Sometimes, though, I approach a passage and am suddenly very aware of my gender, and how my gender alters my reading of the text.
Let us consider Jeremiah 20:7.
My handy ESV (if you doubted that I was comfortable with gender exclusive language, the fact that I predominantly use an ESV should convince you, although I really own it because it was the most convenient wide-margin Bible I could find) renders this verse,
“O Lord, you have deceived me,
and I was deceived;
you are stronger than I,
and you have prevailed.”
I can’t get much useful meaning out of the first two lines; I’ve never experienced God as a deception. The second two lines strike me as even less useful. Yes, God is stronger than mortals. Is this news? Nevertheless, it’s inoffensive.
I’m reading Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Prophets, and he makes an entirely convincing argument that the proper rendering of the verse is,
“O Lord, Thou hast seduced me,
And I am seduced;
Thou hast raped me
And I am overcome.”
That makes, theologically, a heck of a lot more sense. It’s much more powerful language. I get it. It ‘opens’ the verse for me, and gives me a new perspective on the prophetic experience. Here’s Heschel:
“This interpretation betrays an ambivalence in the prophet’s understanding of his own experience. The call to be a prophet is more than an invitation. It is first of all a feeling of being enticed, of acquiescence or willing surrender. But this winsome feeling is only one aspect of the experience. The other aspect is a sense of being ravished or carried away by violence, of yielding to overpowering force against one’s will. The prophet feels both the attraction and the coercion of God, the appeal and the pressure, the charm and the stress. He is conscious of both voluntary identification and forced capitulation.”
Yes. Absolutely, yes. That speaks to my experience of God. I have felt coerced, enthralled, overcome. There is appeal and pressure, charm and stress. “All your waves and your billows have gone over me!”
And yet.
As a woman, the image of God as rapist gives me the heebie-jeebies. Surely I cannot be the only person to feel likewise—hence, presumably, the more neutral rendering of even a conservative, literal translation like the ESV. I can get over my distaste, but just barely, and I’ve never been sexually assaulted. I imagine this translation would be much more problematic for someone who has. Yes, the prophet is speaking about a loving coercion—but rape is never loving; rape is terrifying and horrible. Yes, part of the prophet’s point is that a genuine experience of God can include fear—but that is fear caused by the prophet’s human experience of an overwhelming Divine, not fear caused by a woman’s victimization. Yes, I see the point, and find the metaphor useful—but it still makes my stomach squirm.
I find myself very interested when I notice my gender intersecting with my reading of a text. (I am assuming that women are more likely to be uncomfortable with this passage than men; perhaps that is a false assumption.) Ultimately, despite my qualms, I find this rendering of the passage useful and compelling—and I wonder what that says about me and my approach to the Bible.
I wonder if I would find this passage equally useful without my queasiness. (I felt similarly queasy all the way through Lolita, and know I wouldn’t remember that book so vividly or find it so compelling without its ability to induce a vague nausea.) I wonder where the line is between language that provokes us into deeper thought, and language that is simply offensive—language that pushes our limits, and language that is too far outside of them for us to follow.
While reading this passage of Heschel, I couldn’t stop thinking about Donne. One of his Holy Sonnets uses very similar imagery to convey a slightly different, but related, point. I don’t feel any queasiness about this sonnet. I love it whole-heartedly:
Batter my heart, three person'd God, for youI’m not entirely sure why I find this language less problematic than the language in Jeremiah. Part of it is because this speaker is much more clearly longing to be overcome. Part of it is that ‘ravishment’ is part of a whole spectrum of forceful imagery (batter, break, blow, burn, imprison, enthrall), not the predominant image. Part of it is simply that I love Donne and, in a weird way, ‘trust’ him more than I trust the author of Jeremiah. Part of it is that the word ‘ravish’ has a whole different range of connotation for a modern reader than the word ‘rape’ does.
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
When, if at all, is it ever acceptable for a writer to use images of rape in this way? Does it change depending on the gender of the author? Does it change depending on the context they were writing in?
How do others notice their gender identity affecting their reading of the Bible?
Ah, Jeremiah. A book I go back to over and over (I was reading it again during the world conference in Kenya). Several passages have spoken to me and worked their way into messages I have given, and the verse you quoted in this post is one of my favorites.
