Sleeping with the Enemy: Recent Scholarship on Sexuality in the Book of Judges

Two Men in a Locked Room: Judg. 3.12-30

As far as Eglon’s assassination by Ehud in Judges 3 is concerned, a largely novel and highly pronounced exegetical development of the last three decades is the proliferation of studies that discern sexual innuendoes in the scene. Alter was probably the first, at least in modern times, to do so when he claimed that:

Ehud ‘comes to’ the king, an idiom also used for sexual entry, and there is something hideously sexual about the description of the dagger-thrust. There may also be a deliberate sexual nuance in the ‘secret thing’ that Ehud brings to Eglon, in the way the two are locked away alone in a chamber, and in the sudden opening of locked entries at the conclusion of the story (1981: 39).

Provocative as it was, the claim seems to have gone largely unnoticed for about a decade, and the most notable scholar to have paid any attention, Sternberg (1985: 532 n. 4), summarily dismissed it. However, in the 1990s and 2000s several exegetes, especially Brettler (1991: 295-96; 1995: 82) and Niditch (1993: 117-18; 2008: 54, 57-58), not only endorsed Alter’s stance, but also offered specific arguments in support of his predominantly impressionistic reading, singling out several details of the narrative that allegedly paint Eglon as a woman and his assassination as rape. Additionally, Brenner (1994: 52) and Brettler (1995: 82) contended that already ancient and medieval authors must have been aware of sexual connotations in the story, at least as a possibility, while Niditch pointed out that ‘the play on “sex and slaughter”…is found in non-Israelite epic contexts as well’ (2008: 57; cf. 1993: 116).

The trend culminated in the publications of Miller (1996) and Guest (2006: 168-77), both of whom construe Judg. 3.12-30 predominantly in not just sexual, but in specifically homosexual terms. According to Miller’s reading, the narrator portrays Eglon as a gay man, seeking an actual homosexual encounter with Ehud, while Guest maintains that Eglon is ‘caricatured as a passive recipient of anal rape’ and concludes, alluding to the title of Trible’s book (1984), that the piece deserves to be ‘listed among the “texts of terror” for gay-identified people’ (2006: 176-77).

Sleeping with the Enemy: Judg. 4.17-22; 5.24-27

Unlike the encounter between Ehud and Eglon, that between Sisera and Jael, recounted in prose in Judges 4 and in poetry in Judges 5, was explicitly and unambiguously construed as sexual already in late antiquity. The Talmud thrice quotes Rabbi (R.) Johanan as interpreting the unusual string of seven verbs used of Sisera in 5.27 in terms of his having sex with Jael as many times and her ‘doubtlessly’ enjoying it (b. Yebam. 103a; b. Naz. 23b; b. Hor. 10b). The interpretation was occasionally mentioned in passing by modern authors, mostly Jews writing for Jewish audiences (see the references in Zakovitch 1981: 367, n. 5), but it was not until the early 1980s that Zakovitch (1981) presented its full-throated defense. He conceded that, beyond 5.27, there is little trace of sexuality in either Judges 4 or Judges 5, and that some elements of the two accounts, especially Judges 4—such as the twice-mentioned covering of Sisera with a blanket (4.18, 19)—point away from this reading. He ascribed this, however, to a deliberate de-sexualizing reworking of an ‘original’ text in which Jael must have played a role similar to that of Delilah, Esther, Judith, and the anonymous loose woman of Proverbs 7, luring Sisera into her bed and putting him to sleep with wine and sex.

Unlike Alter’s reading of Judg 3.12-30, the notion of a sexual undercurrent in Judg. 4.17-22 and 5.24-27 did not take long to gain traction in the exegetical community. The interpretation’s steadily growing popularity was not even hampered by the fact that, almost concurrently, the relationship between Jael and Sisera came to be seen in mother–son terms (e.g. Brenner 1990). Indeed, some authors explored both motifs simultaneously, apparently seeing little tension between them. Thus, in Bal’s book, devoted in its entirety to Sisera’s assassination, a casual unqualified assertion that he ‘was sleeping because he had just made love’ (1988b: 129) is closely and seamlessly followed by a discussion of his death as a ‘reverse birth’ of sorts (pp. 130-34; cf. Bal 1988a: 211-17, 227-29; Alter 1985: 46-49; Aschkenazy 1998: 27-29). Fewell and Gunn even saw an amalgam of ‘seduction, maternity, violence’ in the discussed texts (1990: 392-94; quotation p. 394), pointing out, for example, that when in 4.21 Jael approaches Sisera, she may be doing it ‘maternally, as a mother to a sleeping child…“softly” (as lover?) or “stealthily” (as rapist?)’ (p. 393).

