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Taking Hermeneutics to Heart
Proposing an Orthopathic Reading for Texts of Terror via the Rape of Tamar Narrative
Casey S. Cole
Lee University, Cleveland, Tennessee
Abstract
When we read “texts of terror,” how do we expect them as Scripture to speak to our lives today? Instead of asking what we might learn to believe or do, the orthopathic hermeneutic suggests we might ask, “How should this make us feel?” This article uses the story of the rape of Tamar in 2Samuel 13 by examining what the text might do to us, not what we should do with the text. Following recent works of pentecostal scholarship, the article suggests that the goal of the reader should not be to search the passage for comfort, but rather to allow the Spirit to speak to us because of the troubling text, not in spite of it. When we do so, we learn to grieve with the Spirit and are inspired to live as instruments of the compassion of Jesus.
Keywords
hermeneutics – Tamar – orthopathy – rape – texts of terror – 2Samuel 13 – pentecostal hermeneutics
Introduction
Every semester I ask roughly two hundred Christian university students why they read the Bible. The top three reasons in every class are: (1) to learn what is true to believe, (2) to learn what is right to do, and (3) to be comforted. I then read to them 2Samuel 13, the story of Tamar, daughter of David, raped mercilessly by a son of David. The students hear—many of them for the first time—the account of a young, royal daughter whose sisterly care lands her in a violent situation in which her brother rapes her and robs her of her future. As
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if that were not enough, the drama unfolds at the order of their father, Israel’s great king. I then read to them of Tamar’s response: a plea to marry her abuser in order to save her social status.They stare back with wide eyes as the tale ends with Tamar’s silenced future in her other brother’s household and the curtain closes with fratricide. In light of such a horrific Bible story, I ask my students to tell me what we as Christians might learn to believe about God from this, or what we should do in light of it, or how we might be comforted by such a passage. They struggle.
It does cause pause for good reason. What should one learn from such a biblical text? What can we learn to believe or learn to do? The narrative is in no way instructional or explanative, and it is does not contain characters we want to see as role models. Perhaps some wonder why a story like this exists in our holy book at all. If searching for a doctrine to understand (orthodoxy), the reader may be limited to learning that lust leads to demise, or, as many commentaries point out, that children often follow in the footsteps of their fathers.1 If reading for orthopraxy, the reader may end up only with a few examples of what not to do.2 And if one seeks comfort from this text, it may prove hard to find at all.
Thus, the hermeneutical question may not be, “How does this text function?” but rather, “How ought we to function in light of the text?” A pentecostal hermeneutic can ask the question, “How does the text read us?” If the Bible is an altar, a place to encounter God, as Rickie Moore suggests, it is the reader who is shaped and transformed, not just his or her interpretation of the text.3 The Spirit of God inspires the text by inspiring us. The effect of the Spirit on our affections is especially crucial in narratives that lend themselves to responses of horror. When we open ourselves to the Spirit through the text,
1 See, e.g., Robert B. Crisholm, Jr., 1 & 2Samuel, Teach the Text Commentary Series (Grand
Rapids: Baker Books, 2013), 244–249. The section for 2Samuel 13 is entitled, “You Reap What
You Sow,” and the “Big Idea” is that “The Lord ensures that justice is satisfied, sometimes by
allowing one’s children to repeat the parent’s sins.” “Key Themes: David’s sons repeat his sins,”
and “David pays the second installment of the self imposed penalty of his crimes.” Certainly
this generational impact is a lesson that can be learned from the narrative. This emphasis,
however, often limits Tamar’s role in the narrative to simply being a pawn in a story about
men.
2 This may be especially true (and in this passage dangerous) for female readers. The joy of
a Bible story with a female character draws the female reader to identify with her over the
other characters at work in the text and, furthermore, can lead one to assume that the female
character has acted rightly.
3 Rickie Moore, “Altar Hermeneutics: Reflections of Pentecostal Biblical Interpretation,”
Pneuma38, no. 2 (2016): 148–159.
