Monday, September 30, 2013

Ladies of the Judges #6 - conclusion of the series


The Four Ladies of the Book of Judges #6

Conclusions concerning the Series

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Having completed my writing on the four Ladies of the Book of Judges, I want to write something of a conclusion to the series to explain what I have tried to do with the series.  I want to explain where I have written what will be hopefully a core of biblical exegesis encouraging to all Christians.  Hopefully readers of all Christian persuasions will have found some encouragement in seeing how Christ’s life and ministry seems to have been anticipated in the lives and experiences, sometimes wonderful and glorious and sometimes macabre and heart-rending and even grotesque, but always in some way or fashion anticipating Christ in his earthly life and ministry.  I hope thus the description of how Deborah, Jael, Jephthah’s daughter and the Levite and his concubine did this for those who read what I had to say.

Secondly I also wrote in the hope of gently exploring certain themes that would be controversial for various Christian readers, because they are issues over which our modern church experiences division.  I have tried to do this not because I wanted to create further division in the church of Christ, but because I hoped to encourage diverse groups with diverse perspectives to come together over the Biblical witness to mankind.  I believe that in our modern Christianity we tend to easily accept division over theology.  I believe theology is essential to the well-being of the church.  If we are to express what we believe we must have articles of faith which we express to others.  But we are too easily divided by our theological differences.  A different spirit characterized the early church because they believed theology was essential to the well-being of the Christian faith.  We tend to tolerate differences of theology without ever trying to address the divisions in belief partly because we think theology is nothing more than what we believe individually and so that is alright because everything is relative.  But the early church believed that the church was united in Christ through the proper proclamation of the Gospel.  Therefore theological divisions were regarded as possible indications that the Gospel itself was at stake.  The early church often dealt with such theological differences by forming councils.  This included the first church council held by the Apostles at Jerusalem in Acts 15, and then later in the seven ecumenical councils of the Church within the Roman Empire prior to the Great Schism in 1054.  The early church, within the first millennium of the Church’s history came together to deal with differences and potential points of division by contemplating the Scriptures as they addressed the issues, the history of the church’s tradition reflected in what had been believed everywhere and in all times and places, and in accord with reason of the leaders within the Church struggling to formulate a consensus perspective that would differentiate the right understanding and spirit to guide the churches according to the gathered wisdom of the church meeting in council.  Since I am not a clergyman, I can raise such issues around a Scripture passage in the hope that others in Christ will further consider these issues and the church will in its various manifestations in our modern era consider and contemplate such issues in the hope of moving toward a consensus perspective.  Such a perspective can only be forged by engaging one another regarding the principles guiding what we believe and while patiently listening to one another in an attempt to respectfully hash out viewpoints prior to trying to determine who is right and wrong.  The Church is not built by reacting with emotion, or by creating straw-men representing differing perspectives in the Church.  Rather the church will be edified when church leaders gather together not to compromise but to contemplate issues with a sense of urgency in the hope of discovering the truth that binds, ties together, and unites God’s people in Jesus Christ.

I have found myself increasingly divided within myself regarding differing gender issues as addressed within modern Christianity and regarding the nature of a progressive versus traditional perception of the Scriptures and tradition.  I almost forced myself to read some things by “progressive feminist Christians” sort of expecting to find some strange concoction that I could easily see through as far less than Christian.  Instead I found explorations of themes which caught my attention and there were in these writings certain things described of wounds that I had felt in my own Christian life.  Instead of discovering craziness I discovered that I had wounds festering up in my Christian life that they helped me to understand so that healing could begin.  For me the article that especially brought this to my attention was an article on the purity codes written by a young woman who had been home-schooled and from what she had said was in the sort of churches much of her life like those I had been in much of my life.  She had bought into a popular view of male-female relationships which scorned “dating.”  By the time she was finishing college without much experiencing any sort of real growth in dealing with the opposite gender, she revolted against a number of elements within her background.  I began to realize that I had experienced some of the same sort of experiences within a similar sort of church background.  For me the issue was more how we dealt with lusts in men.  In my Reformed background, sin was taken very seriously and often we were told how to look upon a woman with lust was as if to commit adultery already in our heart.  In my background the preacher was tempted to use Jesus’ teaching on lust primarily as a text showing the evil of our hearts.  But from a pastoral perspective that is not at all a complete view of attraction.  A preacher concerned only with using such a passage to bring people under the conviction of sin can create an unintended mindset that sees all attraction as something basically evil.  I remember a pastor at one time wondering why so many church members ended up dating and marrying non-believers.  I feel I know why now.  As a man it is a relief to imagine that the woman doesn’t mind that you find her attractive and doesn’t imagine that means you have some horrible lust problem.  For the gal it is sort of nice not to have to figure out what role you are going to play when the non-Christian guy seems to just like you and wants to be with you and you have the pressure relieved of having to fulfill the dreams of the latest book on the perfect relationship.  It would seem that in our hunger to guide young people into an “ideal” relationship with their future marriage partner we have for all too many of our young people created impossible scenarios not meant for normal people who have this need to cautiously explore and grow in friendships until a mature relationship may be entered fully expecting God’s grace and provision through good and bad, richer or poorer, etc.  We have a plethora of well-meaning books creating ideals for young men and women.  But the men and women themselves don’t fit into ideals for simply fit into individual expressions of what it means to be human.  Humanity takes priority over idealisms.    I want to clarify that in my situation, very often it was me and not my pastors that took ideals to their absurd extremes.  But a culture of wanting to see the evil in our hearts rather than yearning to live our lives as liberated redeemed human beings has caused numerous mischiefs in the lives of young and also older people in our Evangelical churches.

