An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 46: How knowing your tropes can prevent burning. Lots and lots of people and things burning (Judges 11-15)

Judges 11-15

How knowing your tropes can prevent burning. Lots and lots of people and things burning.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Judges 11

“And it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob:”

A couple of folk lore motifs crop up in this chapter, where once again the Israelites are threatened, this time by the Ammonites (those darn fossilised snail things...), and a new leader is raised to deal with them.

This time the judge is Jephthah, who is the son of a harlot and cast out by his legitimate stepbrothers, but eventually called back to lead the Israelites. There’s an ongoing theme so far of younger sons and the dispossessed rising to positions of importance (to quote George RR Martin, “cripples, bastards and broken things”) which is interesting, the meek inheriting the earth indeed.

Jephthah agrees, and sends an embassy to the Ammonites, pointing out all the victories of the Israelites so far (i.e. refer to Joshua and prior chapters of Judges), but of course the Ammonites don’t listen. Jephthah goes to war, and promises to make a burnt offering of the first thing that he sees when he returns home. Because he probably predates all the other folk tales using this trope he doesn’t realise that this is going to be his only daughter, but I think we all guessed something like that would happen.

His daughter doesn’t get a name, but she has to be sacrificed anyway (which is odd at this point because I’m pretty sure all the laws of Moses were quite against human sacrifice). She goes off with her companions into the wilderness for two months to “bewail her virginity” (and I can’t have been the only person to think for “bewail” read “lose”). Her sacrifice is commemorated from then onwards by the daughters of Israel every year (for four days).

Judges 12

“And the men of Ephraim gathered themselves together, and went northward, and said unto Jephthah, Wherefore passedst thou over to fight against the children of Ammon, and didst not call us to go with thee? we will burn thine house upon thee with fire.”

The Ephraimites get angry at Jephthah for not including them in the fight against the Ammonites, and the disagreement turns into a civil war. The Gileadites occupy some of the Ephraimites land and use the word “shibboleth” to determine who is actually an Ephraimite , and kill anyone who can’t pronounce it. So that’s where the expression comes from. The chapter then kind of fizzles out after Jephthah’s death, with a list of the next few judges.

Judges 13

“For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”

The enemy of the week this time are the Philistines (and I shall be interested to see if there is any specific reference to them having no appreciation for fine art), but this chapter largely covers the birth of Samson which includes a lot of tropes used before in the bible, and will be seen again. Samson’s mother, who doesn’t get a name, only known as the wife of Manoah, is barren but an angel tells her that she will conceive a son (as per Abram and Sarai), and gives the prophecy given in the quote above. I looked up Nazarite, which seems to be a kind of oblate, consecrated to God with the vows not to drink or cut their hair. I do wonder, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the first, to wonder if “Jesus of Nazareth” is actually meant to be “Jesus the Nazarite”. Well, maybe we will come back to this thought when we reach the New Testament.

The angel gives Mrs Manoah some sound obstetric advice (no drinking, don’t eat “unclean” stuff – this last less so as the uncleanliness is a ritual concept rather than specifically hygienic). The bulk of the chapter is a runaround with Manoah and Mrs Manoah wanting proof of the angel, and the angel repeating its advice, and Mrs Manoah and Manoah repeating the prophecy and advice to each other. Finally the angel does some stuff with fire as proof of its nature, and eventually Samson is born. This chapter is very much in the folk tale style of writing.

Judges 14

“And he came up, and told his father and his mother, and said, I have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines: now therefore get her for me to wife.”

This is a strange interlude, but if you’ve ever wondered why Tate and Lyle golden syrup has a dead lion on it, this chapter is why. Young Samson falls for a Philistine woman, which can only lead to trouble, and on his way to see her he kills a lion with his bare hands (the writing here is very confusing with too many pronouns, so it’s not obvious at first if Samson rends the lion, or the lion rends Samson). Later, he sees that some bees have made a hive in the carcass of the lion, because obviously that’s what bees do.

Later again Samson holds some kind of feast with thirty companions, and Samson sets them a riddle; “Out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong came forth sweetness”. Thirty sheets and garments are the stakes, and the companions have seven days to guess the riddle. They ask his Philistine wife to find out the answer for them, and she uses some “feminine guile” i.e. pouting and whining to get the answer from him.

Unfortunately, Samson guesses what they have done (they have “ploughed with his heifer”!) and kills them in anger. His wife is “given to his companion”, which I guess means what it sounds like but as this is the last verse perhaps it’s expounded upon. As I said, and odd little chapter with another nameless wife and once again a biblical “hero” actually acting in a morally questionable fashion; I quite like that they do, though, as it makes them more human rather than idealised paragons.

Judges 15

“And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.”

Oh, the writing in this section! Truly terrible. From the last chapter, evidently the “he” that gave away Samson’s Philistine wife to another man was Samson’s father, because here Samson discovers this and gets angry when his father says “but I thought you hated her”. He catches foxes, ties firebrands to their tails and sets them loose in the cornfields of the Philistines for … some reason. It kind of reads like a big tantrum. In revenge the Philistines burn Samson’s father and wife.

Samson fights the Philistines and runs to the rock of Etam. The Philistines send men of the tribe of Judah to capture him, and they tie him up and leave him for the Philistines, but Samson breaks his bonds and kills a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Once he’s done this, Giod makes water appear for him, and he becomes a judge of Israel.