The Bible as "Literature" – 3 – Jephthah as "literary art"

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[Continued from: The Bible as ‘Literature’ & The Bible as “Literature” – 2 – Introduction to the ‘Old Testament’.  Reformatted and highlighted for post.]

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The evidence of the texts suggests that–

•  the literary impulse in ancient Israel was quite as powerful
  • as the religious impulse, or,
• to put it more accurately, that the two were inextricable,
• so that in order to understand the latter,
• you have to take full account of the former.

In all biblical narrative and in a good deal of biblical poetry as well, the domain in which literary invention and religious imagination are joined is history, for all these narratives, with the exception of Job and possibly Jonah, purport to be true accounts of things that have occurred in historical time.

Let us consider one extended example of a text—

• in which historical experience is recast,
• perhaps even reinvented,
• in a highly wrought literary art
• that embodies a religious perspective
• and that also encompasses elements which later conventions would set beyond the pale of literature.

Chapter II of Judges recounts the disturbing story of Jephthah’s daughter.

• Jephthah, before going into battle against the Ammonites, makes the imprudent vow that if he returns victorious he will offer to the Lord whoever (or whatever) first comes out from the doors of his house to greet him.
• In the event, it is his only daughter who comes out, and
• Jephthah, persuaded that the vow is irrevocable, sacrifices her, first granting her request of a stay of two months during which she and her maiden friends can “bewail her virginity” (11:38).

Now, the historical scholars, with some plausibility, view the whole story of the vow and the sacrifice as an etiological tale devised to explain the curious annual custom, mentioned at the end of the chapter, of the daughters of Israel going up into the mountains to lament for four days. We are scarcely in a position to decide on the historical facts of the matter.

• Perhaps there was a Jephthah who actually sacrificed his daughter (in contravention, of course, of the strictest biblical prohibition), and then a local cult sprang up around the death of the young woman.
• It may be more likely that in the region of Gilead there was a pagan cult—for the sake of the argument, let us say, of a Persephone-like goddess—which was adopted by the Israelite women; when the origins of these rites had been forgotten, the story was invented to explain them.
• We often think of such etiological tales as belonging to the realm of early folk traditions rather than to literature proper, being a “primitive” attempt to explain puzzling realities narratively; and such condescension has frequently been reflected in scholarly treatment of the Bible.
• But etiological tales are in fact essential elements of many artfully complex and symbolically resonant stories in the Hebrew Bible.
  • The Deluge story culminates in, but can hardly be reduced to, an answer to the etiological question: how did the rainbow get in the sky?
  • The haunting tale of Jacob and the angel (Gen. 32:24-32) is in some way generated by yet transcends the question: why do Israelites refrain from eating the sinew of the animal’s thigh?

And in Jephthah’s story, whatever explanation is provided through the tale for the origins of an obscure practice is subsumed under the more complex literary enterprise of interrelating character, motive, event, historical pattern, political institution, and religious perspective.

The art of interrelation is the hallmark of the great chain of narratives that runs from Joshua to 2 Kings.

Let us now look at just the first large segment of the Jephthah story. For reasons that will soon be apparent, the story actually begins with the last two verses of chapter 10, before the figure of Jephthah is introduced at the beginning of chapter11.

Then the children of Ammon were gathered together, and encamped in Gilead. And the children of Israel assembled themselves together, and encamped in Mizpeh. And the people and princes of Gilead said to one another, whosoever is the man [AR] that will begin to fight against the children of Ammon, he shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.

Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor, and he was the son of a harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah. And Gilead’s wife bare him sons; and his wife’s sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in out father’s house; for thou art the son another [AR] woman. Then Jephthah fled from his brethren, and dwelt in the land of Tob: and there were gathered worthless fellows [AR] to Jephthah, and went out with thim.

And it came to pass in process of time, that the children of Ammon made war against Israel. And it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob: And they said unto Jephthah, Come, and be our captain, that we may fight with the children of Ammon. And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, Did not ye hate me, and thrust me out [AR] of my father’s house? And why are ye come unto me now when ye are in distress? And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, Therefore we turn again to thee now, that thou mayest go with us, and fight against the children of Ammon, and be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, If ye bring me home again to fight against the children of Ammon, and the Lord deliver them before me, then shall I be your head [AR]. And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, The Lord be witness between us, if we do not so according to thy words. Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and captain over them: and Jephthah uttered all his words before the Lord in Mizpeh. (Judges 10:17-11:11)

Whether or not things happened precisely as reported here, and whether or not the ancient audience conceived this as a literally accurate account of historical events (both questions are unanswerable), it is clear from the way the text is organized that the writer has exercised considerable freedom in shaping his materials to exert subtle interpretive pressure on the figures and events.

In such writing, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish sharply between history and fiction, whatever the historical intentions of the writers. Admittedly, even modern “scientific” historiography has certain rhetorical features, but biblical narrative stands at the far end of the same spectrum, the language of narration and dialogue never being a transparent vehicle to convey the events but constantly in the foreground, always intended to be perceived as a constitutive element of the events.

