Thoughts on women...

We've finally arrived at the end of Judges and unfortunately have one final horrific episode to confront before moving on.  After the rape and murder of the unnamed concubine by the Benjaminites, the leaders of Israel went to war against them and killed all but 600 men. They also vowed to not allow the Benjaminite men to marry their own daughters. However they THEN decided that as God had instituted the twelve tribes of Israel,  they shouldn't allow the tribe of Benjamin to die out. So they hatched a plan to get them wives. There was a town named Jabesh-Gilead whose inhabitants hadn't come out against Benjamin. So they attacked the town, murdering every man, married woman and child, leaving 400 virgins who they 'gave' to the Benjaminite men. This still wasn't enough wives so they then kidnapped 200 more women from the town of Shiloh during a feasting day, ambushing them at night, later gaslighting the Shiloh townspeople into not retaliating.  At this point Israe...

Surely one of the most disturbing stories in the bible is that of Jephthah and his daughter in Judges 11:29-40. I'll leave you to read it but essentially Jephthah makes a vow to sacrifice the first to greet him when he returns home from victory in war. Tragically the first to greet him is his daughter and even more Tragically, he goes through with the sacrifice in a point of honour. This story should also remind us of so-called honour based killings and abuse which still happen today and crimes committed to 'protect or defend' the honour of a family or community. Forced marriage, FGM, breast flattening, murder, beatings, rape, threat to kill... There is never any justification for it and most justice systems have made it clear that there is no place for cultural relativism when it comes to these crimes. All are human rights violations and have been roundly condemned by the World Health Organization.  God cares deeply about the vulnerable and oppressed as we've already t...

In this journey through the bible, next on our list is Dinah in Genesis 34. In preparing for this I started to read some commentaries because I knew that there is not complete agreement among the scholars with some believing it to be more of a love story than rape. A perspective I hadn't see before though caught my eye and it was so unexpected and shocking that I think it's a good place to focus today. To say it's a reach is an understatement and you can read it here if you like for the long version (its a section of a longer discussion and a suggested interpretation rather than a categoric statement). Essentially however, it takes a similarity in the language used for when Leah (her mother) "went out" to see Jacob to have see with him to conceive Dinahs brother, and compares it to how Dinah "went out" to visit the women of of the land. They suggest that she went with the intention of sexual immorality. They are suggesting "like mother, like daught...