A Horrific Act of Violence

"No such deed has been done or seen from the day that the children of Israel came up from the land of Egypt until this day. Consider it, confer, and speak up!"

Judges 19:30 NKJV

A constantly updated war bulletin. Sometimes fierce and thunderous, other times sharp and silent, usually underestimated, hidden, and stifled. In a dramatic silence, victims cannot find the courage to come forward and cry out about the abuse they have suffered. Rarely are they able to scream in the whispers and gestures of their violated bodies the pain engraved in their flesh. This is violence against women, which we would never want to find in the realm of faith. Yet its deep roots are confirmed in biblical history, where the cases are striking. Among the stories reported, three women are as emblematic as they are forgotten: Dinah, Tamar, and the Levite's concubine. Their stories are full of endless devastation. I have chosen to retrace them in the hope of eliciting compassion, generating rejection of indifference, and instilling the courage to speak out.

Genesis 34 tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob, who goes out to meet other girls. In a moment of leisure, she falls victim to Prince Shechem, who sees her, lures her into his house, and takes her. Shechem then falls in love with her and wants to marry her. Jacob's sons agree, but on condition that Shechem and all his people be circumcised. This is a ruse to weaken the enemy and overwhelm him in his vulnerability. In fact, three days after the circumcision, Simeon and Levi attack the city and kill all the males, kidnap women and children, and rape them (too). In 2 Samuel 13, we read the story of Tamar, sister of Absalom, sons of King David and the same mother. Amnon, their half-brother, falls desperately in love with Tamar, to the point of not eating anymore. On the advice of his cunning friend Jonadab, he resorts to a subterfuge. He pretends to be ill, and when David comes to visit him, he asks him to send his sister to prepare him something to eat. The girl obeys, but as she offers him the cakes she has made with her own hands, Amnon grabs her with the intention of having sex with her. The young woman resists and tries to reason with him, suggesting that he ask her to marry him, but he, blinded by passion, rapes her and then drives her away. When Absalom discovers the truth, he kills Amnon two years later to avenge the offense.

We find the third story in the Book of Judges (chapters 19-21), and it is so gruesome that the narrator comments that “nothing like this has ever happened or been seen before.” A Levite from Ephraim sets out on a journey to retrieve his “adulterous” concubine, who had returned to her father. He wants her back, determined to speak to her heart. Here the Levite stays with his father-in-law, who lets them leave only after several days. Arriving late in Gibeah, in the territory of Benjamin, they are hosted by an old man from Ephraim, at whose door the Benjamites suddenly knock, ordering the Levite to come out because they want to abuse him. After offering them the old man's daughter and concubine, the Levite himself pushes his wife out. In the morning, the Levite finds the woman, raped throughout the night, lying with her hands on the threshold of the house: exhausted, helpless, dead. He loads her onto his donkey and, once home, the Levite cuts her body into twelve pieces to send to the twelve tribes of Israel. This will be the pretext for a civil war with more rapes and murders, because violence begets more violence and tragedy spreads.

Dina tells us that women pay with violence for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, even today. With Tamar, Amnon mistakes for love the blind passion that leads him to madness and murder. The girl finds herself caught in a web of relationships with men who are incapable of protecting her. Domestic abuse is terrible because it occurs in contexts where the weakest should be safeguarded, protected, and loved. The nameless woman in the third story is an open letter. Abused and torn apart, she has not encountered any “good Samaritans” who have anointed and bandaged her wounds. The cry for justice becomes that body torn to pieces and raped again. Why these stories? Scripture does not believe that denying or removing violence is enough to overcome it. On the contrary, it believes that it must be narrated in order to allow the reader to recognize and process it. We cannot ignore these violent pages and only read uplifting stories, because we would trivialize evil, shirking our duty to look into the abyss of the heart. May God help us to have eyes to see a social problem that marks all relationships, even the most intimate ones.

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Weekly Bible Reading Plan #49

December 01,   Ezekiel 40-41; 2 Peter 3

December 02,   Ezekiel 42-44; 1 John 1

December 03,   Ezekiel 45-46; 1 John 2

December 04, Ezekiel 47-48; 1 John 3

December 05, Daniel 1-2; 1 John 4

December 06, Daniel 3-4; 1 John 5

December 07, Daniel 5-7; 2 John