As suggested by the latter quotation, Fewell and Gunn also exemplify the refusal of most exegetes to follow Zakovitch—and ultimately R. Johanan—in (implicitly) limiting sexuality in Judg. 4.17-22; 5.24-27 to Jael seducing Sisera, and Sisera making love to her. Instead, they focus upon the interpretation of Sisera’s murder as a ‘reversed rape’, in which a woman blitzes a man with the purpose of penetrating him. Blazed by Alter’s examination of Judges 5 (1985: 46-49), the path was followed, in addition to Fewell and Gunn, by Bal (1988b: 130-34), Niditch (1989; 1993: 113-15; 2008: 66-67), van Wolde (1995: 244-45; 1996: 292-93), Ackerman (1998: 59-61), and others, but implicitly rejected by Schneider (2000: 79-80, 93). The only major treatment of the episode along the Johanan-Zakovitch lines was offered by Reis (2005), who interpreted Judges 4 as having Jael ‘mount’ Sisera three times and even seduce Barak.

Like Grandma, Like Granddaughter: Judg. 11.1-2, 34-40

No sexual activity, explicit or implicit, can be detected in the narratives that have Jephthah as their protagonist (Judg. 11.1–12.7), but two women close to him, whose cameos bookend the narratives, are introduced in terms of such activity, or lack thereof. The text refers to his mother as הנוז, usually translated ‘harlot’ or ‘prostitute’ (11.1), and twice mentions his daughter’s םילותב (11.37, 38), usually translated ‘virginity’. In both cases, there is a split in recent scholarship(see below) between those who recognize the sexual connotations of these terms, and even emphasize them, and those who largely or entirely deny such connotations.

In the case of Jephthah’s mother, several exegetes of the last three decades—for instance, Trible (1984: 94), Hugo (2005: 118), and Rooke (2006: 253)—have interpreted the text as underlining her promiscuity (cf. already Boling 1975: 197). Apart from the conventional understanding of הנוז, the main evidence they cite is Jephthah’s truncated genealogy in 11.1b: since he could not possibly descend directly from the Gileadites’ eponymous ancestor, Jacob’s great-grandson (Num. 26.29), his introduction as ‘the son of Gilead’ is seen as an ironic way of saying that any man in Gilead could be his father, thus presupposing his mother’s chaotic sex life. Over against this reading, Schulte (1992) argues that here and in several other biblical texts, הנוז should be understood as ‘die selbständig lebende Frau der matrilinearen Familie’ (‘independently living woman of a matrilineal family’) (p. 262; cf. Bal 1988a: 86-88). Friedl (2000: 168-70) and Jost (2006: 183-86) largely agree with her, while Schneider (2000: 162-64) and Sjöberg (2006: 53-55) emphasize that the term cannot be interpreted as indicative of the woman’s loose sexual mores, due to its fundamental indeterminacy.

As far as Jephthah’s daughter is concerned, the presupposition that the text insists on her virginity, in other words, on lack of sexual experience, has been a major argument of those who maintained that her sacrifice involved dedication to the deity through lifelong celibacy, rather than burning at the stake (see Marcus [1986] for a comprehensive review of arguments for and against this hypothesis). Bal (1988a: 44-52) and Day (1989: 59-60) contend that םילותב should, or at least can, be translated ‘nubility’ rather than ‘virginity’. This claim has been accepted by several scholars (e.g. Steinberg 1999: 126-27; DeMaris and Leeb 2006: 187; Jost 2006: 187). However, Frymer-Kensky’s overview of virginity in the Hebrew Bible (1998) casts a pall of doubt over the validity of the alternative reading, and Schneider (2000: 179-82) observes that the narrator’s portrayal of Jephthah’s daughter as a virgin who ‘had not taken actions to change that status in her two month mountain visit’ (p. 181) makes good contextual sense.

