A generation later, Isaac continued the sordid family tradition when he told the men of Gerar that his wife Rebekah was his sister in order to save his own skin.5 This time the "sister" didn"t even make it to the king"s house. Abimelech, who is identified as "king of the Philistines," happened to observe the couple engaging in s.e.xual play and he became furious with Isaac for creating a situation that would have allowed an improper s.e.xual encounter between one of his men and Rebekah.
The Troubling Questions Whoever first said that bad news always comes in threes might have had these stories in mind. For us and other scholars, these episodes bring up several troubling questions: Why did the patriarch think he was in danger? There is nothing in the stories to suggest that any of these foreign rulers wanted to kill, or even harm, Abraham and Isaac. In fact, each time the deception was revealed, the response was just the opposite: the king was generous or wished Abraham or Isaac well. Abraham"s and Isaac"s initial paranoia that their wives" beauty would lead to their own destruction proved to be entirely without merit.
Didn"t the patriarch care about what would happen to his wife? By masquerading as her brother, each man virtually guaranteed that his wife would be taken into another man"s house. It appears that Abraham and Isaac were only afraid of what might happen to themselves, not to the women. Their survival instinct had completely taken over, and they subjected Sarah and Rebekah to whatever situations they might encounter in another man"s house. This is a particularly poignant issue because in the second version Abraham had just received word from G.o.d that Sarah would conceive and have a son. For all he knew, she might already be pregnant, but this didn"t seem to factor into his decision.
Why did we not hear from the wife? Sarah and Rebekah are central to the plots of the narratives, but they remain completely silent throughout all three episodes. We are not even told what they were thinking as their husbands asked them to lie for them. Actually, "ask" is too kind a word. Abraham didn"t request Sarah"s a.s.sistance-he demanded it: both times his words to her were put in the imperative form: "Say you are my sister." Isaac did his father one better. He didn"t even try to coerce Rebekah into joining the charade. Maybe he was afraid she would blow her line. Instead, he boldly declared to the men of Gerar, "She is my sister." Apparently neither woman had a vote or a voice.
Why is the story repeated three times? It is rare if not unique in the Bible to have three such similar stories so close to each other, let alone occurring within the same family. These are indeed the only stories in the whole Bible in which a man tries to pimp his wife. Upon closer inspection, there appears to be a progression in how the scenes are presented: the first time it appears that Sarah had s.e.xual relations with the foreign ruler; the second time she was brought into his house, but they were not physically intimate; and the third time Rebekah did not even get in the door because the king spied the couple and discovered the truth.
Is this arrangement intentional? What do we make of all this outlandish behavior?
Abraham on the Couch Such questions have attracted the interest of Bible scholars for a long time, and typically they have tried to address only one or two of these issues without proposing a comprehensive solution that might explain them all. Dominating these discussions have been questions like: Which story is the oldest? Why are they different? And how do they compare ethically?
Then along came J. Cheryl Exum, a well-known professor of Bible at the University of Sheffield in England. She offers an entirely different approach to the question.6 Exum thinks that the characters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob reflect the deep-seated motivations of a male narrator to-yes-encourage his wife to have s.e.x with someone else. This will take some "splaining.
Unlike many other scholars, Exum views the three stories as parts of a whole rather than as separate, unrelated units. The method Exum adopts is quite unusual, at least by the normal standards of biblical scholarship. She offers a psychoa.n.a.lytical reading that tries to illuminate what she calls the "narrative unconscious" of the text. Her conclusion is that these stories all address the secret fantasy lurking in a man"s mind that his wife will have s.e.x with another man. In Exum"s words, "Because there is something fearful and attractive to the (male) narrator about the idea of the wife being taken by another man, a situation that invites the woman"s seizure is repeated three times.... Telling the story of the patriarch"s repet.i.tive behavior offers the occasion for a "working out" of the neurosis."7 In Exum"s view, this explains why Abraham and Isaac come up with a plan that ensures that their wives will have s.e.x with other men. This is precisely what they want to happen. Seen in this way, the stories are about the desire and fear of the narrator. He desires to have his choice of the woman validated, and this will happen if another man finds her attractive. If the other man tries to take her, this might even increase the husband"s desire for her. At the same time, there is an element of fear. s.e.xual relations with another man will give the woman a point of comparison. The other guy might have read The Joy of s.e.x and therefore be a better lover. Maybe the woman will enjoy his bedroom tricks. According to Exum, these stories are an attempt to resolve the thoughts and feelings that have their origin in the man"s hidden fantasy that his wife will be taken by another man.
Note what Exum is not saying. She does not believe that the stories reflect the unconscious of a particular individual, like Abraham or Isaac. Rather, she speaks of a collective, male-centered unconscious, whose spokesperson she calls "the narrator." She sees the texts as communal products that were given their final shape by males. The psychology and mind-set of the stories therefore inevitably reflect those of their male authors and editors, in her view.
Exum proposes that we think of the characters as split-off parts of the narrator. Just as when a person under a.n.a.lysis is able to recognize aspects of himself or herself in the various characters of a dream, the characters in the Genesis stories are vehicles that allow the biblical narrator to work out the neurosis he is experiencing. In order to interpret the movement from one version of the story to the next, Exum adopts a Freudian model that makes use of his famous three-part division of the human psyche. Exum throws out lots of ids, egos, and superegos in her scholarly paper, but we"ll try to sum them up neatly and quickly.
