Abstract
T
Park begins the volume by disclosing her own social location and its impact on her reading of the text. She is a Korean American female scholar shaped by two contexts: 1) the patriarchal and religiously conservative immigrant community in which she was raised, and 2) the mostly White educational institutions in the northeastern United States where she was trained. Park likewise acknowledges her debt to the work of previous scholars, with whom she remains in conversation throughout the volume. Park’s awareness of her own interpretive subjectivity and her generous approach to the readings of others constitute a major strength of this volume. She constantly foregrounds the flexibility of the biblical text and its susceptibility to multiple construals without losing sight of her own unifying thesis.
Park argues convincingly that the few female characters in 2 Kings are used as ciphers for the writers’ fears or as tools for androcentric theological agendas. Some unnamed females—such as the poor widow (2 Kgs 4:1–7), the servant girl (5:1–27), and the starving mothers (6:24–31)—provide brief glimpses behind the text of marginalized populations that are harmed by an uncaring and corrupt political system. The writers quickly pan away from such characters to focus on power struggles among kings and prophets. In contrast, Park draws attention to vast segments of Israelite and Judean society (poor men, women, and children) who are rendered invisible and voiceless in the text because of gender, class, or ethnicity. She reminds readers that behind these accounts of a few select men vying for power and dominance “are the untold sufferings of people who bear the brunt of the violence, distress, and adversity caused by these leaders and their policies” (p. 205). The commentary attends to monumental and archaeological evidence that testifies to this suffering.
Park also highlights the denigration of powerful female characters like Jezebel and Athaliah in 2 Kings. The writers reserve special animus for Jezebel as a pious and powerful foreign woman. A narrative scapegoat, she is depicted as a “gateway drug” luring Ahab and the men of Israel to worship foreign gods (p. 107). Although in many ways a mirror image of the zealous Elijah, she is othered in the text, and lingering effects of this propaganda are still used to disempower minority women today. Park elucidates how biblical writers use xenophobia and sexism to justify Jehu’s treasonous power grab. Complicit interpreters misread Jezebel’s death scene as vanity or attempted seduction, rather than as an elderly queen’s attempt to control her final image and die with dignity. Noting that Anath is sometimes depicted with a necklace of skulls and belt of hands, Park suggests that foreign worship lingers in the text along with the murdered Jezebel’s remains (9:35), despite attempts to eradicate them both.
Although Athaliah is presented as Jezebel redux in Judah (11:1–21), Park argues convincingly that there is a more complicated story behind the text. How could one sociopathic woman almost singlehandedly annihilate the Davidic line, despite the presence of palace guards and soldiers? While the text takes pains to present Athaliah as an isolated interloper in the Judean court, her successful coup and six-year reign suggest that she had support. Yet she is all but silenced in a text that constructs its own version of history. Here and elsewhere Park’s ability to reconstruct events behind the text emerges as another strength of the volume.
Equally impressive is Park’s ability, without eisegetical imposition, to suss out the gendered significance of texts when it is not immediately obvious. Something as simple as a physical description of Elijah as a hairy man (1:8) or insults targeting Elisha’s baldness (2:23) have gendered connotations in an ancient world that links hair to a wild, feral virility (e.g., Samson or Enkidu). The very first episode in 2 Kings stages a contest between the “baal of flies” (Baal-Zebub) and YHWH and his prophet Elijah (“baal of hair”). By sending an envoy to inquire of Baal-Zebub rather than YHWH, Ahaziah denigrates the latter’s ability to provide for the needs of the king and his people. When the hirsute Elijah repeatedly calls down fire from heaven to consume the king’s messengers, the biblical writers reaffirm the prophet’s authority and YHWH’s masculine power as the real storm god who controls life and death. Similarly, given the connection between hair and virility, the insults leveled against the bald Elisha (and indirectly toward his god) must be met with violence to reassert his (and YHWH’s) masculine power. YHWH’s masculinity is also a subtext in episodes pitting Israel’s deity against other gods. These episodes allow the biblical writers to reassert that only YHWH can provide regeneration and life (e.g., 2 Kgs 5:1–27).
