This is a tale of redemption. From emptiness to fullness; from bitter to blessing.
Naomi is probably the most famous mother in law in the bible. She begins the story on the back foot, having lost her husband, Elimelech, and both married sons whilst in Moab where they originally fled to find food. But she has Ruth*, her Moabite daughter in law, who refuses to leave her when she decides to return to her Israelite homeland of Bethlehem (lit. 'house of food).To reflect her loss she wishes now to be called not Naomi (pleasant) but Mara (bitter).
'I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty' (Ruth 1:21).
(Is everything that goes wrong God's fault: is everything that goes right down to His provision? Interesting thought...)
But Naomi and her daughter in law arrive in Bethlehem at the beginning of the harvest, a sure narrative and theological harbinger of fruitfulness to come. And that's what you keep feeling in this story: hope after desolation. It's like watching a gentle rom com but a lot better - you know everything is going to be all right.
Thanks to a fortuitous encounter with a relative from way back, Ruth and Naomi have the chance to be 'redeemed' in the manner of Levirate law regarding remarriage of widows. Boaz is the gentleman in question - a 'kinsman-redeemer' - and a jolly kind chap at that. He is willing to marry Ruth the foreigner from Moab and to count any ensuing offspring as, effectively, children for Naomi.
So although she arrived in Bethlehem a widow and childless, she ends up cradling baby Obed, grandfather of King David, in her ageing arms, whilst the women comment of the baby, 'He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter in law who loves you and who is better than seven sons, has given him birth' (Ruth 4:15).
It's never too late to be blessed.
*to be continued tomorrow...
It's just Beauty and the Beast all over again - does no one ever learn?
Today is the first post about an un-named woman in the bible, but she is no less memorable for being 'someone's daughter'. All of us are someone's something; mother; sister; brother; husband; widow; regret...
Jephtha was one of those people who just had to underscore his achievements with grandiose vows before God - the sort Jesus warned about when he said 'simply let your 'yes' be 'yes' and your 'no' be 'no', anything else comes from the evil one' (Matthew 5:37). In a rash moment of pre-battle prayer Jephtha (whose name means 'he opens') opens his big mouth and out comes this:
'If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph (...) will be the Lord's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering' (Judges 11: 30-31).
NO, NO, Nooooo...you can hear the readers' cries already. Obviously something, or rather, someone, very precious is bound to be first on the doorstep.
Correct.
Who should run out to meet him but his only daughter, dancing and singing and being innocent and lovely.
It is the nature of unbreakable oaths that they must be carried through. No one understands this better than this daughter, his only child. All she asks, before the dreadful deed is done to her, is that she be allowed to roam the hills with her friends and weep that she will never marry. If it were me I'd be weeping I was about to be sacrificed in the name of some dumb promise made in the heat of battle, but there you go. Her death will mean the absolute end of the family line as there are no siblings or cousins.
So think of a sad song, plait some flowers in your hair and wander the hills in memory of Jephtha's virgin daughter, sacrificed in the name of misguided religious observance, but still exuding a sort of sweet, unruffled feminine aura around the 11th chapter of the rather grim book of Judges.
I've often camped at the New Wine Christian festival near Bath, England, and I can report that tent pegs are normally invaluable. No pegs, no home for a week.
Occasionally you need a tent peg for another reason - maybe to pierce a hole in the top of your polythene pack of sausages in the absence of scissors - but generally they're for hitting into the ground with a mallet. Never have I heard of someone bashing one into a man's skull whilst he was asleep - certainly not at Week A anyway.
But this is what our fabulous female for today does, outwitting the mighty army Commander, Sisera, into the bargain.
Israel's enemy have been defeated but the hated Sisera is still at large and staggers into the camp of Heber, the Kenite, an ally. He is met by Jael, Heber's wife, and all indications are that she will hide him safely in her tent till danger is past. She offers a bed, tucks him up, gives him a bedtime drink and meekly receives her instructions: 'Stand in the doorway of the tent (...) If someone comes by and asks you, 'Is anyone here?' say no.' (Judges 4:20).
But this lady ain't no pushover. While Sisera's asleep, she creeps in, takes a hammer and inserts the tent peg through his temple (I'm thinking these Ancient near Eastern ones are a bit tougher than your average Millets variety).
