“A Nameless Wordless Woman” based on Judges 19

September 17, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Today we conclude the Subversive Women of the Bible Sermon series with this, the absolutely worst story in the Bible. Unfortunately the story doesn’t really end where we leave it, and it does keep getting worse. Our heroine is certainly subversive, but unfortunately her subversion is not the final word; the final word is violence.

Phyllis Trible is a feminist Biblical Scholar whose career included teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York and Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, NC. In 1984 she published Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives in which she carefully explains and comments on four “texts of terror” in the Bible. This is, of course, one of them. She opens the chapter on this story with these words:

“The betrayal, rape, torture, murder, and dismemberment of an unnamed woman is a story we want to forget but are commanded to speak. It depicts the horrors of male power, brutality, and triumphalism; of female helplessness, abuse, and annihilation. To hear this story is to inhabit a world of unrelenting terror that refuses to let us pass by on the other side.”¹

Unrelenting terror is a reasonable description of this story. I think that she oversimplifies the gendered aspects of power and abuse, but only from a modern perspective. From within the story her description is right on, from within life in the United States now it is both true and untrue. We want to be careful with that today, because this story is strikingly relevant to life. Trible ends her chapter on this story saying:

“Violence and vengeance are not just characteristics of a distant, pre-Christian past; they infect the community of the elect to this day. Woman as object is still captured, betrayed, raped, tortured, murdered, dismembered, and scattered. To take to heart this ancient story, then, is to confess its present reality. The story is alive and not all is well. Beyond confession we must take counsel to say, ‘Never again.’ Yet this counsel is itself ineffectual unless we direct our hearts to that most uncompromising of all biblical commands, speaking the word not to others but to ourselves: Repent. Repent.”²

Let’s take a little bit of time to highlight the big questions in this story and clarify some of the confusing parts. To begin with, a “concubine” is a second class wife. Trible says, “Legally and socially, she is not the equivalent of a wife, but is virtually a slave, secured by a man for his own purposes.”³ Other famous concubines in the Bible include Hagar, and the maidservants of Rachel and Leah. Our heroine’s status as concubine leads to the subversive action that takes place, one that is so radical that no one even tries to figure it out.

The concubine leaves. She leaves her husband, but that wasn’t done. It couldn’t be done. At that time, and by later Torah regulations, only men had the right to initiate divorce. A wife couldn’t leave. This feels way MORE true for a concubine, a second class wife, one who lacked even the dignity and respect given to first class wives who had close to no power to begin with. Leaving husbands wasn’t a thing. And the story says she left, got to her father’s house, and stayed for FOUR MONTHS. This heroine left her husband.

I’m not really sure why her father sheltered her, doing put him into a power battle with her husband when her husband had the legal upper hand. It is possible that this woman lied to her father and told him that her husband had divorced her, or even that her husband HAD divorced her and changed his mind. The father seems to be trying to buy her time when her husband arrives. Her father seems to be trying to keep her sheltered. That’s notable.

I don’t know what it would take for a woman, a concubine, to leave her husband at that time. It seems likely that many concubines were raped and abused, particularly since most women got no choice in their marriages. It seems fair to assume she was being abused, yet most women accepted the social norms that kept them in place and didn’t leave to try to stop it. The biggest question is why this woman was so brave! She left. And it seems like it almost works, but eventually he decides he wants her back. This whole things feels like the cycle of abuse. Likely the motivation for this woman to leave was that the last incident of abuse was so terrible that the next one was going to be deadly. (Terrifying how powerful the norms were that only she is said to leave.)

Trible points out that in Hebrew the woman’s “master” (her word) is said to come after her to “speak to her heart, to bring her back.”⁴This, too, is part of a cycle of abuse. The text never says he actually does so, but the speaking kindly after abuse is part of the cycle. When the husband/master gets to his concubine’s father’s house, he seems open to flattery and being treated well. The woman’s father is able to keep them for several days, I suspect at great expense. If her father had been wealthy, she would not have been a concubine. Yet the food and wine flow freely, and the husband/master struggles to leave the comfortable living.

