WE"VE ESTABLISHED that Jesus"s ancestors were no saints. Jesus was called "the Lion of the tribe of Judah"-even though Judah slept with his daughter-in-law thinking she was a prost.i.tute. King David is perhaps Jesus"s most famous ancestor, and yet he did the nasty with another man"s wife, then put the hit on him. What, pray tell, did it take to get dismissed from the messianic line?
Now we come to a scandal involving Jesus"s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, a charmer named Ruth. To understand Ruth, we must open a topic we find personally repellent: in-laws. Every normal person knows that his or her in-laws belong in psychiatric wards, prisons, or alien study projects. But some people, a very weird 5 percent of the population perhaps, actually like their in-laws. They want to be with them over the holidays. They want to hear their lame stories, dumb jokes, and offensive political views.
Ruth was one of these oddb.a.l.l.s. Her own family must have been a complete b.u.mmer because she was willing, even eager, to leave them and live permanently with her mother-in-law. Here"s how it happened.
A Happy Homecoming Like any good story, this one began with a crisis-a famine that drove a particular Israelite family from their home in Bethlehem (as in "O Little Town of") to Moab on the other side of the Dead Sea (the modern country of Jordan). This family, led by the mother, Naomi, stayed there for ten years. Her sons married Moabite women, one named Ruth and the other named Orpah. For you daytime TV buffs, this is the very Orpah for whom Oprah Winfrey is named, though you"ll notice that Winfrey"s family mixed up the lettering by accident. It"s probably better. Orpah Winfrey doesn"t have that $1.2 billion net worth ring to it.
Speaking of unfortunate names, Naomi"s sons were named Mahlon and Chilion, which in Hebrew mean "sickly" and "failing." Thanks, Mom. Soon the boys lived up to their names and died, leaving Ruth and Orpah as widows. Naomi"s husband had died too. By the way, Naomi"s name means "pleasant," and that would prove accurate eventually.
Having lost her husband and sons, Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem. Ruth and Orpah asked to join her, but Naomi convinced Orpah to go back home to Moab and become a daytime talk show host. Ruth, however, was undeterred. She pledged undying love and loyalty to Naomi.
Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your G.o.d my G.o.d.1 These lines, which in King James English are "Whither thou goest, I will go," used to be sung a lot at weddings, usually by a soprano with a no-wonder-your-opera-career-never-got-off-the-ground voice. But Ruth originally directed these words to her mother-in-law. Keep that in mind the next time you hear it during the ceremony.
Why would Ruth insist on going with Naomi? All we can think is that she was hard up for options. Indeed, jobs for women were scarce in ancient Israel. Widows who had no male relative had three options: seeking charity, becoming a prost.i.tute, or working for McDonald"s, and unfortunately for them, the last option is a joke. Ruth didn"t have a lot of choices, and apparently Sickly hadn"t left her any life insurance.
So Naomi and Ruth went back to Bethlehem, where Ruth started a ground-level career in gleaning. Gleaning is picking up what harvesters drop or leave unpicked. Gleaning was Israel"s welfare-to-work program for the poor. The law of Moses actually commanded farmers to leave a little of their crops unharvested: When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien; I am the LORD your G.o.d.2 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the LORD your G.o.d.3 In other words, G.o.d didn"t want farmers to behave like Wal-Mart, but rather, to leave a little money on the table for the working poor. So Ruth began gleaning in the field of Boaz, who was a relative of Naomi"s dead husband. Boaz was impressed by Ruth"s industry and by what he had heard of her loyalty to Naomi (who meanwhile had changed her name to Mara, which means "bitter," because she was mad at G.o.d). Boaz was very kind to Ruth, making sure she was not hara.s.sed by the fieldworkers and giving her water and food. He told his reapers to leave some of what they had picked for her. Boaz even asked her not to glean in another field, so Ruth gleaned in Boaz"s field until the end of the barley and wheat harvests.
At the end of the harvest, Ruth had no more reason to hang around Boaz"s fields, but Naomi recognized that a May-December relationship was developing. She went into matchmaking mode and told Ruth to bathe herself and put on scented olive oil, the ancient version of Chanel No. 5. Then Ruth was supposed to dress up and go to the threshing floor. This was the place where the barley or wheat was beaten to separate the inner kernel of grain from the outer chaff. The kernels were heavier and would fall to the ground while the chaff would be blown away. Naomi told Ruth to watch for Boaz, see where he lay down after eating and drinking, then go to him, uncover his feet, and lie down there.