The very names and geographic indications in the story, whether they were happily found by the writer in his historical material or contrived for thematic purposes, form part of the pattern of meaning. Jephthah’s name means “he will open,” a cognate of the verb patsah that he uses when he says in anguish to his daughter: “I have opened my mouth unto the Lord” (11:35).

The eponymous Gilead begets him, almost as though the clan itself begat him, and thus a simple genealogical datum is immediately ironized, for he is expelled by Gilead as a collective entity, then courted by its elders for reasons of frightened self-interest. He gathers around him a band of desperadoes in the land of Tob, which, however real a geographic designation, also means “good” and thus participates in another turn of irony, the land of good being the badlands from which the banished man longs to return to a home.

Jephthah’s is a tale of calamitous vow-taking, and this initial section constantly plays with vows and pledges and the verbal terms they involve. At their encampment in Mizpeh the Gileadites take a vow that whoever succeed in leading them against the Ammonites “shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.” When Jephthah’s half brothers decide to drive him out—apparently with the threat of force, for in the next verse we learn that he has to flee—they address him with what amounts to a legal declaration: “Thou shalt not inherit in our father’s house, for thou art the son of another woman.” It would have been easy enough for the author to report this as interior monologue (as elsewhere in the Bible, “They said in their hearts”) or as private speech among the brothers. Instead, his choice of direct discourse addressed to Jephthah (in which the narrator’s plain term “harlot” is euphemistically veiled by the brothers as “another woman”) sharpens the element of confrontation so important in the story and suggests that this is binding pronouncement of disinheritance meant to be heard by witnesses. The latter suspicion may be confirmed by Jephthah’s accusation of the elders, making them accomplices in his banishment (“Did not ye hate me and thrust me out…?”). When the elders come to Jephthah, speaking to him quite brusquely (biblical Hebrew is rich in polite forms of address, which they pointedly avoid in their opening words), they renege on the original terms of the collective vow and offer him, instead of chieftainship over all the inhabitants of Gilead, a mere military command, not “head” but “captain.” As in virtually all one-sided dialogues in the Hebrew Bible, we are invited to wonder about the feelings and motives of the party who remains silent.

Jephthah says nothing to his brothers, only flees; but years later, when he receives the rudely pragmatic invitation of the elders, his pent-up resentment emerges: “Did not ye hate me … and why are ye come unto me now when ye are in distress?”

The Biblical writers repeatedly use dialogue not merely to define political positions with stylized clarity, as Thucydides does, but also to delineate unfolding relations, nuances of character and attitude. The elders’ brusque words trigger Jephthah’s outburst. Then, caught out and trying to backpedal rhetorically, they become more voluble and more polite, introducing their remarks with a causal indication, “Therefore,” that doesn’t really refer to anything but vaguely seeks to give him the impression that all along they have been seeking to make amends. Their speech also underlines the thematic key words of “going” and “returning” or “bringing back” (the latter two reflect the same root in the Hebrew), which focus the story of banishment from the house and the flawed attempt of return to the house. This use of what Buber and Rosenzweig first designated as Leitwort (on the model of Leitmotiv), pervasive in biblical narrative, is still another instance of the flaunted prominence of the verbal medium. At the tragic climax of the story, when Jephthah confesses his vow to his daughter, he says, pathetically, “I cannot go back” (11:35).

But the poised choreography of words, in which formulations are pointedly reiterated and internally shifted as they are repeated, is most centrally evident in the changing language of the vow. The elders, having been exposed by Gilead, now revert to the original terms of the vow taken at Mizpeh: “thou mayest go with us, and fight against the children of Ammon, and be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.” Jephthah accepts these terms, omitting the comprehensive flourish of “all the inhabitants of Gilead” and stipulating that he will assume the leadership only if the Lord grants him victory.

Interestingly, it is Jephthah, the banished bastard and guerilla chieftain, and not the representatives of the Gileadite establishment, who first invokes the Lord. His problem is not one of being a weak monotheist but of conceiving his religious obligations in pagan terms, not finally understanding what the Lord God requireth of him. The elders respond to Jephthah’s stipulation by making still another vow (“the lord be witness between us …”). When Jephthah reaches the Gileadite encampment—evidently, the one referred to at the beginning of our text, the whole first section of chapter 11 being a flashback—he is, from what one can make out, spontaneously acclaimed leader by the people, despite his condition to the elders that this should occur only after the victory. They make him “head and captain over them,” both president and commander-in-chief, thus carrying out equally the terms of the initial vow and those of the elders’ first offer to Jephthah. The entire section of exposition then closes with still another speech-act that is continuous with the string of vows: Jephthah speaks words before the Lord, perhaps not yet the words that will bring disaster on his daughter and himself, but at least an ominous foreshadowing of them.

These interconnecting details of the text at hand then link up with a larger pattern of political themes in Judges and a still larger thematic pattern variously manifested in other narrative books of the Bible.