In the first story, Pharaoh functions as the superego, which monitors a person"s actions to ensure that they are not immoral. Abraham, with his unconscious desire to hand over Sarah to another man, is the id, which seeks to act out repressed fantasies and desires. The text, according to Exum, is the ego, where these conflicting impulses are worked out and Pharaoh takes Sarah as his wife.
The second version advances the psychological drama by allowing Abimelech (the superego) to justify himself before G.o.d, who functions as the external moral law. This explains why the king proclaims his innocence when G.o.d chastises him in a dream for almost taking Sarah for himself. Similarly, Abraham (the id) justifies his deceit to Abimelech (the superego) by pointing out that he did not lie since he and Sarah share the same father. Abraham even tries to blame the external moral law for his predicament by pointing a finger at G.o.d for making him leave his father"s house in the first place. As Exum points out, if Abraham had been truly innocent, he probably wouldn"t have protested as much as he did.
By the time we reach the third version, the superego functions independently of outside influence and constraints. The king sees for himself that the couple is in fact married, and so he avoids even the suggestion of impropriety. The fascination with the fantasy has been abandoned since the men of Gerar are not interested in Rebekah, even though she and her husband have been among them for a "long time." Isaac (the id) has finally worked through the neurosis that has been a preoccupation since chapter 12, and he is able to enjoy conjugal relations with his wife after resolving the problem. As Exum points out, the patriarch ultimately feels like the winner of a contest. "Having Abimelech, the rival, witness his s.e.xual activity with the matriarch is the patriarch"s ultimate turn-on, his incontestable victory over his rival desire."8 Exumining the Proposal As out of left field as Exum"s psychological interpretation might seem, it adequately addresses all four of the questions we posed earlier. It explains why the patriarch thinks he is in danger: his fear is displaced. He secretly desires that his wife be taken by another man, but fears the result. It also explains why the patriarch doesn"t seem to care what will happen to his wife. In Exum"s reading, he cares deeply-perhaps so deeply that he doesn"t even realize it. The twist is that what he wants to happen to her is not the kind of thing men normally acknowledge, even if many of them share Abraham"s and Isaac"s fantasy that their wife will be taken by another man.
Exum"s proposal also resolves the question of why we don"t hear from Sarah and Rebekah-this is a guy thing. The male psychology and mind-set that created the stories are just not interested in developing the woman"s character in the narratives beyond her role as a s.e.x object. Finally, Exum explains why we have three different versions of the same story and why they are in this order. They express three different moments of a psychological movement from imagining the fantasy to rejecting it. The order shows the resolution of a psychological problem.
This interpretation also has the advantage of preserving the integrity of the text as we have it and not requiring that we appeal to different sources to explain the repet.i.tion of the story.
We"ll have plenty more to say about Exum"s approach in a later chapter. But for now it"s worth pointing out that, make of it what you will, Exum has done a fine job of answering the questions Bible scholars like to ask about this pa.s.sage.
7.
Was the Toilet Ehud"s Escape Hatch?
WE HAVEN"T DEALT YET WITH p.o.o.p, so we"re excited to finally get to this chapter. This next case of "Is that really in the Bible?" reads like a TV crime drama script infused with tasteless details by a potty-obsessed five-year-old. If the movie Psycho kept a generation of people from taking showers for fear of being stabbed by Norman Bates, this chapter may accomplish the same thing for latrines.
Like us, you may have at one time or another experienced that primal human fear of being killed on the toilet. (Ever read Stephen King"s Dreamcatcher?) Perhaps it"s simply a feeling of vulnerability as you crouch there defenseless-or perhaps those fears are grounded in something much more real. Biblical history, for example. Most of us have had unpleasant experiences on the toilet. But as bad as your experiences have been, a Bible guy named Eglon had it much worse. He was killed on his way to the "throne." As we"ll see, this story, like many in the Bible, flouts modern good taste with real flair. Listen closely-that giant flushing you hear is the sound of our scholarly reputations going down the pipes. Now let"s get to the straight p.o.o.p.
Murder Most Foul This story is told in the Book of Judges. Judges were rulers who led Israel almost like kings, and they ruled by fiat (as some U.S. judges still do). The story we are dealing with here is not the longest or most widely known story in the Book of Judges-that honor goes to Samson and Delilah-but after seeing what unfolds, you may never forget these vivid details. Ehud"s contributions to Israelite history are recapped in a slight nineteen verses that describe just one episode, but it"s a doozy.1 Let"s reconstruct the crime scene. It was a normal day in the Middle East. Moabites were plotting to kill Israelites; Israelites were plotting to kill Moabites. Both dreamed of a.s.sa.s.sinating each other"s kings. As it is today, the Middle East was one big, happy family.
On this day, the king of Moab, named Eglon (or Fatty, if you like), took a magazine and headed for his favorite room in the house. He had reason to feel content. He was successfully oppressing the Israelites. He had plenty of food. In fact, the name "Eglon" means "young calf." Eglon was living up to his name. Though the Bible rarely describes people"s physical traits, it goes out of its way to say that Eglon "was exceedingly fat." Either the historian who put these words to goatskin was feeling a bit cheeky that day, or King Eglon"s weight problem would factor into the plot. We"d bet on the latter.
