Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19 (Ki Teitzei)

Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19

What a gloriously disturbing collection of verses are these? Why were they never covered in Sunday School?

Here is the rundown with commentary:

21:10-14 describes how to forcibly subjugate and frequently rape "marry" one of the aforementioned [Numbers 31] virgin girls whom you took captive in battle after killing her relatives. That is, until you grow tired of her and yearn for new captives. Simply divine!

21:18-21 describes how to run the trial and public execution of a rebellious and party-going son. Martin Sheen, take note.

21:22-23 describes a curse which the L-rd G-d puts upon certain dead people because of how other people cruelly killed them. Interestingly, Christians tend to think these verses apply in some bizarro-world way to Jesus of Nazareth, whose divine cursing allegedly brought forth a blessing.

22:5 - God also hates cross-dressers. British satirists, take note.

22:8 - As it happens, I own a home with a flat roof and no parapet, and evidently that's just one more reason for Jehovah to hate me. I've done worse, of course.

22:12 - God loves tassels! Inexplicably, though, he hates Mardi Gras.

22:13-22 - If a girl doesn't bleed from her crotch on her wedding night, the men of the city shall publicly stone her to death. Divine sex tip: Men, try to avoid foreplay and don't be gentle!

22:28 - Punishment for raping a virgin is (wait for it...) fifty shekels of silver and an unbreakable vow of marriage to the rape victim. There is no punishment for raping a widow, evidently. Also, how must it be for the virgin to get the chance to be raped on a daily basis by the fellow who ruined sex for her in the first place? Now where did the first-wave feminists ever get the idea that the Bible is a patriarchal, barbaric, and oppressive document?

23:1-3 - God is a real man's man and refuses to be seen with guys who are less than fully equipped and properly endowed, if ya know what I mean. Also, God loathes bastards and their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandkids, for some reason or another. Probably the sanctity of marriage or some bullshit like that. Also, He is a bit racist when it comes to certain non-Israelites, but we sort of caught the drift of that already.

23:13-14 - Please don't take my word for it, just go read these verses yourself. Right now. Otherwise you'll think I'm exaggerating when I say that these verses commit thoroughgoing Biblical literalists to the odd position that God is angered when He steps in poop. No, really.

23:15 - The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 may not have been unconstitutional, but it was clearly unbiblical. I've got to remember to go book-mining for references to this verse in the sermons and polemics that went back and forth between northern and southern preachers at the time.

23:17 - No whores and sodomites allowed.

23:20 - Confirms certain European Gentile stereotypes about Jewish custom, oddly enough, by specifically commanding that it is okay to screw over goyim (and only goyim) by lending at interest.


24:1 - Whenever the authors cannot think of a rational justification for a new rule, they always whip out "That would be detestable in the eyes of the LORD." Wish they'd had invented an abbreviation or one word acronym for that.

25:12 - Women may have their hands cut off for an oddly specific offense. I'm wondering if I go through all of WestLaw or Lexis if I can find any instances of this particular form of physical assault. I'm also wondering whether this law arose out of something that the priestly scribe who wrote it shudders to recall. Given the ban against those "wounded in the stones" this could have been a career-ending injury for him.

While this passage ends with yet another ruthless exhortation to wage total genocide, I'm going to skip lightly over that and attempt to end this post on a positive note. This passage has several positive injunctions not to oppress the poor, strangers, orphans, and widows, or even hardworking oxen, and moreover it lays out a rudimentary system of welfare at 24:19-22. So that was a nice change of pace from all the smiting and cursing. Even a blind squirrel finds a tasty nut every once in a while.

Genesis 39: One Hot Cup o' Joe

In this chapter, we learn that Joseph is blessed in all things, including sex appeal. Just as Dinah and Sarah (and possibly Rebekah) were the targets of gentile royal lust, so also Joseph proves irresistible to the opposite sex. Evidently both the patriarchs AND the matriarchs were all smoking hot. Also, it would appear that our modern American obsession with personal appearance and sexual attractiveness, especially noticeable in television and movies, has a very ancient pedigree indeed. One might say it is rooted in those fabled "Judeo-Christian values" I keep hearing about from the politicians.

In any event, Joseph manages to preserve his virtue by fleeing the house, and then gets smacked with a rape charge, in one of the earliest documented cases of "he said / she said" in a sexual assault trial. Personally, I consider the wife's story to be the more plausible of the two, but as they say "history is written by the winners" and I don't see anyone worshipping the gods of Egypt around here.

