When God Remembers

I've finished my Psalm a day, and then a month of Ecclesiastes a day, and now I'm on to a chapter of the Bible a day, starting at the beginning. I hit Genesis 8 this morning and came across this:

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. (Gen 8:1)

It reminded me of one of my favourite passages at the end of Exodus 2:

God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. (Ex 2:24-25)

After four centuries of slavery in Egypt, the groans of Israel are about to be answered with action.

What was interesting was doing a quick search for God and Remembers (זכר + אלהים), and amazingly there's only four in the whole Tanach. I changed the search to include Yhwh, but that only added one further occurrence, 1 Sam 1:19. Here then are all the times when the Bible records God "remembering" his people. (If you have others which don't match the construction, let me know - this is just from a quick Accordance search.)

1. God remembered the floating Noah (Gen 8:1) and caused the waters to recede
2. God remembered the worried Abraham (Gen 19:29) and rescued his nephew Lot
3. God remembered the barren Rachel (Gen 30:22) and gave her a child
4. God remembered his covenant for the sake of his enslaved Israel (Ex 2:24) and began working to rescue
5. Yhwh remembered the marginalised Hannah (1 Sam 1:19) and gave her a child

Obviously God remembering doesn't imply the opposite - that he could ever forget - rather it points to the fact that he has chosen that time to act and to intervene for the sake of those he loves.

Judge Jephthah in Context

Jephthah in Context

I've been thinking about Jephthah this week, and there are two things to note from the outset. The first is the context. After the long saga of Gideon + Abimelek, and before the long saga of Samson, there is a classic bookended structure:

Minor judges (10:1-5)

Jephthah (10:6-12:7)

Minor judges (12:8-15)

We can obviously say a lot more about the structure, but as a starting point the structure of the minor judges either side is used to mark out Jephthah in the centre as a major judge. But if we wanted to fill out the structure a little more, we can see another layer and more parallels: 

Two judges; many sons on many donkeys (10:1-5)

Sin, subjugation, suffering, supplication (10:6-16)

Jephthah the new judge, one of multiple sons, saves Israel (11:1-33)

A stupid vow and the slaughter of a virgin, succeeded by civil war and a shibboleth (11:34-12:7)

Three judges; many sons on many donkeys (12:8-15)

The parallels between the minor judges (two before, three after) are self-evident. Jair (10:3-5) had 30 sons on 30 donkeys ruling 30 towns. Ibzan (12:8-10) had 30 sons (to whom he married 30 women from outside his clan) and 30 daughters (who he married off outside his clan), and Abdon (12:13-15) had 40 sons and 30 grandsons on 70 donkeys. 

We will meet more donkeys in the chapters to come, but we have seen the wiley Aksah upon a donkey securing extra water rights  (1:14-15) and donkey goers are exhorted to pay attention to the call to unity by Deborah (5:10-11). But we have also seen an army slain with a donkey's jawbone (15:15-16) - perhaps having a dig at these wannabe warlords on their donkeys. 

The numbers 30 and 70 come up as well; 30 pops up several times in the Samson saga and in the epilogue (20:31,39), but 70 is both the number of kings mutilated by Adoni-Bezek (1:7) and the number of his own brothers murdered by Abimelek to become leader - a deal involving 70 shekels (8:30; 9:25). Are these new 70 a redemption of the number or simply a continuation? 

But apart from the minor judges, the structure highlights the situation before Jephthah (sin, subjugation, suffering, supplication; 10:6-11) but also that, after Yhwh grants him the victory, things aren't much different (11:34-12:7). The judges to whom Yhwh grants his Spirit (in Jephthah's case, 11:29) are going to become worse and worse leaders, worse and worse examples, and will highlight more and more what a failure it is to trust in human leaders, who cannot (really) save.