The young person undergoing such struggles quite often can’t diagnose what it is that is causing them to struggle and flounder.  Often when questions are formed regarding feelings that have been identified, the person asking those questions is referred back to that very idealism as their needed answer, even as it is that which has been slowly creating a volcano in their inner being.  For a number of women who have gone through such an experience they found “feminism” extremely liberating as it treated their individuality seriously as nothing they had ever experienced before.  Often what they have discovered in “feminism” is something entirely different than how members of their old churches have thought when they speak of “feminism.”  They had grown up in what were male led churches where women were described in terms of the roles they fulfilled not the persons whom they were meant to become through God’s love for them as individual human beings, but almost as things fitting their roles in the church and family as they were to be directed by some more knowing man.  I hope in saying these things Christian ministers and churchmen can understand how there are many church experiences, and sometimes especially in conservative and evangelical expressions of Christianity some women are given the message, probably not intentionally but even so are given the feeling, that being a woman makes them a second class citizen in the kingdom of God.  There is a sense that a woman is a role-player and not someone loved for their own person.  That is something I don’t think Jesus ever allowed the three women named Mary or the one named Martha to ever feel.  That is something the Apostle Paul never let Lydia or Priscilla feel; and likewise the Apostle Paul rejoiced that St. Timothy was reared spiritually by his mother Eunice and his grand-mother Lois whom the Apostle Paul spoke of on a first name basis.  There are some things Paul spoke of that have to be dealt with, but of first importance is that we see that Paul, our Lord Jesus Christ, and God all really liked women and affirmed that women were to be affirmed and not treated as a ministry’s after-thought, or just some object meant to help men.  I do not expect that churches in our modern era are going to come overnight to a unified perspective about all the specific possible roles for women.  But I think it is very important to realize that sometimes churches and ministries have failed to affirm that God’s love for women as women is every bit as real as his love for “the men” of the church.  I fear that under some ministries you would get the feeling that God loved preacher men first of all, and then the other men in a congregation, and like the Syro-Phoenician woman, the women ought to rejoice that they get the left-over scraps.  I hope none of this is intentional.  But such messages seem to be conveyed more than we who are conservative or traditional sometimes understand.  These are things that need discussed.  But these are things which usually build up until one person or the other feels they cannot openly discuss their wounds, so they find a more hospitable place, and sometimes those who do express their questions and concerns are not given a thoughtful patient hearing, but are treated as if contemptuous of the faith.  It is important I think that such questions are understood to exist.  Very often as much as all the ideology built up to express divisions in a theological or philosophical or sociological or political description there is this sense that deep down the problem is that one is viewed solely as a thing not all that valuable instead of being affirmed and loved as a unique loved by God human being.

I have sought in this series to place an emphasis on the Biblical doctrine of the seed-sowing woman found promised in Genesis 3:15 in description of how God would bring a redeemer through the seed of woman.  This doctrine ultimately is fulfilled in the Theotokos, meaning “God-bearer.”  Mary brings God into the world by giving birth to Jesus Christ.  I truly believe that in that birth the virgin represents not just herself but all faithful women who believed the promise given in Genesis 3:15.  That is where theologically and in the Gospel we can begin to build a positive message of affirmation for all women under the proclamation of the Gospel.  As I tried to stress with the prophetess Deborah, her claim to being a mother in Israel was not merely about bringing babies into the world, but representing the hope of Israel, the expected redemption God was to bring about in his promise expressed in Genesis 3:15.  Being a woman of God is about carrying hope in one’s figurative womb until hope at last gives birth to reality.  Lois and Eunice were God-bearers to the soul of young Timothy.  Priscilla was a God-bearer in her taking Apollos to the side and explaining the Gospel more clearly to him.   Deborah was a God-bearer in deciding between disputants a judgment underneath the tree where she judged Israel.  Being a mother in the sense of Theotokos is as much as a Teresa caring for the poor of Calcutta and a Fannie Crosby writing a hymn as it is bringing an infant into the world, and of course never should that be treated as anything less than truly glorious.  However we slice and dice some of the questions being raised in our day in our churches, every pastor of every church should spend time considering how he or she if that be the case may insure that every woman in the congregation is encouraged to blossom and bloom with the ability to use every gift God has given them in a life of joy and creativity and bringing forth of glory to God.