Ruth followed these instructions. In the middle of the night, Boaz was startled awake and looked down to find his favorite gleaner lying at his feet. He asked who she was. Ruth told him and added, "Spread your cloak over your servant, for you are next-of-kin." "Spreading the cloak" was a metaphor for taking in marriage. Ruth was proposing to Boaz. He gratefully accepted and thanked her for pursuing him rather than a younger man.
But there was one fly in the ointment. By custom, if a man died childless, his brother was to marry the widow and father children in the name of the dead man. In the Book of Ruth, the custom had apparently broadened to include not just brothers but the closest male relative. But Boaz was not Ruth"s closest male relative; another man was ahead in line for her hand. Thankfully for Boaz, that man couldn"t marry Ruth without jeopardizing his own inheritance, so he pa.s.sed up the opportunity. With that, Boaz married Ruth, and they had a son named Obed, who was King David"s grandfather.
What Really Happened at the Threshing Floor?
Let"s zero in on the action. Scholars have long puzzled over the exact sense of Naomi"s instructions to Ruth and her execution of them at the threshing floor. Naomi"s instructions were: Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do.4 Ruth obeyed, and this happened: When Boaz had eaten and drunk, and he was in a contented mood, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then she came stealthily and uncovered his feet, and lay down.5 What was Ruth doing? Why did she uncover Boaz"s feet? Some scholars have suggested she was waking him up by pulling the blankets off his feet and freezing his toes. But why go to all that trouble? Why not simply talk to Boaz during the day and say, "Hey, you heard what happened to Sickly. I"m available now, and you"re looking pretty good"? Why do something as strange as crawling in bed with his feet and waking him up? Is this some kind of romantic chick thing, or are we misunderstanding the action?
You know well by now that the term "feet" in the Hebrew Bible can be a euphemism for the genitals. The Israelites must have known that the size of a man"s feet correlates to the size of his boneless appendage. So perhaps when Ruth uncovered Boaz"s "feet," she was really uncovering his private parts. But if so, it still doesn"t fully explain what happened. In fact, it just raises more questions. Was she trying to make Boaz think they"d had s.e.x so that he would feel obligated to marry her? This seems unlikely. Yes, Boaz was probably a little tipsy from "eating and drinking." That"s what it means when it says that he was "in a contented mood" (literally, "his heart was good"). Harvest was a time of celebration, after all. But he wasn"t like Lot-so drunk that he couldn"t remember whether or not he"d had s.e.x. (That"s drunk.) Besides, he seemed very pleased that Ruth had come after him and doesn"t seem to have felt coerced.
Who"s Uncovered?
Enter Kirsten Nielsen, a Dutch Bible scholar who wants to save us from our confusion. In her commentary on Ruth, Nielsen proposes a new and unique solution to the quandary of this pa.s.sage.6 She begins by noting the s.e.xual overtones of this episode. It takes place at a threshing floor, which is linked with celebration, as we have seen, and also with fertility rites, because nothing put ancient peoples in a squirrelly mood like a good harvest. Ruth waited until Boaz had eaten and drunk, which would have loosened him up s.e.xually (and given him a good set of beer goggles, just in case). By bathing, perfuming, and dressing, she made herself irresistible to Boaz, Nielsen says. Nielsen also notes the obvious: the verb "to lie," a key word in the story, is often used in the Hebrew Bible as an idiom for s.e.xual relations. Finally, as we have seen, the word "feet" is a common euphemism for the s.e.xual organs, and the verb "uncover" is a.s.sociated with an idiom for having s.e.x.
Had she been at the top of her game, Nielsen might also have noted one other expression with s.e.xual overtones. Naomi told Ruth not to make herself known to Boaz until after he had finished eating and drinking and then she was to know the exact place where he lay down and go to him there.7 The verb "to know," of course, is the Bible"s favorite wink-and-nudge term for s.e.xual relations.
Nielsen also points out that the word for "feet" in this story is not the usual one in the Hebrew Bible. The word in Ruth is rare. It occurs in only one other place in the Hebrew Bible, where it is used in tandem with "arms" and clearly means "legs."8 But this word for "feet" can also mean the place of the feet, as in "the foot of the bed." When Ruth lay down "at his feet" all night, it clearly means at the foot of where Boaz was sleeping, not next to his actual toes. But in verses 4 and 7, where Ruth uncovered "his feet," it is more ambiguous. Did Ruth uncover Boaz"s actual feet, or did she clear a place around his legs? Nielsen and many scholars and translators think it refers to a place, not a body part. Fair enough.