Genesis 38: Tamar keeps it in the family

To invoke the KJV euphemism, Judah "went in unto" a certain Canaanite woman, who bore him Er, Onan, and Shelah. To this day, when Englishmen having trouble finding the right words to say, they invoke the name of Judah's firstborn.

Er marries Tamar, who is soon widowed because the LORD slays him for reasons only known to God. Onan was then ordered by his father to "go in unto" Tamar and duly impregnate his late brother's widow. He goes in to her alright, but pulls out of her at the last moment, thus spilling his seed and demonstrating to posterity that the ancient Semites knew at least one method of birth control. The LORD, never one for a disobedient smartass, slays Onan for failing to go all the way. And thus down to this very day the practice of coitus interruptus with one's sister-in-law is referred to as Onanism. Wait, wait, that's not what it means?

One might be tempted to think that Onan's story is the only bizarre sexual incident involving Tamar in this chapter of the Bible, but wait, there's more! Judah impregnates his daughter-in-law without ever looking her in the face because he thinks she is a working girl. Maybe it was custom back then never to look a prostitute in the face? Certainly this would open up the field of competition.

At any rate, Judah becomes wroth when his daughter-in-law, the widow of both Er and Onan, starts to show as pregnant. He commands that she be burned alive (seems a bit harsh) but then she provides the proof of purchase which he had given her as a receipt for services rendered. Alas, Judah, you are the dastard who knocked up this hapless woman! Perhaps you should both be burned alive?

Genesis 28-31: More selective breeding

Isaac send Jacob forth into the world to find a bride, telling him to "take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother." This Isaac does, not just once but twice.

Jacob works for seven years to marry Rachel, but he is tricked into marrying her older sister Leah instead. Somehow, he doesn't notice this until after consummating the union. I know they didn't have electric indoor lighting back then, but I'd wager good money that I could tell my wife from her older sister even in the dark, and even though their voices sound fairly similar. Perhaps seven years of celibacy makes one a bit overhasty.

Jacob does eventually get to marry Rachel, however, after only seven more years of working for his new father-in-law. As an added double bonus, he also fathers children upon both of his wives' maidservants, firstly with Rachel's maid Bilhah and later with Leah's maid Zilpah. I've heard a good deal about Biblical family values from the politicians and preachers around here, but I'm thinking they need to be a bit more specific as to which bits of the Bible contain the family values which they would like us to emulate.

Jacob works some magic with selective breeding of his father-in-law's livestock using specially prepared almond trees. How this works is a bit obscure, but the practical upshot was that he ends up with loads of sheep and cattle. He tries to sneak away from his father-in-law, but he is pursued. Rachel steals some of the household goods, or rather gods, for reasons unknown, and hides them quite well. Eventually, Jacob and Laban reach a sort of détente, and go their separate ways.

Genesis 20 - Theodicy FAIL

Most theodicies (counter-arguments against the argument from evil) run something like this: "God cannot intervene to prevent evil because if He did so it would go against _______" where we can fill in the blank with something we tend to like, such as free will or personal moral development. Here in chapter 20 we find that the God of Abraham wasn't terribly concerned with these philosophical notions, at least not where Sarah's virtue was on the line. Once again Abraham has played the sister card and given her unto a king (Gerar rather than Egypt this time around) because although she may be ninety years old, she is still smoking hot. God himself warns the king against following in the way of Pharaoh:

"I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart; for I also withheld thee from sinning against me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her. Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are thine."

The king is naturally upset with Abraham for pulling the sister stunt, and Abraham excuses himself by noting that the people of Gerar are probably godless killing machines, and anyway Abe's wife really is his half-sister. (Incest prohibitions will come along later in the Torah.)

The moral of the story is somewhat unclear, however, whether it is to be taken as parable or history, it is clear that the God of Abraham has yet to hear of the free-will defence or the soul-building theodicy, since he steps right in to intervene with revelation and miracles and threats of regicide.

Genesis 18-19: God Hates Inhospitality

In chapter 18 we find Abraham and Sarah at home (with their new and slightly different names) demonstrating their impeccable manners as host and hostess by preparing bread, butter, meat and milk from scratch for three men who seem to pop into the narrative from nowhere in particular. After the extravagant meal, the men inform the elderly couple that they will have a son. Laughter ensues, and Sarah claims it was just the laugh track. Abraham then sends these strange men off to Sodom, which seemed like a good idea at the time.

After this point, a curious thing happens. The all-knowing all-seeing all-powerful creator of the universe starts haggling with Abraham over the conditions of Sodom's utter destruction. Now I've always been skeptical of stereotypical portrayal of Semites as stern negotiators, but here we find the putative forefather of their many nations wrangling over price with the Lord God Himself, bargaining the price down from fifty righteous souls to only ten. Good on him, I say. Too bad Jesus couldn't talk God down a bit at Gethsemane, "Please Lord, take this cup away, maybe I just could just die of thirst instead?"

