Exodus 3-6: Speechophobia, Zebra Crossings and Industrial Relations

Exodus 3

So Moses is shepherding

Verse 2 “And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.”

Hmm, I hope the LORD is offsetting his apparemissions...

And God says “Yo, Moses”

Verse 7 “And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which by reason of their taskmasters: for I know their sorrows: And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey: unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.”

Well, that certainly sounds like a land without people for a people without land...

So God says 'go to Pharaoh and tell him to let you and yours go.'

Moses demures and also says 'what shall I say unto them [the Hebrews]'

Verse 14 “And God said unto MOSES, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.”

Is this like iambic pentameter?

But God sees problems with his own plan

Verse 19 “And I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not by a mighty hand. And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go.”

So get your women to “borrow” jewels of silver and gold, as a kind of 'pre-looting'

Exodus 4

Moses says 'they aint' gonna believe me, LORD.' And God says 'check out the magic rod that turns into a serpent when ya throw it in the dirt.'

Moses does it and “Moses fled before it.”

And God says 'pick the damn snake up you numbskull'

And it turns back into a rod.

[Erm, isn't this PROOF, which denies FAITH, and without faith god is nothing and man then goes on to prove black is white and gets killed at the next zebra crossing?]

And God has a leprous hand/not leprous hand stunt for Moses too.
And a blood/water stunt.

And Moses says 'I got public speaking anxiety LORD, I get so tongue-tied. Can't you get someone else for the gig?'

Verse 14 “And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses, and he said Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well. And also behold, he cometh forth to meet thee: and when he seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart.”

Moses gets leave of absence from Jethro his boss to head back to Egypt.

Verse 21 “And the LORD said unto Moses When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.”

Now, that line is worth re-reading. God is going to take away Pharaoh's free will, thus surely rendering Pharaoh blameless for the shit that hits the fan. So who, really, is to blame for all the deaths to come? That'd be the neurotic Bearded Sky Man, I reckon.

Moses' wife Zipporah seems unhappy, and circumcises her son and said “Surely thou a bloody husband thou art to me.”

Silly joke: Couple at a Relate counselling session, and it's not going well. In desperation the counsellor asks the man. “Well, you two aren't communicating much. Do you talk to your wife while you are making love?” And the man shrugs and says “Sure, my mobile's charged.”

Verse 27 “And the LORD said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. And he went and met him in the mount of God, and kissed him.”

But probably not with tongue.

Verse 29-31 “And Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel. And Aaron spake all the words which the LORD had spoken unto Moses, and di the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed: and when they heard that the LORD had visited the children of Israel and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped.”

Suckers.


Exodus 5

Aaron and Moses meet Pharaoh, who laughs at them and orders a karoshi.

Verse 6-7 “And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them: ye shall not diminish ought thereof: for they be idle: therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God.”

This is good old-fashioned management, punishing workers who have temerity to ask for better conditions, to stop them getting ideas above their station. Make them hit higher productivity targets while cutting their wages etc etc. Death by speed up!!

And it's a bad time to be a union steward...

Verse 14 “And the officers of the children of Israel, which Pharaoh's task masters et over them, were beaten, and demanded Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task in making brick both yesterday and to day, as heretofore.”

And the union bureaucracy blames Moses and Aaron for taking a mildly bad situation and making it worse.

And Moses says to God 'whassup?'

Verse 23 “For since I came to Pharoah to speak in thy name he hath done evil to this people: neither hast thou delivered thy people at all.”

[Moses doesn't get God has a Plan]

Exodus 6

God goes on a riff about how cool he is and all the things he'll do. Frankly a bit embarrassing...

Verse 9 “And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel: but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.”

And God orders Moses and Aaron back to Pharaoh, and there's another family tree for a few verses.

Verse 30 “And Moses said before the LORD, Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharaoh hearken unto me?

Good question, given what's coming...

Genesis 46-50: the Twelve Tribes of Israel and more family trouble brewing?

