War brings about not just the violence of the battlefield but all the other furious faces of victimhood - including sexual crimes and abuse of humanity - so often in the form of attacks on women. The current war between Israel and Hamas is also made so much worse as it is marked by horrific, made-worse by their disputed veracity and disbelief - sexual assaults on innocent women. But it isn’t just wartime that makes is worse for women. 1 in 3 women will experience violence in their lifetime. This week marked the start of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. It is up to each of of us to end it. And one of the ways we can do so is by talking back to our toxic traditions and texts.
Why is violence against women so prevalent in the patriarchal narratives we’ve inherited and still activate -- and what can we all do to name these abusive patterns, demand change, criticize our texts and traditions so that we can move towards deep healing and transformation, impact our legal, religious systems and human behavior?
We can start by naming abuse where we see it and not hide behind or tolerate excuses.
In chapter 23, Ezekiel takes parables to a new - lower - level and introduces a text that some critical readers describe as “pornoprophetic” into the biblical narratives. In previous chapters the prophet already exhibited misogyny in disturbing allegories - equating Jerusalem as the adopted daughter turned deviant wife and abused wife of YHWH. In today’s chapter it is not just the Kingdom of Judah that is accused of idolatry represented as adultery, but the Kingdom of Israel as well.
Ezekiel weaves a horrific saga of two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah. Oholah represents Samaria - the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and Oholibah represents Judah - the Southern Kingdom:
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֵלַ֔י בֶּן־אָדָ֕ם הֲתִשְׁפּ֥וֹט אֶֽת־אׇהֳלָ֖ה וְאֶת־אׇהֳלִיבָ֑ה וְהַגֵּ֣ד לָהֶ֔ן אֵ֖ת תּוֹעֲבוֹתֵיהֶֽן׃
“YHWH said to me: O mortal, arraign Oholah and Oholibah, and charge them with their abominations.”
Ezekiel 23:36
In shocking detail Ezekiel elaborates on the two sisters’ infidelity and lavish adultery, leading to their husband’s - YHWH - angry reaction and cruel punishment.
By all accounts - this chapter is grotesque and problematic. As Robert Alter notes:
“There are passages in this prophecy where the allegorical referent of idolatry virtually disappears as the sexual foreground is flaunted. Ezekiel looks distinctly like a man morbidly obsessed with the female body and with female sexuality, exhibiting a horrified fascination with both.”
The issue here is not just that Ezekiel, like other prophets, is naming Jerusalem as a feminine entity guilty of adultery and therefore deserving of her punishment - destruction. The implications of this brutal attack on fictional women becomes the tragic recipe of actual attacks on women - by the men who read these texts and perceive them as permission for violence against their wives - or other women.
Prof. Athalya Brenner writes in the introduction to On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the Hebrew Bible, that she edited with Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes in 1993:
“A (male) fantasy of (male) domination is acted out by equating divine authority with male power. The (male) fantasy of (female) submission becomes definitive. It is easily legitimized by a two-way application of the analogy: when God is imaged as a human male, human males can be viewed as divine... Metaphor creates its own ‘reality’, its own frame of reference, not to mention hierarchy...
This propaganda cleverly constructs a stereotype: every woman, especially everywife, is a potential deviant and should therefore be tightly controlled. By males, of course. Wife-abuse and rape should be directly linked to the worldview which makes such prophetic propaganda acceptable. Religious-political propaganda can lead to wholesale rape of women: read the news about Bosnia..
...whoever composed those passages perceived women and men—not to mention God—and gender relations in a certain way. That vision, that male fantasy of desire which presupposes a corresponding and complementary mythical fantasy of female desire, is pornographic. As a reader, I can resist this fantasy by criticism and reflection.’
Prof. Tamar Kamionkowski goes even further with her condemnation of Ezekiel. And she also goes a step further in framing why the prophet - and others - choose to equate the fate of their nation with that of women who are vilified and victimized:
“These horrific texts feed male sexual fantasies and have been termed by some recent commentators as “pornoprophetic” because of the way women’s bodies are objectified and sexualized.
In these texts, the destruction of the Northern Kingdom and later the Southern Kingdom, along with the destruction of Jerusalem, are viewed through the lens of rape. Infiltration of the enemy into the city, the decimation of property, and the loss of life are understood through the filter of the female body. It is possible that the actual experiences of the male population as captives of war led to a collective sense of emasculation.
The prophets, especially Ezekiel, were trying to make sense of traumatic events. In order to make sense of their victimhood, they had to imagine themselves collectively as God’s wife, receiving the appropriate punishments for bad behavior that they, presumably, would inflict on their own wives. In the search for a theological rationale for their misfortunes, they may have tried to shift their experience of powerlessness and loss of control (associated with women’s social positions) to a hyper-identification with God, who has every right to inflict brutal punishment upon his wife.
In the history of interpretation, these texts have been used to promote the idea that men have the right to use violence as a method of control over women. While the violence against women in the narrative material is explicit and easy to identify, violence through the language of metaphor is more insidious. It is easy to claim that “it’s just a metaphor,” but biblical commentators have read these texts with complete empathy for God’s (the husband’s) perspective. They build further upon these texts, describing how lucky Israel is because God does not ultimately abandon her. Only in recent decades have feminist readers of these texts pointed to the ways in which they reflect and reify violence against women.”
And thus, to Ezekiel and all who read his words verbatim we can safely see today - enough is enough. With so much pain inflicted these days on so many innocent people all over the world, and as violence against women continues to ravage lives, homes and communities, the critical reading of these biblical texts must include harsh condemnation, deep consolation and complete commitment - time’s up. Let’s come up with metaphors that still shake us up and depict the depravity of humanity - but let’s honor the divine image we are made of - each and every one of us.
Image: Ohala and Ohaliva by Gerry Joquico, Saachi Gallery, London
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what an incredible essay bringing together so many strands and strains...you embrace so much that is interwoven in the way we have made the world.