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we are not limited to methods that constrict us to rationalization of the author or breakdown of the language. Moore says:
If we see scripture only as a means to our epistemological ends, then we will continue to be trapped, as we have been, in a hermeneutical pro- cess that is constantly hinging onour capacityto explain or explain away Scripture’s many limitations, tensions, complexities, dissonances, inco- herencies, contradictions, obscurities, ethical difficulties, and so forth.4
In such a scriptural text as Tamar’s story, limiting ourselves to a hermeneutic of orthodoxy and/or orthopraxy may leave us trapped in the texts of terror.
The Danger of Strictly Reading for Orthodoxy and/or Orthopraxy
2Samuel 13 leaves much to the hermeneutical imagination. A “plain reading” is difficult since the narrative neither explains cognitive beliefs nor advocates a certain ethic.5The narrator does not suggest how this factors into systems of theology or suggestionsof how toact appropriatelywith regard tothe horrorsof rape. As with all Scripture, especially narrative, here interpretation must occur. Certainly no learned person who follows the ethics of Jesus could surmise that the mere existence in the Bible of a story like Tamar’s condones what occurs therein. But as Rowan Williams reminds us,
One of the great tragedies and errors of the way people have understood the Bible has been the assumption that what people did in the Old Tes- tament must have been right “because it’s in the Bible.” … But they are not in the Bible because God is telling us, “That’s good.” They are there because God is telling us, “You need to know that that is how some peo- ple responded … things can go very wrong.”6
It seems unimaginable that anyone could construe this passage to endorse rape. The responsive actions to the rape in the text, however, are not so easily
4 Ibid., 156.
5 When I ask students in my classes to give a reading for orthopraxy from this text alone,
students point out that Absalom’s reaction of killing Amnon could serve to legitimize murder
as an act of justice.
6 Rowan Williams, Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer (Grand Rapids: Wm. B.
Eerdmans, 2014), 28–29.
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putaway.Onemightexpectthatatleastonebiblicalcharacterwouldactrightly, compassionately, in the face of such tragedy. Yet, all three responses, by Tamar, King David, and Absalom respectively, pose their own problems. A reading for orthopraxy may be limited to their anti-examples.
First is the response of Tamar. After she is raped, Amnon immediately despises her and throws her from his house. Realizing what is happening, Tamar begs him to ask their father for her hand in marriage. She says, “Sending me away would be worse than what you have already done!” (2Sam 13:16,ceb). Should this be an example of how to respond to one’s rapist? Perhaps one could reason why this might make sense given Tamar’s place and time, but imagine offering this as advice to a girl today. Tamar lived in a different time, so maybe we could rationalize that she made this decision to preserve her livelihood. But could we imagine Jesus yoking a girl to her rapist, or even condemningTamar to Amnon then? Jesus spoke about liberation from oppressors and freedom from that which makes desolate.
Next is the response of Tamar and Amnon’s brother, Absalom. Absalom cares for his sister by bringing her into his household, but he tells her, “Keep quiet about it, sister. He is your brother. Do not take it to heart” (2Sam 13:20; italics mine). About this, one commentary states, “Absalom as a good elder brother consoles Tamar and asks her to remain quiet.”7 Is this how “good brothers” act? Simply try to mute the cries of their sisters? Surely this is not the type of advocacy the Comforter brings. Furthermore, Absalom is so full of rage and hatred that he murders his brother. Does this mean that murder of the perpetrator is the proper response? Has Absalom provided justice and therein given us a model ethic? Could one imagine Jesus responding today in this way?
Lastly, we have the response of David. He is found in the roles of both father and king. The narrator tells us that David was angry, yet he took no action on behalf of his daughter. The text says, “He refused to punish his son Amnon because he loved him as his oldest child.”8 David’s response is inaction due to favoritism of a son. We cannot allow silence to be the popular response to rape or injustice any more than we can allow biblical interpretation to condone it. If there is anyone the reader might expect to be a prototype savior in the narrative, it is David, the “man after God’s own heart.” Yet, David gets it wrong. The text shows that David’s inaction may be because he has competing feelings,
7 Ghana Robinson,Let Us Be Like the Nations: 1 & 2Samuel, International Theological Commen-
tary (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993), 222.