ReplyDeleteThat may be surprising because I have been sexually assaulted (I won't go into that now, but I wrote about it here and here). Even so, the translation that speaks to me the most is of being "raped" and "overcome."
I think part of the reason is that language mirrors my experience. I have felt used by God at times—used against my will, in ways that wounded me. I love the language in that verse in the same way that I love the angry Psalms. God can can handle the accusations, and sometimes it feels good to say the way it feels using the strongest possible imagery.
Some days, my relationship with God feels a lot like this (a song that seems like a modern version of Jeremiah 20:7). Not every day, fortunately!
[A side note: I think it is important to remember that sexual violence can also be directed at men. It is true that women are more often raped, but we also don't hear about male rape as much because there is such a stigma attached to it. All that to say, I don't necessarily see this verse as gendered.]
I read that verse and I was strongly moved by it, and then I simultaneously thought about giving a message like that in open worship, and I thought, "uh oh." And then I started wondering . . . all of the above! I hadn't thought of it as like the angry Psalms. That's helpful, and so is your affirmation that Heschel's translation of the verse speaks to you, too.
DeleteYou opened Jeremiah 2:13 for me while we were in Kenya. I had never noticed that broken cistern imagery before. My above-mentioned wide-margin ESV has scribbled notes next to that verse, including, "Thank you, Ashley W.!"
Thanks for saying so, Rosemary! I am still riding the emotional ups and downs after speaking at the women's conference and it is nice to hear that something I said was of use.
DeleteActually, I think my understanding of Jeremiah 2:13 is growing. Someone at the women's conference asked about my convergent Friends thread group and how I defined convergent Friends. I read the verse to her and started talking, saying more than I did in Kenya. I was surprised at the time and thought, I may have more to say about this!
When I read I tend to be more aware of my being a woman than my lack of being a man, as it were. I don't read about men and masculinity and feel excluded, but I become more alert and critical when I read about things that are supposedly feminine. Maybe it's because I can more confidently compare what I'm reading to my own experiences.
ReplyDeleteIn any event, I do not have the same reaction to the use of "rape" here. I can easily see it as a "enforcing will over another" verb more than a "violence against women" sort of verb. Granted, the latter definition is much more usual in this day and age, and Heschel might have chosen a different word if he had written it today instead of fifty years ago. I guess my vote then is that it changes in context. (And thanks for pointing out a book I need to read.)
When I read the Bible, my gender only stands out to me when I feel singled out for it. A lot of the time, I do put a varnish of context on it ("Well, women were property back then."), but sometimes I get upset or irritated (example, I can understand being unclean after giving birth, since there is a lot of blood involved, but why on earth are you unclean for 30 days after having a son and 60 after a daughter??). Otherwise, I don't think it influences my reading.
Oh, you should definitely read Heschel! I've also read The Sabbath, which I found very moving.
DeleteI liked the way you put, 'more aware of being a woman than of not being a man.' That's it for me, too. I can't read 1 Timothy 2:11 without getting a little, er, cranky (granted I think that verse had a specific and reasonable meaning in context and doesn't apply to me today, but I still get all eye-rolly).
I wonder if there *are* women who couldn't tolerate this reading of Jeremiah, or whether I was being overly sensitive? Of course we three are hardly an unbiased sample . . . hmmm.
Like you, Rosemary, gender-exclusive language tends not to bother me. But I think it's because of the era I grew up in where that was the norm. So I learned to read myself into the text and am generally not offended when I see it. The verse in Jeremiah using the word "rape" did however, get a visceral reaction out of me, probably because it is such a brutal act. But as a reader, when I come across something like this, I read further to get an understanding of what the author is trying to convey. Knowing that Heschel is a scholar, I would naturally assume there was more to it than just my visceral reaction to the word. But how many other people do that? Or do they read and just get turned off by wording, not even making an attempt to get at the heart of the author's intention?
ReplyDelete"Knowing that Heschel is a scholar, I would naturally assume there was more to it than just my visceral reaction to the word. But how many other people do that? Or do they read and just get turned off by wording, not even making an attempt to get at the heart of the author's intention?"
DeleteRight. That's part of my hesitancy. While giving ministry, I worry about walking that line between pushing people and turning people off before they are able to get at the heart of the speaker's intent.