So, with Joseph having duly loaded up his brothers with food to see them through a journey in famine-stricken territory, Jacob decides that he wants to see the son he thought was dead.
The entire family decamps to Egypt, which gives an opportunity to list all of Jacob's sons and grandsons, which include the wonderfully named Huppim and Muppim, two of the many sons of Benjamin. They all settle in a land called Goshen, the whereabouts of which seem to be a bit hazy but is somewhere in the Nile Delta.
The famine, however, continues, and with his distinctly profit-oriented mind Joseph manages to get the desperate population of Egypt to swap first their cattle and horses and then all their land for bread, effectively reducing them all to sharecroppers:

"The Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land.
And it shall come to pass in the increase, that ye shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for them of your households, and for food for your little ones."
(Ch 47 v23-24)

Meanwhile, the dying Jacob calls Joseph to his bed and gives his blessing to Joseph's younger son Ephraim, instead of to the older Manasseh. You'd think, after the trouble that this kind of thing caused with first Ishmael and Isaac and then Esau and Jacob himself that people in this family would leave off giving complicated blessings, but apparently not.
Jacob also calls all of his other sons to him and decides to enumerate their failings and virtues, including Reuben's 'instability' (for sleeping with one of his father's concubines) abd Simeon and Levi's 'cruelty' (at last these two are getting some come-uppance for going around stabbing people left right and centre.) Judah, Zebelun and Issachar are apparently all ok, while the rest of the sons - Dan, Gad, Naphthali and Benjamin - all get rather ambivalent reviews, including:

"Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward."
(Ch 49 v17)

and:

"Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil."
(Ch 49 v27)

And so are listed the Twelve Tribes of Israel, setting a framework for many of the political and religious developments of the rest of the Old Testament.
Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob's own first wife Leah, Jacob himself is buried at the tomb in Hebron built on land bought by Abraham. This is also described as being near Mamre, an intriguing site which is mentioned at a number of points in Genesis and seems connected with Sarah and Rebekah. The archaeological record suggests that it was an ancient cult site from bronze age times, prior to the eras associated with Biblical figures insofar as Old Testament characters can be identified with pre/historic periods, and which continued as a religious shrine under Jewish, Roman, Muslim and Crusader Christian rule. Christian pilgrims seem to have managed to destroy the last remains of the ancient


tree which was associated with the site. There is a nice little discussion of whether the trees actually associated with the site were oaks or terebinths here. Terebinths, by the way, may sound grand but are also the source material for turpentine, which is less swanky sounding.
As so, with a grand act of final forgiveness of his conniving brothers by Joseph, the Book of Genesis ends.

Exodus 1-2: Baby killing, man killing, God forgetting?

Exodus 1

Starts with roll call of the “twelve tribes”

Verse 7 “And the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceedingly mightly; and the land was filled with them.”

There may be trouble ahead... And sure enough, there's a new boss, not the same as the old boss.

The new king who didn't know Joseph says “these guests are like fish, they've gone off after three days.”

Verse 10 “Come on,let us deal wisely with them: lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us."

Ah yes, unreliable, agents of a foreign power yadder yadder yadder.

The Hebrews get “taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens” but like Hydra “the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.”

So feeling harried and Herod, Pharaoh tell the midwives to bump of the boys.

Verse 16 “...if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.”

Huh??!! That is arse-backwards. One male can inseminate lots of women, whereas lots of males chasing a limited number of females is a recipe for internal tension. Women are the bottleneck in population demographics. Duh! Or maybe its a psyop to demoralise the Hebrews?

The God-fearing midwives disobey, and at their next performance appraisal tell Pharaoh the Hebrew mothers spit them out before the midwives get there.

So Pharaoh gets all Nilistic.

Verse 22 “And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river and every daughter ye shall save alive.”

I think I see where this is going. I may mosey on through one more chapter before retiring...

Exodus 2

Verse 1 “And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.”

[FFS, haven't you clowns heard of exogamy??]

Verse 2 “And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she was him that he was goodly child, she hid him three months."

