Post by Rabbi Neil on Nov 18, 2018 18:00:33 GMT
When I started reading Torah as a child, I focused most on the named characters, which is an obvious and natural focal point. They are, after all, the main characters of the text! The stories were stories, with fairly simple meanings, something Rabbinic tradition often called p’shat, which is the plain meaning of the text. As I grew, I came to learn of d’rash, which is the meaning that we can draw out of the text by reading in the gaps. For example, when Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, what kind of fruit is it? The answer is in midrash, in the drawing out of things that aren’t explicitly mentioned. Sometimes, midrash brings in names of characters who are unnamed in Torah, usually women, such as Noah’s wife who is named Na’amah and Pharaoh’s daughter, who was named Batya, which is totally extraordinary since that’s a Hebrew name not an Egyptian one! In P’shat, the stories are the stories, in midrash, the stories are actually what’s behind the stories!
As I’ve become more strongly influenced by feminist sources, especially feminist commentaries on Torah, I’ve come to learn that there’s another story – the untold story of ancillary characters, particularly nameless ones. They are the agents of change in the narratives of those characters who are named. Why did Torah not even bother to name them? What is it saying in its exclusion of their very being? So, this is a third way of reading Torah, in which the stories are specifically what’s not in the stories! Characters with no name can be particularly revealing, such as Lot’s daughters, or the daughter and the concubine in Judges 19. The two stories, from Genesis and Judges, are extremely similar, and both are worthy of attention together.
In the Genesis account, two Divine visitors arrive in Sodom and Lot welcomes them in to his home. The inhabitants of the city press upon Lot to hand over his guests so that they may have their wicked way with them. Lot refuses. Instead, he offers up his virgin daughters, and he says the most remarkable thing – “You can do anything you want with them, but please don’t do anything to these men. They have come to my house, and I must protect them.” (Gen. 19:8)
That’s extraordinary in and of itself. What’s even more extraordinary is that this is repeated in the Book of Judges. There, in an almost identical story, when the inhabitants of Gibeah press a hospitable resident to hand over his guest, he replies, “Here is my virgin daughter and also his concubine. Let me bring them out. Degrade them and do to them what you wish, but to this man, do not do this abominable thing.” (Judg. 19:24)
In the book of Genesis, the daughters are saved because the visitors are Divine beings, messengers, angels, call them what you wish, and they blind the mob so that everyone can make their escape. The women in Judges 19 are not so lucky. In that story, the guest takes his concubine, throws her outside, and the men assault her all night long. The guest goes to bed and in the morning opens the door and there she is, lying in the doorway. He says, “Get up, let’s go,” but she gives no answer. He puts her on his donkey, sets off for home, and when he gets there takes a knife, cuts her limb by limb into twelve parts and send them throughout the territory of Israel. It’s a horrifying story, perhaps made slightly less horrifying when we realize that it’s a political satire on King Saul. We see this, for example, in I Sam 11:7 where Saul “took a yoke of oxen and cut them into pieces, which he sent by messengers throughout the territory of Israel.” Oblique political commentary though it may be, though, it’s still a horrifying story, perhaps made even more horrifying by the fact that in the pastiche the oxen which Saul actually did cut up is replaced by a concubine, relegating her to the status of a mere animal. She not only has no name, no identity, she’s barely even human!
This connection makes Lot’s offer of his daughters in Genesis even more startling. If we read the passages from Samuel, Judges and Genesis together, he’s not just protecting his guests, he’s essentially offering his daughters up as a sacrifice. More than that, when the guest in the Book of Judges sends sections of his concubine to the other tribes, it’s the start of an inter-tribal war in which the Benjaminites are almost totally wiped out. Referring that back to Genesis, maybe then God’s destruction of Sodom is an act of war itself, in which the inhabitants of Sodom are almost totally wiped out, save for Lot and his family.
The namelessness of Lot’s daughters continues in even more astounding fashion. Thinking that they are the last human beings on earth, they realize that in order to perpetuate humanity they have to procreate with their father. They get him drunk and sleep with him on two separate evenings. They both bear children. The first is called Mo’ab, meaning “from father” and the second is called Ben-Ammi, meaning “from my people.” This is the origin of the Moabites and the Ammonites, two peoples whom the Israelites will later be commanded to destroy in their conquest of Canaan. Once again, then, we find politics coming into the narratives of nameless women. What’s extraordinary about this is that the daughters have the power to name, but do not have names themselves. Elsewhere in the Bible, we see women call themselves something, such as Naomi who, in the Book of Ruth (1:20) says, “Do not call me Naomi but call me Mara (which means bitterness) because the Eternal has made my life bitter.” Women naming themselves, then, is not unheard of, so why do Lot’s two daughters not do the same, especially when they give names to their sons. More than that, the names they give to their sons refer to their father and their people, and not specifically to themselves, when they had the perfect opportunity to at least be referred to in the names of their sons.