‘The Eater Became the Eaten’: Judg. 16.4-31

Recent scholarship appears to move simultaneously in diametrically opposite if by no means incompatible directions when it comes to Samson and Delilah. While downplaying the sexual (or, at the very least, physical) component of what transpired between them, it emphasizes the sexual (and unmistakably physical) component of what Delilah—and, with her help, the Philistines—did or attempted to do to Samson. From Samson making, or trying to make, love to Delilah, the spotlight has perceptibly shifted to Delilah and the Philistines raping, or attempting to rape, Samson. To use his own riddle (Judg. 14.14), long interpreted in more or less explicit sexual sense (e.g. Eissfeldt 1910: 134-35; Crenshaw 1974: 490-91; 1978: 115-16; Camp and Fontaine 1990), the exegetes are wont to portray Samson as a (potential) eater who ended up as food.

The former trajectory is most prominently represented by the exegetes’ almost unanimous rejection of Delilah’s identification as a prostitute, commonplace in both pre-modern and modern treatments of the text. Exum (1996: 184-99) offered probably the fullest treatment of the issue, complete with a discussion of Delilah as a prostitute in modern European painting and cinema, but there is little disagreement with Exum’s stance in other studies and commentaries published after 1980. Ackerman (1998: 230-32) is one recent author who insists upon seeing Delilah as a prostitute, while Bal (1984: 356-58), Niditch (1990: 620), and Schneider (2000: 220-21) tread the middle ground, liminally placing Delilah ‘between wife and prostitute’ (Schneider 2000: 221). Exum (1996: 219-26) also used the insights of Karen Horney’s psychology to build a case for understanding Samson’s attraction toward Delilah as having less to do with sexual urge than with what Exum calls a Samson complex—‘the man’s desire to surrender to the woman and his fear that he will be destroyed by her’ (p. 221). Along similar lines, Gunn (1992) submitted that behind Samson’s interest in Delilah, as well as in the Timnite woman in ch. 14, could be a profound (in the former case, even desperate) and basically non-erotic desire for companionship.

More recently, several exegetes traced indications of sexual violence in what happens to Samson after he reveals his secret to Delilah, and loses his hair together with the power residing in it. Bal (1988a: 226) initially construed Samson’s blinding, ‘the penetration of the hero’s soft flesh with a hard object’, as a rape of sorts. Much later, Jost opined that ‘wird Samson von der Philistern…feminisiert’ (‘Samson was feminized by the Philistines’) (2006: 251), Niditch singled out several hints at ‘feminization of the hero’ in the account of Samson’s capture and imprisonment (2008: 171), and Scholz (forthcoming 2012) concluded that ‘Delilah and the Philistine men were ready to rape Samson’. Bringing together the two perspectives on Samson and Delilah is Rowlett’s reading of Judg. 16.4-31 as a ‘tale of bondage and degradation’ (2001: 106), wherein they engage in sadomasochistic role play, using different objects and exploring different themes, but invariably reversing the sexual parts that patriarchal society would consider ‘normal’.

Rape for a Rape: Judges 19–21

As already mentioned, Judg. 19.25 is the only place in the book where multiple acts of forced sex take place unmistakably and explicitly. The concomitant propensity of modern exegesis to concentrate not on the nature of what transpired in Gibeah, but rather on the crime’s implications, has largely remained in place in recent decades. The most noticeable development has been the shift of attention, brought about by the rise of feminist scholarship, toward the underlying power patterns and associated stereotypes of the patriarchal society, permitting and even encouraging sexual violence against women, especially those that display a degree of independence, as well as making them expendable for the sake of men’s safety. The shift was initiated by Trible (1984: 65-91) and sustained by Exum (1993: 176-201), Ackerman (1998: 235-40), and many others.

A less pronounced and more recent trajectory is to wonder whether violence in Gibeah, while doubtlessly sexual in nature, had much, if anything, to do with the attackers’ sexuality, and whether the woman victimized and ultimately killed by the assault was its primary or even secondary target. Although some comments to that effect can be found already in Exum’s book (1993: 182-83), it would appear that Carden (1999: 91-92) was the first to argue in substantial detail that the mob’s purpose was to debase the Levite (to ‘make him queer’, in Carden’s words) by violating him through his concubine and thereby emasculating him (similarly Reis 2006: 138-39). A year after Carden, von Kellenbach (2000) boosted the argument by drawing parallels between the experiences of the Levite and those of Jewish men whom the Nazis forced to send their families to death camps.