Anyhow, in the next chapter we find Lot demonstrating his own admirable hospitality by taking in and dining with two angels who have for some unfathomable reason taken upon themselves the form of attractive young men. The locals of Sodom gather around the house and say unto Lot, "Hey! Get those guys out here so that we may get to know them, you know, in the Biblical sense, by which we mean gang rape." Evidently the Sodomites had a very different sense of hospitality than that of Abraham and Lot. Being a proper patriarch and host, Lot refuses this offer, and counters with his own virgin daughters instead. Evidently, Lot isn't nearly as good a negotiator as Abraham. He should have lead off with goats and let the Sodomites haggle up from there.

The men of the city at this point try to break down Lot's door, evidently overjoyed at the prospect of getting to gang rape everyone in the house. The angels then strike the Sodomites with blindness, and hasten Lot and his family out of the city, to the nearby hamlet of Zoar in good time for the Lord to rain fire down upon the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. While escaping, Lot's wife looks back and turns into a pillar of salt, and to this very day the families fleeing fearfully from the cities to the suburbs are referred to as "white flight," presumably in her honor.

After settling outside of Zoar, Lot's virgin daughters devise a clever plan to drug and rape him, because they wanted to have children and, well, their father was the only guy around. Thus did Lot demonstrate his own sexual prowess, in that although he was elderly and drunk out of his skull, he still managed to knock up two virgins, on two consecutive nights, against his will and without his knowledge or consent. It appears legendary feats of virility are becoming a running theme in this book, one gets the sense that the authors really wanted to play up the manhood of their forebears.

Genesis 16-17: The Joy of Sects

In these passages we find the mythical origins of both Islam and Judaism, that is, the very first mentions of both Ishmael and Isaac. Both boys will be circumcised, but only one will be covenanted and featured throughout the rest of this particular holy book. This may cause some degree of animosity between those who claim the one and those who claim the other as their forefather, but we'll overlook that eventuality for now and focus on the creation myths of these two monotheistic sects.

The obvious question arising from the events of chapter 16 is this: If your wife had trouble conceiving, and she encouraged you to instead impregnate her personal assistant (who is on your payroll) would you go ahead with the plan? Even supposing polygyny was the norm, and even given that the first wife okays the plan, it seems more than a bit like sexual harassment to compel one's employees to bear one's children. I can already hear anthropologically trained moral relativists saying that we shouldn't project our modern norms against sexual slavery back to the ancient world, but we are talking about someone who is to this day considered morally exemplary by Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Baha'i. If he were indeed so, surely he wouldn't have leveraged his position of power to get into his servant's pants. That's just the sort of abuse of power we'd expect from Bill Clinton or Newt Gringrich, but never Father Abraham. Contrary to our modern notions of personal liberty, however, we find that being the man on top makes it okay to sexually exploit one's servants, by Biblical standards. Not only acceptable, but actually worthy of angelic support in the wilderness crisis pregnancy center, where Hagar is told that her most important duties are to submit and obey. How uplifting is that, ladies? And unto this very day, the women of Islam are oft encouraged to emulate the wifely submissiveness of their putative forebear.

In chapter 17, we find that the God of Abraham has a bit of a sexual mutilation fetish. I can just imagine Abraham saying "we shall do *what* to the flesh of our foreskins? Didn't you put it there for a reason?" At this point, it is absolutely necessary to quote at some length from Rabbi Maimonides:

"As regards circumcision, I think that one of its objects is to limit sexual
intercourse, and to weaken the organ of generation as far as possible, and thus
cause man to be moderate. Some people believe that circumcision is to remove a
defect in man's formation; but everyone can easily reply: How can products of
nature be deficient so as to require external completion, especially as the use
of the fore-skin to that organ is evident. This commandment has not been
enjoined as a complement to a deficient physical creation, but as a means for
perfecting man's moral shortcomings. The bodily injury caused to that organ is
exactly that which is desired; it does not interrupt any vital function, nor
does it destroy the power of generation. Circumcision simply counteracts
excessive lust; for there is no doubt that circumcision weakens the power of
sexual excitement, and sometimes lessens the natural enjoyment: the organ
necessarily becomes weak when it loses blood and is deprived of its covering
from the beginning. Our Sages ... say distinctly: It is hard for a woman, with
whom an uncircumcised [man] had sexual intercourse, to separate from him."