I wonder if during the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers had succeeded in maintaining the Biblical perspective of “Theotokos” theology if a different sort of Reformation might have resulted.  In the Reformation, Protestant theology acknowledged Christ especially as Prophet, Priest, and King.  Because Protestantism held to these three offices, Protestant theology generally viewed these three offices which Christ fulfilled in Christocentric ways.  But during the Reformation there was a divorce allowed to take place in Protestant theology between Patriarchy and Theotokos.  Then patriarchy became a doctrine divorced from the person of Christ as if all that patriarchy meant was male leadership of the church and male leadership in the home.  But in reality, one of the titles into which Christ was born by being born of the virgin was “eternal father, and prince of peace.”  Jesus Christ is now the patriarch, the eternal father of humankind, the second Adam, the firstborn of the creation in God’s redemption.  I wonder how different the spirit of Evangelicalism and my own Reformed background within the Church would have been if instead of declaring Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King; the Reformers would have described him as Patriarch, Prophet, Priest, and King.  I suspect that our entire perception of what patriarchy means would have been described in much more Christ-centered expressions than sometimes is now the case.

I would hope that many of us will learn to overcome the instinct to protect ourselves by simply retreating to our own camps, but will seek to build understanding with others, to cultivate friendships, to understand varied experiences, and to seek to have a common mind in the spirit of God, the mind of Christ, and in a common life unto God the Father.  We will begin to seek out the Scriptures to find common ground and understanding with one another rather than proof-texts against each other.  That is my dream for the divided church of this day and time.

 

Thursday, September 26, 2013


The Four Ladies of the Book of Judges #5

Exploring the “Seed-Bearer” Theme

A Levite’s Concubine

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            The Old Testament can be nasty and violent, but none of its scenes are more grotesque than the story found in Judges 19.  The chapter begins with a comment that “in those days there was no king in Israel.”  This surely is meant to be connected in the mind of the book’s reader with the conclusion drawn in the final verse of the Book of Judges, “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”  Those are sentiments with which every self-professing “patriarchal Christian” could express his agreement.  But one could make a case from the story told in Judges 19 that Israel’s problem was not the lack of patriarchy but of a patriarchy gone very wrong.  That would of course lead to the question by some “is patriarchy at all such a good thing” and to others of “what would a good patriarchy look like?”  I will give my tentative view while leaving lots of room for others to develop their own answers to such questions.  For these are some of the most important questions being asked in the Christian community in our day.  I am part of an older generation and tradition that finds he is looking on with a sense of joy and pride at a younger generation asking its own important questions.  I wish I could jump right in with the younger set.  But I also count my own generation as those who have known Christ and made him known to me, with whom I have had too much the joy of fellowship to ever be comfortable casting aside discourteously.  So I do what seems to me I must do, try to introduce two sets of friends to each other; one set conservative and patriarchal and the other progressive and definitely not patriarchal.  Let them meet around this story.

            The writer introduces the story of a Levite who married a woman from Bethlehem.  Actually we are told that the Levite took for himself a concubine from Bethlehem.  Somehow concubine sounds already a bit tawdry.  A wife would be a full partner.  A concubine sounds sort of like a servant with benefits mostly for the master.  But this seems like the nature of the story found in the relationship between this Levite and his wife.  There is a form of a proper legal relationship on the surface with something not quite right just underneath the surface.  This thing not so quite right is always very near the surface.  No reader ought to be able to miss it.  It is blatantly open and not hidden.

            We discover that not long after the couple marry; that the concubine according to the passage “played the whore against her husband.”  But then we are told not of some sordid affair but that the concubine runs home to her father’s house.  Aren’t you a bit suspicious of what we really took place?  I suppose it is possible that she went home to her father to play the whore, but this sounds more like a writer speaking in satire.  Was she abused?  Did she find the whole experience uncomfortable?  Why did she go home?  Was she just immature?  Thousands of answers, we are not told the real one or ones.  But this is a story that a reader knows by instinct has some pieces missing.  I think I am not misreading the story, but simply discovering what this shrewd old story-teller wanted us to see so blatantly underneath the prim and proper reputable name of a Levite, the priestly tribe in Israel.  Something is amiss in Israel where every man does what is right in his own eyes.

            Four months after returning to her father, the Levite comes looking to fetch her back.  Does he love her, or is it his pride that says he needs her, or is it that he feels she is rightful property?  She is his concubine after all.  He and her father discuss her future.  That is the way things are done in a patriarchy.  The only way to make it more blatant is if the two of them were to say to her, “We are going to McNellie’s pub and grill to decide your future, why don’t you stay here and clean the house while we take care of this business.”  The father seems to like the Levite well enough, but every night he tries to keep the Levite from leaving with his daughter.  Why does he want to delay them?  Perhaps he loves his daughter a bit, but usually fathers want to see their daughters with a man they love.  Or does this father know for as much as he has agreed in principle to send this daughter back with her legal husband, that something not quite right exists between him and her.  I get the feeling always in this story that something is amiss just underneath the legal formalities of husband and wife or I mean "concubine".

            Finally they leave and they get only a few miles and they come upon Jebus (Jerusalem, named Jebus before it was taken from the non-Jewish Gentiles that ruled it).  The Levite, who receives his living from the other tribes of Israel as the priestly tribe will not stay in Jebus.  He goes further to a town in the tribe of Benjamin known as Gibeah.  He and she and at least one other servant will stay here for the night.

            It is almost dark.  Another man tells the Levite to stay with him.  He is not of the tribe of Benjamin, but is a sojourner from the tribe of Ephraim, a fellow sojourner in a town of the tribe of Benjamin.  None of the people from Benjamin took in the Levite.  Only the traveler from Ephraim gave him lodging.  Then the horror story began to take place.  There were the echoes and shadows of a night in Sodom long before Israel had been granted the Promised Land by God.