By contrast, several authors (Trible 1984: 83; Kamuf 1993: 193-94; Aschkenazy 1998: 76; Bach 1998; Scholz 2010: 151-52; forthcoming 2012, among others) have drawn attention to the sexual subtext of Judges 21. According to them, although the narrator speaks only about the virgin women of Jabesh-Gilead and Shiloh being ‘given’ to Benjaminite survivors (v. 14) or ‘seized’ (v. 21) and ‘carried off’ (v. 23) by them as wives and emphasizes procreation as the goal, in essence these women were coerced en masse into sexual relationships—in other words, gang-raped.

Anchors Aweigh

One vulnerable spot of the interpretations generated by the recent scholarly quest for sexuality in Judges is their poor to nonexistent anchoring in the biblical text. At the most fundamental level, the exegetes involved often rely heavily on rare, dubious, or unattested semantics of Hebrew lexemes. Among them:

Further, textual details are often interpreted as sexually charged without consideration for the narrative’s layout, especially as delineated by its syntax. For instance, the expression ינולפ לא אוב ‘to come to someone’, appearing in Judg. 3.20; 4.22, does often denote sexual intercourse, especially when the subject is a man and the object a woman. Yet, contrary to Alter (1981: 39), Reis (2005: 34-35), and several others, in both of the above cases the context points elsewhere. In Judges 3, by using the perfect form אב, the narrator places Ehud’s ‘coming’ to Eglon prior not only to everything that follows, but also to the courtiers’ departure from the room reported in v. 19b. The sentence then cannot possibly serve as a hint of sexuality in what happened between the two men while they were alone; rather, it explains that Ehud had approached the king and thereby smartly positioned himself for the planned single-move blitz while Eglon was surrounded by his minions and therefore less likely to become suspicious about the visitor’s maneuvers. In Judg. 4.22bα, Barak’s ‘coming’ to Jael is immediately followed by him seeing Sisera’s body (‘and behold, Sisera fallen dead, with a peg in his temple’, v. 22bβ). Under Reis’s hypothesis that Barak’s coming to Jael indicates a sexual encounter between Jael and Barak, the upshot is that Barak was unaware of a corpse in the room—indeed, in the same bed—until he started making love to Jael. A much more plausible interpretation would be, of course, that here הילא אביו simply means ‘and Barak entered Jael’s tent’.

Analogously, the string of verbs in Judg. 5.27 that R. Johanan and, following him, Zakovitch (1981: 367-68) and others interpret in terms of Sisera (repeatedly) copulating with Jael immediately follows her striking him on the head and splitting his skull (v. 26b) and ends with him described as דודש (‘despoiled’). With that in mind, it does not matter that one of the three roots employed here, בכש, does often refer to sexual intercourse (on the other two [ערכ; לפנ], see above): it is still highly unlikely that the verse describes anything but the death throes of Israel’s erstwhile oppressor. Furthermore, when Niditch (1989; 1993: 114-16; 2008: 81) and Ackerman (1998: 59-60) cite the verse as evidence that Sisera’s assassination is interpretable as rape, they overlook or downplay the fact that he is the subject of all three verbs.

Likewise routinely overlooked is the context, both internal and external, of the allegedly sexual scenes. Brettler (1991: 295; 1995: 82) and many exegetes after him emphasize that the description of Ehud’s sword as double-edged (Judg. 3.16) potentially renders it a phallic symbol, since such a sword must of necessity have been straight rather than curved (a more typical shape at that time). In the story’s context, however, the detail has a more immediate, and crucial, meaning that becomes clear in the very next phrase: Ehud could smuggle the weapon into the royal palace only by concealing it under his garments, and that was only possible with a short, straight sword (no pun intended). Of course, Ehud’s left-handedness also played a major role: as explained by the same verse, he strapped the sword to his right side, likely to be skipped by friskers because a right-handed warrior would have trouble using a weapon positioned in this way. Additionally, the reference to Ehud’s sword as double-edged (literally ‘double-mouthed’) is interpretable as a hint at Eglon’s gluttony suggested by his enormous girth (Sternberg 1985: 332-33), or a hint at the doublespeak that Ehud used in order to secure a private audience with the king (Good 1965: 33-34; Gunn 1987: 116; Handy 1992: 240).