Likewise, Park argues that masculinity is involved in YHWH’s demand for exclusive worship from his wife/daughter Israel (cf. Hosea). Just as the male household head controls the sexuality of his wife and daughter, YHWH expects to control Israel’s religious allegiances. The biblical writers repeatedly assert that YHWH can provide Israel with those things associated with royal and divine masculine power: provision of needs, protection from invaders, and destruction of enemies. They also set up the theological expectation that kings who worship YHWH exclusively enjoy masculine successes by winning battles, dominating others, and providing for and protecting their people. Kings who worship improperly, however, suffer the emasculation of violence, vulnerability, and destruction. They are unable to protect their people or defeat their enemies.
Yet Park notes that this gendered worldview of the writers is neither monolithic nor univocal. While the text defends the masculinity of YHWH and the Deuteronomistic belief system, it simultaneously deconstructs these assertions and provides the possibility of a counter-reading. For example, Moab’s ability to overthrow Israelite rule (1:1; 3) raises questions about why YHWH allowed his people to lose this territory. Despite the writers’ efforts to shift blame from the Deity onto Israel’s kings, these questions are never fully answered. The story of desperate, starving mothers in 2 Kings 24–31 also strikes a discordant note against the claim that YHWH is a powerful, lifegiving deity. Why does YHWH not send Elisha to inform these women that the famine is nearly over before they cannibalize a child? Does YHWH really authorize the incredibly bloody rebellion of Jehu? These and several other episodes, Park notes, raise questions about the dominant belief system embedded in the text.
More glaring are instances where impious monarchs, condemned in the text for religious violations, nonetheless enjoy long and successful reigns (e.g., 13:1–9; 14:8–16, 23–29). Even Manasseh, whom the writers of 2 Kings revile, rules longer than any other Judean monarch (21:1). Park notes the writers’ attempts to alleviate such incongruities in the text by shortening the accounts of these kings or passing over their accomplishments in silence. Similarly jarring, the handful of righteous Judean kings (Joash, Amaziah, Hezekiah, and Josiah) experience early success followed by ignominious endings. Park demonstrates that this results, in some cases, from the writers’ efforts to disguise embarrassing political machinations. But readers look in vain for adequate theological explanations for Hezekiah’s forced tribute to Assyria and the righteous Josiah’s untimely demise. Readers cannot help but question why YHWH allowed Josiah’s heroic reform efforts to fail. The writers attempt to scapegoat Manasseh as the cause of Judah’s fall, thus deflecting blame from YHWH. However, Park argues that the writers’ efforts in this case appear excessive and unconvincing. Could Manasseh or anyone do something so bad as to warrant the desertion of Judah by YHWH?
Such recurring moments of dissonance, created by historical events that did not match theological expectations, might lead readers of 2 Kings to question YHWH’s masculine character. As Park points out, such moments increase in frequency as the book progresses until 2 Kings ends with a fast-pace narrative that “conveys a sense of theological confusion” (p. 303). Does the fall of Judah indicate that YHWH has been defeated by a stronger, more masculine god? Park argues that the book never fully resolves such quandaries, but instead deconstructs “the androcentric vision of the deity professed throughout 2 Kings” (p. 303). Perhaps trying to end the commentary on a hopeful note, she posits that the muddled vision of YHWH’s masculinity at the close of the book “compels the reader to begin the process of decolonizing the image of God so forcibly asserted in the preceding account” (p. 315, emphasis added). While this is certainly one possible readerly response to the text, readers are hardly compelled in this direction. Unfortunately, most readers of 2 Kings have failed to deconstruct the violently masculine images of YHWH that the text contains despite repeated hints of a counter-narrative. Despite this overstatement, the strengths of Park’s volume clearly outweigh its weaknesses.
The volume begins with a short editorial forward by Athalya Brenner and a longer introduction to the series by Barbara E. Reid. Following the author’s introduction, Park provides twenty chapters of commentary, each usually tackling one chapter of 2 Kings. Exceptions are longer chapters dealing with women, children, and the sick as victims of warfare (6:1–7:20); the reign of Hezekiah in Judah (18:1–20:21); the reign of Josiah in Judah (22:1–23:37); and the fall of Judah (24:1–25:30). Given her thesis, Park chooses to use masculine pronouns for YHWH throughout the commentary. A bibliography and two indices arranged by Scripture references and subject follow a short afterword. Copious footnotes make citations and further discussion easily accessible to the reader. Finally, the volume is greatly strengthened by the inclusion of insets in which other scholarly voices offer complementary interpretations and background information from other cultural contexts and subject positions.