 |
| Icon that says "Bible commentary." Image source. |
[content note: rape]
A few days ago I published a post called David's Womanizing, which included quotes from the bible about David's 10 concubines who were raped by David's son Absalom. Here's a summary of that story: David was the king. His son, Absalom, started a rebellion and David had to flee from his palace- but he left 10 of his concubines there. Then Absalom's advisor told him it would be a good political strategy for him to have sex with David's concubines, so he did that. Later, Absalom is killed and the rebellion is over, and David comes back home. Here's what happened to the 10 concubines:
When David returned to his palace in Jerusalem, he took the ten concubines he had left to take care of the palace and put them in a house under guard. He provided for them but had no sexual relations with them. They were kept in confinement till the day of their death, living as widows.
After I published that post, I thought I'd do some googling to see if anyone else was as horrified by this bible story as I was.
I found a few commentary websites- Precept Austin and Biblehub. Both of these contain excerpts from bible commentaries by many different writers. And... wow, I have feelings about this, I don't know why I have so many feelings, I've read plenty of commentaries before, and what I find on these sites is pretty standard commentary stuff... but... they all just read so heartless to me, and I'm shocked and saddened, wondering how these writers could be so heartless toward these 10 women.
Some commentaries put part of the blame on these women, saying they should have tried harder to resist being raped. Some commentaries say that these women could not be seen in public because it would remind people of Absalom's rebellion. Some commentaries say that they were "defiled" by Absalom and so they couldn't be sexual partners to David any more.
Here's one quote on that, but many of the other commentaries said similar things:
Matthew Poole's Commentary
Put them in ward; partly, because they had not vigorously opposed Absalom’s lustful desire, as they should have done, even with the hazard of their lives; and partly, lest the sight of them should renew the memory of Absalom’s filthiness, and of their own and David’s reproach, which it was fit to bury in-perpetual oblivion; and partly, because it might appear incestuous to have to do with those who had been defiled by his own son; and partly, because as David would not, so it was not now convenient that any other man should have any conjugal conversation with them.
I just... how can someone say something like this? Bible scholars sitting there and writing that these women couldn't be seen in public... like for them to even exist isn't proper because then people will have to think about Absalom. Like they can't be people any more, they can only be ugly reminders of what Absalom did.
(This reminds me of how Monica Lewinsky says people have advised her that she should change her name- because her name is also the name of the scandal. Like there's something wrong with her simply existing in public after what happened to her. She says she will not change her name, and asks why nobody ever says Bill Clinton should change his name.)
At the same time though, I don't know enough about what life was like for kings' concubines to know if this is actually a worse situation for them. Is it worse to be required to have sex with the king, or to not be allowed to have sex at all (or to go out in public, apparently)? Note that this meant they could not have children. Either way it's not great for them. It's not like they all had great marriages with David and then Absalom came along and so David suddenly ended his good healthy relationships with these women. Either way, their having sex or not having sex was full of political meaning, and was never about what they wanted. So, I actually don't know if this was a worse outcome for them or not.
But this story just made me think... what if you're a straight man, and your wife gets raped- would you say "well I'll do the bare minimum to provide for her financially, so no one can accuse me of being unfair to her, but we won't have much of a relationship any more, obviously"? How about, like, having some compassion for her? Why is the commentators' only concern about how it makes David look?
(I mean, I know that's not really a good comparison, because what the bible is talking about here is totally different from how we think of marriage today. I wish Christians would acknowledge that, instead of claiming there's some "biblical definition of marriage" which we supposedly still follow.)
So that's when it hit me- these commentary writers really don't care about women, do they? This is just blatant sexism. I mean... I've often heard feminists talk about how the bible is mainly focused on men, how a lot of famous theologians are men, etc, and I never really paid much attention to that, because there's nothing inherently wrong with talking about men, or learning from men. The issue is when women are explicitly being excluded, and typically you can't know for sure that's happening, you can just look at the relative numbers of men and women and feel a bit suspicious about how it ended up that way.
But... I don't know why, something about this just strikes me as "wow they explicitly don't care about women." To discuss rape victims in these kind of terms, like "well yeah then David couldn't have a relationship with them any more because it would look bad."