Finally he breaks free, but does so too late to complete the journey in one day. This seems like a good point to acknowledge that some parts of this story are mean to villify King Saul. This is yet another piece of “David is God’s choosen King” propaganda. The strongest theme in the book of Judges is that the people do evil things without a King, and they need a King. However, multiple parts of this story connect King Saul to the terror and evil of this story: he is said to be from the Tribe whose lands it happens on, his capital is in the city it happens in, a village named later is also relevant in his leadership. Some of this story is anti-Saul propaganda, but it isn’t at all clear which parts. I’m choosing to assume that the propaganda is ONLY in connecting Saul to the story, because I find the story uncomfortably plausible.

The man, his servant, his donkeys, and his concubine arrive in the Benjaminite village of Gibeah rather late and no one invited them in to their homes. This is already evil in the eyes of people for whom hospitality was the highest form of morality. Finally, another outsider, an older man, acknowledges them and the two men talk. Terrifying, as Trible points out, the husband/master “refers to his own concubine as the old man’s property, thereby offering her as bait”.⁵ Once they are in, the story starts to sound strikingly like the story of Sodom in Genesis 19. They eat, drink, and are merry until an angry male mob appears at the door and demands the opportunity to rape the newcomer. It continues with the resonance of Genesis 19. The host offers women instead. In Genesis it was two virgin daughters, here it is one virgin daughter and the concubine. The host negotiates, and it is terrifying. Trible writes:

“No restrictions whatsoever does this lord place upon the use of the two women. Instead he gives the wicked men a license to rape them. His final words of negative command emphasize again the point of it all. ‘But to this man do not do this vial thing.’ If done to a man, such an act is a vile thing; if done to women it is ‘the good’ in the eyes of men. Thus the old man mediates between males to give each side what it wants. No male is to be violated. All males, even wicked ones, are to be granted their wishes. Conflict among them can be solved with the sacrifice of females.”⁶

In Genesis, the messengers of God intervene and no one is harmed. In Johnathan Kirsh’s book The Harlot at the Side of the Road, he writes, “From what we recall about the intervention of the angels in Sodom, we do not really expect the young women in Gibeah to be cast into the arms of the mob – something, angelic or human, will spare them at the very last moment.”⁷ Nothing does.

Instead, the husband/master seizes the concubine and throws her out to the men who rape and torture her until sunrise. As light dawns she summons all of her remaining strength to find her way back to the home where her husband/master was, and fell on the threshold of the home. The story indicates he slept just fine, and when he woke up he decided to go on his way. He seems a bit annoyed to find her blocking his way on the doorstep, but he doesn’t let it slow him down. To this woman who he had pushed out the door, who fought her way back after an unspeakably terrible night, he says, “Get up, we are going.” There is no answer. The text seems intentionally vague about when she dies. Trible says, “Her silence, be it exhaustion or death, deters the master not at all.”⁸ Her death may be after she gets to the threshold. It may be on the journey. It may not be until he takes his knife to cut her into pieces. At the end of this harrowing story, she is dead. It seems to me that if she hadn’t left, this would have been her fate. In leaving she gained herself months of freedom from abuse and hope. Her husband/master was going to kill her. As it happened, he used her to protect himself, nonchalantly. That protection she offered him either killed her, or he did anyway in the end. Their reunion was only a source of violence and terror for her.

Afterward he sends out the pieces of her body to the 12 tribes and call them together to tell his story, but he tells it quite differently than Judges 19 does. When he tells it, he looks better. In both his telling and the responses of the tribes, it is clear that the objections are to: the lack of hospitality, the threat to the man’s well-being, and his loss of property with what was done to the concubine. The horror and the response in the text are not because of what SHE lived through. (Mine is.) In fact, the next two chapters continue the story with civil war, massacre, and at least 600 more women being raped. Still, the narrator remains unconcerned about the women.

The story says that when her body is sent out the Israelites are instructed to “consider, take counsel, and speak out.” Trible responds, “’Direct your heart to her, take counsel, and speak.’ From their ancient setting, these imperatives move into the present, challenging us to answer anew. … Truly, to speak for this woman is to interpret against the narrator, plot, other characters, and the biblical tradition because they have shown her neither compassion nor attention.”⁹

Another feminist author writes, “The ideologies expressed through these [stories] are both degrading and deadly for women.”¹⁰ This is the problem. If this story had happened once, it would be enough to be an atrocity. However, this story is common enough. According to research done by the Center for Disease Control, “Intimate partner contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/ or stalking was experienced by 37.3% of U.S. women during their lifetime…and 30.9% of U.S. Men.”¹¹ At its extreme, it is as deadly as this story.

