The Book of Judges ends with an ancient festival of harvest interrupted by cruelty, born of despair.
Tikva Frymer-Kensky, in her book "Reading the Women of the Bible" comments: “All the bloodshed, the deaths of so many men and women and the threatened extinction of a national consciousness, have now come full circle to more violence against the young women of Israel.
Horror continues to follow horror.”
The basic plot line follows in the aftermath of the battle against Benjamin, in which the entire tribe is decimated, with the exception of 600 male warriors, who are hiding in the desert. In the heat of battle the men of Israel make a vow - none of them will ever allow their girls to marry any of the boys of Benjamin. But after the vow, now that they’ve won, the men of Israel lament the losses of their kin and are worried that the tribe of Benjamin will become extinct - and what then of their 12 tribe coalition? The elders come up with plan A:
Looking around, they realize that the people of Yavesh-Gilead, the tribe of Menashe from across the Jordan river, didn’t join the battle, and so they take up arms once more and cross the river to annihilate the innocent men and women of the town, in punishment for not being part of the coalition. But revenge is not really the point - they make sure to leave the virgin girls alive, 400 total, and bring them to the surviving warriors of Benjamin as war-brides, to repopulate the tribe.
Trauma meets trauma and one can imagine the terrified young girls, orphaned and thrust upon the bitter Benjaminites - survivors of carnage instructed to populate the tribe. But that brilliant plan does not quite solve the problem - there are still some 200 warriors without a wife.
And here the wise men of Israel come up with the awful plan B that strangely echoes the patriarchal narratives found as the foundation myths of many nations, including the infamous Abduction of the Sabine Women- founding rape victims/mothers of Rome. This scene captured the imagination of many artists over time, including, oddly, Dr. Seuss, whose depiction, almost innocent. is today’s illustration.
What’s happening in Israel is this: The elders realize that they can’t break their vow and can’t give any of their daughters to the warriors of Benjamin - but they can set up a situation in which those men can ‘capture’ a few innocent girls. The setting is the ancient full moon festival of grape harvest, celebrated with dancing in the vineyards of Shiloh. Not much is known of this holiday but we assume it to include festive spirit of frivolous and carefree attitudes, with fresh grapes and wine, under the midsummer full moon, away from the confines of city walls and regular morality. The women lead the way with dancing. It may have been a sort of mating dance.
Into this idyllic scene the elders invite the single warriors to hide and wait to hunt:
וּרְאִיתֶ֗ם וְ֠הִנֵּ֠ה אִם־יֵ֨צְא֥וּ בְנוֹת־שִׁילוֹ֮ לָח֣וּל בַּמְּחֹלוֹת֒ וִֽיצָאתֶם֙ מִן־הַכְּרָמִ֔ים וַחֲטַפְתֶּ֥ם לָכֶ֛ם אִ֥ישׁ אִשְׁתּ֖וֹ מִבְּנ֣וֹת שִׁיל֑וֹ וַהֲלַכְתֶּ֖ם אֶ֥רֶץ בִּנְיָמִֽן׃
“As soon as you see the girls of Shiloh coming out to join in the dances, come out from the vineyards; let each of you seize a wife from among the girls of Shiloh, and be off for the land of Benjamin.”
They do as told.
And we’re left wondering who are the people, the ancestors of Israel, who avenge a rape of a single woman by raping thousands of others and killing their families?
What are we to do with the moral stench of this terrible tale?
On one level, this abduction story may have served as a vague reminder of the bonds between warring tribes, somehow coming together to forge alliances, often through marriage between their children, whether they liked it or not. Rome wasn’t built in a day - but the Romans and the Sabines created the polis that overtime would become the empire we all know. It’s possible that this biblical fragment also alludes to alliances brought about not just by battle but by gradual assimilation and love making between neighbors who wavered between hate and love. What women’s’ roles were in these so-called male-dominated societies is difficult to discern. In her critical Feminist reading of these texts
Tikva Frymer-Kensky tries to frame this story in the political context of this book - and the one that will directly follow:
“The narrator caps the story with the message on which he began: In those days there was no king in Israel. Each man did what was right in his eyes. Now the reader can fully appreciate the tragic irony in these words, for what was right in the eyes of the people was not right at all. The reader is left anxiously awaiting an end to such abuses. Someone has to limit the authority of heads of household, someone has to prevent the power of men over their women from being carried to such extremes, someone has to direct the congregation of Israel. Someone has to protect society’s vulnerable members! By the end of this story the readers are ready to add their voices to the chorus of Israel’s elders who said to Samuel, “Give us a king to rule us” (1 Sam. 8:5). The king will save Israel! But, as readers of the Bible know, the kings did not save Israel, and the next book of the Bible, Samuel, once again uses stories about women to show the flaws in monarchy and its inability to create a just and holy society.”
War over, festival interrupted, the tribes return home. The people of Benjamin, with no elders of their own to help them deal with the PTSD and raise new generations, do the best they can. A baby will be born soon to help elevate the situation. We bid the book of Judges farewell and prepare to open up the Books of Samuel - the prophet who will crown a king.
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I have a sense, and I think you alluded to this shadowy possibility, Amichai, that the Book of Judges is prophetic, for it seems to me that the world is moving towards its dystopia. Clan and tribe, scarcity and fear, mafiaosi in seats of power, identity politics and conspiracy theories splintering forms of consensus... climate peril and contraction. The social and political chaos of Judges seems tragically of the moment. No Samuel in the wings. In the face of this, are we not called to decency, neighborly awareness, family atonements, and judgment married to compassion? Meanwhile, in this patient journey through the Bible we are shown bright mythic fragments in which our guide seeks to see the mirrors. How sustaining his practice and mine to follow.