Then Nielsen springs her original contribution on us. The key to understanding this pa.s.sage lies in what precisely was uncovered, she says. The traditional interpretation says Ruth uncovered his feet. Some take this to mean she literally uncovered his feet, which makes no sense. Others think it means they had s.e.xual intercourse. Indeed, the verb "to uncover" is part of an expression, "to uncover the nakedness of," that is especially common in Leviticus 18 as a euphemism for having s.e.x. But further consideration makes this less likely because there is no reference anywhere in the Hebrew Bible to a woman uncovering a man"s nakedness. Whenever the expression "uncover the nakedness of" is used, it means to "uncover" a female, meaning to have s.e.x with her. For example, Levitical law says, "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister,"9 and goes on to prohibit "uncovering the nakedness" of other close female relatives. But when it talks about uncovering the nakedness of a male relative, it means having s.e.x with that man"s wife. This is what the otherwise confusing prohibition in Leviticus 18:7 a means: "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother." Ruth"s uncovering of Boaz"s "feet" can"t have the same meaning as uncovering the nakedness of a man in Leviticus. There is no biblical support for it. The closest parallels are the story of Lot being tricked into s.e.x by his daughters (see chapter 18) and the law about a woman who grabs a man"s genitals (see chapter 12).
So what did Ruth uncover? Nielsen thinks the answer is (ta-dah!) Ruth herself. She proposes that what we witness in this story is Ruth"s "h.e.l.lo, big boy" moment. This is not explicit in the text, but Nielsen says the context and other texts in the Bible indicate that Ruth was communicating her availability and showing Boaz the goods.
There is support for this in other Bible pa.s.sages where a woman uncovers herself. The prime one is Ezekiel"s notorious depiction of Jerusalem and Samaria as lewd wh.o.r.es: When she carried on her prost.i.tution openly and exposed her nakedness, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister.10 This and the other cases of women uncovering themselves are, admittedly, all described with disapproval, but Nielsen argues that the whole point in telling the story of Ruth was to show how she was an extraordinary character who did extraordinary things and was rewarded for them. Incidentally, there are a few examples of men uncovering themselves. These include the infamous story of Noah"s drunkenness11 and David"s dancing before the ark.12 Noah"s exposure was clearly unintentional, and David"s case is ambiguous because he was wearing some clothing, though it was very flimsy.
Nielsen finds further support for her interpretation in parallels between the story of Ruth and that of Tamar in Genesis 38 (see chapter 8). Both women were widows for whom the prospect of remarriage in the normal course of events was dim. Both were compelled to take matters into their own hands and to use trickery to get what they needed. Both used their s.e.xuality to accomplish their goals. Tamar dressed as a prost.i.tute. Ruth took off her clothes and gave Boaz a show. Her nakedness was (duh!) an invitation to Boaz to take her as a wife before she pranced around nude to other leading members of the Bethlehem community.
The Naked Truth: Evaluating the Proposal Nielsen"s proposal is intriguing and inventive. It clarifies an episode that is otherwise difficult to understand. If Ruth was trying to seduce Boaz or even to allure him, it certainly made better sense for her to undress herself rather than him.
Unfortunately, and we say this with real regret, there is one big problem with Nielsen"s proposal. The form of the verb "to uncover" used in Ruth 3:4, 7 (piel) is transitive but not reflexive. For you non-English majors, this means that it must have an object. It must uncover something, and it cannot mean to uncover oneself or to undress. The latter meaning requires a reflexive form of the verb (either niphal or hithpael). Nielsen recognizes this, so she does not claim that the verb in Ruth can have a reflexive meaning-not exactly. Instead, she says that its object is "implicit." In other words, everybody knows Ruth uncovered something, but the text doesn"t tell you what.
Sorry, gang. This is fudging. Nielsen"s proposal is a semantic gimmick gussied up in a snazzy nightie.
But there is one possible escape hatch. Nielsen cites one other case where this same verb form has an implicit object and a reflexive meaning. She says, The verb "uncover" is used in Isa. 57:8 without a direct object, but with an implicit "your genitals."...The woman turns her back on Yahweh, uncovers herself, and makes the bed wide when she buys the love of the bed from her lovers.13 The problem is that the meaning of Isaiah 57:8 is not as clear as Nielsen implies. The NRSV has a footnote about the line using the verb "uncover"-"Meaning of Heb uncertain"-and the NRSV actually translates it with an object: For, in deserting me, you have uncovered your bed, you have gone up to it, you have made it wide.
