What did violence against women and children mean for ancient audiences and how do modern audiences hear and process the meaning of violence in the texts of the Hebrew Bible? The rape of Tamar, the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter, babes ripped from the womb during war—texts such as these are hardly fodder for Sunday School classes; yet we are left with the reality that the Bible is a violent text full of war, murder, genocide, and destruction, often carried out at the behest of God.
The essays in this volume explore ways in which the Hebrew Bible uses and abuses women and children to make indelible points concerning the people of Israel, the lived realities of the Israelite society, and God’s relationship to His people. Where other works turn to the study of the violence itself, or to the divine nature of violence, this volume focuses in on the human component. As a result, these studies are reminders that women and children born out of trauma are at once vulnerable and valuable, fragile and resilient.
Introduction: The Place of Women, Children, and Violence in the Hebrew Bible
Kristine Henriksen Garroway (Hebrew Union College, Israel), Hyun Chul Paul Kim (Methodist Theological School in Ohio, USA), John W. Martens (University of St. Thomas, USA)
PART 1
Violence against (Resilient) Children
1. A Resilient Reading of the Young Miriam in Exodus 2
Paba Nidhani De Andrado
2. The Perils of Prophetic Proximity: Violence against Children in the Elisha Narratives
M. L. Case
PART 2
Women and Children in the Context of War
3. A Whole Burnt Offering to the LORD? Contextualizing Ritual Violence against Women and Children in the Deuteronomistic History and the Punishment of Achan
Anthony P. SooHoo
4. Scorched Birth Tactics: The Eighth-Century Prophets and Rhetoric of Violence against Children in War
Jason Anthony Riley
5. Sons (and a Daughter) as Scary Semantic Signs: Naming Children in Isaiah 7–8 and Hosea 1 as Acts of Violence
Julie Faith Parker
6.The Wife and Mother: Mercy for the Womb in the Divine Marriage Metaphor
Laurel Koepf
PART 3
Texts of Violence and Contemporary Readership
7. The Lost and Found Children of Daughter Zion in Deutero-Isaiah
Angela Sawyer
8. “Wife of Promiscuity and Children of Promiscuity”: The Legitimation of Sexual Violence and Illegitimacy Disability through Hosea’s Marriage Metaphor
Alice Yafeh-Deigh
9. Performing Grief for the “Ungrievable”: A Re-reading of Ezekiel 16 with The Statue of Peace
Jina Kang
Bibliography
Index
Height:
Width:
Spine:
Weight:0.00