It’s not enough for us to say that they were nameless because they were women, and the Bible isn’t concerned about them. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Miriam and many others show that that definitely is not true. These women aren’t named for a reason, and I’m not sure it’s enough to say that it’s because they’re supporting characters in another main character’s narrative. I think their namelessness adds to the story. Perhaps the namelessness of Lot’s daughters is to make them more general. Perhaps we’re meant to be appalled with the story as with the one in Judges, and we’re meant to think about our own daughters at that point. Maybe the horror of the narrative is in their namelessness and how that makes it so much closer to our own lives. Another way of looking at their namelessness is in comparison with the nameless Divine messengers who visit the home. One pair is nameless but immensely powerful, the other pair is nameless but powerless. Their namelessness might be a contrast to demonstrate just this. It’s not that Torah doesn’t care about their gender per se, but it might be acknowledging their powerlessness. That could be an advanced gender commentary by Torah. However, if we take all three texts together – Genesis, Judges and Samuel – and once again return to the comparison between the daughters and Saul’s slaughtered oxen, we could also go the other way and say that their namelessness serves to show that they work for men and exist to help men get what they want out of the earth. I’m not sure that’s the case, but I see how the comparison could be made.
At the end of the day, the comparison particularly with the story in Judges truly reveals the horror of this story. The callousness of the guest in the Book of Judges who sees his concubine lying ravaged and dying on the floor and who says “Get up, we’re going” to her is surely a reflection on Lot who probably would have said the same to his ravaged daughters had it not been for the intervention of the Divine messengers. This, then, is almost certainly a critique of Lot, and is not shared as a story of exemplary behavior. We are specifically not meant to act like Lot because our children, no matter their names, are valuable to us. The namelessness of the daughters allows us to make this comparison, where it could not have been made before. While the Judges passage is a critique of King Saul in the light of the Genesis passage, when reading the other way and looking at Lot in light of the Judges passage, we see a strong critique of a father who cares little for his daughters. He treats them as though they were nameless, as though they were unimportant. We don’t need to reject Torah’s perspective here, we need to embrace it and read the critique for ourselves. We need to not be like Lot. When the Divine messengers visit Abraham, he runs out to meet them and offers them food and water. When the Divine messengers visit Lot, he runs out to meet them and then offers his daughters to the baying horde.
So, may we be more like Abraham receiving his guests than Lot. May we never hold anyone so insignificant as to make them nameless in our own narrative. And may we realize every moment that we render someone essentially nameless, every time we dehumanize someone, so that we may instead lift them up and, in so doing, lift up all of humanity. And let us say, Amen.
As I’ve become more strongly influenced by feminist sources, especially feminist commentaries on Torah, I’ve come to learn that there’s another story – the untold story of ancillary characters, particularly nameless ones. They are the agents of change in the narratives of those characters who are named. Why did Torah not even bother to name them? What is it saying in its exclusion of their very being? So, this is a third way of reading Torah, in which the stories are specifically what’s not in the stories! Characters with no name can be particularly revealing, such as Lot’s daughters, or the daughter and the concubine in Judges 19. The two stories, from Genesis and Judges, are extremely similar, and both are worthy of attention together.
In the Genesis account, two Divine visitors arrive in Sodom and Lot welcomes them in to his home. The inhabitants of the city press upon Lot to hand over his guests so that they may have their wicked way with them. Lot refuses. Instead, he offers up his virgin daughters, and he says the most remarkable thing – “You can do anything you want with them, but please don’t do anything to these men. They have come to my house, and I must protect them.” (Gen. 19:8)
That’s extraordinary in and of itself. What’s even more extraordinary is that this is repeated in the Book of Judges. There, in an almost identical story, when the inhabitants of Gibeah press a hospitable resident to hand over his guest, he replies, “Here is my virgin daughter and also his concubine. Let me bring them out. Degrade them and do to them what you wish, but to this man, do not do this abominable thing.” (Judg. 19:24)
In the book of Genesis, the daughters are saved because the visitors are Divine beings, messengers, angels, call them what you wish, and they blind the mob so that everyone can make their escape. The women in Judges 19 are not so lucky. In that story, the guest takes his concubine, throws her outside, and the men assault her all night long. The guest goes to bed and in the morning opens the door and there she is, lying in the doorway. He says, “Get up, let’s go,” but she gives no answer. He puts her on his donkey, sets off for home, and when he gets there takes a knife, cuts her limb by limb into twelve parts and send them throughout the territory of Israel. It’s a horrifying story, perhaps made slightly less horrifying when we realize that it’s a political satire on King Saul. We see this, for example, in I Sam 11:7 where Saul “took a yoke of oxen and cut them into pieces, which he sent by messengers throughout the territory of Israel.” Oblique political commentary though it may be, though, it’s still a horrifying story, perhaps made even more horrifying by the fact that in the pastiche the oxen which Saul actually did cut up is replaced by a concubine, relegating her to the status of a mere animal. She not only has no name, no identity, she’s barely even human!