8 Interestingly, this portion of 2Sam 13:21 is left out of the Masoretic text, though it appears in
thelxxand thedds.
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conflicting emotions. He is angered by what happens to his daughter, but he is blinded by partiality to his son. With such divided affections, David offers no justice for the situation and, consequently, no hope for the reader.
Just like the other characters, David has not taught us what is right or good. Perhapsonemightbeabletoexplainwhytheseresponsesarejustifiableintheir context. But no matter how one understands these reactions in their original frame of reference, a christocentric ethic shows us a different model for action. We can entangle the narrative in theological or historical-critical explanation, but why do we feel that the responses of Tamar, Absalom, and David are not good? Because we know Jesus and cannot imagine him responding like that. It may be a good spiritual exercise to imagine how Jesus would react in any role of this story. In accordance with his actions in the Gospels, it is difficult to imagine Jesus desperate because of fear, so filled with rage that he resorts to murder, or having favoritism unto confused negligence.
The Danger of Strictly Reading for Comfort
Fear, rage, and confusion are a far cry from the hope and peace mentioned earlier that Christians desire when they read the Bible. Without doubt, the Bible is a source of comfort to us. Its words can be water to a parched soul, balm on a sore wound, and hope in a dangerous land. Pentecostal scholarship, however, has been quick to point out that the Bible is not inherentlysafefor its audience: there is a risk in reading it. This can occur when the Bible operates like a mirror, reflecting ourselves back to us, and certainly that involves risk. Our pains, fears, and sins are exposed, which are painful but allow growth to occur.9Moreover, the text does not merely reflect ourselves, but it operates as a living “vessel,” or a “Spirit-Word.”10If the Scriptures are going to be a place where the reader encounters God, a certain risk is implied. C.S. Lewis’s depiction of Aslan as “good but not safe” comes to mind.11 Certainly we trust God, but our ideologies, our actions, and our perceptions are in danger of alteration and possibly even death.This alteration may come through the act of wrestling with a reading. As Chris Green has pointed out,
9 10
11
For more on this, see Moore, “Altar Hermeneutics,” 155.
Cheryl Bridges Johns, “Grieving, Brooding, and Transforming: The Spirit, the Bible, and Gender,” jpt 23 (2014): 147.
C.S. Lewis,The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe(Nashville,tn: HarperCollins, 2002).
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Read in the Spirit, Scripture bring us into participation with Christ and his sufferings. Wrestling with the Scripture, and being wounded by it, alters us savingly. But it does not merely wound—it crucifies.12
With these texts of terror, we must learn to feel the agony of Christ. Wounded- ness, crucifixion even, may be the appropriate response to the text.
This passage offers very little comfort to the reader today. There is no happy, miraculous ending to Tamar’s story. The patriarchal society in which she lives determines that she is ruined, and her future is decided for her. She cannot return to the virgins’ quarters of her royal home, and she cannot marry or have children.13 She is ostracized from both her sisters and her hope of a husband and family. She is forced to become completely destitute. Yahweh did not divinely intervene and save her. Her father, the king of all Israel, cannot fix her situation. The narrator lets us know that even though she could move into Absalom’s house, she “remaineddesolate.”14It did not fix her. She may have survived, but she is destroyed.
The Path to Orthopathy
As Cheryl Johns reminds us, however, “A Spirit filled feminist hermeneutic does not abandon women to grief.”15 Instead of explaining doctrine or suggesting a course of action, perhaps this story wants us to feel something. Maybe it wants to teach us to feel something besides comfort. This practice of feeling with the text is not simply emotionalism or emotivism, but the hermeneutic of orthopathy: learning what is right to feel. Said differently, it is learning to feel as God feels. Scripture is meant to shape not just our minds and actions to be Christlike, but our hearts—our affections—too. We read often of God’s feelings, emotions, and desires, and when we do so it is easy to assimilate
12
13 14
15
Chris Green, Sanctifying Interpretation: Vocation, Holiness and Scripture (Cleveland, tn: cptPress, 2015), 126.