"Bed" could even be translated as the object of all three verbs in these lines: "you have uncovered, raised up, and widened your bed." In any case, the fact that there is only one other place in the entire Hebrew Bible that has the meaning Nielsen wants to a.s.sign to the form of "uncover" in Ruth-and that this place is uncertain-seriously weakens her proposed interpretation. If the form of the verb in Ruth were reflexive, Nielsen"s interpretation would make perfect sense. But scholars have long recognized that this is not the case, and that is the reason why no one else has proposed her theory.
We are left with the text in Ruth that states that Ruth uncovered Boaz"s feet or legs or the foot of his "bed." Exactly why she did this and what happened at the threshing floor remain mysteries. But perhaps that is the point. With a story this loaded with romantic attraction and innuendo, maybe the author left it to readers to imagine exactly what happened under Boaz"s covers.
22.
Did Jacob Use Ancient v.i.a.g.r.a?
FOR MOST SINGLE GUYS, going from no s.e.xual partners to four in the s.p.a.ce of a week would be cause for celebration. But when it happened to Jacob the patriarch, he must have learned that the human body is not an unending font of s.e.xual energy. Almost overnight his tent flap became a revolving door for spouses and concubines wanting to leave with more than they came with. We can only imagine that he longed for a night alone to recharge his batteries and just plain think. Poor Jake learned the hard way to "be careful what you wish for because you just might get it."
That"s why it seems possible to us that Jacob had a little help in rising to the occasion night after night. Let"s examine the hard facts to see if he might have relied on an ancient form of v.i.a.g.r.a.
Big Love But first, just how did Jacob end up with four s.e.xual partners? No, he didn"t go hog wild with an Asian mail-order-wife scheme. Rather, as we know from chapter 14, he was tricked into marrying the "wild cow," Leah, when he was really in love with Leah"s younger sister, "the ewe," Rachel. But we haven"t yet mentioned that these two sisters brought other s.e.xual partners into the relationship as well-their respective handmaids, Zilpah and Bilhah, who then became Jacob"s concubines. To Jacob, it must have seemed like an embarra.s.sment of riches (at least for the first couple of nights), especially since concubines were basically female s.e.x slaves. In the world of the Bible, they were also sometimes called upon to act as surrogate mothers, usually when the wife was childless. But in this case, the concubines were pressed into service like overused backup incubators as Leah and Rachel competed in a high-stakes game of fertility, family status, and love.
Upon marrying Jacob, Leah and Rachel wasted no time in trying to build their dynasties through him.1 This heated s.e.xual compet.i.tion lasted most of their adult lives. Leah took an early lead, giving birth to four sons in a row. The Bible says that because Leah was unloved, G.o.d opened her womb. Rachel, who was barren, complained about this to Jacob, who we a.s.sume was doing his best to impregnate his favorite wife, but her complaint only angered him. Who can blame him? By that time he was probably feeling as sore as an overworked mule, hobbling around the camp and longing for his bachelor days.
So Rachel did what any desperate woman of that era did: she made her husband sleep with her servant. What Jacob thought of this is unrecorded, but Bilhah bore two sons by him, and these kids were credited to Rachel"s account. Leah, meanwhile, had stopped having children, but sensing a ninth-inning comeback by Rachel, she brought in her relief pitcher, the handmaid Zilpah, who bore two sons by Jacob. At that point, Jake the Stud had eight children. And here is where the plot thickens, because the births of his final five children involved a plant with very mysterious properties.
Harry Potter and the Bible One day, Reuben, Jacob"s oldest son, found some mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother, Leah. Apparently this was a big deal, because Rachel found out about it and begged Leah to give her some. Leah refused at first, until Rachel promised that Leah could "borrow" Jacob for a night in exchange for the mandrakes. Jacob then slept with Leah and she bore her fifth and sixth sons, Issachar and Zebulun, as well as a daughter, Dinah. Rachel also bore two sons, Joseph and Benjamin.