This man used his partner’s body for his own protection. It seems almost certain there had been previous violence toward her, and the way he treats her during and after this episode is a further experience of abuse and violence. While he didn’t get financial gain from it, only protect, I think it is fair to say that this man sexually trafficked his concubine. He used the power he had over her and her body for his well-being.

Sexual trafficking hasn’t stopped since those ancient times. According to The Atlantic, sexual trafficking today is a business worth $150 billion worldwide, and most of those who are trafficked are minors.¹² Worse yet, the laws and the ways they’re implemented make those who are trafficked more vulnerable to arrest than those who traffick them.

This is a modern story set in a far away time. This text of terror to this one nameless wordless woman is a terrifyingly common and universal story. And, to the depth of my being, I believe that God is horrified. And when God is horrified, God’s people are being called to change horrible realities. While my heart is with this nameless heroine, much of my curiosity focuses on her husband. Like many people who are human trafficked, she used all the power she had to get free and the system pulled her back in. I want to know why her husband so deeply devalued her, and what was so broken in him!

Similarly, I want to know what would have stopped that mob in Gibeah from wanting to rape? In today’s terms, what would stop adult men (it is nearly always men, but not always always men) from paying money to rape children? I don’t entirely know, despite pontificating about this for most of a year. If we want a final word other than violence, these are the things I know: taking women’s points of view in stories helps us understand their experiences and moves us toward gender equality; cultures that have more respect for woman and greater gender equality have fewer instances of intimate partner violence and rape; talking about texts of terror and horrifying realities is imperative if we want to be part of changing those realities.

This sermon series has been LONG. I think many of us have been tired of it at points, and I don’t mind if you celebrate its end. This feels like an odd text to end with, but I’m still trying to respond to Pete Huston asking about the women whose stories aren’t told. Those women are all too often reflected in this nameless and wordless woman’s story. They are all a call to action for us, a reminder that while it may get annoying to talk about women, sexism, and misogyny for a WHOLE YEAR, taking up our part in addressing and working toward ending such injustices necessitates that we talk about and acknowledge them.

Over this year, it has been through taking the points of view of biblical characters that we have been trained and conditioned not to notice, that we have have been able to see and learn so much from stories we thought we knew! For me it been a transformational opportunity to hear the Bible anew, and to finally meet heroines who have been hiding in plain site all along. I hope transformation will stay, even as we leave the sermon series behind.

There is, of course, plenty of work still to be done in relation to the injustices created by sexism, misogyny and patriarchy, and it still very much matters. May God guide us all to do the work. Amen

1Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1984) 65.

2Trible, 87.

3Trible, 66.

4Trible, 67.

5Trible, 72.

6Trible, 74

7Jonathan Kirsch, The Harlot By the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible (Ballantine Books: New York, 1997) 244.

8Trible, 79.

9Trible, 86.

10Kirsch quoting Tapp, 253.

11Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010-2012 State Report tps://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/NISVS-StateReportBook.pdf

12Pricilla Alvarez, “When Sex Trafficking Goes Unnoticed in America” in The Atlantic (Feb. 23, 2016) found at https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/how-sex-trafficking-goes-unnoticed-in-america/470166/ on September 14, 2017. Statistic comes from International Labour Organization http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_243201/lang–en/index.htm

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Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 17. 2017

Sermons

“The Hard Work of Departing” based on Genesis 16:7-15 and…

November 6, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

We are told that in order for life to exist three things are necessary: a source of energy, liquid water, and essential chemicals. To expand on the last of these, “Life as we know it contains specific combinations of elements including carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen that combine to form proteins and nucleic acids which can replicate genetic code.”¹ It could be that life could exist with a different combination of chemicals, but the theory remains: a source of energy, liquid water, and essential chemicals are necessary to life.