            It is I think important to discern the exact sin so horrible that night in Sodom and this night in Gibeah.  In both instances the men of the city surround a house and want to ravage the male guests.  In both instances the hosts offer women as acceptable substitutes, which has traditionally been viewed as proof that this showed the belief of the hosts that homosexuality was wrong.  Of course for modern sensibilities it suggests that protecting women seems a bit less important than protecting men.  Obviously the Bible speaks about inordinate sins, both in heterosexual and homosexual forms, but for the religion of Israel I think it important to realize that two greater sins were being dealt with than the ordinary individualized forms of inordinate sin.  One of the sins involved in modern terminology is that Gibeah had become a complete and total rape culture.  A rape culture is a culture that sees people “asking for it.”  If you are a visitor to a city near night in an open square you must be asking for it.  If you are a woman dressed a certain way you must be asking for it.  You can tell when a people are being overtaken by a rape culture when a judge assigns a thirty day sentence to an adult man who rapes a fourteen year-old girl because she was dressed provocatively.  One can speak about what is and isn’t modest dress but a rape is never justified by a woman dressing in a certain way or by a man being at a certain place when darkness falls.  The other great sin is that Israel had been commanded to honor and protect the sojourner in their midst for Israel had sojourned in Egypt only to be enslaved, an enslavement from which God had rescued them.  Therefore Israel was to treat with respect the sojourner in their midst.  This is one of the reasons why none of us should have respect for any right wing historians trying to make a Biblical argument for America’s allowance of slavery.  Not only was American slavery a dishonoring of those who sojourned with us, but it was a traveling over a mighty ocean to kidnap foreign men and women so as to bring them in chains on boats to our land to be sold to the highest bidder.  One cannot get riled up about the sin of Sodom and then fancy that it was alright to cross seas to make our economic windfall through enslaving people who would be forced to sojourn among us.  That is what Gibeah and Sodom were about.  The men of both cities saw sojourners as people to take advantage of.  This is why a Christian must wonder what is it to seek justice in determining the status of “illegal immigrants.”  Yes these passages may tell us a bit about inordinate sins, but they tell us a lot more about how we are to respect the sojourner and how we are to say an absolute no to the rape culture.

            The scene turns more grotesque as the men of the city clamor for the man that had come into the house.  The host makes the offer of the women, his daughter and the Levite’s concubine.  The men of the city argue for the man.  This time there are no powerful angels in the household to blind the men.  The men continue to want the man.  So what does the Levite, the member of Israel’s holy tribe do?  The Jewish Publication Society translation once more provides such a clear picture in its translation:  “But 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.”(Judges 19:25 (Sacred Writings, Volume I Judaism, the Tanakh edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, the New Jewish Publication Society Translation)



An image of an abused woman

            Here was a Levite, dedicated to God’s service, set aside to lead God’s people to know the peace or Shalom of God.  So the mob is at the door and the Levite, who should be a protector of God’s people and especially of his wife that he wanted so desperately to return with him, and instead he seizes her and throws her to the mob.  What a guy?  These men of Benjamin might in name have been part of Israel, but in reality they had become godless men.  The Levite, the man dedicated to protect Israel’s spiritual treasure had taken his wife and thrown her to a mob of godless men.

            It still gets worse.  In the morning after the woman has spent the night (when the earth is covered in darkness) suffering so horribly, she literally crawls and drags her own body to the threshold of the house.  We are told that the Levite rises up.  That implies that while his concubine suffered, he slept.  He steps out the door and says to her as she lay on the ground, her hands on the threshold; “Up, and let us be going.” (Judges 19:28)  There was no reply.  She had died of her abuse.  The Levite then took her upon an ass and took her with him to his home.



The Levite’s concubine at the threshold

            Perhaps somewhere on the road to his home, his conscience and his humanity began to become alive.  Israel, the covenant people of God had been broken asunder so that one tribe no longer respected another and every man did what was right in his own eyes, and this had affected the Levite and the whole of the nation of Israel, the whole of God’s people.  What was to become of the people of God?  How much worse could it get?  The Levite took his deceased wife’s corpse and cut it into twelve pieces to be sent to the twelve tribes of Israel.  It was a gruesome finish to this story, a macabre act of grief, a guilty conscience, and a cry of despair for God’s people to regain their senses.



Carving the corpse for distribution to all Israel

            This gruesome scene proved the pivotal exchange in Israel’s history as told within the Book of Judges.  As this woman’s body parts were distributed throughout Israel the people of God began to return one and all to renew their covenant with God.  The response to this Levite’s call of Israel to return to God’s covenant resulted in the most complete response of Israel in the entire Book of Judges.  The people of God renewed their covenant with God.