Ghana Robinson, Let Us Be Like the Nations, 222.
The English word translated “desolate” comes from the Hebrew word שָׁמֵם , meaning numb. This suggests that Tamar is “awestruck”; she has been silenced. Interestingly, after Absalom bids Tamar to hold her peace and move into his house, her voice is offered no more in the text. Her mourning and crying are no more, but one must wonder whether silence is better than grief. What does her silence say that she cannot? Thecevsays, “but she was always sad and lonely.” While this translation certainly gets at the state of Tamar’s heart, it is surely an understatement.
Johns, “Grieving, Brooding and Transforming,” 152.
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ourselves to them. The Old Testament shows us that Yahweh is a God who is passionate, a God who is affectively “moved” by the happenings on earth. The narratives, the prophets, and the wisdom literature all reveal a God who grieves, who can be angered, who rejoices, who is jealous, and who has compassion.16 When we hear of God having pity or God laughing, we routinely read that as a proper response to the situation at hand, even as a model for our own reactions. But we must remember: Yahweh is not a character in Tamar’s text of terror. We are not shown how God feels. The characters offer no attempt at explanation, nor does the narrator offer us any insight.
How, then, are we to learn what is right to feel from the story of Tamar? Maybe this is answered best by first tackling the question of where God is in the text. Many readers are shocked to realize that God is absent from an active role in the narrative. In fact, God is not even mentioned. There is no archetypal savior at all. God remains silent.Yet, God’s silence should not be misinterpreted as a lack of God’s concern, or worse, as God’s condoning these actions.17 God’s silence does not mean that God missed it or does not care. God’s eyes were not closed. Perhaps, then, it is the eyes of our hearts that have been closed and need to be awakened from an ancient sleep of a merely pragmatic reading of thebiblicaltext.SowherewasGodinthestory?MaybeintryingtolocateGodin the text, we have missed God’s Spirit within us, brooding over the text.The Bible is literature of various genres that gives us revelation of God, and revelation takes two. Thus we are invited through the Scriptures to participate in the life of God, to enter into God’s story of history as the Spirit illuminates our minds and our hearts. The Spirit loves to live and dance in the space of interpretation that exists between the text and the reader.
When the Text Reads Us
Pentecostals have long thought of the Bible not simply as an explanative text- book or an ethical manual, but as a place to encounter God. As Rickie Moore says, Pentecostals have an “altar hermeneutic.”18We perceive the text as a type of altar at which both we and God show up, and we can be “altered.” Moore says:
16 17
18
See Psalm 78:40; Deut. 9:22; Exod. 34:14, Isa. 62:5; Judg. 2:18.
The idea of God’s silence as sign of God’s disapproval, especially in the book of Judges, can be found in Lee Roy Martin’s The Unheard Voice of God: A Pentecostal Hearing of the Book of Judges, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series 32 (Blandford Forum, uk: Deo Publishing, 2008).
Moore, “Altar Hermeneutics.”
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Approaching biblical hermeneutics in this light illuminates the realiza- tion that it may not be the biblical text as much as my own self that needs to be interpreted, that is, that we need Scripture to interpret us more than the Scripture needs us to interpret it.19
In reading texts of terror, we get interpreted. Our own hearts get exposed. Our feelings, our emotions rush to the surface. Our reactions reveal our desires. These texts serve especially well to reveal our fears and our pain.
