In the comments to yesterday's post on Brokeback Mountain, CL Hanson notes that she learned at BYU that "in [Mormon] culture woman is the disposable person." That's something learned in college myself, albeit in a bible lit class, when I read this gruesome story in Judges 19, which I'm going to tell now, and then we're going to take a break from this topic, since it doesn't seem wildly popular. [OK, I lied: there's a followup here.] Plus, I'm almost done with the paper and will have time to write about something else for a while. But here it is, without further ado, one of the grossest stories from the Old Testament:
In Judges 19, we get the story of a Levite from Mount Ephriam whose concubine leaves him in order to return to her parents' house, an activity labeled "playing the whore against him," or valuing her own desires above his. The Levite eventually goes to fetch his concubine, and on their journey home they stop in Gibeah, where the men are "Benjaminites," meaning both that they are of the tribe of Benjamin and that they have sex with other men. The Levite sets up camp in the street of a city, only to be implored by an old man not to lodge there--instead, the old man offers the couple shelter for the night.
Beginning in verse 22, we read
Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him. [Note: in case you don't get it, they're using "know" in the biblical sense, this being the bible and all.][23] And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly.
[24] Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing.
[25] But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go.[26] Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man's house where her lord was, till it was light.
[27] And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold.
[28] And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place.
[29] And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.
Cutting an ox into twelve parts and sending a piece to each of the twelve tribes was a traditional call to war, but why cut up a perfectly good ox when you've already got a dead--or nearly dead--concubine? Keep in mind, the Levite called the tribes to war over the fact that the Benjaminites had destroyed his property--at stake was the fact that this MAN would have to get a new concubine--rather than over the fact that a woman was raped repeatedly, since he himself threw her out the door to be raped.
The tale is revolting, in its homophobia, its misogyny, its unspeakable violence. It shows that homosexual acts are so abominable that to prevent their occurrence, one should offer one’s virgin daughter to be “humbled,” because in these matters, women’s health and happiness, if not their very lives, are acceptable sacrifices. Gay gang rape is unthinkable, but straight gang rape–hey, if it placates the horny male miscreants outside your door, no problem! The aftermath isn't much better. The other eleven tribes went to war against Benjamin, and killed over 25,000 of its men--only 600 men of Benjamin remained when the battle ended. It looked as though the tribe would die out, because all the men in the other eleven tribes had sworn not to give their daughters in marriage to Benjamin, an oath they could not renounce. But they didn't want to be the eleven Tribes of Israel, so they hatched a plan to provide the Benjaminites with wives: a group of virgins, the daughters of Shiloh, would be celebrating a feast off in a vineyard, and if the Benjaminites rode in, kidnapped the virgins and married them, well, their fathers hadn't broken their oath because they had not "given" their daughters in marriage to Benjamin, only allowed them to be taken.
Marriage and procreation, you see, were both duties and rights of these men, regardless of any sexual conduct they engaged in with other men. The important thing was to keep the tribe going. This is the spiritual and moral legacy we have inherited from the Old Testament, and it still lives on in Mormonism, which is why marriages between straight Mormon women and gay Mormon men still receive such praise.
I'm impressed by how squarely this story fits with the idea of Mormon women sacrificing their happiness and sexual fulfillment in marrying gay men. Is this story taught as a justification, or is it merely part of the theme of female sublimation?
Hi Verbify--thanks for stopping by. I never heard this story at church. I was assigned the last three chapters of Judges in a OT lit class at the U of Arizona, and I remember the teacher asked, "So, what do you think of Judges 19?" He waited a moment, then said, "I can tell who did the reading because anyone who actually read it looks completely horrified."
It's precisely the kind of story most people who believe the bible want to pretend isn't in it. When I would mention it in Mormon contexts, most people would give me blank stares; some would even tell me I couldn't possibly be remembering it accurately.
But I do think it is indeed sublimated in our consciousness as one more way that women must be sacrificed to preserve the honor and health of men.