            This most gruesome and grievous of stories completes the story of how four ladies in the Book of Judges points to Christ.  For this woman suffered at the hands of Israel’s appointed religious leaders, was cast into the darkness to suffer at the hands of godless men and died with her hands on the threshold.  The Levite mourned as he looked upon her as many mourned when they saw the suffering they had caused to the Lord of glory.  Her body was distributed to all Israel bringing forth Israel’s renewing of its covenant with God, even as Christ’s body and blood is distributed to the Israel of God that we might partake of his sacred body, drink of his cup of salvation, and be restored into his holy fellowship, holy nation, royal priesthood, and become forevermore his own sons and daughters loved in our Lord.  This was all forced upon a woman by a deranged and fallen patriarchy.  The one true patriarch, born with the description among many titles of “everlasting father and prince of peace” shielded his bride, took upon himself her sins, and came before the mob to die on a cross and then in the power of his righteousness rose on the third day and crossed the threshold so as to bring his bride, his church, and the people of God safely across the threshold for God has willed that not one given to his hand would fall from his protection until all of Israel would be saved forevermore.  For at Calvary, on that cross a true patriarch took upon himself everything necessary to shield her from danger and to grant to her both abundant and eternal life.  The seed of the woman who crushed the Serpent’s head has become our one true patriarch and his patriarchy guarantees the redemption and restoration of health to his people when our days of trial and temptation have reached their end.



The body and the blood

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Four Ladies of Judges - Part IV - Jephthah's Daughter


The Four Ladies of the Book of Judges #4

Exploring the “Seed-Bearer” Theme

Jephthah’s Daughter:  “Lamenting Virginity”

Written by Dan McDonald

 





            There are a number of challenges for the modern reader trying to piece together an understanding of the eleventh chapter of the Book of Judges.  What sort of man was Jephthah, described as a “mighty man of valor?”  Did Jephthah actually sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering?  What are we to make of the sacrifice that did take place?

            I think it is important to see Jephthah as a flawed man who nonetheless is considered by the Scriptures to be a man of faith, even if his faith is flawed.  For most Christians, the inclusion of Jephthah in the rolls of faith in Hebrews chapter 11 will settle the question of whether Jephthah was a man of faith or not.  Still, that doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that Jephthah was a deeply flawed man as well as a man of faith.

            The Bible tells us of how Jephthah’s background led him to being made an outcast by his family.  He was the son of Gilead but not of Gilead’s wife.  His mother was a harlot or prostitute.  The rest of his family therefore didn’t want him around them.  They tossed him off the family estate.  At least part of the reason mentioned was they didn’t think he should be rewarded with a part of the estate when he was the son of a harlot.

            After his family disowned him Jephthah “dwelt in the land of Tob: and there were gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with him.”  (Judges 11:3)  The translation of the same sentence by the Jewish Publication Society’s version of the Tanakh reads more clearly “Men of low character gathered about Jephthah and went out raiding with him.”  If we were to think of Jephthah in modern terms, he was forced by his dysfunctional home to find family as the head of a gang.  They were tough enough and rough enough that they got a reputation for being able to more than handle things in confrontations.

            It was somewhere after Jephthah’s men of low character were seen as “tough hombres” that Jephthah’s family came asking him if he would fight on their behalf against Israel’s oppressors.  The hard years had an impact on Jephthah.  He wasn’t the sort of guy who now naturally supposed that God loved him and had a wonderful plan for his life.  He was a disinherited son that had fought and clawed his way to the top of a gang.  He had learned that offering security was a liability unless there were some paybacks for the security offered.  He told his brothers if they would agree to be ruled by him, he would fight on their behalf.

            After Jephthah is recognized as their leader and commissioned to fight Israel’s battle, it would appear that Jephthah then determines it is important to seek the Lord.  He makes a vow that if God would enable him to defeat the enemy he would offer as a burnt offering anything that came out to meet him when he returned to his land.  This is something that I think shows the basic problem with Jephthah and why he made his rash vow to God.  Jephthah had not learned to be a man who was loved.  He was an outcast who gathered friends who were outcasts, and together they could make a living by raiding others.  Alliances were perhaps the closest things Jephthah knew to friendships.  He was an alliance builder who knew how to offer security by bargaining until his reasonable offer was accepted.

            At this point I think we can see from a Biblical perspective a flaw in Jephthah’s approach to life, a flaw very common in people that had a background like his.  From a strictly Protestant perspective that flaw might be described as not being grace centered.  He was the sort of person who had learned to obtain security through deal making.  Sociologically his flaw could be described in similar manner as having been introduced to society through a non-loving family.  His sense of security had not been fostered through a loving family but in the structure of a gang.  They obtained security by being tough hombres able to defeat other hombres and able to trade for needed alliances to defeat those who had to be defeated.  Jephthah took that attitude in his approach to God when he felt he needed help to defeat the enemy.

            I wonder if another attitude wasn’t part of his composition.  Jephthah had gained security, even his brother’s recognition by being a leader.  Perhaps there was a consideration within Jephthah’s mind that obedience would be desired by God rather than sacrifice, and a living sacrifice of our hearts, minds, and souls would be the reasonable service God would desire.  But Jephthah wanted to make a deal so he could remain a leader and not just be a servant to God.  Perhaps Jephthah wasn’t willing to offer God himself as a living sacrifice.  Perhaps Jephthah gave God his terms instead of the terms God would have given him in going to battle.  God was gracious to allow Jephthah victory, but God showed that no one again should ever want to make such a deal for if we failed to give ourselves there was nothing we could offer worthy of the gift we refused to offer.  Jephthah came to his estate and his daughter came running out to him.  She ran from the house with timbrel.  She was prepared to dance joyously for the great victory Israel had won.  But her joy was short-lived for soon he shared with her the horrible news of the vow he had uttered.



