is a divisive force in Israel, and incites internecine carnage.  Thus, the biblical text itself is covertly critiquing Jephthah and his leadership.

Midrash is much more blatant in its criticism.  Jephthah’s rash vow was invalid a priori. Furthermore, when it turned out to have dire consequences, it should have been annulled,  but the egos of Jephthah and the “spiritual” leader, Phineas the High Priest, prevented this and Jephthah’s daughter paid the price.

The two following 19^th century portrayals of the same scene are so involved with the lusty women that they miss the point.

Tissot poses Jephthah’s daughter framed by an arch, undulating for a victory photo-opp, wearing a headdress of tambourines and playing a drum. There’s no hint of the coming fall. Laurens portrays a group of girls doing some last minute rehearsing before the curtain rises. Jephthah’s curvaceous daughter, seen from the back, dances through the doorway, while one entirely naked friend peeks over the windowsill and waves to the miniscule silhouette of the approaching troops. These might as well be scenes from the Song of Songs and not the moment before disaster.

The most frequently treated scene in the story of Jephthah’s daughter is the fulfilling of Jephthah’s vow.  Both literary and visual Midrash generally depict this fulfillment as the slaying of the daughter and this would appear to be the obvious intent of the biblical narrative.

The two medieval illustrations above, show a parallel between the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter and the sacrifice of Isaac. Although created over 100 years apart, they demonstrate that the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter was conceived similarly to the sacrifice of Isaac.

In most Midrashim, Isaac is portrayed as a willing martyr who urges his father to complete the act; since there is nothing in the biblical text of the Akedah to indicate such willingness, these Midrashim may actually derive from the explicit willingness of Jephthah’s daughter in the biblical account. A text from the Babylonian Talmud draws the parallel between Jephthah and Abraham, without comment. Pseudo-Philo likewise refers to the Sacrifice of Isaac in his retelling of the story of Jephthah’s daughter, holding up the midrashic Isaac as a model of piety. Thus there is a web of interconnections between the stories of Jephthah’s daughter and Isaac.

Christian theology goes a step further. The akedah as a prefiguration of the crucifixion is an ancient pillar of Christian thinking; occasionally, the sacrifice of Jepthah’s daughter is also likened to the crucifixion, as in the writings of Ephrem the Syriac. A 7^th century visual representation of this parallel is found in the chapel of the Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai. As a result, Jephthah becomes a positive figure in some Christian thinking, as opposed to the negative evaluation, overt in the Midrash and implied in the Bible.

In medieval Jewish commentary, a radical and surprising new interpretation appears, in the commentary of R. Abraham ibn Ezra: lo and behold, the fool doesn’t do it. Ibn Ezra discovers an ambiguity in the text and reads Jephthah’s vow as:

Whatever comes out of my door will be the Lord’s or I will offer it up.

What other commentators understood as a single outcome in two phases should be read as two different options. This reading is based on the assumption of traditional scholarship that each biblical phrase has its own distinct meaning. The upshot of this reading is that if what comes out to greet Jephthah be appropriate for sacrifice, it will be sacrificed; if not, it will be otherwise dedicated to God. Since, as it turns out, Jephthah’s own daughter greets him, she obviously(!) cannot be sacrificed. Therefore, concludes Ibn Ezra, she was consecrated to a life of meditation and prayer. The great Jewish commentators Radak, Ralbag, Abravanel and Malbim accepted this reading, while the Ramban rejected it out of hand. Only Nicholas of Lyra, among Christian commentators, accepted the view that she was not sacrificed, apparently following Radak; as it turns out, Nicholas was a Jewish convert to Christianity!

Church history contextualizes Ibn Ezra’s novel interpretation.  Between the years 1000 and 1300, the number of convents in Europe increased tenfold.  Since no such institution existed within Judaism, this increase may have been the model for the new interpretation of Jephthah’s vow.

Why has this scene been placed here? The answer is formal and theological: Jephthah’s daughter cannot legitimately be sacrificed on the altar, so she is executed on a stone, just as the 70 brothers are. A strong diagonal of raised swords also unites both panels, thus making the statement that the death of Jephthah’s daughter was not a pious sacrifice prefiguring the crucifixion, but a wanton murder. Thus what seemed to be a naïve normative reading of the story turns out to be subversive.

The Book of Judges ends with a horror story.  From the beginning of the book, violence is the default behavior of the people of Israel, in line with the familiar phrase: There was no king in those days and everyone did whatever they pleased.  Nonetheless, there’s no hint at the depth of depravity that will unfold in this final story.