In a similar vein, the immediate context of Judg. 11.1b militates against the claim of Trible (1984: 94) and others that the phrase ‘Gilead begot Jephthah’ is meant to introduce the latter as ‘anybody’s son’, thereby naughtily highlighting the promiscuity of his mother. The verse that follows leaves no doubt that here Gilead is an individual, complete with a family, not a personification of the region by the same name, and that Jephthah was recognized as his son: if that were not the case, other children of Gilead would not have had to banish Jephthah in order to deny him an inheritance. The purposes of Jephthah’s introduction as the son of the Gileadites’ eponymous ancestor are not immediately obvious, but most likely it is meant as a proleptic explanation of his later demand to be appointed the group’s ‘head’ (11.9). The reference to Jephthah’s mother as ‘another woman’ (11.2b) rather than ‘harlot’ (הנוז, 11.1) further confirms that at the very least she was Gilead’s established mistress, and consequently further strengthens the argument of Schulte (1992), Friedl (2000: 168-70), and Jost (2006: 183-86) that the issue was the woman’s social status, not her sexuality.

On a broader scale, by far the most egregious example of the above-mentioned disregard for context is the Jael-Sisera scene in Judges 4 and 5: the exegetes who perceive sexual content in it rarely consider the physical and mental condition of the Canaanite general (one notable exception is Fewell and Gunn 1990: 393 n. 10). Sisera had just emerged from a physically grueling and emotionally tense battle that had ended in an unexpected and humiliating wipeout of his army (4.15-16; 5.19-21). He was fleeing on foot (4.17), traversing miles, perhaps dozens of miles of rugged terrain (neither the battlefield nor the site of Alon-bezaanannim, where Jael’s family resided according to Judg. 4.11, can be located with certainty, but they must have been at least a few miles apart; for a detailed discussion, see Gaß 2005: 251-58). Sisera was a fugitive, certain to face immediate death, if not worse, if discovered by the winners, who were likely hell-bent on revenge after twenty years of oppression (4.2-3); and, with Israelite forces already in his hometown, Harosheth-hagoyim (4.16; cf. 4.2), he had nowhere to go. Under such circumstances, what would be the chances of his being in a mood for sex, even if propositioned, before asking for water (most authors do not specify at what point exactly the alleged intercourse between Jael and Sisera took place, but according to Reis [2005: 28-31], this is what is meant by Jael covering Sisera with a הכימש in 4.18bββ)? Even if he were in such a mood, would he be able to perform, especially more than once, as per R. Johanan and Reis? And did Jael need to resort to seduction in order to sedate an exhausted warrior, especially after serving him milk, a mildly soporific drink?

Sometimes a Pipe is Just a Pipe

Another vulnerability of the exegetical eagerness to find sexual motifs in Judges is its heavy reliance upon the strategy of subjectively, even arbitrarily, enticing sexual symbolism from the text. The most conspicuous example of this strategy is the construal, explicitly or implicitly operative in most, if not all, interpretations of Eglon’s and Sisera’s assassinations as rapes, of every elongated or erect object as phallic, and of every stab with such an object as sexual penetration. The crucial issue with this construal is that its proponents hardly ever discuss the evidence that seems to contradict it. For instance, does the fact that both ברח ‘sword’ (Judg. 3.21) and דתי ‘tent peg’ (4.21; 5.26) are grammatically feminine in Hebrew disqualify them from functioning as phallic symbols? Is the case strengthened or weakened when as many as three different objects—not only Ehud’s arm and his sword (Brettler 1991: 295-96; 1995: 82), but also the hilt (בצנ) of the latter (Guest 2006: 171)—are regarded as such in this relatively short story? Can Eglon plausibly be seen as a victim of rape, given that Ehud’s sword seems to go all the way through his body (see Frolov 2012: 113-14)? In Sisera’s case, does it matter that Jael’s strike is aimed at his temple, a part of the body that is as decidedly non-sexual as it gets? Probably sensing this difficulty, Fewell and Gunn (1990: 393-94 n. 11) posit that Jael stabbed Sisera in the mouth, but Judg. 5.26 militates against this translation: how can a mouth be ‘split’? On a broader scale, does the phallic symbolism of piercing weapons exist in the cultural space of the Hebrew Bible if Abimelech (Judg. 9.54) and Saul (1 Sam. 31.4) ask to be pierced; do they want to be symbolically raped? And finally, in a world without firearms, where most violent deaths occur by stabbing of one kind or another, is it even possible to falsify the interpretation of such an act as rape? To paraphrase a well-known saying ascribed to Sigmund Freud (the father of the notion of a symbolically sexual object), when is a sword just a sword and a stab just a stab?