Jephthah’s daughter learning of her father’s vow

            Even at this juncture Jephthah should have recognized he had made a rash vow and repented of his error.  But Jephthah’s religion was partially Biblical and partially made of religious traditions not as gracious as that of the Scriptures.  Perhaps he was a legalist in some ways who made a stand based on rigid principles such as his own time period’s version of the principle of, “a righteous man swears to his own hurt and does not change.”  So Jephthah in some manner sacrificed his daughter.

            It is common in modern treatments of Jephthah and his daughter to suggest that Jephthah’s daughter lived a life in seclusion from humanity rather than being literally sacrificed.  I would like to say that was true, but no commentator either in Judaism or Christianity proposed an alternative to actual sacrifice prior to 1000 AD.  Philo, Josephus, the church fathers, the Talmudic writers before 1000 AD regarded to a person an actual sacrifice.  I hope they were all wrong and the one or two commentators who suggested otherwise between 1000 AD and 1400 AD were correct.  I would be happy enough for the alternative view to be correct that I will acknowledge it as a possibility.  But that does seem like a lot of religious tradition to overcome.  For further reading on this I provide this link from a Jewish source telling of both Christian and Jewish traditions on this passage.



Jephthah’s daughter and her companions lamenting her virginity

            Jephthah’s daughter agrees to whatever sort of sacrifice it ended up being.  She asks one thing of her father.  She asks that she may have two months to spend with her companions.  She will lament her virginity.  For a Hebrew woman of Old Testament times virginity was seen as a temporary glory to be exchanged for a greater glory, the glory of union and the possibility that one might become a mother in Israel and be somehow included in the promise of the birth of the one who would crush the serpent’s head.  Jephthah’s daughter lamented that she would die a virgin and be excluded from being a mother in Israel.  She faced her coming death with valor, with resolve, and lamented with bitter tears and great sorrow that she would die a virgin.  For surely no virgin could ever be associated with this promise, that through the seed of the woman would come the son who would crush the serpent’s head.

            But perhaps the one thing that Jephthah’s daughter lamented so grievously, and which Israel for many years marked on its calendar with a festival, was the one thing that tied this otherwise sad woman with the coming birth of the promised son.  For Jephthah’s daughter lived before Isaiah declared that this son would be born of a virgin.  But here in Judges perhaps Jephthah’s daughter prefigures it.  This son according to Deborah would be the word made flesh, according to Jael would crush the Serpent’s head, and according to Jephthah’s daughter would be born of a virgin.  Her lamentation would in a better place be turned to joy as angels sang around the virgin who had given birth in yonder stall in Bethlehem.

 

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Four Ladies of the Book of Judges # 3 - Jael


The Four Ladies of the Book of Judges #3

Exploring the “Seed-Bearer” Theme

Jael:  A.K.A. “The Hammer Gal”

Written by Dan McDonald

 



Jael:  A European artist’s conception


            The land in which God planted the Hebrew people is a small piece of territory on the southern end of a land bridge connecting the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe.  It was a land of milk and honey, especially in comparison with its neighbors to the east, south, and west where large deserts and semi-deserts exist except near rivers.  Israel existed on a valuable trade route and between powerful nations that valued the land because of its agriculture potential as well as its command of the southern end of one of the world’s most important inter-continental trade routes.  The nation of Israel was generally a small nation existing between greater nations.  Israel existed between the Mesopotamian crescent that created great empires and the Egyptian empire and sort of existed like Poland between Russia and Prussian led Germany.  The Germans and Russians could agree on one thing, there was no need for Poland to exist.  That is what Egypt and the Mesopotamian kingdoms thought of Israel.  In virtually every generation of Israel’s existence marauders came from east, north, south, or west to try to gain control of Israel.  It is the sort of story that leads people to sing songs glorifying a brutal end to a leader of a marauding army.  That is the sort of story we read when we read of Jael, of whom Deborah sings and praises as the “Blessed above all women” when referring to Jael.  If we did not take into account that Israel’s history was a land of nearly constant warfare, tested time and time again by invaders, plunderers, marauders, conquerors, enslavers, and terrorizers we would never begin to understand the love Deborah and Israel had for this woman Jael.  From a modern perspective we may view her differently, but Biblically “the most blessed of women” leads us to think of Jael as one who somehow was part of a vision of the Old Testament looking forward to the most blessed of women who would bear a son.  How we might ask would Jael picture the most blessed of women mothering the promised Son that would bring redemption to humankind?

            Sisera was the commander of the army ruling over Israel while Deborah was judging Israel.  Deborah had issued the call for liberation of the Hebrew people and revolt against the occupiers.  She called upon Barak to lead the army.  She planned to lead a small portion of the army as a diversion when Sisera would try to attack and defeat the revolutionary army.  But Barak wanted to fight the battle with Deborah at his side.  So Deborah agreed but prophesied that because Barak was unwilling to command the army the glory of his victory would be given to a woman.



A female Nubian Ibex the goat native to Israel- Jael’s name described these.