What were these mystery plants, these mandrakes, and why did the Bible mention them? The story seems to imply that they played a role in the production of Jacob"s last five children-in Leah"s regaining fertility and in Rachel"s overcoming barrenness. Fans of Harry Potter have a head start on this answer because in that series the young wizards-in-training are taught about the properties of mandrakes.2 In Harry Potter"s world, mandrakes restore people and animals that have been petrified, transfigured, or cursed to their original state. But mandrakes are also extremely dangerous. Their tops are pleasant enough-leafy and purplish green. But their roots are small babies whose cry is fatal to human beings.
J. K. Rowling"s description is obviously exaggerated, but it"s not pure fiction. Mandrakes are real plants. They have long been rumored to hold magical powers. And in fact, they do have narcotic properties and have been used at different times as an anesthetic to induce sleep and as a stimulant. The botanical name of mandrakes is mandragora officinarum. They are native to the eastern Mediterranean area, so they grow near Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine, especially in rocky places. They are a tuber or root vegetable, a species of the potato family, and as with potatoes and carrots, their underground root is their fruit. Their color is similar to the description in Harry Potter. They have dark green leaves around a purple flower, and their leafy tops grow close to the ground, like lettuce.
Here is where mandrakes get weird: the roots do often look like a small person, similar to what"s described in Harry Potter. They are usually about the size of a little apple but have been reported to grow several feet in length. The humanlike shape and the narcotic properties of mandrake roots have given rise to superst.i.tions and legends about them over the ages. In the first century CE, the Jewish historian Josephus reported that the mandrake plant would kill a person who pulled it up.3 In the Middle Ages, a more colorful legend developed. Mandrakes were reputed to grow under gallows. They supposedly sprang from the s.e.m.e.n or urine of the men who were hanged there and resembled them. When uprooted, they were thought to emit a horrible scream that would instantly kill any person or animal within earshot. Shakespeare alludes to this superst.i.tion in Romeo and Juliet, although in his version the effect of hearing the mandrake"s scream is insanity rather than death.
Alack, alack, is it not like that I, So early waking, what with loathsome smells, And shrieks like mandrakes "torn out of the earth That living mortals, hearing them, run mad.4 J. K. Rowling obviously adapted these legends in writing her popular wizard books.
But the relevant legends for our story go back much further. Because mandrake roots sometimes looked like a tiny woman, they were thought to be able to make women fertile. They were also purported to be an aphrodisiac that could be used, as a prominent Bible dictionary delicately puts it, "to excite voluptuousness."5 Think of them as the Spanish fly or green M&Ms of their day. There may actually be something to this legend, since their narcotic properties could lower a person"s usual inhibitions.
Ancient languages confirm the connection between mandrakes and s.e.x. The Hebrew word for mandrakes (dudaim) sounds like the word for love (dod). Some even suggest translating the word as "love-plants" or "love-apples." The name suggests that the ancient Israelites were well aware of the plant"s properties. The name "love-apples" is especially appropriate in the one other place in the Bible where mandrakes are mentioned. In Song of Solomon, the woman summons her lover and promises to give him her love (dod) "when the mandrakes have given forth their fragrance."6 It doesn"t take a fan of erotic literature to understand that the image of mandrakes blossoming and opening their leaves or flowers to emit fragrance is probably a metaphor for female arousal. The Arabs too had a nickname for mandrakes-"Satan"s apples" or "the devil"s apples," a clear recognition that mandrake-eating could lead to wild times.
It"s no wonder, then, that a tussle broke out between Leah and Rachel over the plant. Both women wanted to bear more children for Jacob. Both seem to have believed that mandrakes could enhance s.e.xual arousal and performance. But whether the mandrakes actually worked is hard to say. Genesis credits G.o.d rather than the mandrakes for the additional births, explaining that G.o.d heard Leah"s prayer and remembered Rachel and opened her womb. But from the point of view of the two competing sisters, it"s abundantly clear that they believed they were using an ancient fertility drug.
And they may not have kept the mandrakes to themselves. While mandrakes are a.s.sociated explicitly with female fertility and female s.e.xual arousal in Genesis and Song of Solomon, it"s not beyond the pale to imagine that Jacob needed some help as well. At this point in life, he had fathered eight children. His equipment must have been tired. He was probably older than both Leah and Rachel, about middle age, perhaps older. He was probably looking for any kind of stimulation he could get. Leah, whose appearance and charm had never done much for him in the bedroom, may have especially wanted to share her mandrakes with him. Leah had also stopped bearing children, suggesting that she may have reached menopause.
We cannot know for certain, but it seems quite possible that Jacob used the mandrakes as a kind of ancient v.i.a.g.r.a, and that the final four tribes of Israel were born with the help of the biblical ancestor of the little blue pill.