But the jig is up and she puts him near where Pharaoh's daughters will find him near the river's edge.

Kid (Moses, natch) gets raised, and telescoping forward a bit...

Verse 11 “And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brehtren, and looked upon their burdens and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw there was no man, he slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.”

Attaboy- none of this turn the other cheek malarkey. And with a good understanding of the 11^th commandment “Thou Shalt Not Get Caught.”

Moses gets in another fight, the wee hothead and his opponent says “You're not the boss of me”

Verse 14 “And he said, Who made thee a prince and judge over us? Intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared and said Surely this thing is known.”

Yep. Pharaoh wants his guts for garters so he legs it to Midian. He helps out at a well and is rewarded with some shepherd's daughter Ziporah. And Moses decides to start citing Robert Heinlein novels

Verse 22 “... for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.”

Verse 23 “And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried., and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.”

And I am restraining myself from sub/dom gags....

Verse 24 “And God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.”

WTF? God forgets? GTD, God, GTD...

Verse 25 “And God looked upon the chldren of Israel, and God had respect unto them.”

Genesis 48-50: All good things must end. This too.

Chapters 48

Joseph gets word the old man is dying and rocks up with his two sons Mnasseh and Ephraim.

Jacob/Israel says he's hearing voices again

Verse 4 “And said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee. And I will make of thee a multitude of people and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession.”

And he's blind so can only touch the kids faces, but puts the wrong hand on the wrong kid's head (should be right for older, left for younger) and does the blessing and dishing out.

Verse 17 “And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim it displeased him: and he held up his father's hand to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Mannasseh's head”

No dice of course, from Jacob, who knows a thing or two about dodgy successions, having pinched his brother Esau's rights.

Verse 19 “And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, K know it: he also shall become a people,and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.”

So, no over-population issues there then...

Chapter 49

So Jacob on his death bed dishes the dirt publicly on all 12 of his sons. Anyone seen “Festen”, that great Danish film that contains a mother doing the same in true Danish style to her kids? Passive-aggressive sliminess to the nth degree.

Reuben's primal scene causes him grief

Verse 4 “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel: because thou wentest up to thy father's bed: then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch."

Simeon and Levi get labelled for the bloodthirsty psychos they are

And so it goes on- and on. Read it and yawn.

Verse 33 “And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost and was gathered unto his people.”

About. Bloody. Time.

Chapter 50

Mourning. Pharaoh's permission to bury Israel/Jacob up north. Shifting the body. More mourning, burying etc.

Verse 15 “And when Joseph's brethren as that their father was dead, they said Joseph will peradventure hate us and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him.”

Ah, the old family-as-Yugoslavia-as-powder-keg-when-Tito-dies. It's a story as old as the, erm, Bible...

And Joseph tells them to chill

Verse 19 “... Fear not, for am I in the place of God? But as for you,ye thought evil against me: but God meant it unto good to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.”

Joseph sticks around in Egypt and sees (great?) grandchildren.

Verse 26 “So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.”

And so ends one of the longest books in the Bible, which has taken two and a half bally weeks to read. As will Psalms, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

What have I learnt? Erm, not to trust any of these guys as far as you can throw them. It's all cheating, lying, smiting etc. [Ed: Gee, profound.]

