Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Theological Context: Restless Readings by J'annine Jobling

Author:J'annine Jobling [Jobling, J'annine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Emigration & Immigration, Sociology
ISBN: 9781000160727
Google: xZr6DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-09-10T02:54:12+00:00

And here Tamar claims her voice. Her reasoned response contrasts the wisdom of Tamar with the folly of Amnon, who would do this foolish thing which is not done in Israel. And thus Amnon would be like one of the fools in Israel. As Trible notes, Tamar acknowledges the position of herself as a woman: she works within the existing structures. She knows David would not deny her to Amnon, but pleads for the proper forms to be followed. ‘Yet in this story victory belongs to the fools.’30 Amnon did not want to hear her voice; he raped and laid her. In this way desire turns to hate and Amnon cannot get rid of Tamar quickly enough. But again, Tamar speaks. Trible stresses her firmness and clarity of speech. Sending her away, she insists, would be an even greater evil. Again, Amnon would not listen to her. ‘The words of this wise woman he spurns a second time.’31 He has her ejected: ‘Send this away’, he commands – and ‘bolt the door after her’. No longer do we hear of Amnon my brother, Tamar my sister; the relationship has fractured; moreover, until she is out from the presence of Amnon, Tamar has lost her name.

The narrator poignantly introduces the information that ‘upon her was a long robe with sleeves’, of the sort worn by virgin daughters of kings; the servant puts her outside and bolts the door after her. Tamar ritualistically heaps ashes on her head and tears the virgin robe as indeed she herself was torn by rape. ‘A woman of mourning, Tamar goes away weeping.’32 Amnon did not listen to her words; desolate, she dwelt in the house of Absalom.

Absalom counsels Tamar who had spoken wisely to be quiet; Trible perceives this to be a pragmatic expedience masking a plan for revenge.33 Tamar’s desolation, though, cannot be reversed: ‘She lives in death… Raped, despised, and rejected by a man, Tamar is a woman of sorrows and acquainted with grief.’34 David, the King, did nothing, and it is significant that his royal status is mentioned in this context. Trible lays stress on a contrast between David and Absalom. To be king is to be responsible, to have an obligation over and above the obligations of a father to a daughter. His neglect of that relationship, is of course, embodied in the text through its very absence as an explicit reference. Furthermore, according to the Greek Bible, he did not rebuke Amnon his son because he loved him. If in the Judges’ narratives, we are repeatedly told that such things could happen because there was no king in Israel and each man did what was right in his eyes, here there is a in Israel, but does in its own eyes.

The end-stress of the unit belongs, however, to Tamar: ‘but Absalom hated Amnon on account of the deed that he raped Tamar his sister’.35 Absalom’s hate is left, festering and unresolved. Two years later, Absalom murders Amnon: the rape of Tamar is cited as the cause.

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