But then I thought, maybe it's not sexism, maybe this heartlessness comes out of a belief in biblical inerrancy. You believe that everything in the bible is true, so then if you read something bad in the bible, you have to accept it and just keep reading without thinking too much. That's why the tone of these commentaries is like "well, here's what the logic would have been, in their society, to justify treating these women that way- okay keep it moving, keep it moving, next verse!"
But wait, no, inerrancy wouldn't apply in that way in this passage. Inerrancy would come into play for passages like Deuteronomy 20:16-18, where God commands his people to "completely destroy" all the people in the promised land. To commit genocide. If you believe in inerrancy, you have to believe that God really said this, and that since God said it, it must be right. You have to believe that genocide is right in this case.
This 2 Samuel passage about David is different. Even if you believe in inerrancy, you don't have to believe that David was right. You can say "yes, the bible is inerrantly recording something that really happened. But what David did here was wrong." See, this verse doesn't say anything about God's opinion. God can't be wrong, but other bible characters can be wrong. In fact, that's one of the go-to talking points that inerrantists use. Someone comes along and makes the argument "there's a lot of violence in the bible" and then the inerrantist answers "the bible isn't condoning that. These passages are descriptive, not prescriptive. People aren't perfect! A lot of these bible stories are about teaching us what NOT to do." Which holds up logically if it's something like this, something that the bible says David did but doesn't mention God approving of it. That argument doesn't work when the bible explicitly says it was God who told them to commit violence, for example.
And actually, there was a part of one of the commentaries that said David did wrong:
David came to his house at Jerusalem, and the king took the ten women, the concubines whom he had left to keep the house, and placed them under guard and provided them with sustenance, but did not go in to them - David seems to respond a bit in the flesh in this passage (in my opinion) especially since the act committed against these women was the consequence of David's sin! Oh, the ever widening circle of our secret sins! Beware! After all who had left the concubines in Jerusalem? David had. And who had heard and should have pondered the prophecy by Nathan about his wives (2Sa 12:11-12+). David had heard this prophecy, and theoretically should have taken the concubines (who were considered lesser wives) out of harm's way. Of course it was a prophecy from God and every prophecy is fulfilled perfectly. So one must propose that David had to leave them to fulfill the prophecy. I don't think he knowingly did that, but somehow was caused to forget Nathan's prophecy. In either event, David seems to react strongly against the 10 women who would have had no choice but to surrender to Absalom raping them! They are collateral damage of David's sin with Bathsheba and against Uriah!!!
Our sins like David's can affect so many others in so many different ways!
This bit is good in that it says David "seems to respond a bit in the flesh"- this is Christianese for "his behavior is sinful and not what God would have wanted." Also it says "the 10 women who would have had no choice but to surrender to Absalom raping them"- good job not blaming the victims for being raped. Seems like that's a low bar to clear, but several of the other commentaries failed to clear it.
So this commentary writer has thought a bit about what it was like for these women, and how David did not treat them right. But the passage I pasted there only talks about that a little bit; its overall point is discussing how this fulfills the prophecy from 2 Samuel 12:11-12, and making a bland point about how our sin affects other people. 2 Samuel 12 is after David rapes Bathsheba and murders her husband Uriah, and the prophet Nathan comes to David and tells him that was wrong, and "Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight." So now, look at that, Absalom rapes David's wives, we've come full circle, the prophecy is fulfilled, score a point for inerrancy.
Heartless.
Even though this commentary excerpt has some compassion for these women, it's mostly framed in the context of "did David do the right or wrong thing here?"
Oh and then that web page moves into talking about "Was David Right to Take Concubines?" which is all about the laws that God gave about marriage, and contains nothing about how the concubines were actually treated. It's all about examining whether or not polygamy breaks God's laws. Nothing about how it affects actual people. That's the inerrancy mindset right there.
But then I thought, maybe there's a third explanation for why these commentaries come across so heartless toward these 10 concubines. It's not necessarily about sexism, or inerrancy- it's about the purpose of a commentary. Commentaries are intended to be resources that pastors can use when they write sermons. And sermons are about "how to be a good Christian" or "here are some things you should believe about God." Caring about these concubines doesn't really fit into that. So the commentaries spend very little time on it.
Oh.
So, my whole life, I've had the wrong idea about the purpose of a commentary.