Genesis 39-45: dreams and deceits in Egypt

So, having had a bit of a weird diversion on the subject of Judah's rather disturbing family unit, we're back to Joseph (minus Technicolour Dream Coat), who has been flogged off to some traders and taken to Egypt as a slave.
Certainly compared with, say, the Triangular Trade in the 17th and 18th centuries or child slavery on cocoa farms supplying multinational corporations around, oh, now, Joseph's experience of slavery seems pretty cushty. He gets made overseer of the house of the rich man, Potiphar, who buys him, and for a while everything goes fairly smoothly.
Then Potiphar's wife takes a fancy to Joseph, tries to get him into bed, and cries rape which he won't comply. Now, stories like this really piss me off. I'm not denying that there are a very few very stupid women out there who do cry rape falsely, but given the numbers of them vs the numbers of women raped as sexual abuse, as expressions of male power, as means of ethnic insult or of insulting an enemy in war, the balance is definitely on the female side in terms of getting a really poor deal. Today, we had really, really nasty headlines about the jailing of some particularly vile young men in London who gangraped a 16-year-old with learning difficulties and then gave her 50% burns by pouring caustic soda over her. And got just 6 to 9 years each in jail (although their sentences are, apparently, possibly going to be revised by the Attorney General). So, yet again, we have this misogynistic bullshit. Fuck RIGHT OFF.
Anyway, in Joseph's case this leads to him getting banged up, but being the resourceful fella he is, prison is more of a networking tool than a punishment for little Jason Donovan here. I think this is quite funny, as it reminds me of the tale of 'la Prision Fecunda' - the 'fertile prison' of the Cuban revolution where Castro got to do lots of thinking before initiating the invasion which culminated in the triumph of the revolution, the defeat of Batista and the general prolonged annoyance of successive US governments. Probably not a comparison many Bible readers would be too chuffed with, but hell, they're going along with the fake-rape scenarios.



Through this prison experience, Joseph's power to interpret dreams comes to the notice of Pharoah, who thinks that Joseph's interpretation sounds spot on, and:

"41/39 said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God hath shewed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art:
41/40Though shalt be over my house, and according to thy word shall my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be greater than thee."

Which seems like a lot of trust for someone whose abilities have actually yet to be proven... but the prophecies do come true, and thanks to them and Joseph's good management, during the seven years of plenty huge stocks have been kept of food to tide everyone through the seven lean years to follow.
As a result, when the famine also hits Canaan, Jacob's remaining sons, without the benefit of prophesying brothers, have fallen into famine. They are dispatched by their father to buy grain from... Joseph (either the LORD is working in mysterious ways or these stories are laden with more dubious coincidences that a double episode of Neighbours. I hear. Oooh look, more Jason Donovan connections. Spooky).
Joseph recognises his brothers but pretends not too and starts off by making them grovel, which I guess is a fair enough response to being put in a pit and then sold into slavery. But he still loves them (sucker) and sends them away with lots of grain, and sneaks their money back into the sacks so they haven't even had to pay for it. Simeon seems to still be very much on the scene, apparently unpunished for being a lying murdering bastard. But Joseph's little wheeze isn't over, and he demands that they come back with his younger brother Benjamin, the only other son of Rachel and the one who she died giving birth to.
Jacob, as Rachel was his favourite, is understandably sceptical of this idea, but is talked into it on the grounds that all of them really, really do need some food. Back in Egypt, they get well fed. But Joseph is still playing games with them, and has his silver cup put in Benjamin's grain sack so that he can be arrested on the way home:

"44/2 And put my cup, the silver cup, in the sack's mouth of the youngest, and his corn money. And he did according to the word that Joseph had spoken.
44/4 And when they were gone out of the city, and yet not far off, Joseph said unto his steward, Up, follow after the men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good?
44/5 Is not this it in which my lord drinketh, and whereby he divineth? ye have done evil in so doing."

So all the brothers come back again to beg that Joseph will not cause their elderly father's death by imprisoning Benjamin, and in the end he reveals his identity, there are hugs and kisses all round, and he sends them back home to Canaan laden with goodies:

"45/21 and Joseph gave them wagons, according to the commandment of Pharaoh, and gave them provision for the way.
22 To all of them he gave each man changes of raiment; but to Benjamin he gave threee hundred pieces of silver, and five changes if raiment.
23 And to his father he sent after this manner; ten asses laden with the good things of Egypt, and ten she asses laden with corn and bread and meat for his father by the way."

Which must have thrilled the people of Egypt no end, with five more years of famine still to get through.

The image at the top of this post is of a famine stela from Sehel Island, Egypt, sourced from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Famine_stela.jpg

Anita Diamant: The Red Tent

The Red Tent tells the story of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, who appears briefly to be 'taken and defiled' in Genesis 34 and is never mentioned again.