As Moore says, these texts “confront” us.20When we read a story like this, we are confronted with our own theology. We must deal with our thoughts about God. In light of the way we think about God, we may be quick to ask angrily, “Where was God?” or “Why did God let this happen?” No longer is the text the subject, but now the subject is God. Yet, both reader and text must fall subject to this Subject.21Furthermore, as we wrestle with the story of Tamar, there is a likely possibility that we will be wounded, as Green has said. Most of all, it is too easy to imagine the difficulty with which a victim of rape would read this story. This pain caused by empathy and identification with Tamar is not limited to the victims themselves or only to the abuse of rape. Even if one does not have a personal connection of abuse, the reaction to this scene ought to be one of horror. Disgust. Sorrow. The story is repulsive.22Imagine if someone’s response to this passage was laughter: if one thought it was funny and it inspired them to see what they could get away with. Would we not know that something was deeply wrong with that individual? With issues of rape, it is to be hoped that there is an easy consensus to a right or wrong reaction. But the question begs for a standard: how do we judge our reactions to the text?
Accepting the Text as Spirit-Word for Meaning-Making
In the tiring process of trying rightfully to discern problematic passages, it is possible that we have tried to “sanitize” the text, to wipe it clean of the dirtiness
19 20 21 22
Ibid., 155.
Ibid, 156.
Johns, “Grieving, Brooding, Transforming,” 151.
A striking quote is helpful from Craig E. Morrison,2Samuel, Berit Olam: Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry, ed. Jerome T. Walsh (Collegeville, mn: Liturgical Press, 2013), 166. “Tamar’s rape is unbearable to read. Because the narrator provides us with so much preliminary information about Amnon’s scheme, we watch in dread as the childlikeTamar approaches her predator, ready to hand-feed him with her fresh baked delicacies.”
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that hurts us.23When we narrow our focus to epistemological understandings or explanations, we can become distracted and lose sight of the meaningful- ness demonstrated by the characters in the narrative. Yet, if we understand the Scripture as Spirit-Word, that “frees the biblical text from the confines of his- tory.”24 Thus, the Spirit is free, free to make meaning with liberality. As Cheryl Johns says, this “requires a pneumatology that covers the entire span of God’s actions in history.”25 Those actions do not only include God’s activity on the earth, but they also urge us to let the Spirit show us how God feels.
Thus, what if, instead of “sanitizing” the text or distracting ourselves with theories, we allow ourselvestotakethestorytoheart?What if we allow the Spirit to pull us into the text instead of just pulling the text into us? Maybe then we could read with our affections, like Mary Evans does when she says of reading 2Samuel 13:
We see Tamar as a person in her own right. We note her generous nature … We feel her incredulity turn to dismay … We sense her dismay turn to hopeless desperation …We watch her despair turn to inconsolable misery … We weep with her as she rips her clothes.26
This is neither emotivism nor mere emotionalism. Now certainly just because one feels something or reacts in a certain way does not justify it as right or good or Christian. An orthopathic hermeneutic does not simply pat one on the head for recognizing feelings; it alsoteststhe feelings. It makes room for the Spirit to transform our affections by asking what is right in light of Jesus as the ultimate revelation of God. Here we have the freedom within the Spirit to ask how God feels about the narrative. Can we imagine how Jesus would feel, hearing of this story? What would Jesus’s reaction be? Jesus never explicitly deals with rape in
23
24 25 26
Edgar W. Conrad, review of Cynthia Edenburg, Dismembering the Whole: Composition and Purpose of Judges 19–21, Ancient Israel and Its Literature 24 (Atlanta: sbl Press, 2016), Review of Biblical Literature (Feb. 2017). Speaking of Judges 19–21, Conrad writes, “Gang rape and death, young virgins given as trophy wives, the encouragement to ensure posterity by abducting young women who are enjoying the festivities at Shiloh, and the horrifying slaughter, including ‘the little ones’ (21:11), are so repulsive that it is difficult to sanitize the literature by thinking about what an anonymous author and redactor might have been conjuring up in the sixth-centurybce.”
Johns, “Grieving, Brooding, Transforming,” 148.
Ibid.
Mary J. Evans, The Message of Samuel, The Bible Speaks Today, ed. J.A. Motyer (Downers Grove,il. InterVarsity Press, 2004), 222.
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the New Testament, so how do we know? We must be willing to let the Spirit inspire our imagination. This is not completely subjective work of personal fantasy, but is grounded in the person of Christ revealed in the Gospels and guided by the tradition of our communities.