While the pleasant day unfolded at the palace of King Fatty, another person entered-Ehud, or Lefty, because the text says he was "left-handed." (In another example of Bible humor that you only get if you spend endless years studying ancient Hebrew, Ehud is identified as "of the tribe of Benjamin." The name "Benjamin" means "son of the right hand," so this is like saying, "Lefty, son of Righty." This would have had the ancient copyists rolling.) In came Lefty to the palace of King Fatty, who was working up a good dump in the upper chambers (we are not being gratuitous; this is actually part of the plot). Okay, the nicknames were fun, but to avoid confusion, let"s go back to the real names. Ehud ("Lefty") had brought with him an eighteen-inch double-edged knife, strapped to his right leg, and a gift. He was welcomed into the king"s chambers, where he gave King Eglon the gift. But Ehud apparently forgot to think up a good method for getting the king alone so he could kill him. ("Hey, let"s you and me go in the other room and have a bon-bon-eating contest" didn"t come to mind, but probably would have worked.) Instead, Lefty laid on King Fatty the most hackneyed line in crime drama history: "I have a secret message just for you." Even preadolescent fans of mob movies could have sniffed that one out.
But Eglon, whose BS antenna must have been broken, was completely suckered by this. He eagerly dismissed his servants, and Ehud proceeded to the king"s "cool roof chamber," where he was sitting on his throne. Without wasting any time, Ehud seized the knife with his left hand (naturally) and thrust it into the unsuspecting Eglon"s belly-here"s your message, Tub-o!-where it completely disappeared, enveloped in folds of fat. Eglon was not only too fat to dodge the blow, but he was now actually hiding his own murder weapon. With visions of the healthier lifestyle he never pursued running through his head, Eglon keeled over-and defecated! How"s that for drama: not just blood and guts, but good old-fashioned c.r.a.p. The shock of the attack must have loosened the poor man"s sphincters, and he dropped his payload. Ehud, apparently deciding to leave the knife stuck in the king rather than fish around for it with the awful stench taking over the room, locked the doors to the king"s chamber and escaped the murder scene, cool as a cuc.u.mber.
The king"s servants, clearly the worst bodyguards in Moabite history, decided not to check on their boss for a long time. Apparently that familiar odor that said, "Eglon wuz here," was emanating from his room. a.s.suming that he was on his preferred throne relieving himself, they went back to playing the ancient Moabite version of pinochle. n.o.body, it seems, was eager to check on him. Perhaps the palace help always abandoned the building when Eglon felt the call of nature. But finally, after an embarra.s.singly long time, the servants got worried. No magazine was that long. They got the key and opened the locked door, only to discover the king sprawled dead on the floor and an awful mess that someone would have to clean up. Ehud, meanwhile, was long gone. Later that day he led his fellow Israelites in a rousing military victory over the demoralized Moabites, who were wondering exactly what to say in Eglon"s public obituary ("Died at home surrounded by his recent works"?).
Does It Really Say That?
The story is gross. Are we embellishing it? Certainly not. The Hebrew text tells us that the king"s servants actually thought Eglon was on the toilet. The text uses the slang of the day-"he is covering his feet," a Bible expression that refers to the fact that when you squat to take care of business, your clothing is usually around your ankles. (This charming little phrase is also found in 1 Samuel 24, when King Saul enters a cave to relieve himself. It was probably a little trick the writers used to ridicule kings they didn"t like.) The other key word in the disgusting panoply of facts is parshedona, used in verse 22, which describes something that "goes out." It doesn"t take a genius-or even two Bible scholars-to recognize that this tells us that something went out of Eglon when he died. This is such a gross word, in fact, that this is the only time it is found in the entire Hebrew Bible. There are no related forms in other Semitic languages. Unfortunately, that also gives prudish English translators some wiggle room to avoid translating it, which is why your Bible, no matter the translation, probably does not say that Eglon took one final dump when he died. Some English versions simply leave it out. Others bend the meaning so that it refers to Ehud going out to another part of the palace after murdering Eglon. But the story leaves no doubt that it means that Eglon p.o.o.ped on himself, which is a normal response to sudden trauma like having a guy stuff a knife into your blubber. In many English versions of the Bible, this word is daintily translated as "dirt," but the most honest translation is "c.r.a.p." That"s how it"s rendered in the ancient Aramaic and Latin translations, and that"s the translation that makes the most sense in light of the gory details of the story.
But there is one more mystery to this drama. How was Ehud able to leave the crime scene and get away scot-free? Did he waltz out of the palace, past the hapless bodyguards without even disturbing their pinochle game? Or did he have another escape route? (Cue the dramatic music.) The answer revolves around another word that is difficult to translate.
Leaving Through the Men"s Room Baruch Halpern, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, thinks architecture is the key to solving what he dubs the "oldest locked-room murder" in literature. Halpern, like a Hebrew-literate detective with too much time on his hands, has pored over the various parts of Eglon"s palace and plotted out Ehud"s movements from the time he entered to the moment he slipped away.2 The spare account in Judges 3 provides little architectural detail, so Halpern relies on palaces excavated in other parts of the ancient Near East-like Megiddo in Israel, Tell Halaf in Syria, and Tell Tayanat in Turkey-to understand the layout of Eglon"s royal residence.