The Shortest Judge

The second is that Jephthah leads for the shortest time of all the judges:

That being said, we aren't always told the full details. We sometimes know how long they were judge for (from Tola onwards) and we sometimes know how long there was peace for because of their reign (up to Gideon). It could be that these timespans are coterminous, for example with Gideon it says "During Gideosn't lifetime, the land had peace for forty years." (8:28b) But we don't have the same information for other judges, and there seems to be a judgement in the latter judges (from Tola onwards) in that Israel weren't granted peace after their judge died. 

But Jephthah stands out because he is at the very bottom of the barrel in terms of lengths (not including Shamgar because we know so very little about him), and, even though we are in a sense comparing apples (years of peace) with oranges (years led for), the only information we are given is what we have to work with. That is, 40-80 years is associated with the first four judges, while 6-23 are the years associated with the latter seven. And Jephthah is at the bottom of everything:

• Jephthah: 6
• Ibzan: 7
• Abdon: 8
• Elon: 10
• Samson: 20
• Jair: 22
• Tola: 23
• Gideon: 40

I think why this matters is because Jephthah is not given a clear rebuke from Yhwh despite his evil vow and his evil fulfilment thereof. Rather, Yhwh is silent throughout. His name is invoked, but he is not. The response is threefold:

1. Jephthah's line is finished. His daughter's virginity is emphasised, as is her being his only child. There will be no Jephthaian dynasty.
2. The immediate aftermath to his victory over the enemy is civil war. There will be no united Israel under Jephthah.
3. His leadership (including his two wars) is the shortest of any judge: only six years. His only legacy is to be known as "the one who couldn't shut up"; Jephthah coming from פתח - to open (one's mouth).

Errata

 As I've been going through Ecclesiastes again, I noticed an error in my book. 

On p50 I wrote: 

"in 4:1 there is a fourfold use of עשׁק (to oppress), which occurs four times as a participle, albeit in different forms each time,"

It's clearly only thrice. In trying to understand why I made this error, I think I must have misread נַעֲשִׂים (from עשה) as הָעֲשֻׁקִים (from עשק). It's also possible that my brain was looking for groups of four - in the same paragraph I discuss 4:4 and "four near-synonyms for work." 

If you want to fix it, perhaps the paragraph should read,

This similar formula is seen with את־כל (twice in 4:4), and then patterns of three: in 4:1 there is a triple use of עשׁק (to oppress), which occurs three times as a participle, albeit in different forms each time, while in 4:4 the pattern of three is made up of three synonyms for work, with מעשׂה, ,כשׁרון ,עמל as well as, for a potential fourth, what Qohelet describes as work’s functional equivalent, namely כי הוא קנאת־אישׁ מרעהו (for this is one’s envy over their friend).

I'm not sure how it got through so many readings and readers, but there you go. I also still need to track down the library copy of my MTh and fix a separate typo there (which thankfully I caught before the published version). 

Sisera's mother

In chapter 5 of the book of Judges, there is a three-verse aside about Sisera's mother, absent from the chapter 4 account of the same battle, which I've always found intriguing. Here are a few thoughts I've gathered together

Sisera's mother among the women of Judges (5:28-30)

Through the window peered Sisera’s mother, Behind the lattice she whined: 

“Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why so late the clatter of his wheels?”

 The wisest of her ladies give answer; She, too, replies to herself:

 “They must be dividing the spoil they have found: A damsel or two for each man, spoil of dyed cloths for Sisera, spoil of embroidered cloths, A couple of embroidered cloths round every neck as spoil.”

(Judges 5:28–30 JPS)

In the story of Deborah and Barak, there are three female characters, two of them named.

1. Deborah, the key figure 
2. Jael, the unlikely victor
3. Sisera's mum, waiting for her son's return

But there's a couple more groups of women. 

1. First, the handmaids of Sisera's mum, who are standing by to help her out
2. But second, the female captives they expect will be the spoils of the battle

Nimrud ivory carving with “Lady at the Window” motif; Daniel I. Block, “Judges,” in Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, vol. 2 of Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Old Testament. ed. John H. Walton; Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 149.

