Sara's Blog

I’ve been too busy with finals, transferring schools, reading, and being too lazy to write more, so here’s a poetic interlude.

Unto what pinnacles of desperate heights
Do good men climb to seize their good!
What abnegation to all mortal joys,
What vast abstraction from the world is theirs!
O what insane abuses, desperate pangs,
Annihilations of the Self, soul-suicides,
They wreak upon themselves to purchase - God!
A God to guide through these poor temporal days
Their comings, goings, workings of heart,
Obsess indeed, their natures utterly;
Meanwhile preparing, as in recompense,
Mansions celestial for their timeless bliss.
And to what end is this Holiness; this God
That arrogates their intellect and soul?
To none! Their offered lives are not so grand,
So active, or so sweet as many a one’s
That is undedicate, being reason-swayed;
And their sole mission is to drag, entice
And push mankind to those same cloudy crags
Where they first breathed the madness-giving air
That made them feel as angels, that are less than men.

-Wilfred Owen (completed 6 November 1912)

The Book of Ruth is only four chapters long and can be read in one sitting. This has to be the best book in the entire Bible; I’m not saying this because of its length (Though that certainly doesn’t hurt!) but because this book has NO murder nor mutilation nor rape nor slavery in it! It is a story of honesty and dedication and little else. It is sad that it seems that the only reason the story was included is probably because it relates a piece of King David’s lineage.

There is, of course, one glaring problem with Ruth: it posits that all the joys of a woman’s life comes from having men in their lives and all their sadness due to their absence. (They put the “penis” in “happiness!” …Er, happeniss.) Sadly, it is also the entire basis of the story, but since this is the presumption of entire Bible the reasons mentioned in the former paragraph render it tolerable indeed, at least compared to all the other books.

I’ll just summarize the whole story for you if you don’t want to go read it yourself:

Naomi and her two Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and the eponymous Ruth, are childless widows. On the way back to the Promised Land from Moab, Naomi urges her daughters to return to their families because it is unlikely that she could ever have another son to marry them (and fulfill that duty as mandated by their customs) and even if she did, they would not like to wait long enough for him to reach maturity. Orpah goes home, but Ruth remains out of love and devotion for her mother-in-law and swears to remain by her side until death separates them. They travel to Bethlehem. Naomi (whose name means “sweet” or “pleasant”) declares that her life is empty and bitter and requests that she be known as Mara (meaning “bitter”).

Naomi’s late husband had a relative by the name of Boaz whom still lives nearby. Boaz is a kind, honest, and prosperous man and Ruth decides to glean missed crops from his field (as per a philanthropic law noted in Leviticus 19:10). He had heard of Ruth’s goodness and favors her for it, giving her food and ensuring that her harvest will be bountiful. Naomi is heartened by the kindness shown to her.

Emboldened, Naomi applies to her daughter-in-law to seek marriage with Boaz by claiming her right to wed a brother (or in this case, near kinsman) of her late husband. Boaz realizes that he ought to have seen that this was his duty before and promises to marry Ruth if he cannot find a better husband for her.

The very next day Boaz brought the elders of the town together and offered Naomi’s husband’s land (note that women have not been allowed to own land [or anything at all in many cases] until recently) and there is interest shown in it until Boaz says that Ruth must become the wife of the new owner. Afraid to jeopardize their lineage (because the son-less widow’s child will be considered the child of her late husband and not that of the child’s actual father), all decline and Boaz assumes his duty and marries Ruth. They are happy together and have a son. Naomi claims him and her life is sweet and full again. Ruth is praised for her goodness.

¹⁵ … For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.”

-Ruth 4:15
It is rare in this book that a woman, much less a foreigner daughter-in-law, should be considered better than any, man let alone seven sons, but of course that lovely sentiment is followed up with:

¹⁶ Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. ¹⁷ The women living there said, “Naomi has a son.”

-Ruth 4:16-17
Of course, the true value of a woman is her ability to be the dirt for man’s seed and, with good luck, the seed will grow into a boy. Would Ruth have been thus praised if all her children were girls? It is doubtful.

Then it is revealed that the baby, named Obed, is to be David’s paternal grandfather. The end!

I haven’t stopped reading the Bible, I’ve just gotten a bit tired of writing. Now that I have three additional books behind me I figured it was time to play catch-up.

Judges is a collection of stories of fairly inconsequential and mostly unsuccessful leaders of Israel between Joshua and Samuel.

Right off the bat, 1:6 describes the mutilation of prisoners of war, then shortly thereafter they show mercy to another treasonous ally (1:23-25) as was done with Rahab in Joshua 2, again contradicting God’s direct order as given in Deuteronomy 7:1-6.