Halpern says that Ehud first met Eglon in an audience hall, a large area where the king officially received visitors. When the king dismissed his servants so he might hear Ehud"s "secret message" (which turned out to be a squelching knife to the belly), they probably retreated to a porticoed antechamber separated from the audience hall by doors that they would have closed behind them. (If there are any ancient Hebrew language geeks out there, the word for this room is aliyya, which describes a chamber on the upper level of a structure.) The text tells us that Ehud "came to" Eglon while he sat in this upper-level chamber,3 probably climbing a set of stairs from the audience hall to the king"s throne. Once Ehud killed Eglon and the fat king evacuated his bowels, Ehud locked the doors to the upper room and exited via the misdaron.
Now things get interesting. This word misdaron is only found here in the entire Bible. It is a key piece of evidence for us to figure out how Ehud escaped without detection. Add to it another puzzle piece, which is a word translated in many versions as "cool." It is used twice to describe the king"s upper room.4 But Halpern points out, and we agree, that in the hot climate of Jericho, where the story takes place, the upper part of a building is the hottest part. For this reason, he proposes the alternative reading of "beams," based on the word"s meaning in Psalm 104 (this is how Bible detective work moves forward). This tells us, then, that the king"s throne room was an upper room supported by beams. Picture that: an upper room suspended above wooden beams. Now we"re coming closer to figuring out what the misdaron was through which Ehud escaped the crime scene.
Modern English versions of the Bible typically translate misdaron as "porch" or "vestibule," but there is no linguistic support for this. Just because you want it to say something nice like "porch" doesn"t mean it does. Halpern thinks it more likely that misdaron refers to a latrine or toilet. He notes that indoor plumbing and toilets were commonly found in royal palaces from the mid-second millennium BCE on-well before the time period in which the Book of Judges is set.
Also, the Semitic root on which misdaron is based can mean "to be blinded, puzzled," which Halpern believes can be a.s.sociated with the Israelite att.i.tude of concealment toward excrement. The same att.i.tude is reflected in the expression "to cover one"s feet." He thinks the misdaron is the "hidden place" under the beams that served as the depository of the king"s urine and feces. We will now quote Halpern so you can get the full disgusting impact of his meaning: "The king"s droppings from above could only have fallen through the floor down below. And to this nether region, under the beams, royal janitors no doubt had access."5 Others have suggested that Ehud left the upper room through other routes, but their arguments are not particularly persuasive. Some propose that the throne room had a back door, which might help explain the translation "porch" or "vestibule" for misdaron. But if such an alternative entrance had been available, we would expect the king"s servants to have used it when they became concerned that something might be wrong with him inside the locked upper room. Why would they get a key to unlock a door the king had locked instead of peeking in the back door?
Others say Ehud left the upper room the same way he entered it: by taking the stairs back down to the audience hall after he locked the king in. But Halpern observes that the text doesn"t support this interpretation because the expression that"s used-"he closed it upon himself"-is used only to describe a door being locked from the inside. Ehud was definitely inside the throne room with Eglon"s corpse when he secured the door.
There are other reasons to think Ehud left through the latrine. If he went out the back door undetected, how would the servants know that he had left and that it was time for them to return to their master? The text suggests a cause-effect relationship between his departure and their return to Eglon. "After he had gone, the servants came."6 In Halpern"s opinion, Ehud and the courtiers probably b.u.mped into each other soon after the king met his end. After slithering his way through the hole in the floor that functioned as the royal john, Ehud cautiously tiptoed his way through the c.r.a.p-catching room underneath. He probably exited through a door under the stairs that was used by the janitors to gather his excellency"s excrement. Ehud was now back in the audience hall at the foot of the stairs leading to the upper chamber. At this point, he opened the doors that led to the porticoed antechamber, where the king"s attendants were waiting to be summoned. As he strolled past them, they did not suspect a thing about what had transpired in the few moments since they saw their master alive for the last time. They returned to the audience hall. As the odor of the king"s final bowel movement wafted through the air and Eglon didn"t appear, they became concerned. Bounding up the stairs and fumbling with the key, they finally opened the door to the king"s en suite quarters to discover a gruesome sight. ""Behold! There was their lord fallen dead on the floor" (verse 25), with his load dropped beside him. No blood; dagger enveloped; no sign of fiddling with the lock."7 Israel: 1. Moab: 0.
The story of Eglon and Ehud, aka "Fatty" and "Lefty," is unique. Ehud"s escape through the royal toilet adds the final deliciously repulsive touch to a story already rife with vomit-worthy images. Of course, since the Bible leaves so many details unstated, any attempt to say precisely what happened is speculative. But as Bible scholars, we find Halpern"s explanation fairly convincing. It clears up lingering questions about the story that would otherwise remain unanswered.
And as guys who appreciate an occasional diversion into the disgusting, we think this makes one heck of a story.
8.
Was Onan a Jerk?
FOR CENTURIES, a guy named Onan has gotten a bad rap as the only man in the Bible to be on record as having m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed. Prudish Christians created a euphemism for masturbation based on his name: onanism. The example of Onan, and his ultimate fate, has been used for centuries to discourage young people from taking s.e.xual matters into their own hands, so to speak.
But was Onan really a jerk? Or was he, rather, a model of s.e.xual control? A pioneer of population control? The first human in recorded history to use the withdrawal method? Let"s take another walk on the seamy side of Bible history to find out.