The main character of the story seems to be the concubine of a Levite from the hill country of Ephraim. But she turns out be a mere pawn. Like all the other characters in this tale, she is unnamed; but unlike the others (including entirely minor figures), she is not given a single word of speech. At the outset of the story, the concubine leaves her husband, for reasons not made clear, and returns to her father’s home in Bethlehem of Judah. Four months later(!) the Levite follows to reclaim her;  day after day, his hospitable father-in-law delays their departure. Having finally left as the light fades, they decide against staying in nearby Jerusalem, fearing this city of foreigners. They arrive at the Benjaminite city of Gibeah in the dark, unwelcomed until an elderly Ephraimite offers them his hospitality. Local perverts surround his house and demand to have their way with the Levite. Instead, the concubine(!) is pushed out the door. In the morning, the Levite, unmoved to find her body on the doorstep, loads her on to a donkey. heads home, dismembers the corpse and sends the parts to the 12 tribes. Their fury is aroused and a civil war that ensues, in which Benjamin is decimated. For the sake of tribal survival, the remaining Benjaminites are given women procured by abduction.

In an early rabbinic discussion, the question of censorship is raised. It’s so horrible, maybe we should just not talk about it, remove it from the curriculum.  But this option is rejected; the story, like other embarassing episodes (Lot and his daughters, the Golden Calf, Judah and Tamar) should be read and processed.

Another (disappointing) midrashic treatment of our story, juxtaposes it with the story of Micah’s idol (Judges 17).  The rabbis conclude that Israel was punished for being more concerned about the concubine than they were about idolatry.  But in fact, the implication of this “learning” is that the unnamed woman becomes even more marginalized than in the Bible.

The 13^th century Morgan Bible, containing hundreds of images from the Hebrew Bible, devotes fully eleven panels to the grotesque concluding episode of Judges. The visual narrative opens with the hospitality offered at Gibeah and continues in the dining room.

Action proceeds as the the scene pictures the terrified concubine being delivered into the hands of the armed gang.

The artist then renders:

²²While they were enjoying themselves, the men of the town, a depraved lot, had gathered about the house and were pounding on the door. They called to the aged owner of the house, “Bring out the man who has come into your house, so that we can be intimate with him.” ²³The owner of the house went out and said to them, “Please, my friends, do not commit such a wrong. Since this man has entered my house, do not perpetrate this outrage. ²⁴Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. Let me bring them out to you. Have your pleasure of them, do what you like with them; but don’t do that outrageous thing to this man.” ²⁵But the men would not listen to him, so the man seized his concubine and pushed her out to them. They raped her and abused her all night long until morning; and they let her go when dawn broke.

Four hundred years later, two Dutch artists chose to interpret relationships, rather than the grotesque.

Eekhout and Rembrandt both portray the night scene in which the Levite and company are offered  hospitality in Gibeah. The text is silent with regard to the concubine’s relationship with her husband. She leaves him; we don’t know why. It takes him four months to go after her; we don’t know why.  Their reunion in the father’s house emphasizes only the gustatory delights. The two pictures above read this relationship very differently. Eekhout places the couple in affectionate proximity. Although her hand rests on his knee, his interest is focused on the potential host. In the Rembrandt scene, she sits separate among the suitcases, while the two men are in close conversation. Intimation of the coming disaster is missing from both pictures. The artists have chosen an isolated prelude.

On further examination, the artist numbered the paintings sequentially, leading us to view them as a triptych. This unified view reveals animal savagery intensifying diagonally, from top to bottom and left to right. A human-faced animal becomes a bloody tongued wolf with a repulsive coat. Finally, it multiplies into a vicious pack.  Throughout, we barely see the concubine as a person, but only as body parts: 12 in panel 1, 12 in the upper part of panel 2, and 12 hands in panel 3. The central panel pictures the attacked and the attackers; a riot of bodies. The hands of panel 3, the only flesh-color in the triptych, are the victim, grabbing, scratching, pleading, surrendering. The art of the 21^st century in its interpretive expressionism is a powerful contrast to the stylistic and realistic narrativism of the earlier works. Without Shafner, our treatment of this story would be dispassionate; her work makes ones blood boil.

We’ve dealt with four of the major extended units of the book of Judges:  in two, women destroy men and in two. men destroy women. Plautus wrote in the 3^rd century BCE: “Homo homini lupus”, man is a wolf to his fellow. In the book of Judges it could also read: man is a wolf with women.