The novel is by Anita Diamant, an American writer who has penned a couple of works of fiction but whose main body of work seems to be a veritable library on the subject of 'modern Jewish living,' ranging from everyday rituals to what names to pick for your children. Her other novels seem to deal mainly with more contemporary subjects, including Good Harbor (a story of friendship between two women in Massachusetts after one of them is diagnosed with breast cancer, which reminded me of some of Alice Hoffman's less magical novels, or a less political version of Marge Piercy's modern-day works) and the forthcoming Day After Night, which I approach with trepidation as it is the story of four young Jewish women in the few years leading up to the birth of the State of Israel/the Palestinian Naqba, or Catastrophe, and I suspect I'm going to find it very offensive, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.
Anyway.
The Red Tent itself is now one of those books which has legendarily sold millions of copies, apparently through the power of word of mouth and reading groups, although I'm now sceptical of most of those claims since marketing companies seem to often have more to do with them than meets the eye. It is an extremely women-oriented novel, telling Dinah's life story – the years of it after the massacre at Shechem by definition entirely fictional. Respecting the probable level of separation between male and female lives at the time, as well as the writer's own apparent interests, the tale deals largely with the lives of the women of Jacob's camp – his wives and concubines Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah – with their father Laban, their many sons and even Jacob largely playing bit parts. Female forebears such as Sarai (Sarah) and Rebekah/Rebecca are viewed as wise, powerful figures, whereas while Abram/Abraham is respected he is very distant and nebulous, and Isaac appears as a blind, feeble old man who has never recovered from his near-sacrifice by Abraham:

“Years later, when his grandsons finally met the boy of the story, by then an old man, they were appalled to hear how Isaac stuttered, still frightened by his father's knife.”

In line with this interest in the stories of the women of the family, the Biblical God or El is also a distant figure, very much associated with the men. The women worship a range of different local and family deities – hence the conflict when, as described in the Biblical account, Laban finds his household gods have disappeared along with Jacob and his wives. Diamant frames this as part of one of the book's ongoing themes, the era of Jacob as the cusp of a transfer from matriarchal to patriarchal religions, with Rachel asserting her right as her father's daughter to take the figures of the Gods, and Laban demanding his right according to a newer male-oriented system to leave them to his oldest son, Kemuel. The extent to which this prehistoric female-centred belief system, as set out by archaeologists such as Marija Gimbutas in a range of books, including the Language of the Goddess and the Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, actually existed across the Middle East and Eastern Europe is disputed, but there is certainly plenty of evidence for a much more varied and gender-balanced pantheon than that offered by the great monotheistic faiths.





The book, which is named after the ritual menstrual tent inhabited by the women for three days at the beginning of every month while they bleed, is highly sensual, both in describing the erotic relationships between Jacob and his wives and Dinah and her husband, Shalem, and also in the non-sexual descriptions of the scents and sounds of living a camp existence, surrounded by goats and dogs, and where Jacob may be handsome but he also smells like any other goatherd in a settlement where water must by pulled by hand. The women are wise, but their wisdom and power is sited in the female domains of baking, weaving and brewing, or in midwifery and healing knowledge, or in the secrets and mysteries of the Red Tent, where they are able to build alliances and cook up schemes in what might be seen as an expression of subaltern power, 'weapons of the weak.'
Also interesting about this book is the strength of the indictment it delivers against Jacob and his sons for the murders in Shechem. The killings are depicted as primarily the acts of the jealous, bitter twins Simeon and Levi, but with the complicity of Jacob and some of the other brothers. Contrary to the Biblical account, Jacob's change of name to IsraEl is not by the command of God, but an attempt by Jacob to escape his own name:

“so that people would not remember him as the butcher of Shechem. He fled from the name Jacob, which became another name for 'liar,' so that 'you serve the God of Jacob' was one of the worst insults one man could hurl at another in that land for many generations.”