Coitus Onanterruptus Onan"s story appears in Genesis 38, smack in the middle of the story of Joseph, and it seems dreadfully out of place there-like a naughty interruption of an otherwise seamless narrative. You could remove chapter 38, which tells the Onan story, and smush chapters 37 and 39 together, and they would flow together without skipping a beat. For this reason, scholars have often proposed that Onan"s story was inserted, rather clumsily, into the Joseph tale, almost like a gratuitous s.e.x scene thrust into an action movie. While it may be true that this story is an insertion (of more than one type, as we"ll see), there is a certain logic to telling it in Genesis 38. The story takes place in Canaan before Jacob"s family all moved to Egypt. It also depicts Joseph"s older brother, Judah, as a grown man with newly married sons of his own. The supposed interruption may be the author"s way of relating two simultaneous events, like saying, "Meanwhile, back in Canaan...."
Onan was one of Judah"s three sons. The others were Er and Shelah. We don"t know why Judah named his kids after grunting and sneezing noises. Maybe he wasn"t very creative. At the appropriate time, Judah found a wife for his oldest son, Er, a woman named Tamar. The Bible tells us that Er was wicked. In fact, his name actually resembles the word for wicked in Hebrew. Er erred, you might say, and G.o.d killed him. G.o.d was pretty much the judge and the jury in the Middle East back then. So Judah approached his next son, Onan, and told him, "Go in to your brother"s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her; raise up offspring for your brother."1 What he meant was, "I don"t care if you find Tamar to be pleasant, attractive, or a good squeeze-bag her." The text goes on to say that Onan knew that any children he fathered by Tamar would not be his, so he refused. But he did it in a sneaky way.
Onan"s secret goal was to turn each of his s.e.xual encounters with Tamar into Mission Unaccomplished. He didn"t want to give her full bang for her buck. The NRSV puts it graphically, though not very romantically, when it says, "he spilled his s.e.m.e.n on the ground."2 It makes you wish romance novelists had translated the Bible rather than artless language scholars. In any case, the verb in this sentence literally means "to spoil." That"s exactly what happens to s.e.m.e.n that is spilled on the ground. And Onan"s s.e.m.e.n hit the ground "whenever" he "went in to" or "joined" with Tamar. The clear sense of the Hebrew is that this happened a lot-Onan apparently didn"t mind coming for the party, he just didn"t want to bring a gift.
Onan"s repeated coitus interruptus displeased G.o.d, who killed him as he had his older brother Er. Two of the Grunt Brothers were now wiped off the map.
The Moral of the Story: Always Pay Cash If you"re wondering what happened to poor Tamar, the story tells us and gets even more salacious. Judah"s third son, Shelah, was too young to be married at the time. At least that"s what Judah told Tamar. He promised that when Shelah grew up, he would marry Tamar. In the meantime, Judah sent her back home to live with her father. The story says that Judah was afraid that Shelah would die.3 It"s not clear what this means. Perhaps Shelah had a bad habit of spilling his own s.e.m.e.n on the ground, or maybe he was doing whatever older brother Er had done to make G.o.d angry. But as the story unfolds, it appears that Judah was afraid that Tamar was cursed or had bad luck and would lead Shelah to his death as she had his previous sons. In the meantime, Tamar must have been wondering, "What"s a girl got to do to get pregnant around here?"
A long time pa.s.sed. Judah"s wife died. Shelah grew up. But Judah did not fulfill his promise to Tamar. Finally, with the biological clock ticking loudly in her ears, Tamar took matters into her own hands. She learned that Judah was going away to shear sheep. She removed the mourning clothes she had been wearing since her husband died and dressed up as a prost.i.tute, covering her face with a veil (which isn"t bad advice for prost.i.tutes today). She sat at the entrance of the town of Enaim (which means "eyes" in Hebrew, which happened to be the only part of Tamar"s face that was visible). When Judah pa.s.sed by, he saw her but did not recognize her because of the veil. Thinking she was a prost.i.tute, he inquired about the cost of a good fling. Perhaps warming up to her role as a hooker, she negotiated a price: a kid (a baby goat), which he promised to send back to her. The price was acceptable to her, but she wanted some collateral until the goat arrived. She must have heard the talk from the other prost.i.tutes that some guys enjoyed dinner but didn"t pay the bill. She asked for his personal effects-his signet ring, which he wore on a cord like a necklace, and his shepherd"s staff. This would be like a business today holding your driver"s license as a guarantee of payment. The signet ring was especially important because it was Judah"s identification, which he would need for future transactions. Judah, perhaps not the brightest guy in the messianic line, left two of his most important personal effects with her and proceeded to have his romp.
Judah may have been stupid, but at least he was honest. When he got home he tried to pay his debt. He sent a kid back with a friend. But the friend could not find the prost.i.tute. That"s because Tamar had dropped her side career. The hours must have been lousy and the health benefits terrible. She had played prost.i.tute for just one john-the gullible Judah. Then she had returned home and dressed again in her widow"s clothing, as if nothing had ever happened. But something had happened: she had become pregnant. Judah had not spilled his seed on the ground. Within months her belly swelled, and when Judah learned she was with child, he wanted to have her burned to death since, technically, she was still betrothed to Shelah, even though Shelah wasn"t really following through. It was only when she produced Judah"s own personal effects-his signet and staff-that he relented, confessing, "She is more in the right than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah."4 The story notes that Judah did not have s.e.x again with Tamar. Tamar gave birth to twin boys who were the ancestors of two prominent families in Israel. Perez, the older, stood at the head of the genealogy that produced both King David and Jesus. That"s correct: a child born of a father and his daughter-in-law"s illicit union became an ancestor of Jesus. Just listen to that collective gasp from Baptists who never learned this in their midweek Bible studies.