23.
Were Samson and Delilah into S&M?
THREE THOUSAND YEARS before Fabio first graced the cover of a romance novel, there lived Samson, history"s original tough-"n"-tender hero. Like Fabio, Samson was a long-haired, l.u.s.ty strongman who could heat up a battlefield or a bedroom. And like Fabio, portrayals always show him locked in a steamy embrace with some exotic woman, the tragic lover caught in a pa.s.sionate yet doomed romance.
But the similarities end there. While Fabio went meekly into half-stardom doing b.u.t.ter-subst.i.tute commercials, Samson lived in constant conflict with his enemies (and, as we"ll see, his lovers), and his life ended with a bang. Every church and synagogue kid knows that Samson liked to inflict pain on his enemies. But one scholar prompts us to ask a strange question: did he also like to receive pain from his s.e.xual partners?
Let"s back up for those of you who snoozed through the Book of Judges in Sunday or Sabbath school. Samson was no ordinary guy. An angel foretold his birth and commanded his parents to raise him as a n.a.z.irite, which was a person who was separated or consecrated, as the Hebrew-derived term implies. n.a.z.irites dedicated their lives to G.o.d and had to follow three rules: (1) avoid grapes and all products made from grapes; (2) never cut their hair; and (3) never come in contact with corpses.1 In Samson"s particular case, though not in the case of all n.a.z.irites, not cutting his hair gave him superhuman strength.
But like many strongmen, Samson also had a strong weakness. He enjoyed too much the company of women, and the wrong women at that. The first woman in his life was his wife, an anonymous Philistine whom Samson married against his parents" wishes. We"ll spare you the gory details, but this poor, nameless gal came to an unfortunate end when she and her father were burned to death by their fellow Philistines as a result of their a.s.sociation with Samson. Because of this, Samson went completely postal and killed one thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. (Didn"t they have a two-week waiting period for those things?)2 The second woman mentioned in Samson"s story was a prost.i.tute he visited in Gaza. When the Philistines discovered that the Big Guy, who was their sworn enemy, was in their city having a tryst with one of their ladies of the night, the men plotted to ambush him as he left through the gate at the break of day. But Samson finished his business prematurely and left at midnight, not even bothering to have a smoke. On the way out he removed Gaza"s city gates, posts and all, and carried them on his shoulders all the way to Hebron.3 This qualified as his morning workout, and later he had a shake for lunch and a sensible dinner.
Your Lyin" Heart This brings us to Delilah, the only woman in the narrative with a name, and the only one, we are told, whom Samson loved (cue the dramatic warning music). But let us clear up some misconceptions about dear Delilah that remain in the collective memory. She is most often thought of as a deceitful and conniving woman, a femme fatale who resorted to trickery to get what she wanted. But in actual fact, Delilah never tried to trick or hoodwink Samson, and she was marvelously upfront about what she wanted-to learn the source of his amazing power. Her initial request was blunt and unambiguous. "Please tell me what makes your strength so great, and how you could be bound, so that one could subdue you."4 No feminine subtlety there.
At the same time, her motives were selfish because in seeking to hand over her lover to the lords of the Philistines, she hoped to receive the tidy sum of eleven hundred pieces of silver from each of them. Why would she do this? Well, why not? The Bible never says Delilah loved Samson. Her motive was apparently less about heart strings and more about purse strings. She was probably a Philistine herself, so she may also have been acting out of loyalty to her people. If she could turn a profit in the process, so much the better.
So three different times Delilah asked Samson to reveal the source of his strength, and each time he gave her a false answer. (Who was the deceiver, then?) First he told her that he could be bound by seven fresh bowstrings. When she did this, he snapped them like thread. Next he told her that using new ropes would do the trick, but he snapped those too. The third time he instructed her to braid his hair and make it tight with a pin. This reference to his hair implies that he was giving a now-you"re-getting-warmer hint at the truth. But this didn"t work either. He remained as strong as ever.
Finally, Delilah exploited his affection with a cla.s.sic female strategy: "How can you say, "I love you," when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me three times now and have not told me what makes your strength so great."5 This major-league pout worked (don"t they always?), and Samson, fed up with her badgering, told her the truth. Then he dozed off in her lap. His head was promptly shaved and he was taken prisoner by the Philistines, never to escape. They gouged out his eyes and made him a slave and showpiece at their ancient World Wrestling Federation event.