Those three things exist on this planet, and given that reality, life seems irrepressible. Tiny cracks in pavement or cement sidewalks sprout grass and weeds. Puddles that stand too long grow algae, wet wood grows mold and moss. I’ve been considering this unstoppable quality of life ever since I visited Bryce Cannon National Park and was motivated to take this picture. At one and the same time there is a huge evergreen growing at the base of “hoodoos” easily 5 times its size AND there are tiny little evergreens popping up at the top of hoodoos with remarkably little soil available to them. Yet, life won’t stop. The trees grow.

The Bible is a remarkably interesting document, and within its complexity and contradictions it sometimes feels like there are unquenchable truths gleaming through it. These truths are like the force of life on our planet – no matter what is done to try to stop them and no matter the strength of the circumstances that would prevent them – they prevail. Our two stories today tell profoundly of a God who cares about ALL people, while existing within a narrative about God choosing to focus on just one people.

The story going on here is supposed to be about God choosing Abraham. There is supposed to be a special bond with Abraham, and less so with Sarah, and yet the story keeps diverging to include and bless others. It is as if the universal love of God cannot be contained, even in the stories trying to tell the back-story of the people who long claimed God’s love was particularly for them.

Our two readings today are most likely two versions of the same story that were adapted differently with time. The one in Genesis 16, which we read first, is the version from the Southern Kingdom and much older. The one in Genesis 21 is the version from the Northern Kingdom. The Bible got edited A LOT. Most of the stories in the Torah (first 5 books) were passed on in oral tradition for centuries before they first got written down, and oral tradition naturally changes stories as it goes. Likely each version had changed over time in different ways to suit different time-relevant needs. Then, after being written down, the stories continued to get adapted, including by editors so that they would make a more coherent story. The people responsible for translating the Bible into English also made difficult decisions that functioned as further editing. The stories we have now are the complicated compilations of milenia, with many fingerprints on them.

That is, the two stories we read today are likely the same story with different fingerprints on them. Yet, they are edited into the current version of Genesis whereby they fill two different roles. They are, at one and the same time ONE story and TWO stories that happen sequentially. The editors aren’t perfect, in the second version Ishmael is a 17 year old that his mother carried away into the wilderness in her arms like a baby. (Oops.) But the work of the editors to make a coherent story makes both stories important, and not just the older one.

Throughout both stories, extraordinary things happen to Hagar. Explains of this are coming from the work of the amazing Biblical Scholar Phyllis Trible. In Genesis 16 Hagar has run away from Sarai/Sarah because of Sarai/Sarah’s harsh treatment of her. Hagar is a subversive woman choosing to run away, likely to die, and taking with her the heir that her slave-master husband wants most desperately. She reaches a point where she claims her life as her own, and she acts on it. In Genesis 16, Hagar is pregnant, and when she runs away she is near the border with Egypt, and finds a spring to sustain herself.

“The Hebrew word ‘spring’ (’ayn) also means ‘eye.’ The association resonates with Hagar’s having acquired a new vision of Sarai, and it anticipates the new vision of God that she will soon acquire. She, an Egyptian and a slave, is the first person in the Bible to whom such a messenger visits. Moreover, for the first time in the narrative a character speaks to Hagar (rather than about her) and uses her name. … The messenger promise Hagar innumerable descendants, thereby according her the special status of being the only woman in the Bible to receive such a promise. … The messenger affirms Hagar’s conceiving. She will bear a son and will name him Ishmael. Hagar becomes the first woman in the Bible to receive such an annunciation. … The messenger specifies the meaning of the name Ishamel (God hears): ‘For God heard your affliction.’”²

Now, unfortunately, in the form of this story that we have now, the messenger of God tells Hagar that God hears and knows her affliction, AND sends Hagar back to it anyway. The first act of subversiveness doesn’t get her free, although she is different afterward. Perhaps the only reason it doesn’t work is so that we can get to the second story though. After the words of the messenger, Hagar speaks for the second time, and from the way the story explains it, what happens is astounding. Trible puts it this way:

