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Post by Maggie on Aug 31, 2013 9:17:00 GMT -6
Quite a brilliant person was quoted on IGI as writing the following: God does not command rape. Full stop. Judges 21 is the culmination of the story that begins in chapter 19 when “wicked men” of the tribe of Benjamin brutally rape the concubine of a Levite passing through, leading to her death. The Levite appeals for help to the rest of Israel in a horribly graphic way that works. The armies of the nation gather near the scene of the crime, demand that the evildoers be given up to them and, when the Benjamites refuse, determine to wipe out the city to purge the great evil from Israel. The slaughter is immense but through it all, the Israelites do not rejoice in victory. They mourn.
When the extent of the slaughter becomes clear, the Israelite mourn that one of the 12 tribes will disappear. In order that that not happen, they find the one group who should have taken part in the battle (and in the oath not to give their daughters as wives to the Benjamites) but did not and help themselves to the young women. The remaining women are seized in Shiloh and that brief description ought to remind you of the rape of the Sabine women. (Rape means “to seize”). It is the Sabine women themselves who put an end to the war that follows between the Romans and the Sabines. Seems that they were not all that displeased with their marriages.
So we are not talking about rape at all, but about marriage. True, it is a forced marriage but how is that relevantly different from an arranged marriage in peacetime? In both cases the women are not consulted. In peacetime it is a matter for the father to manage. Surely no one would call arranged marriages, which are still the norm in many parts of the world, “rape”. Yet even in peace, the woman may be as unwilling partner as in war.
Most people understand the difference between rape and marriage. In marriage the husband has a duty to take care of the wife. He doesn’t just get to use her for sex and then walk away. It is a very modern notion to describe as rape any sexual activity that you find repugnant. But rape is normally a single act or event. Marriage is a life-long covenant with mutual obligations and responsibilities. Thus the ancient marriage customs described in the Old Testament can never be equivalent to a command to rape, no matter how much those customs sear your modern mentality. They are fundamentally different. This topic has really started to interest me. For a horrifying excursion through modern day " bride kidnapping" one need only read up on it in Wiki. It is very common and it is usually rape by anyone's definition. So I started looking around online last night to see what more I could find out about this chapter and came across an article in Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal (Fall 1997 Volume 1, Number 1) The article "Deuteronomy 21: 10-14 - The Beautiful Captive Woman" makes a strong case that this bit of scripture is an argument for forbidding rape in war. The abstract says: Anti-rape legislation is a pressing issue. Deuteronomy 21:10-14 contains what appears to be an ancient form of anti-rape legislation. The author examines the way in which the biblical provision was interpreted by post-biblical commentaries and halakhic sources. The Talmud Yerushalmi and the Talmud Bavli disagree on various issues concerning the captive woman, including the timing and the location of intercourse between the captor and the captive. The Yerushalmi clearly was against the rape of a captive woman at war, while the Bavli was primarily concerned with the threat of theological pollution posed by a foreign woman. I will talk about this a little bit more in another post. I want to see if I can find out more in my library's databases. But for now, I do recommend the article as a very interesting contribution to the discussion going on. |
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Post by Maggie on Sept 1, 2013 17:12:37 GMT -6
There is quite a bit more to say about Judges and about rape and forced marriage. Two things need to be said at the outset. The Bible is a book for adults. I know that seems odd in a day and age when children's Bibles and Sunday School abound but it is important to understand that a lot of the Old Testament is plain ugly. It describes ugly matters, ugly choices and ugly outcomes for tribes and individuals. The ancient world was brutal and life was every bit as brutal and, often, very short. But this truism does not come close to saying that God approves of or orders rape in Judges or anywhere else. It describes unvarnished reality. It ought to give us pause to consider that God chose to become incarnate in such a world. But the question being discussed across the street is wrongly formulated. God is barely considered in Judges. The whole point of the book is one painful picture after another of apostasy and sin on the part of Israel.
Scholars generally consider Joshua, Judges, 1,2 Samuel, and 1,2 Kings to be the "Deuteronomistic History" of Israel-- the stories as they have come down to us are in the version finalized by writers after the destruction of Jerusalem. The editors of Judges (Believers Church Bible Commentary)1 introduce their commentary on Judges by placing it in a larger context. Among other things, they say, "As the foundation for this theological interpretation of Israel's past, the writers of the Deuteronomistic History used the fundamental principles of what now is the book of Deuteronomy. "The book of the law" supporting Josiah's reforms (2 Kings 22-23) was likely an early form of Deuteronomy. The various stories, records, and traditions from the Israelites' earlier years were measured against the teachings of Deuteronomy. These teachings can be consolidated into a comprehensive formula: obedience to God results in blessing, but disobedience results in disaster. On the basis of this formula, the Deuteronomistic History presents the unmistakable conclusion that Israel's eventual downfall and Jerusalem's destruction resulted, not from any weakness or unfaithfulness on God's part, but from the community's own sinfulness"(p.16)
The ugliness of Israel's apostasy was not quickly forgotten. Brensinger writes: Denied hospitality. Emotional and sexual abuse. Murder. Mutilated remains. The shock of this entire scandal at Gibeah did not pass quickly, becoming instead an ugly benchmark in Israel's history (Hos. 9:9; 10:9). In paying particular attention to the way biblical characters and writers react to grotesque evil, one notes a sense of amazement from beginning to end.