Egads. Women.
The Games People Play While forgiving Samson his poor relationship choices-after all, he didn"t have access to eHarmony"s twenty-nine-point personality test-we can still ask, is it possible to know anything more about this iconic biblical couple? Lori Rowlett, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, thinks we can, and she offers an interpretation that will shock many Bible readers the way it shocked even us.6 She believes the relationship between Samson and Delilah contains an element of kinkiness that can be read according to the rules and codes of sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic s.e.x games. We"re not real familiar with S/M terms and practices (and our wives very much appreciate that), but to understand this theory we dive ever so briefly into the strange world of leather and love.
S/M involves a partner who is dominant and one who is submissive. Rowlett says that Delilah can be seen as the dominant partner with Samson in the role of the submissive partner-or "butch bottom," to use her term. She points to the fact that Samson surrendered himself willingly to Delilah and allowed her to tie him up. Rowlett sees Delilah the Philistine as the exotic Other who dominated the Israelite Samson in a tale of bondage and humiliation that fit the pattern of sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic s.e.x play. Even their banter can be interpreted this way, she says: "The constant give and take between the two lovers resembles S/M role-play, complete with ritual questions, hair fetishism and other power games."7 In Rowlett"s a.n.a.lysis, Samson got bored with winning every time and became tired of Delilah"s constant questions, so he engaged in an act of deeper submission by revealing his secret to her. This made him even more vulnerable and put her in a position of greater authority over him. In effect, she became the supreme dominatrix who now had complete power. The mighty hero who always dominated others was reduced to a submissive partner whose fate was no longer in his own hands. At the same time Delilah too was transformed from a deceiving temptress into a domineering mistress.
Wowsers. Are we still in Kansas?
A Painful Proposal This is surely an interpretation of the Samson and Delilah story that few of us have encountered before. Before casting a critical eye on it, we should begin by pointing out that elsewhere in her article Rowlett makes some astute and important observations about the power dynamics present within the story itself and in the context out of which it emerged. She observes that the play between Samson and Delilah reflects the cat-and-mouse game G.o.d played with the Israelites throughout the Book of Judges, and it also underscores the political agenda of the author of the story. Reading the narrative from the perspective of S/M s.e.xual games is a creative way of acknowledging and exploring these aspects of the text and its formation.
But that doesn"t mean that the text describes Samson and Delilah actually engaging in S/M erotic play. As Rowlett states, the ultimate purpose of S/M is to achieve bodily pleasure. Yet there is no indication in the story that this was the purpose or outcome of what Samson and Delilah did. According to the story, Delilah"s primary motivation was money. Samson"s motives were less clear, but we are never told that his interaction with Delilah over the source of his power gave him bodily pleasure. In fact, he was asleep when she weaved his hair and bound him with various cords. Sleeping during s.e.x is, we think, a universal sign of disengagement.
And what about the fact that Delilah herself did not actually cut Samson"s hair but had a man come in to cut it for her? Rowlett simply ignores this fact. She also does not explain why, each time he was bound, Samson the Supposedly Submissive broke free and a.s.serted his dominance over Delilah. That doesn"t fit the pattern Rowlett proposes.
Other questions pop up when we take into account the wider context and recurring patterns of Samson"s story. A few chapters earlier, when the Philistines persuaded Samson"s wife to pry from him the answer to a riddle he had posed, she, like Delilah, appealed to his affection to get him to spill the beans. "You hate me, you do not really love me. You have asked a riddle of my people, but you have not explained it to me."8 Here, as with Delilah, Samson was worn down by her constant pestering, so he eventually relented and told her the answer to the riddle, which she pa.s.sed on to the Philistines.
Another scene also antic.i.p.ated what would happen later with Delilah when Samson"s fellow Judahites bound him with rope and handed him over to the Philistines.9 The rope melted like flax, and he reached for the nearest jawbone of donkey and went on the kind of Incredible Hulklike rampage he was becoming famous for at the Palestine Police Department.
Rowlett does not try to give an S/M spin to these earlier scenes, nor should she, because there is no evidence to support it. But the echoes with the Delilah story suggest that the author wanted the reader to understand and interpret the relationship between Samson and Delilah in light of what had happened earlier in his life. Imposing an S/M reading on the later scenes runs the risk of making them so unusual that the similarities with the earlier part of the story are missed or lost.