Stimulating Ideas Back to our central subject, which is masturbation. Why did poor Onan"s name become a byword for solo s.e.x? And was this pa.s.sage really describing a man masturbating, as some Christians even today believe? What does it mean that he "spilled his seed" other than that the floor needed a good mopping?
According to Thomas W. Laqueur, a well-known cultural historian and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the a.s.sociation of masturbation with the story of Onan goes back only to the eighteenth century.5 In 1712 an English pamphlet appeared with the t.i.tle Onania; or, The Heinous Sin of Self Pollution and all its Frightful Consequences, in both s.e.xES Considered, with Spiritual and Physical Advice to those who have already injured themselves by this abominable practice. And seasonable Admonition to the Youth of the nation of Both s.e.xES. The author was anonymous but was probably a man named John Marten. Notice that Marten capitalized s.e.x twice in the t.i.tle. He knew what sold books.
Marten was a "surgeon" in a day when you didn"t even need an online degree to practice medicine and putting leeches all over someone"s body was considered advanced treatment. He was something of a huckster but also a brilliant marketer. His pamphlet caused a, shall we say, wide sensation in England and went through multiple editions. Its main claim, which sparked alarm, was that masturbation by both males and females was a dire threat to individual health and social order. It also established "onanism" as a term for the activity. Indeed, Marten claimed that Onan"s crime, for which G.o.d killed him, was "lasciviously to grope with the privities." Not so coincidentally, the cure for this misguided desire could be found in a potion available from-you guessed it-Marten himself and his sponsoring apothecary.
The consequences of the fervor that resulted from Marten"s publication have lasted even to today, and not just among people who at one time or another have lasciviously groped with their privities. In addition to the endurance of the term "onanism," fervent opposition to masturbation continues in certain Christian circles. Before the eighteenth century, the phenomenon of masturbation went largely ignored by the church. This wasn"t a bad posture, since masturbation is not addressed anywhere in the Bible. But the Christian mind-set changed with the publication of Marten"s pamphlet. Subsequently, masturbation was viewed as a horrible and dangerous sin.
Just how influential Marten"s hoax remains became apparent in a sticky s.e.xual scandal during the administration of President Bill Clinton. No, not that scandal. This was an earlier one, in 1994, when Clinton asked for the resignation of the United States Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders. The reason, as you may remember, especially if you keep up with news about masturbation, was that in a speech at a UN conference on the AIDS crisis, she had advocated the teaching of masturbation as a way of preventing young people from s.e.xual activity that could spread the disease. The public outcry at her remarks was so great that she was forced out of office.
The most vocal objections to Elders"s comment came from conservative Protestant Christians who were worried that the promotion of masturbation might erode public morality, especially among the young, as it almost did in 1712 until Marten saved the day with his pamphlet on the s.e.xES. Opposition also came from Catholics who, following the teaching of Augustine, held that s.e.x is legitimate only for the purpose of reproduction, not pleasure. This idea is explained in the New Catholic Dictionary"s definition of Onanism, which reads in part: The theological term for the crime committed by married persons, who in the performance of the conjugal act aim to prevent conception.... Onanism is always a grave sin. It is a crime opposed to natural law, for it frustrates the primary purpose of matrimony, namely, the procreation of offspring.6 Who"s Your Daddy?
But notice that Marten"s pamphlet and the New Catholic Dictionary represent two different interpretations of Onan"s deed. Was it masturbation or was it withdrawal? Most biblical scholars would argue that it was the latter, for two reasons. First, the expression "go to" used of a man approaching a woman is a very common idiom in the Hebrew Bible for s.e.xual relations. It may originate not from a description of the s.e.x act but from the idea of a man entering a woman"s tent or residence to get it on with her. But whatever its origin, its use in the present story indicates that Onan"s behavior occurred while he was having s.e.x with Tamar. Instead of climaxing inside of her, he would "spill his seed" on the ground. (The famous literary critic Dorothy Parker quipped that she named her parrot Onan for the same reason.) In other words, Onan withdrew to prevent Tamar from conceiving.
The second reason for this interpretation lies in the larger context of the practice of "levirate marriage" that is a.s.sumed in this story. The word "levir" is of Latin derivation and refers to a husband"s brother. The custom of levirate marriage was found especially in certain clan societies, like ancient Israel. The way levirate marriage was supposed to work is spelled out in the Book of Deuteronomy: When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside of the family to a stranger. Her husband"s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband"s brother to her. And the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.7 This was why Judah ordered Onan to "perform the duty of a brother-in-law" to Tamar.8 Levirate marriage had several purposes. It kept a man"s lineage from dying out. It also kept property within a clan or family so that it did not revert to outsiders by inheritance. This explains why Onan refused to fulfill his duty. He was selfish. He did not want his son to be considered his brother"s. He may also have been trying to gain Er"s inheritance. If Onan fathered a child by Tamar, that child would inherit Er"s property. But if Er had no son, his property might go to Onan.