What is above all at issue in Judges is the question of right rule and fitting rulers, the sequence of judges devolving by stages toward the state of general anarchy and civil war represented in the five closing chapters.

Unlike Samson, the subject of the next major story in the line, Jephthah has a certain poise and command as a leader:

• he shows himself, perhaps surprisingly, an able diplomat in his negotiations with the enemy intended to avert war;
• he is obviously a tough and effective military leader;
• his exchange with the elders also indicates a quality of shrewdness.

But the vow, together with his inflexible adherence to carrying it out, is a fatal flaw, and it is not surprising that after his personal catastrophe he should preside as leader over a bloody civil war (chap. 12) in which tens of thousands of fellow Israelites perish at the hands of his army. The banishment at the beginning, at the head of a band of desperadoes, looks forward to the David story, but it is the sort of similarity that invites us to contemplate an essential difference: Jephthah is a disastrously more imperfect David who exhibits some of David’s gifts but will found no dynasty, build no “house,” leave no lasting institutions for national unity behind him.

What can be inferred from all this about the workings of the literary impulse in the Hebrew Bible? Perhaps the most essential point is that literary art is neither intermittent in its exercise nor merely ancillary to the writer’s purposes—in this central regard, our passage from the beginning of the Jephthah story is thoroughly characteristic of the whole corpus.

To be sure, the writer here is deeply concerned with questions of—-

• political leadership,
  • community and individual,
• the binding nature of vows and pledges,
• the relationship of father and daughter,
• man’s real and imagined obligations before God;
• but as a shaper of narrative he engages these complex issues by making constant artful determinations, whether consciously or intuitively, about such matters as—
  • the disposition of character,
  • the deployment of dialogue,
  • the attribution or withholding of motives,
  • the use of motifs and thematic key words,
  • the subtle modification of near-verbatim repetition of phrases.

For a reader to attend to these elements of literary art is not merely an exercise in “appreciation” but a discipline of understanding: the literary vehicle is so much the necessary medium through which the Hebrew writers realized their meanings that we will grasp the meaning at best imperfectly if we ignore their fine articulations as literature.

This general principle applies as much to biblical poetry as to prose. A line of Hebrew verse, whether it occurs in a grim denunciation in the Prophets, in an anguished questioning of divine justice in Job, or in the exultation of a psalm of praise, is likely to evince a certain characteristic structure dictated by the formal system of biblical poetry, of which the poets, whatever their spiritual aims, were exquisitely aware. The predominant patterns within the line are in turn associated with a number of characteristic movements for developing the poem as a whole; and some poetic compositions exhibit truly intricate structural features, involving refrainlike devices, strophic divisions, rondo movements, concentric designs, and much else. This is hardly surprising to find in any poetic corpus, but these are not qualities that our usual preconceptions of Scripture have encouraged us to look for in biblical poetry; and, as with the prose, an inattention to the literary medium runs the danger of becoming an inattention to the close weave of meanings.

Let us return briefly to what can be inferred from our illustrative passage specifically about narrative, which remains the dominant genre of the Hebrew Bible. These stories, we generally assume, are part of a religious literature, but that is true only in the rather special sense that virtually every other realm of experience is implicated in the religious perspective. Hence the pungent worldliness of the Hebrew Bible.

If what is ultimately at stake in Judges is the possible historical meaning of the ideal of God’s kingship over Israel, what we see in the foreground here, as throughout the Hebrew narratives, are issues like—

• the strife between brothers,
• the struggle over a patrimony,
• the opposition between legitimate wife and illegitimate mate,
• the bitterness of personal exile,
• the lines of political tension in the triangle of —
  • individual,
  • community leaders,
  • and populace.

The narrator’s extreme reticence in telling us what we should think about all these conflicts and questions is extraordinary, and, more than any other single feature, it may explain the greatness of these narratives.

• Is Jephthah a hero or a villain,
• a tragic figure or an impetuously self-destructive fool?

There are bound to be disagreements among readers, but the writers draws us into a process of intricate, tentative judgment by forcing us to negotiate on our own among such terms, making whatever use we can of the narrative data he has provided.

There are, of course, explicit judgments made on particular characters and acts from time to time in biblical narrative: and so-and-so did evil in the eyes of the Lord. But these are no more than exceptions that prove the rule, most frequently occurring in connection with cultic transgressions, as in Kings, with its constant concern about the exclusive claims of the Temple cult in Jerusalem.

The general rule that embraces the more characteristic refusal of explicit judgment is the famous laconic quality of biblical narrative.

There is never leisurely description for its own sake;

• scene setting is accomplished with the barest economy of means;
• characters are sped over a span of years with a simple summary notation until we reach a portentous conjunction rendered in dialogue;
• and, in keeping with all this, analysis and assessment of character are very rare, and then very brief.
  • We have no idea what Jephthah looks like,
  • what he is wearing,
  • whether he is taller or shorter than his brothers,
  • where they are standing when they pronounce banishment on him;
  • and his feelings about being thrust out can be inferred only from his subsequent words to the elders.