A final issue concerns the appropriateness of reading a story that is more than two thousand years old through the lens of S/M s.e.x play. Sadomasochism is a relatively recent term that is partially named after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, a late-nineteenth-century Austrian novelist who wrote extensively about the s.e.xual pleasure he received when he was verbally or physically abused. It may strike some as misguided to apply such a modern concept to such an old story.
At the same time there is ample evidence that people in the biblical world engaged in all kinds of unusual and, in some cases, illegal activities in the pursuit of s.e.xual gratification, including rape, incest, and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. These still take place today, and it"s not inconceivable that some people in the ancient world would have derived satisfaction from the experience of pain and submission. But is it part of the story of Samson and Delilah? We think not.
To be fair, Rowlett never comes right out and says that the text describes Samson and Delilah engaging in S/M s.e.xual activity. Her intent is to explain what kind of interpretation of the story emerges when it is read from a sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic perspective. Such readings have become quite popular in some scholarly circles during the past couple of decades. The Bible has been put in conversation with unusual and atypical aspects of human experience, and the results have run the gamut from insightful to bizarre. It is, in a sense, a way of playing with the text, but it is not, in our opinion, a way that yields much about the Bible story itself.
So Samson"s popular image remains intact, in our opinion. He was a strong guy whose lovers exploited his affection like an Achilles" heel. He made a career of killing the enemies of Israel-even killing thousands in his final suicidal act at a great arena-but we"re far from convinced that he enjoyed pain and humiliation as part of his lovemaking. Like Fabio, he was probably a romantic at heart.
Conclusion.
There you have it. We hope you"ve enjoyed our tour of bizarre and bawdy Bible interpretations. You probably didn"t guess ahead of time that it would include forays into such topics as pimping, depression, and a.s.sorted s.e.xual proclivities. And this was just the whirlwind seven-day tour. There are plenty more fascinating interpretations that we hope to explore in future books.
We"ve considered a wide range of proposals in this book. Some, like the suggestion that Joseph was a cross-dresser, are preposterous. Others, like the idea that Eve was created from Adam"s p.e.n.i.s bone or that the Bible commands pubic shaving, we found to be more reasonable, if still shocking. And who could ever forget the unsavory but plausible interpretation of Ehud using Eglon"s toilet as an escape hatch? As weird and strange as some of these proposals have been, they give us a deeper appreciation of the variety of themes covered in the Bible. And who knows? Perhaps exposure to the seamy side of the Bible will inspire people to enter the field of Bible scholarship, seeing that they can explore s.e.xy and outrageous topics like these.
We"ve seen that Bible pa.s.sages can be interpreted in many different ways. Some scholars study language and word meanings, while others focus on archaeology and ancient cultural practices. They like to talk in fancy terms like "interpretive lens" about the approach they use to interpretation. Some of the lenses that have been used in this book are feminism, sociological a.n.a.lysis, and Freudian psychology. One of the reasons for the number and diversity of approaches to the Bible is that they are all dealing with people and events that are thousands of years old. It"s not an easy task to describe what people felt and did and thought that long ago-which is why there are sometimes more theories than facts. But as this book shows, it is a task that can produce scintillating, provocative, and even convincing results.
The Bible consistently reminds us that religion, s.e.x, and other sensitive issues often go hand in hand. This does not make the Bible any less the Good Book. It simply shows that the Good Book is also the Real Book. We trust that you"ve been entertained and informed and that you"ve been prodded to consider some old stories in new ways. We also hope that you"ll keep thinking about them-indeed, some of them may prove hard to forget.
About the Authors.
JOHN KALTNER is an a.s.sociate professor of religious studies at Rhodes College, where he teaches courses on the Bible, Islam, and Arabic. He is the author of several books, including Ishmael Instructs Isaac: An Introduction of the Qur"an for Bible Readers and The Old Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content, Which he co-wrote with Steven L. McKenzie. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.
STEVEN L. McKENZIE is professor of Hebrew Bible and old Testament at Rhodes College. He is a co-leader of the Middle East Travel Seminar, which tours Syria, Jordan, the Sinai, Israel, and Greece each spring. He has written and edited many books, including King David: A Biography and How to Read the Bible. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.
JOEL KILPATRICK is an award-winning reporter and creator of LarkNews.com, the world"s leading Christian satire website, which received the 2005 Gospel Music a.s.sociation"s Grady Nutt Humor Award. His work has been featured in Time, the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, and on CBS Radio. He lives with his wife and family in the Los Angeles area.
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