This connection makes Lot’s offer of his daughters in Genesis even more startling. If we read the passages from Samuel, Judges and Genesis together, he’s not just protecting his guests, he’s essentially offering his daughters up as a sacrifice. More than that, when the guest in the Book of Judges sends sections of his concubine to the other tribes, it’s the start of an inter-tribal war in which the Benjaminites are almost totally wiped out. Referring that back to Genesis, maybe then God’s destruction of Sodom is an act of war itself, in which the inhabitants of Sodom are almost totally wiped out, save for Lot and his family.
The namelessness of Lot’s daughters continues in even more astounding fashion. Thinking that they are the last human beings on earth, they realize that in order to perpetuate humanity they have to procreate with their father. They get him drunk and sleep with him on two separate evenings. They both bear children. The first is called Mo’ab, meaning “from father” and the second is called Ben-Ammi, meaning “from my people.” This is the origin of the Moabites and the Ammonites, two peoples whom the Israelites will later be commanded to destroy in their conquest of Canaan. Once again, then, we find politics coming into the narratives of nameless women. What’s extraordinary about this is that the daughters have the power to name, but do not have names themselves. Elsewhere in the Bible, we see women call themselves something, such as Naomi who, in the Book of Ruth (1:20) says, “Do not call me Naomi but call me Mara (which means bitterness) because the Eternal has made my life bitter.” Women naming themselves, then, is not unheard of, so why do Lot’s two daughters not do the same, especially when they give names to their sons. More than that, the names they give to their sons refer to their father and their people, and not specifically to themselves, when they had the perfect opportunity to at least be referred to in the names of their sons.
It’s not enough for us to say that they were nameless because they were women, and the Bible isn’t concerned about them. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Miriam and many others show that that definitely is not true. These women aren’t named for a reason, and I’m not sure it’s enough to say that it’s because they’re supporting characters in another main character’s narrative. I think their namelessness adds to the story. Perhaps the namelessness of Lot’s daughters is to make them more general. Perhaps we’re meant to be appalled with the story as with the one in Judges, and we’re meant to think about our own daughters at that point. Maybe the horror of the narrative is in their namelessness and how that makes it so much closer to our own lives. Another way of looking at their namelessness is in comparison with the nameless Divine messengers who visit the home. One pair is nameless but immensely powerful, the other pair is nameless but powerless. Their namelessness might be a contrast to demonstrate just this. It’s not that Torah doesn’t care about their gender per se, but it might be acknowledging their powerlessness. That could be an advanced gender commentary by Torah. However, if we take all three texts together – Genesis, Judges and Samuel – and once again return to the comparison between the daughters and Saul’s slaughtered oxen, we could also go the other way and say that their namelessness serves to show that they work for men and exist to help men get what they want out of the earth. I’m not sure that’s the case, but I see how the comparison could be made.
At the end of the day, the comparison particularly with the story in Judges truly reveals the horror of this story. The callousness of the guest in the Book of Judges who sees his concubine lying ravaged and dying on the floor and who says “Get up, we’re going” to her is surely a reflection on Lot who probably would have said the same to his ravaged daughters had it not been for the intervention of the Divine messengers. This, then, is almost certainly a critique of Lot, and is not shared as a story of exemplary behavior. We are specifically not meant to act like Lot because our children, no matter their names, are valuable to us. The namelessness of the daughters allows us to make this comparison, where it could not have been made before. While the Judges passage is a critique of King Saul in the light of the Genesis passage, when reading the other way and looking at Lot in light of the Judges passage, we see a strong critique of a father who cares little for his daughters. He treats them as though they were nameless, as though they were unimportant. We don’t need to reject Torah’s perspective here, we need to embrace it and read the critique for ourselves. We need to not be like Lot. When the Divine messengers visit Abraham, he runs out to meet them and offers them food and water. When the Divine messengers visit Lot, he runs out to meet them and then offers his daughters to the baying horde.
So, may we be more like Abraham receiving his guests than Lot. May we never hold anyone so insignificant as to make them nameless in our own narrative. And may we realize every moment that we render someone essentially nameless, every time we dehumanize someone, so that we may instead lift them up and, in so doing, lift up all of humanity. And let us say, Amen.