Now, some interpreters recognize the levirate marriage background of this story but still contend that in "wasting his seed" Onan was gratifying himself s.e.xually and that G.o.d killed him for this, not for refusing to reproduce. As support for this view, they point out that the punishment prescribed for failure to carry out the duty of the brother-in-law was much less severe than death. That law commanded that the widow in such a case go to the city elders and lodge a complaint. The elders were to summon the brother-in-law. If he refused in public to comply, the widow was to remove his sandal, spit in his face, and say, "This is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother"s house," which would then be his reputation in Israel.9 But there is another dimension of this story that needs to be considered-Tamar"s position in society. Another purpose of levirate marriage was the social function of making sure widows were cared for when they had no other form of sustenance. Tamar was caught in limbo. In that society, betrothal was effectively marriage that had not been consummated. Tamar was betrothed to Shelah, so she could not marry another man. But Judah obviously had no intention of allowing Shelah to marry her. She was not, apparently, in any danger of starving or becoming dest.i.tute. But living childless in her own father"s house for the rest of her life was not a satisfying prospect. A woman"s worth in that society was judged particularly by her success at bearing children. Onan"s treatment of her was degrading. Then to isolate her, as Judah had done, was humiliating and robbed her of her life"s purpose.
Tamar"s solution to her dilemma-dressing as a prost.i.tute to seduce her father-in-law-may strike us modern readers as extreme. And in a sense, it was extreme. But it was an extreme to which Tamar was driven to preserve her own dignity and self-worth. Nowhere in the Bible is her act condemned. In fact, she appears in the genealogies of David and Jesus.10 Matthew"s version includes five women, which in itself is unusual in an Israelite genealogy. Tamar is the first of the five. The others are Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba-who is called the "wife of Uriah"-and Mary. Each of these women had a checkered reputation: Rahab was a prost.i.tute; Ruth spent the night with Boaz before they were married; Bathsheba had s.e.x with David while she was married to someone else; and Mary got pregnant with Jesus before she was married to Joseph. Yet Rahab is held up as an example of great faith, a woman who believed in Israel"s G.o.d and aided the spies in the conquest of Canaan. Ruth is presented as a model of love and loyalty. Bathsheba is cast as the innocent victim of David"s l.u.s.t and the mother of the supremely wise King Solomon. Mary is a paragon of faith and trust, specially chosen to be the mother of Jesus. Tamar fits well in this list as a woman of courage who took great risks in a time of crisis to preserve her dignity and continue her husband"s line.
Seen in this light, perhaps Onan"s sin had less to do with self-gratification than it did with trying to deprive another person of fulfillment and purpose. Does the Bible speak about masturbation? In our opinion, clearly not. You might say the Bible turns a blind eye to the subject.
9.
What Was Isaac Doing When Rebekah First Saw Him?
MOST PEOPLE REMEMBER the precise moment they first laid eyes on the love of their life. Perhaps they saw each other across a crowded cafe or on a dance floor. Perhaps a friend introduced them at a party, or maybe they were in the same bowling league (Steve"s suggestion).
But few of us first saw our lover while he or she was using the latrine. Yet that"s precisely what may have happened to Rebekah, the wife of Isaac.
Stop the Camel, That"s My Husband The mystery resides in a particular word in the story of how Rebekah met Isaac. Isaac"s dad, Abraham, had sent his servant to get Isaac a wife from among Abraham"s own relatives who lived far away. Like some families of today, Abraham didn"t want his son marrying outside "his people." And since Abraham was living among Canaanites, there weren"t a lot of local Hebrew women hanging around. The servant took a long journey and had great success. He found a woman he believed was G.o.d"s choice for Isaac. Her name was Rebekah, and according to the Bible account, she was a peach. She offered to water his camels, which was a lot of work considering how much camels can drink. And just like Abraham, she took a gigantic leap of faith, leaving her home and family behind to go where she believed G.o.d was directing her. She was also Isaac"s cousin. Guess it ran in the family. The servant brought her back to Abraham, and while the caravan was approaching, Rebekah saw her soon-to-be husband, Isaac, for the first time. He was doing something in the field.
What exactly Isaac was doing in the field is not known because the meaning of the verb used here is uncertain. The NRSV translates it as "to walk." But careful readers will notice a footnote in their Bible stating, "Meaning of Hebrew word is uncertain." You can say that again. The meaning of the word is in fact so uncertain that at least thirteen different interpretations of it have been proposed by scholars. One scholar, Gregory Vall, who teaches at Ave Maria University in Florida, wrote an article discussing most of the interpretations.1 The first four possibilities all propose that the root of this verb means "talk, complain, muse." One of these suggests that Isaac was talking with someone, perhaps a friend. But the Bible does not mention anyone else being in the field with him, so this interpretation strikes us as unlikely.
Other scholars propose that Isaac was musing or meditating. This is a popular interpretation for modern translations such as the Revised Standard Version and the New International Version. But if this is the meaning of our mystery verb, then what is its point in the context of the story? Why did the author include it? What was Isaac meditating about? Vall points out another weakness: when the verb means "to meditate," it is always accompanied by the preposition "on" to explain what the person was meditating on. In this case, Isaac would have been meditating on the field, which makes no sense.