Uh, let's back up, because I'm really deep in the weeds here. I read lots of commentaries when I was evangelical, but that's not really a normal thing that evangelicals do. Pastors do that. Bible study leaders do that. The average evangelical does not.
The average evangelical talks a lot about how we're all supposed to read our bibles every day, and we feel guilty for not doing it enough. But no one's walking around in church saying "we should all read more commentaries."
I took all that "read the bible every day" stuff really seriously. Evangelicals are always talking about how it's so important to read the bible and know the bible and memorize the bible and base your whole life on the bible, but very few actually follow through on that. I did. I did read the bible every day, back then, and I often encountered weird things in the bible, and I felt like "this is weird, I need help to understand it better" and so I would go look for commentaries to help.
Commentaries are useful in the sense that they do at least have some kind of comment on every single verse. It may not be that helpful, it may not acknowledge the WTFery of the verse in question, it may leave me with even more questions than I originally had, but at least it will say something. That's better than all the sermons and Sunday school lessons which totally ignore all the super-weird passages in the bible.
But now I'm suddenly realizing, if I want to "understand the bible better", commentaries are not really the right thing. Commentaries are for "I want to write a sermon based on this bible passage. I want to spin this such that it can teach us something about how to be a good Christian."
So... what I actually needed was not a commentary, but something more... academic? I seem to remember occasionally coming across academic papers about the historical context of something in the bible, and they weren't trying to make a point about "here's what this bible verse can teach us about how to live a good Christian life." They were just, you know, talking about a thing.
The awkward thing about an academic treatment of the bible, though, is that it won't be from a biblical-inerrancy perspective! So good evangelicals aren't really allowed to read that.
And what I need now is not really a commentary, but maybe something more along the lines of a feminist reading of the bible. That's why I'm enjoying the book "Womanist Midrash" so much.
But wait, back up, I seem to be saying here "when I was evangelical, I just wanted to understand the bible better, so I read commentaries, but that wasn't really the right thing, because commentaries are written from the perspective 'here's what this bible passage teaches us about how to be a good Christian.'" Uh, hello, when I was evangelical, I *did* believe that all bible passages had something to teach us about how to be a good Christian. I *did* have that mindset when I read the bible.
Every day I did my daily bible reading, and I believed that I would read something that would inspire me and connect me with God. And when I felt depressed, or lonely, or had doubts, or other negative emotions, I would open the bible and expect that God would help me feel better through reading it.
And it all fell apart when I started to question evangelicalism... I would try to do my daily bible reading, and over and over I would get stuck on this or that weird thing. I would come into it thinking I'm gonna open the bible for 10 minutes and get some inspiring message from God, and instead all I could think about was how so many little things in the passage struck me as wrong. (I wrote about this in 2015: Why on Earth Did I Ever Expect the Bible to be Anything Other Than Incredibly Weird?)
It used to be, when I was feeling bad, I would take my bible and open it and read something- I had a few favorites that I would often read in situations like this- and it would help me feel better. And I took that as evidence that the bible truly is from God. But I'm ex-evangelical now; I don't think that way any more.
I still have favorite bible passages. There are bible passages I love, that I find very inspiring. But I'm very aware that I picked them out of a sea of, well, everything. A sea of problematic stories and ancient misogynistic laws and violence and genocide. They don't serve as evidence that the bible is "God-breathed"- they just show that all throughout history, there have been at least some people who have had really profound and inspiring things to say about love and justice.
So. Wow this has become a long blog post- can we bring this back to David's concubines somehow? Why do the commentaries care so little about what life was like for them, and the injustice of David responding to their being raped by ending his relationships with them? Is it because of sexism- the commentators are men who just really don't care about women? Is it because of inerrancy- the commentators need to keep their belief that everything the bible condones is right? Is it because of the whole purpose behind writing commentaries in the first place- they're meant to help frame the bible in a way that lends itself to teaching us how to live our lives- and caring about David's concubines doesn't fit into that purpose at all?
I remember when I first began to encounter feminist readings of the bible, how my mind was blown by things that had been there the whole time- I knew these stories, I knew these characters, but I had just never thought of them in that way. I guess I had been held back by sexism, inerrancy, and the belief that the bible is meant to teach us lessons on how to live our lives.
---
Related:
Why on Earth Did I Ever Expect the Bible to be Anything Other Than Incredibly Weird?
No comments:
Post a Comment