The true picture of the mother

It seems quite innocent, but it's actually quite disturbing. 
This lovely old lady, looking out her window, waiting for her son to slaughter the naughty Israelites, to plunder their villages in retaliation, and to steal their widows and daughters as sex slaves. 
Because this is what she's waiting for - some nice fabric for her and some pretty women for him.
For comparison, here's a tribute list from Ashurnasirpal of Assyria (883–859 B.C.):

I received tribute from Sangara, king of the land of Ḫatti, 20 talents of silver, a gold ring, a gold bracelet, gold daggers, 100 talents of bronze, 250 talents of iron, bronze (tubs), bronze pails, bronze bath-tubs, a bronze oven, many ornaments from his palace the weight of which could not be determined, beds of boxwood, thrones of boxwood, dishes of boxwood decorated with ivory, 200 adolescent girls, linen garments with  multi-coloured trim, purple wool, red-purple wool, gišnugallu-alabaster, elephants’ tusks, a chariot of  polished (gold), a gold couch with trimming—objects befitting his royalty.

The other thing to mention is that the word isn't woman or female - it's "womb" - or perhaps something even cruder, which is to say there is no value to these women except as their utility to their male captors. 

Thankfully, when Israel do something just as evil in Judges 21 - the final chapter of Israel's descent into evil - the women there will at least be wives - therefore worthy of protection and support.

Sisera's Mother as anti-Deborah

Deborah is called a mother in Israel (5:7); Sisera's mother is unnamed - known only as Sisera's mother (5:28). This is important, because, from Israel's perspective 

the story ends with Israel being forged as a nation through this victory, but Sisera's mother becomes barren, her son lying dead. 

Deborah became a mother through victory, while Sisera's mother became an un-mother through defeat.

Sisera's Mother as anti-Jael

Jael is just minding her own business, doing her own thing. She's non-aligned - an independent. Sisera thinks she's allied with Jabin, but is unaware that Israel are her distant relatives through Moses's father-in-law (cf 1:16). But I think that the Kenites (her people) are able to choose their own path - do what is right without obligation. We might contrast this with Sisera's mother, who has raised her son; her hopes are his hopes, her morals his morals, and they are not good morals.

At the end of the episode, Barak turns up, a little puffed, because he's followed the Canaanite army and cut them down - but no Sisera. So he's doubled back and in 4:22 asks Jael if Sisera came by. Jael opens the curtain of the tent - might this be the commander you're looking for?

The contrast to this pulling back of a curtain with the curtain pulled back by Sisera's mum, standing by the window and waiting - I wonder where my boy is?

The aftermath

The story of these three women is the story of three different world-views.

• Deborah is the willing servant of Israel
• Jael is servant of none, master of her own destiny
• Sisera's mum is anxious, awaiting the return of her brutal son and his depraved idea of spoil from war.

I should note - Israel are going to go down a not dissimilar path - as we see how far they too have fallen. But for now there's a choice - clearly Israel have a mother (Deborah) and a cousin (Jael) who choose the right path. After their victory Israel have 40 years - an entire generation - of peace and prosperity, but Canaan is done; we won't hear from them again, as they are on the out and the Philistines will rise up to take their place as the chief enemy of Israel.

For a time, at least, the people will mimic their mothers - Israel will mimic the wise and measured Deborah - and they will prosper while Canaan, following the instruction of people like Sisera's mother, are headed for extinction as a people - there are no more Canaanites today.

We should rejoice at the destruction of this evil warlord and his army, and the eventual freeing of Israel from their oppressors. However, the evil expectation we see even in the mother of Sisera will sadly be matched by the Israelites at the end of the book, after which we hear the final words, "everyone did as they saw fit in their own eyes". S

o even though evil from the Canaanites is averted right now, we also know that Israel will show themselves to be no better, 

and as we continue on through the book we await with dread the inevitable.