A third interpretation takes the meditation option a step further and suggests that Isaac was praying. This is the way Martin Luther translated the word. The main problem with this is that Hebrew has a perfectly good word for "pray" that you would expect the writer to use if that was what Isaac was doing. This interpretation also does not explain why Isaac went into the field, unless he was sick of being with his family back in the tents. He was, after all, forty years old and had never been married. Perhaps he was becoming the b.u.t.t of jokes. And unless he practiced onanism, he was probably pretty frustrated too.
Some say Isaac was "complaining" in the sense of "lament" or "mourn," and this is the option Vall prefers. But this interpretation faces the same problem as "meditate." Hebrew has other verbs for "lament" and "cry, weep" that you would expect to find here if that was what Isaac was doing. In fact, the word they propose does not really mean "lament" but rather "complain," in the sense of expressing unhappiness or discontent. Vall, perhaps romantically, likes this option because it explains how Rebekah brought Isaac comfort after his mother"s death. His "complaint" expressed deep discontent out of loneliness. It is a nice sentiment, but it still does not account for Isaac"s presence in the field. He could have complained to G.o.d anywhere.
Several other interpretations suggest that this verb means to "sink down," meaning that Isaac was "low" in the sense of being depressed or sad. But the root is used in this sense only when it describes a person"s inner self-a person"s soul, spirit, or mood being low or depressed. The text here would have to mean that Isaac himself went into the field to physically sink down. Again, this doesn"t make any sense.
Others suggest that Isaac physically lay down. Once again, Hebrew has a much more common verb that means "to lie down," and you would expect to find it here if that is what Isaac did. Besides, it is uncertain whether the root "sink" really can mean "lie down." On top of that, if Isaac was lying down, how could he have seen Rebekah"s caravan coming, and how could she have seen him?
Because there is a noun from this same root that means a "hole," it has even been proposed that Isaac went into the field to dig a hole, which perhaps was a euphemism for defecating. While this interpretation explains why Isaac had to go into the field, Vall observes several problems with it. There are good Hebrew verbs meaning "dig" that you would expect to find here instead of this obscure one. There is also a good Hebrew euphemism for defecation, "to cover the feet," which occurs elsewhere in the Bible, as we have seen. Finally, the Hebrew noun meaning "hole" refers not to a small hole but to a pit, which would have been much larger than Isaac needed to dig to relieve himself, unless he"d consumed an inhumanly large amount of food.
Other interpretations rely on dubious propositions or pure guesswork. They include the idea that Isaac went out "to gather brushwood," to take a stroll, even to "walk about swinging his arms." Each of these proposes that the author used an obscure verb that is not found anywhere else in Hebrew. Sometimes there is even a common Hebrew word with the same meaning that the author could have used but didn"t. Most of these ideas can"t be taken seriously, but they do ill.u.s.trate the lengths to which scholars have gone trying to explain our mystery verb.
Our Pick Vall actually missed one important interpretation put forward by Gary Rendsburg, a professor at Rutgers University.2 Rendsburg proposes a word similar in meaning to "dig a hole." He does not, however, think that it is a euphemism. Rather, he compares it to a root found in Arabic and other Semitic languages that has the sense "excrete, urinate, defecate."
Why even consider this possibility, except for the fact that it"s gross and funny? It has several things going for it-chiefly, that it is used elsewhere in the Bible with this same meaning. One of these occurrences is in the Book of Isaiah.3 The prophet Isaiah, speaking for G.o.d, expresses great anger against his people and describes a time when G.o.d caused the corpses of the people to be like excrement (NRSV "refuse") in the streets. The root is the same as that of our mystery word, though it is spelled slightly differently.
Another example is in a Proverb that discusses the ill effects of drunkenness, such as quarrels, woes, unexplained wounds, and bleary eyes.4 In the list, a form of our mystery word pops up too. It is sometimes translated "complaint." And this translation, though vague and bland, is certainly possible. However, one of the obvious effects of drinking too much wine is frequent urination, so Rendsburg"s interpretation fits particularly well with the point of the pa.s.sage.
The best example of this Hebrew root referring to bodily functions is in the famous story about the prophet Elijah engaging the priests of the Canaanite G.o.d, Baal, in a test to prove whether Baal or Yahweh was the true G.o.d.5 Each side placed a sacrifice on an altar. The worshipers then called upon their respective deities to send fire from heaven to burn up the sacrifice. Elijah eventually won the contest because Yahweh responded when he prayed, while the priests of Baal failed to summon fire from heaven. But during the contest, the mystery word is used. The priests of Baal had spent the entire morning praying to Baal. At noon Elijah started to make fun of them. He told them to cry louder because Baal was otherwise occupied. Elijah suggested that Baal was taking a trip or sleeping or going to the bathroom. The last option is an expression that contains our word. Its interpretation has also been debated, and "meditating" has been suggested for it. But in light of the way Elijah was ridiculing the priests of Baal, it almost certainly means "defecating" or "urinating."
We like Rendsburg"s proposal, though it has one significant disadvantage: it doesn"t speak to the idea that Isaac was comforted after his mother"s death by marrying Rebekah. For that reason, and perhaps from simple revulsion, some readers may prefer to understand the mystery verb as "complain" or "meditate," as their Bible probably states. Fine. But it"s still possible that Isaac was answering nature"s call in the field when Rebekah first laid eyes on her dreamboat.
10.