            Jael’s name means “goat”.  I suppose that wasn’t the most flattering name for a hero in Israel’s history.  But of course, Israel the land of milk and honey drank a lot more goat’s milk than cow’s milk.  So if Deborah the bee portrays the production of honey, then Jael the goat will portray the production of milk.  Sisera had come to plunder the milk and honey and wealth of the land of milk and honey.  He met Deborah and Barak in battle, and was stung by the army gathered by the bee.  But he escaped the battle.

            In the time before the battle, Jael’s own husband Heber the Kenite had been on friendly terms with Sisera.  In fact, Heber had informed Sisera that Deborah and Barak were up to fomenting a revolution.  He gave Sisera information, and Sisera acted upon that information in his desire to put an end to the revolution.  Israel won the battle, but Sisera escaped.  He went to the tent of Heber the Kenite hoping to find security until he could get away from Barak’s army now pursuing enemy number one.  He came to the tent and Jael welcomed him.  She said to him “Turn in, my lord, turn into me, fear not!”  He asked her for water and she gave him milk.  She covered him up and made him feel safe.  He asked her to watch for those coming and to tell them he wasn’t in the tent.  She promised to do so and went to the opening of the tent.  He was weary from the battle and in his exhaustion and sense of security he fell asleep.  Jael stepped quietly towards him and picked up a tent stake and a hammer and centering the stake over Sisera’s temple took a powerful swing of the hammer and drove the tent stake into his temple and into the ground beneath his head.

            There is a theme in the Old Testament of women who proved subversive to their husband’s plans and so acted to bring about the plan of God.  Jael is certainly the most extreme case.  Her husband was in league with Sisera and Sisera’s king, but Jael picked the opportune time to drive the point home that she was not.  Rebekah took steps to make sure Isaac, an old and perhaps mentally feeble man did not bless Esau instead of Jacob; and Abigail disobeying her husband’s wishes fed and gave refreshment to David and his men so as to turn David’s wrath away from her family.  Subversion is a Biblical theme among the women playing a role in the Biblical plan of redemption.  Jael is certainly a picture of how the seed of woman would overcome the serpent by bruising or crushing its head.  Deborah’s song describes the last moments of Sisera as his head was crushed and lay dying, saying, “when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.  At her feet he bowed, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he bowed, there he fell down dead.”  (Judges 5:26, 27)  There could hardly be a more pronounced reference to the promise of the seed of woman crushing the serpent’s head.

            Jael’s actions, in their horrifying bloody manner, portray a significant reality regarding how Christ would defeat the Serpent of old.  As Jael proved to conquer Sisera with deceptive subversion making him feel as if he was secure, so our Lord baited Satan in the great battle for humankind.  This was a common triumph song of the early church father’s glorying in how Jesus overcame Satan.  Satan looked upon the cross believing he was accomplishing his greatest triumph.  Seeing Jesus die on the cross, the enemy of humanity who was mankind’s accuser and a murderer from the beginning saw Christ dying and felt his victory to be sure.  But instead with the death of Christ came the death of humanity’s death and sin.  With the death of Christ came the redemption of humankind, and then on the third day Christ rose from the dead and Satan’s hollow victory had been turned to total defeat and his ruin was assured.

            Deborah’s life seems to have pointed at the truth that the Word was to be made flesh.  Jael’s life pointed to how Jesus would turn death into triumph and defeat into conquest.  He would be the subversive savior of mankind who used Satan’s own blood-thirsty nature as a murderer of humankind to put Jesus to death so that humankind might be redeemed from sin and death.



In art: The subversive conquest of sin and death.

Monday, September 23, 2013

The Four Ladies of Judges- Part II - Deborah


The Four Ladies of the Book of Judges #2

Exploring the “Seed-Bearer” Theme

Deborah:  National Leader, Judge, Prophetess, Mother

Written by Dan McDonald

 


            An acquaintance on Twitter “favorite-d” a tweet submitted by one Gabrielle Wong who said, “The universe is not made up of tiny atoms.  It is made up of TINY STORIES.”  That does seem to me to be a very wonderful summary of how the Scriptures are God’s Word to man.  Is it a problem or the genius of the Scriptures that so much of God’s truth (if you take the Scriptures to be that, which I do) is told in little stories?  Little stories are so messy aren’t they?  A story is told and heard by its audience in a way that every hearer pulls the words into their own life experience and invariably no two hearers hear the same story because each of us filters the story into our own webs of experience, dreams, thoughts and agendas.  I suspect that is why, if our Scriptures are God’s Word, these tiny stories that appear in our Bibles in so many varied translations to be received by so many ears and understood by so many variant traditions seem as if they were always meant to be dropped like Alka-Seltzer into a glass; the story being dropped to plop-plop and fizz in a crowd of people who converge on the story and discuss and react differently to the story told; and then hopefully walk away feeling a sense of camaraderie with all who shared the story-telling with them.  If before we are about to decide that someone who differs slightly from us is a heretic, we should perhaps sit down with them and enjoy the story-telling once more with them before we act as their judge.  A moment with them in a shared pew may enable us to see them in a different manner than ever we have before.