With an orthopathic hermeneutic we do not justlearnabout Christlikeness, but Christlikeness is made possible therein. Readers can find themselves being sculpted into the image of Christ, being made into his likeness by struggling with the text. Thus no longer do we have to work to sanitize the text,27 but we find God actually located in the tension, located in the problems, located in us. Consequently, not only has a pentecostal hermeneutic made room for the marginalized reader’s voice, but a Spirit-filled orthopathic hermeneutic gives voice to the marginalizedtexts. Those texts of terror are made useful by means of empathy. They can shine light on truth and on an ethic of compassion. They stir in us the inability to be apathetic to tragedy. In light of ethics, one can raise the question of whether or not justice occurs in the pericope. Perhaps it does not.28Yet, perhaps justice happens every time the reader looks at this text and says, “For the love of God, no and never again.”
Conclusion: The Chance to Conform to Christ
At the sps meeting in 2014, I had a conversation with a dear friend, Caroline Redick, about the texts of terror. She asked me how I dealt with those passages as a Christian woman. I remember saying to her blatantly, “They don’t bother me.” She looked me in the eye and made a confession that I took also to be a challenge: “Well, theyreallybother me.” I could not understand why she would
27
28
Conrad, review of Edenburg, Dismembering the Whole. He goes on to say, “The kind of careful and thoughtful study she has undertaken, however sophisticated and painstaking in its rendering, however superb as an application of the method employed, however irresistible to historical impulses, may in some sense be an escape from the stories, a way of avoiding the literature itself and the horror it depicts, a means of skirting the responsibility of reading the story as it is in its final form and instead covering the brutality with a blanket of technical argumentation that muffles the cries of the characters and perhaps even the voices of the ultimately unknowable authors and redactors.”
As one church magazine suggests, “Divine justice is satisfied” and “divine justice is evident as her (Tamar’s) intense pain becomes a reality in David’s life.” Here, as with many ecclesial materials, David is the focal point of the story, always the main character. See Eileen Jaeger, “The Bible Reveals Three Guaranteed Way to Ruin Your Children,”The Pentecostal Evangel, June 11, 1961 (Springfield,mo), 3.
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be so bothered. I rationalized to her that I understood myself in light of Jesus’s treatment of women, and those old patriarchal texts could be pushed to the side without much attention. What was actually true is that I did not know how to deal with those texts, so I just simply didn’t. In that moment to Caroline, I was being like brother Absalom, telling her to get over her pain: “Be quiet! It’s the Bible; do not take this thing to heart!”
Perhaps ignoring the texts of terror and focusing on the Gospels and teach- ings of Jesus is one way to do it. Yet, when I read the story of Tamar, I have found that—in that moment of reading it!—it allows me the opportunity to be like Christ. Because of Jesus I know that Caroline is not the only one bothered by Tamar’s story. God “takes it to heart,” too. An orthopathic hermeneutic chal- lenges me to be fashioned and formed by the heart of God revealed in Christ. Furthermore, it pulls us not just toward virtuous emotions and affections, but toward a Christ-centered ethic. It moves us to action by that which “moves” Jesus. It allows the Spirit to shape us with Jesus’s compassion, compelling us toward restorative justice. From the orthopathic hermeneutic, we learn that the Bible does not merely shape our doctrines and inform our ethics, but through the Spirit it sculpts our desires and teaches us how to feel as God feels, forming our character. The Spirit is at work in us through the text, but also at work in the text through us. Herein we learn to brood with the Spirit who hovers over emptiness and chaos, anticipating the future creation.29This is the transforma- tion that happens on the altar of God, forming us to Christ’s likeness, allowing us to participate in the story of God. Maybe if we take such texts “to heart,” we can partner with the Spirit to imagine and then create a world in which the futures of our Tamars do not get taken from them.
29
Johns, “Grieving, Brooding, Transforming,” 152. Johns says this type of reading “moves us into the purposes of God toward justice and the healing of creation. The movement from grief to transformation often goes the way of ‘brooding’ over the brokenness and gestating newness.”
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