“Hagar’s next words bypass the messenger’s words. She does not comment on her continued affliction, the promise of descendants, the naming of her son, the meaning of his name, or his future. Nor does she comment on the God who hears. Instead she names the Lord who sees. The narrator introduces her words with a striking expression that accords her a power attributed to no one else in the Bible. Hagar ‘calls the name of the Lord who spoke to her’ (Gen 16:13*). She does not invoke the Lord; she names the Lord. She calls the name; she does not call up on the name. ‘You are El-roi [God of seeing],’ she says.”³

And then, after all of that astounding-ness, the text seems to revert to the mundane. “Hagar bore Abram a son.” (Genesis 15a). It isn’t as mundane as it seems. Trible says, “Hagar becomes the first woman in the ancestor stories to bear a child.”⁴ Mostly sons are attributed as coming to their fathers (as if that’s how it works.) But, that isn’t all. Hagar gets a lot of “firsts” in the Bible. Moving onto the Genesis 21 version, according to Trible “She is the first slave in Scripture to be freed. At the same time, she becomes the first divorced wife – banished by her husband at the command of his first wife and God.”⁵

In the Genesis 21 version of the story, Hagar prepares a deathbed for her son, and sits to wait for his death. The story is clearly about a very young child. Within this story, Hagar “becomes the first character in the Bible to weep.”⁶ According to Trible, “The God who she saw (r’h) long ago in Shur opens her eyes enabling her to see (r’h) a well of water at the site of the ‘well of seven’ (Beersheba).”⁷

Whether the stories are taken sequentially or as two versions of the same narrative, some themes emerge. First and foremost, God takes care of Hagar and cares about Hagar. She is given extraordinary access to the Divine, paralleling Abraham’s. Unlike any other person in the Bible, she gets to NAME God. Her survival, which is inherently threatened by being sent out alone into the barren wilderness of the desert, is assured by God who SHE renames “The God who sees.” It feels like she names God, “The God who sees ME” because that seems to more completely articulate the wonder spoken by Hagar. She knows she’s a woman, a foreigner, a slave, and in both stories she is profoundly alone and utterly powerless.

Yet, God sees her.

Isn’t it weird? Throughout the rest of the Bible, God is referred to as the “God of Abraham”, but “The God of Abraham” goes with Hagar to care for her. God refuses to be contained by the stories boundaries. God’s love and grace are too expansive to be held within the walls of the narrative. Hagar is meant to be placeholder for Sarah, simply the womb to the woman who matters – and THAT woman only matters enough to be the one to provide descendants. That’s how this is supposed to go, according to the story itself! Instead we get Hagar naming God in the desert.

God disrespects human separations, especially about who matters in the world, even within a story trying to articulate how the ancestors of Israel came to be in the world! Even in that story, the sparkle of God’s love for outsiders shines through. Hagar is one of the least empowered characters in the Bible, by any set of human standards, and she is one of the people given the most access to God in the Bible. Her experiences of God are more expressive and profound than Abraham’s.

That is, Hagar matters. Those like Hagar matter. The Native Americans whose tribal lands were taken by the United States matter, even when the USA disregards its treaties, even with energy companies want protests squelched, even when protesters get arrested. Those seeking to protect the land from the Dakotas Access Pipeline matter like Hagar matters. Women and girls who are used in sexual trafficking matter, even when they are being used to make profits for others, even when they are using drugs to try to escape, even when they are being raped for other people’s pleasures. Women and girls living in modern sexual slavery matter like Hagar matters. Refugees around the world fleeing violence and horrors matter, even when no country wants to welcome them in, even when they use all that they have to get onto ships that may sink, even when getting to a new country means they’ll be labeled ‘illegal.” Refugees and immigrants matter like Hagar matters.

If a refugee, a slave girl of an ancient nomadic herder was important enough to name God, then the world’s standards are COMPLETELY irrelevant. Everyone matters because Hagar matters. Thanks be to God. Amen

1“Life Needs” found at http://phillips.seti.org/kids/what-life-needs.html on 11/3/2016

2Phyllis Trible, “Ominous Beginnings for a Promise of Blessing” in Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell, editors, Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Muslim, and Christian PerspectivesTrible, (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 2006) p. 40-41.

3Trible, 41.

4Trible, 41.

5Trible, 46.

6Trible, 49

7Trible, 49.

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