            The tiny story of Deborah, found in chapters four and five of the Book of Judges, is a tiny story, ah but there is so much here to challenge all the positions of modern man and modern woman.  This is a story of a prophetess, a national leader, a judge, a warrior, everything a conservative patriarchal Christian wants his daughter never to admire or imagine herself becoming.  But just when the modern woman is about to own Deborah as someone just like her, Deborah goes and asks Barak to lead the army.  She seems to want a man to do what men are supposed to do.  She is perhaps not the sort of woman who wants to challenge male authority, but like so many women doing the quote “untraditional” thing, and doing it well we might add; in her druthers she’d sort of like to be in a traditional role.  She asks Barak to lead the army.  She will be content to play a diversionary role and he will lead the real army that crushes the enemy that has come down upon Israel to plunder, to rob, and to steal Israel’s milk and honey.  But Barak won’t take the lead.  He wants Deborah beside him.  Perhaps he is weak, or perhaps he understands implicitly that in this time and place she is the one meant to lead God’s people.  There is in another context a boy who refuses to wear the king’s armor because his armor has been tested and worn by the king and not by the boy.  So the boy refuses the armor and takes what he knows how to use, a sling (which by the way was a long range weapon far more suitable for a boy fighting a giant than was sword and armor).  Perhaps Barak failed his test, or perhaps he passed the humility test.  Deborah somehow seems above both our traditional and feminist roles, she is just Deborah, open to serving God in an untraditional manner from a heart of tradition.

            In Hebrew narratives the names of the characters are often written large into the fabric of the story.  Sisera, whose name I do not know the meaning of, has come down to Israel to conquer, to enslave, and to plunder.  Waiting for him is Deborah, whose name in Hebrew means “Bee”.  A bee produces honey.  The other prominent woman in these chapters is named Jael, which in Hebrew means “goat;” and goats produce milk.  So Sisera coming to plunder Israel, the land of milk and honey is met by the bee and the goat and meets his devastating destruction.
Deborah:  Hebrew meaning "Bee"

            But there is more to Deborah’s name than being a bee who produces honey to go with the goat’s milk.  Deborah is a name that if shortened with a vowel change becomes “Debar” which means the word.  So the prophetess is one who produces in her speaking the word of God.  In other passages the word play will tell how a prophet found the word of God to taste like honey in his mouth but to be bitter in his stomach.  Word plays and names and word plays sum up much of the Hebrew art of story-telling.

            Deborah shows us one more thing about how we relate to the stories we hear and the stories of our life.  When the story is blessed of God, like it was in Deborah’s life the response is not pride but praise.  The story is shown taking place in Judges 4 and then is brought to God in thankful praise and song in Judges 5, in what is described as “the song of Deborah.”  The early church understood this response to the story.  They spoke of truth as “Orthodoxy” which actually means not “right doctrine” but “right praise.”  We believe the story and offer in response “right praise.”

            But in the middle of this story and prominent in Deborah’s song is this story of how Deborah’s life changed everything for a generation of Israelites.  Israel struggled in darkness but then stood Deborah.  “The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel, until that I Deborah arose, that I arose a mother in Israel.”  (Judges 5:7)  She felt her life identified as a mother, everything else was her other job.  This I say not as a commentary one way or another on how women should view home and career.  I think Deborah had another perspective.  She was an Old Testament believer.  She understood the promise that one was to come born of the seed of woman who would crush the serpent’s head and bring triumph to mankind. (Genesis 3:15)  That is why she saw herself as mother.  But her motherhood, in this connection, was about more than baby making.  It was a life lived in hope and expectation that one was to come who was to bring completion to humanity’s dreams, hopes and endeavors.  So in a troubled world where sin and evil often reigned one still planted a garden, built a home, and took time to sit under a tree to hear all the silly cases where this one had this against another and the other declared themselves to be in the right, so they came to Deborah as she sat and judged beneath the shade of a tree.  This was being a mother in Israel, bearing forth hope in God in the darkness, while redemption still awaited its entrance into the chosen woman’s womb.  Deborah was not the woman who would bring the life of this promised son into the world, but she carried in her life and word the embryo of hope being matured and maintained in the days of anticipation for that day when a young maiden would give birth to a son in a stall in yonder Bethlehem.  Deborah looked forward not in escapism but in building a life celebrating redemption until the day when that redeemer would take shape in a young maiden’s womb.  If we believe in a Redeemer who will bring completeness to the creation, we build him a room in our busy lives where we may ask him to remain as our honored guest.  Such was the life of Deborah, a mother in Israel.

            As a mother in Israel, Deborah shared with all the faithful women participation leading to the final event.  We make a great mistake if we imagine that Theotokos (bearing God) only took place in the life of Mary.  Mary was the chosen one, blessed above all women, but she was the representative of every faithful woman of God in the history of humankind, both those like Deborah born before Mary lived, and those like faithful ladies you and I know today who live after Mary gave birth to her son.  Each and every faithful woman’s faithfulness is part of the story of the one who gave birth to the final and only perfect patriarch, our Lord Jesus Christ.  Womanhood in the faith is no second-class estate, but the vessel through which our God chose to bring our Redeemer into the world.

            Finally, Deborah as a prophetess and as a mother in Israel focuses our attention on that promised son of the seed of woman who would redeem us from our sins.  What, if anything could we learn of who and what this promised son would be like from a prophetess-mother?  Perhaps we are meant to understand from the mystery of the prophetess-mother in Israel that the son to be born to the seed of woman was to be “the Word made flesh.”