Similar questions are raised by several other allegations of sexual innuendoes in Judges. As seen above, Alter (1981: 39) believes that the closing and opening of the door to Eglon’s private chamber in Judg. 3.23-25 qualifies as one. Yet, even apart from the fact that locking the room was a key element of Ehud’s exit strategy, there is no clear indication anywhere in the Hebrew Bible of the doors or manipulations with them being associated with sex (on the complex maneuver that Ehud used to escape, see Halpern 1988: 43-60). Miller (1996: 114) stresses that according to 3.16, Ehud’s sword was strapped to his right thigh, ‘where the penis might lie’, while Niditch (2008: 58) points out that the area is a ‘male erogenous zone’. It does not seem to occur to them that this is where swords are always placed for convenient use and that the sword’s normal location is the outer thigh, while both a penis of regular size and the male erogenous zone are confined to the inside. Fewell and Gunn (1990: 393) see Jael’s ‘stealthy’ approach to Sisera in 4.21 as that of a lover or a rapist—why would either act in this particular way, much better fitting a devious assassin? Reis (2005: 39-41) claims, citing examples of churning as a circumlocution for copulation in ‘Sumerian hymns and English and American slang’ (p. 40), that 5.25b, where Jael serves Sisera cream or butter, metaphorically refers to sex. Yet, as Reis concedes, the metaphor in question cannot be assumed to exist in all languages (there is no Russian equivalent, for example); moreover, Judg. 6.38, as well as post-biblical Hebrew, suggests that לפס means ‘cup’ rather than ‘churn’. And, perhaps most arbitrarily, Bal (1987: 62) and Exum (1993: 84-85) regard the pillars of the Philistine temple brought down by Samson as representative of a woman’s legs, even though, depending on the type of structure that the author expected his or her audience to have in mind, they might just as well function as phallic symbols. Moreover, Bal visualizes Samson pushing the pillars sideways and thus ‘breaking the thighs’, while Exum maintains that he pulled them together, symbolically refusing sex. Why could not he push forward or pull back, again depending on the (imaginary) architectural layout that cannot be reconstructed with any degree of certainty?

Raped by the Scholar’s Pen?

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is necessary to consider what exactly is gained by the interpretations that strain the text’s semantics, context, and symbolism in order to tease sexuality out of it. Without question, it is intriguing to examine the subjects that previous generations were (mostly) reluctant to touch upon, and rewarding to offer readings that would not even occur to earlier scholarship. But as the novelty wears off, it turns out that in many cases, at least as far as Judges is concerned, titillation comes at the expense of giving biblical imprimatur to bigoted attitudes and sexist stereotypes that the exegetes doubtlessly find personally abhorrent.

Thus, Guest’s above-mentioned characterization of Judg. 3.12-30 as a ‘text of terror’ for gay audiences graphically demonstrates the ultimate outcome of the insistence upon interpreting the encounter between Eglon and Ehud as sexual. If a divinely appointed Israelite deliverer is shown committing male-on-male rape, an inevitable conclusion is that the narrator condones and even encourages acts of this kind. Moreover, since it is Israel’s longtime oppressor who finds himself on the receiving end, the text must regard such a rape as degrading for the victim and, accordingly, exude ‘contempt for any man who is penetrated by another’ (Guest 2006: 176-77). Even further, if the narrator’s purpose is to portray Eglon as either willingly homosexual (Miller 1996: 113-16) or at least effeminate (Niditch 2008: 58), the corollary, also pointed out by Guest (2006: 177), is that such individuals either want or deserve to be raped. Miller’s claim (1996: 116) that the fragment uses homosexuality as a slur against the Moabites in order to deflect a similar slur against the Benjaminites in Judges 19 adds another noxious ingredient to this already unpalatable mix. In sum, the main outcome of all the exegetical effort and ingenuity that went into discovering sexuality in Judg. 3.12-30 is the injection of violent homophobia, possibly used as a tool of ethnic baiting, into a biblical text. Whether this is a worthy goal is doubtful at best.