The men of Shechem, including the king, Hamor, are largely portrayed as generous and honourable, as are many of those of Egypt, where Dinah spends the rest of her life after the massacre. The descendants of Jacob, meanwhile, are largely portrayed as a dysfunctional group, injured by Dinah's curses and with their women diminished by their loss of the female rites and knowledge which they are increasingly denied by their brothers, fathers and husbands.
It's not a perfect book – the language sometimes teeters on the brink between being mannered in its attempt to evoke its ancient setting, and rich in its evocation of the era. The second half, set in Egypt, seems to lose some of richness and depth once there is no background of Biblical scholarship and feminist vs conventional theology to draw inspiration from. But on many levels this is a deeply moving and fascinating book which provides a marvellous alternative version to this section of the Old Testament.

Genesis 37-38: family values

I would so love to know where some of those really smug Family Values Christians (oops, sorry, might I have alienated someone there?) get their ideas from. These two chapters are absolute corkers on this front.
In Chapter 37 Joseph son of Jacob, of the "coat of many colours," gets sold off to Ishmeelite traders by his brothers for 20 pieces of silver (prophets apparently rate less than Messiahs, or maybe there were inflationary pressures...) because they are jealous of him. The Ishmeelites, by the way, are apparently the same as Ishmaelites, the descendants of Abraham and Hagar. So this should be a lesson - cast your concubines and children into the wilderness and they will live to buy your great-grandkids as slaves.
OK, so maybe repeatedly telling your siblings about your dreams where you, one of the younger members of the family, get to rule them all is not drawn directly from Tact 101. Reuben and Judah are apparently the nicer brothers for wanting to just a) put him in a hole with no water or b) sell him to the traders, instead of just bumping him off outright. Or maybe the concept of having 'blood on your hands' is taken very literally here, so if someone dies from being put in said waterless hole you DON'T have their blood on your hands. The legal repercussions of that for prison camps commanders the world over would be joyous...
In Chapter 38 we have some more upstanding examples of how to run your family life. Judah's kids keep getting killed off by God - in one case, that of Onan, for spilling his 'seed' on the ground after being sent in to sleep with his brother's widow. For this, he gets bumped off and gets a term for masturbation named after him for about the next four thousand years. Tough punishment. Since the lady in question, Tamar, seems a little jinxed Judah is reluctant to marry his last son to her in case he dies too, so in a fit of desperation she 'plays the harlot.' Interestingly, she is identifiable as such because she covers her face. To complicate matters, the client she manages to acquire is her father-in-law, Judah, who gets her pregnant and very generously decides not to execute her as a whore when this is discovered, because she's rather cunningly asked him for some identifiable gifts.
This story - understandably, since the resulting twins are the ancestors of the great Israelite king David - attracts some interest, despite (like tales such as the Tower of Babel and the rape of Dinah) occupying very little space in the Bible itself. Tamar's actions have been reframed by feminist scholars such as Gila Safran-Naveh, a professor of Judaic Studies at Cincinatti University, as a reclamation of a woman's control over her body and her ego after she is hurt and rejected by being widowed and denied a second proper husband (having been married to one son, she seems to have become the property of her father-in-law's family instead of returning to her own parents). This is one of the most fascinating things about reading the Bible - the massive potential for reinterpretation and for digging beneath the initial, obvious patriarchal messages of stories which actually offer so much scope for seeing women's possession of subaltern power and influence.



As a final interesting point, there seems to be nothing specifically reprehensible in the view of this story about paying for sex - the main concern seems to be the dishonour implicit in not paying for sex that you have had, and breaking the commercial agreement therein. Women are definitely confined with the family as facing death if they have sex elsewhere, threatening male ownership of them and male security in their notions of fatherhood, but if women have been taken outside these structures (by choice or force) and become 'harlots' they do apparently have an identifiable status which should be honoured.

The image of Tamar and Judah is from the Residenzgalerie Salzburg, painted by an artist from the school of Rembrandt