I did a fair amount of biblical lit stuff (at the UofA, as it happens - I wonder if I had classes with your professor?), and I'm always impressed by how people fail to react with utter horror to that particular story. Is there anything that's -not- horrifying about it? And yet, my classes tended to get way more bogged down in discussions of whether or not Jael was right to use the tent peg on Sisera.
Disturbing.
Wow, I thought I had a fairly good knowledge of the Bible, but I didn't realize there was anything quite like this in it...
I don't think I can come up with any comment that will do a passage like this justice...
p.s. please email me. Not about this -- about much lighter stupid blogging questions. ;-)
hi Revena--I took the class in, oh, 1983 (yikes!) with Herb Schneidau. I'm guessing he's been retired for a while....
There are so many stories that will just curl your hair, that are indeed uniformly horrifying. But you're right, that sometimes people manage to be really blase about stuff, as if it's normal to send pieces a dismembered woman to your countrymen.
Hi CL--I'm guessing stories like this weren't really the focus of religion classes at BYU.
You may already be aware of this material but if not you may find some of Phylis Trible's work of interest, specifically her book "Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives". I was introduced to this material several years back in a feminist theory reading group and was struck at the time by Trible's discussion of the treatment of Hagar. It put a rather different spin on the meaning of an angelic visitation for women.
Hi Riser--I'm not familiar with Trible's work so I look forward to checking it out. Thanks for the suggestion.
I'm a little late in reading your post on the old testament, however I felt that I had to respond. As far as Mormonism goes I don't know what they teach you, however for Christianity in general I can tell you that you did forget the part of this story where they went to war over the death and rape of the concubine, as well as for attempted murder of the Levite. Not that he wasn't very misguided for hiding out in his room while his concubine was raped and beaten but...
Judges 20:5 That night some of the leaders of Gibeah surrounded the house, planning to kill me, and they raped my concubine until she was dead. 20:6 So I cut her body into twelve pieces and sent the pieces throughout the land of Israel, for these men have committed a terrible crime. 20:7 Now then, the entire community of Israel must decide what should be done about this!
The old testament is exactly why most Christians are not Jewish. It is a bygone era, and most of the stories are from a different time when things were done differently. Thankfully because of Jesus we do not live like this anymore. In fact I would say that almost half of the old testament is full of gruesome stories such as these. The reason that it is still included in a typical Christian Bible is for the very reason that it is part of our history as a human race, we learn from it what TO DO and what NOT TO DO. This is why Jesus came, because we screwed it up. His job was to save all sinners, and to stop stories like these from happening. Today we do not live like this, women have respect and are to be treated as precious just like every other human being.
Unfortunatly not every man understands this idea. We still make... what is it now $.70 on the dollar that men do, the Morman tradition of polygamy is outdated and abused by men, ect, ect. However a good Christian man treats his wife/girlfriend ect with utmost respect and dignity. This is something that most feminists do not get or have never experienced because most men do not follow Christians teachings. There is so much in the Bible that does adhear to many of your ideals and morals as a feminist, it's a shame that most people don't get it. Most of this is in the new testament, not the old. It really irks me when people keep referring to the old testament when they are Christian, it's like Jesus never came or something.
Anyway thanks for reading my rant. I hope this makes sense to you as it does to me...
Jen:
You must have missed my statement that "Keep in mind, the Levite called the tribes to war over the fact that the Benjaminites had destroyed his property--at stake was the fact that this MAN would have to get a new concubine--rather than over the fact that a woman was raped repeatedly, since he himself threw her out the door to be raped."
I'm very well aware that they went to war over this. I don't think it changes much.
Christians' current lust for war and bloodshed is one of the reasons many agnostics and atheists aren't Christian. After all, most of the few remaining supporters of the Iraq war are conservative Christians.
You obviously haven't read much of my blog, since I do address ways in which men who truly believe and practice a religion of compassion and respect treat women better than men who don't.
Your rant doesn't particularly make much sense, but what the hell, since you wrote it, I'll leave it.