Unintended consequences of a somewhat different, if related, kind lurk in the scene of Sisera’s assassination. R. Johanan does not clarify what made him think that Jael had sex with Sisera (Judg. 5.27 clearly functions as his prooftext rather than as his point of departure); neither do the compilers of the Talmud explain what made his pronouncement important enough to be quoted on three different occasions. The most likely underlying mode of thinking has, however, been explicitly and succinctly formulated by Reis: ‘Whenever a man and a woman, not married to one another, are alone in private, there is sex’ (2005: 26-27). In other words, what is probably at work here is a very common patriarchal stereotype, still present and even dominant in certain cultures, that justifies women’s confinement to the household and demands round-the-clock surveillance of their activities by the appropriate men, be they fathers, brothers, husbands, or sons. It comes as no surprise whatsoever that the sages of the Talmud would subscribe to this stereotype, as possibly did at least some of the biblical authors. It is, however, much more difficult to understand what makes contemporary Western exegetes, all or almost all of them feminist or pro-feminist, try so hard to bolster it by forcing sexuality into a biblical scene that effortlessly reads as a platonic, if ultimately lethal, encounter between two people of different gender. This would remain true even with the focus not on Jael’s alleged seduction of Sisera, but rather on the sexual overtones of his assassination. To be sure, rape is primarily about violence and domination rather than sexual gratification. Yet, since the defeated general is at any rate a victim of a violent attack whereby Jael dominates him, the interpretation of his death as rape contributes to the patriarchal assumption that a woman who invites a man to her dwelling seeks sexual contact with him.

Just as incomprehensible is the insistence of several recent publications upon reading Judg. 11.1 as crudely underlining the wantonness of Jephthah’s mother. Again, from the patriarchal standpoint, a woman who enters a sexual relationship with a man without submitting to his control within the framework of marriage would indeed be ‘loose’ by definition and the offspring of this relationship would be of questionable paternity, even if her commitment is lifelong and exclusive. And again, it would not be surprising for the Bible to share this attitude. But why would present-day exegetes be willing to foist it upon a biblical verse, to the point of completely ignoring its immediate context (see above)?

And then there is the matter of dignity. It is possible to argue that when it comes to sexuality, some of the recent Judges scholarship is akin to prying journalism that airs embarrassing revelations about individuals, whose lives might arouse public interest, without consideration for their already excruciating circumstances. The plight of Jephthah’s mother, an unattached woman in a patriarchal society, odious to Gilead’s ‘legitimate’ family, was probably difficult enough without her being labeled a slut whose son’s parentage cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. Furthermore, Jephthah would hardly appreciate being, to all intents and purposes, called a ‘son of a bitch’. Likewise, the predicament that Jael had to face when Sisera showed up at her door was unenviable: if she offered him genuine succor, honoring her husband’s םולש with Jabin (Judg. 4.17), this could expose her and the entire family to reprisals by the victorious Israelites; if she turned him away, he could take umbrage at a blatant violation of the compact that he had counted upon to survive, and kill her on the spot. In the situation in which her only option was murdering Sisera by stealth—a task for which she most likely had been completely unprepared, both physically and emotionally—the last thing she needed was someone telling the world about her having been (to use a word from the title of Reis’s article) ‘uncovered’ in flagrante delicto. Both Sisera and Eglon were sufficiently humiliated by the circumstances under which they died: one killed by a woman (cf. Judg. 9.54) while cowering under a blanket, the other left prostrate on the floor in or near a toilet with a blade in his belly. With that in mind, further exposing their assassinations as rapes may be insensitive if not outright cruel.

The parallel with tabloid reporting becomes even stronger when its well-known propensity to make up ‘juicy’ facts or blow them out of proportion is taken into account. Multiple examples cited above demonstrate that recent discussions of sexuality in Judges are similarly divorced from what actually is described in the Bible. Exum (1993: 171) refers to the narrator’s treatment of Bathsheba and the Levite’s concubine of Judges 19 as ‘rape by the pen’. In terms of this powerful metaphor, just as unscrupulous journalists violate both the truth and their subjects’ privacy, recent exegesis of Judges can be seen, with regard to sexuality, as violating both the biblical text and its characters. Granted, the big difference is that a fictional personality cannot be actually harmed by a blow to his or her reputation; but the reputation of the other side is also affected in the process, and biblical scholarship would hardly want to go, in this respect, the way of the tabloids.