For once, I am in complete agreement with the good Rabbi, and I would also note that my wife has shown no inclination to separate from me as of yet. At this point in the Bible, I am starting to notice that there is an awful lot of bizarre fetishizing and sex talk in this supposedly family-friendly book. Putting aside the aforementioned nakedness of Noah, here we have God is commanding a 99-year-old man to mutilate and cripple his own penis and go on to impregnate his 90-year-old wife. Really? I've heard that "with God all things are possible" but this seems like an arbitrarily difficult feat of sexual prowess. Why not go ahead and make them sleep in separate beds, too?

In any event, God establishes his covenant with the offspring of Isaac, and provides to them a readily identifiable means of telling their offspring apart from those of other sects, assuming of course that they are male, you catch them in the nude, and you aren't averse to a bit of impolite staring.

Genesis 12: Isaac's Mom has got it going on

When it comes to full-on hard-core self-fulfilling prophecy, it's damnably difficult to top the following:

I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing...and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed... Unto thy seed will I give this land.

After committing these verses to papyrus, the Jewish people went on to become the only tribe to ever engage in a truly global diaspora, somehow retain their unique ethno-religious identity, and go on to retake their ancestral homeland. Moreover, the scribes who penned these verses managed to pass on their fundamental religious and cultural memes to at least 7.5 million Bahá'í, 14 million Jews, 1.6 billion Muslims, and 2 billion Christians. Not exactly "all the families of the Earth" but those are damned impressive statistics for a particular collection of ancient memes, the contemporaries of which are today almost entirely extinct.

Back to the story. Abram sojourns around a bit, and ends up in Egypt during a time of desperate need. If this sounds familiar, it is because the story will be retold time and again throughout the Bible. Note especially the narrative elements of Egypt, famine, Pharonic dialogue and dialectic, and that "the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues," which is a bit of a bloody giveaway that the authors of the narrative (and the Author of the Universe, as some would have it) do not mind heavy-handed heapings of foreshadowing. At the end of this particular pericope, the Pharaoh finally stops sticking it to the prototypical Jewess, and lets her people go.

One really can't blame the poor Pharaoh too much, because Sarai was really quite a "fair woman to look upon" as they say, and while a later Pharaoh was to suffer the affliction of a divinely hardened heart, we can fairly assume that this one was quite naturally smitten with a different variety of personal turgidity.

Genesis 6-9: God Poureth Forth Mighty Wrath, Noah Poureth Out Strong Wine

I don't bother overmuch with those who maintain there is ample scientific evidence for a truly global inundation, because doing science means following the evidence to conclusions rather than dragging the evidence along to wherever you were hoping to arrive. That said, what we have here is a mythic parable about the wrath and power and mercy of God. The key passage is this: "And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." If we had to define the term "overkill" using only one ancient myth, this story would be the way to go.

I've always wondered why a putative God would use a natural disaster to get His message across. I mean, wouldn't it be quicker and easier just to magically kill all the offending humans, as God allegedly did with the miserly and dishonest Ananias and Sapphira? Surely the use of a global flood (whether metaphorical or literal) sort of sets the unfortunate precedent that any given massive natural disaster will be assumed to be divine retribution? For that matter, why not just zap all the offending humans into nonexistence and leave the animals alone?

Now this is a more-or-less universally familiar story, at least up to Gen 9:17, wherein God promises never again to destroy all life with water, and provides the rainbow as a symbol of his friendship with men. Presumably, though, the Lord has an infinitude of other means at His disposal (including everything listed in Death From the Skies) and thus this covenant ought not be particularly reassuring to the theologically inclined.

After this point in the story, things get a bit more obscure and obscene. You have to read this bit for yourself or else you'll think I'm just making it up:

And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

So Noah goes to a great deal of personal effort to make a bit of wine (this is the guy who built the entire Ark after all) and then he overindulges and finds himself laying around naked in his tent. I'm not saying anything negative about Noah here. It's his tent, after all, and it's not as if we Americans never lay around the house naked drinking wine. Evidently, though, the ancient Hebrews considered nakedness to be a Very Big Deal, so much so that Noah immediately curses his grandson (who was nowhere on the scene during this story) when he discovers that his grandson's father has seen him naked. Maybe it's because Noah is more than 600 years old by this point, and his body hasn't held up so well over the centuries. Maybe it's because the authors of the book wanted to dishonor the Canaanites early on in the narrative. Either way, it seems a bit extreme to lay down a perpetual curse upon so many tribes on such a *ahem* flaccid pretext as one's own nakedness, exposed entirely by accident, to someone other than the object said curse.