For a short time, a woman named Deborah led Israel and was one of the few successes in the Book of Judges (Chapters 4-5). Her companion Barak was too fearful to begin a campaign against an army of Jabin on his own and Deborah lords over him that her accompaniment will mean that the glory will all belong to a woman (4:9). (It looks like Barak doesn’t capitulate to sexist bullshit like his contemporaries do. Good for him!) Later, a Shechemite leader by the name of Abimelech has an underling kill him to escape the shame of being badly (possibly mortally) wounded by a woman (9:50-57). Even the NIV note on this says that it was God’s intention to humiliate him by giving him such a “dishonorable” death.

Remember how it was forbidden to sacrifice your children to other magical fairies in Leviticus 18:21? Well, in 11:30-40 Jephthah swears to, in exchange for a military victory, sacrifice the first thing that comes out of his house to greet him when he returns home. It so happens that the first “thing” to greet him is his beloved only child, a daughter apparently not important enough to name. (Um… didn’t he think that was kind of likely when he made the deal?) Jephthah sacrifices her after giving her a bit of time to “bewail [her] virginity” (because the worst thing that can ever happen to you is to not be selected by a man). God does not stop this murder as he does that of Isaac, and the human sacrifice is accepted… maybe not since women apparently aren’t human.

11:14-18 backs up what Numbers 20:17-21 said about the Edomites not allowing Israel to pass through their land, which was contradicted in Deuteronomy 2:26-29.

For the second time since the beginning of the Bible (the other being the overall story of Moses), I found some things which could be applied to or used by modern people. Imagine that!

• In both 6:17-22 and 6:36-40 Gideon asks God directly for proof/signs of his will and presence. Why are these things to be taken on pure faith today? It is a very common tenet of modern religion that signs are to not be expected and that faith, the kind that even God’s chosen leaders of Israel did not have, is some manner of virtue.
• Joash saves his prophet-son’s life by declaring that if Baal is a true god that he can fight his own battles (6:30-32). Why can this be applied to someone else’s god but not one’s own? (i.e. What do religions need politically active social conservatives for? If their god is displeased with some victimless “sin” then that god can punish it on their own. You know, if that god exists.)
• 9:8-15 seems to say that only those without value to society seek political office. You should go read this one - I thought it very clever.

After a string of mostly forgettable recollections leader/judges, the Book of Judges is finished with two horrific stories:

Chapters 13-16 impart the story of Samson. When most people think of this character, their minds automatically go directly to Delilah, whose deception herald his downfall. Though many outside factors conspire against him, Samson is also largely responsible for his own troubles. He was consecrated even before birth to be a Nazirite - hardly a fair deal at all - then breaks the rules he never agreed to be bound to. He also has a taste for (generally forbidden) Philistine women, commits mass murder, and tortures helpless animals in part of his revenge acts. Samson a textbook psychopath.

The story contained in chapters 19-21 is even more gruesome than Samson’s story. It begins with a Levite retrieving his concubine from her father’s house and lodging with a Benjaminite. During the night all the men of the city pull a Sodom and ask the Levite out for some bum fun. The host becomes indignant and offers up his guest’s concubine and his own daughter (he has to mention that she’s a virgin, of course, so they know that she’s worthwhile). The townsmen refused, but the concubine was thrown out of the house in effort to appease the horde; she was raped and abused the whole night through and as dawn came she dragged herself to the doorstep where her owner was sleeping. He seemed to have had a refreshing night’s sleep.

²⁷ When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. ²⁸ He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.

-19:27-28

After reaching home, he divided her into twelve pieces, sending them around to all the tribes of Israel. Everybody else in the country seems to be more upset by this crime than the man who sent them fragments of his murdered sex slave. All the other tribes band together to exterminate all the Benjaminites for the crimes of a few. After a few initial unsuccessful attempts (during which God tells them to fight but they lose anyway), they ultimately reduce the tribe to 600 men. Shortly thereafter they experience remorse, not for the innocents they slaughtered but for trying to commit genocide against their relatives. Because all the men had sworn to never give their daughter-chattel to a Benjaminite, they decide to go to the only city from whence no soldiers were sent to commit mass murder and kill all but the 400 virgin women. They give these women to the Benjaminite men but there were not enough for all the men so they concoct a scheme to kidnap virgins from a festival to fill the void.

Maybe if I’d just said, “People in the time of Judges were disgusting and barbaric, just like they are in all the earlier books of the Bible and probably will remain through the rest of it,” first you’d have saved all the time you spent reading the whole spheel.