The writer of Kings, for example, measures the degree of evil: Jeroboam establishes a religious system of his choosing (1 Kings 12:25-33), Omri "sinned more than all those before him" (1 Kings 16:25), and Manasseh "has done more evil than the Amorites who preceded him" (2 Kings 21:11; cf. 2 Chron. 33:9). In the prophetic literature, the same note of disbelief rings again and again. Isaiah considers Israel's level of understanding to be less than that of an ox or donkey (1:3).
Jeremiah cannot locate even one just person in all of Jerusalem (5:1). Malachi, groping for suitable metaphors, suggests that Judah treats God in a manner that would be totally unacceptable to either a father, master, or governor (1:68). Finally, in sheer exasperation, Jeremiah concludes, "Most devious is the heart; it is perverse—
who can fathom it?" (17:9, Jewish Publication Society)" (Brensinger, p. 203).
If you looked at the article I mentioned in the last post, you will note that early Jewish commentators on Deuteronomy 21:10-14 considered it a crude form of anti-rape legislation. It seems to give the woman time to mourn and time to get used to her situation before a forced or captive marriage takes place. However that appears to be a minority position in the literature I read this weekend. A much uglier picture arises from it that better accords with what we know about ancient and modern warfare.
I will pick that up in the next post, since this has gotten quite long.
1Brensinger, Terry L. Judges. Scottdale, Pa: Herald Press, 1999.
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Post by questionmark on Sept 1, 2013 17:55:32 GMT -6
To the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure.
So, start off with asking some questions.
Does anyone think this is necessarily morally wrong, if so by what standard do they judge? If they have no transcendent moral standard, then they are just in the fight because they like arguing. They don't actually believe that rape is wrong, or that arranged marriage is wrong, or that monogamous marriage is right etc etc etc. Because they don't really believe in right and wrong. (Read the last line of this post)
Next, you ask, how many of them are hypocrites. In my experience, the majority of men have pushed women into things that the women weren't comfortable with. Oh, but also the women have pushed men into things they weren't comfortable with. Some are called marriage, others called sex. Usually women push men into marriage and commitment and men push women into sex or sexual conduct. For these people to judge the Biblical passages shows hypocrisy, especially if they are unrepentant.
And, you have to take into consideration what the passage itself says about their standard of justice. In the book of judges, it is a profound offense to the whole world to break your vows. A vow-breaking, a reference that modern people usually associate with marriage and divorce is it not? So we have vow breakers covering over the misdeeds of vow-breakers so that things are not as bad as they could be. Imagine if there were no socially acceptable method of getting a wife?
So basically, the whole country (the people responsible for making marriages) communally arrange the marriages in order not to murder the ENTIRE NATION by not fulfilling their vows.
What is the moral of the story? The last sentence in the chapter:
In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
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Post by Maggie on Sept 1, 2013 18:23:42 GMT -6
If you looked at the article I mentioned in the first post, you will note that early Jewish commentators on Deuteronomy 21:10-14 considered it a crude form of anti-rape legislation. It seems to give the woman time to mourn and time to get used to her situation before a forced or captive marriage takes place. However, later commentaries tell us that the woman had to convert to Judaism in that time in order to be married. If she would not convert, she was given a year to rethink it all. If she still refused to convert, she had to agree to live according to the seven Noahide commandments as a resident alien or be executed. Living as a resident alien sounds like an out, until we remember that single women had no place in society. Perhaps the most important thing to take away from this text and the Jewish commentaries about it is that marriage was a bit of a fig leaf for regulating male sexuality in the field.
Perhaps the most interesting article I read was by Alice Bach "Rereading the Body Politic: Women, Violence and Judges 21" in A Feminist Companion to the Bible1. What makes this painful reading is that she is writing against the backdrop of the discovery of the rape camps in Bosnia. Rape as tool to subjugate women has never lost its effectiveness. In any case she notes that the story in chapter 21 is part of an awful progression from the acts of violence against the nameless concubine (a story strongly reminiscent of Lot's story in Sodom) to the final seizing of the women at Shiloh. In the first case, the Levite gave the concubine to the evil men and so, from a biblical perspective at a time when women had no standing, it was not rape at all. Likewise, seizing the women at Shiloh was not, in the first instance, a crime against them but, rather, a crime against their fathers because rape was always a crime against the father or husband. Women could not bring legal actions for rape. That was up to their male relatives. In this instance the writer is careful to note that the act was a political one, not one of sexual violence. The men needed wives and, thanks to a rash vow, could not obtain them in a more honorable way.
Well, reading the commentaries on this book is fascinating stuff. Judges is just a plain ugly book from beginning to end. But the ugliness comes, as it always does, from men. Not from God.
1Alice Bach in Brenner, Athalya. Judges : A Feminist Companion to the Bible. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic, 1999.
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Post by questionmark on Sept 1, 2013 18:33:19 GMT -6
I can't tell if you're agreeing, correcting, or just repeating :D
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Post by Maggie on Sept 1, 2013 20:08:29 GMT -6
Sorry, I was writing the other post when you posted and hadn't read your post yet! I don't know if I agree with you or not. I didn't quite get it. The "vows" in Judges are rash vows that should not have been made. A rash vow cost Jephthah his daughter's life. A rash vow made the seizure of the women at Shiloh necessary. However, you are certainly right that the whole book demonstrates the horrors of apostasy and sin.
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