For this action she is called 'most blessed' and gets her own jolly song -
'She struck Sisera, she crushed his head,
She shattered and pierced his temple.
Chorus: At her feet he sank,
He fell; there he lay.
At her feet he sank, he fell;
where he sank, there he fell - dead'
(dee dum, dee dum, dee dum...etc.)
TBH I'm having a few 21st Christian qualms about this one, but the text suggests positives: she is part of the divine plan; she is blessed; the land has peace for forty years (Judges 5:31).
Make of it what you will.
It's a bit like buses - you wait for ages for one, then two come along. After pages of Old Testament men through Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and most of Joshua, we come across two women who take God's people forward unflinchingly. Today, Deborah (nickname - 'Bee') and tomorrow her equally strangely named sister in battle, Jael (nickname - 'Mountain Goat').
It's the bad old days in Israel - people lurch from misspent youth to old age, sinning happily against the Lord and suffering the consequences. In a long line of male judges who try and sort them out we suddenly read this:
'Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time. She held court under the Palm of Deborah (...) and the Israelites came to her to have their disputes decided' (Judges 4:4-5).
Sorry, Deborah...? Was that DEBORAH, as in a woman's name? As in a WOMAN leading an Old Testament, militaristic, patriarchal society...just like that?
The OT is full of surprises. She summons Barak to do battle against Sisera. His answer:
'If you go with me I will go; but if you don't go with me, I won't go.'
I rather like him for this - quite 'sensitive man' answer - but God is less impressed, opening up an opportunity for another woman* to have a part in Israel's eventual victory.
Deborah is not backward in coming forward about her role:
'Village life in Israel ceased,
ceased until, I Deborah, arose,
arose a mother in Israel' (Judges 5:7).
Between them, these two women have got the whole nation wrapped up, spiritually and tactically.
*To be continued...
God has astonishing foresight. At some point around 1400 BC he looked down from kingly splendour, noticed a feisty prostitute and thought 'there's a woman whose heart is in the right place - hmm, another special one for the genealogy of my Son...'
In the children's book series, 'Horrid Henry', by Francesca Simon, everyone has an alliterative name to show what they are like: Horrid Henry, Perfect Peter, Moody Margaret - you get the idea. Today we meet Resourceful Rahab who saw an opportunity and grabbed it in both henna-ed hands. Opportunistic or faithful?
An invading people are heading to your city to raze it to the ground. Do you:
a. Sit at home shaking with fear
b. Take up arms and fight them off
c. Side with the invader and adopt their faith into the bargain
Rahab decides on c. As Israeli spies enter her city she hides them on the roof and after they've escaped to the hills, lies to the king of Jericho about what she has seen. As the Israelites prepare to take Jericho and everyone else is 'melting' in fear she and her family prepare to be evacuated as she suspends a red rope from her window - a sign which effectively says to the Jews 'here is the family to spare' - a nod to the blood red marks on the Passover doorways.
For this faithful action she gets a mention in the Epistle of James centuries later: 'Was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies (...) so faith without deeds is dead (James 2: 25-6).
An established leader of the New Testament church commends a foreign prostitute. Strange things happen when women of faith take action.
The tambourine is not everyone's instrument of choice. It wasn't great when you were in infant school and it was the only thing you could be trusted to play apart from the triangle. In the Church of England sensitive types come over hot and shivery when a tambourine is spotted in church. Personally I'm a fan but they do take a bit of skill to play well. Think Stevie Nicks in Fleetwood Mack's Go your own way; Davy Jones of The Monkees and of course Linda McCartney. The beat, the rhythm; the frenetic tempo; keeping everyone going with that insistent urgency.
It makes a good victory sound in the hands of Miriam, Moses' sister, as the Israelites emerge from their miraculous Red Sea escape.
Miriam - brother-rescuer; prophet and musician 'took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them:
'Sing to the lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.' (Exodus 15:20).
It was obviously before believers became worried about coming across all triumphalistic.
It was what freedom sounded like. No more forced labour, religious restriction, assimilation.
It was worship - spontaneous; kinetic; noisy, gutsy.
It was, in all sorts of ways, not really C of E.
John Bell, charismatic leader of the Iona Community in Scotland, once got up in front of a large evangelical congregation in Reading and addressed God as 'midwife of change...' There was the faintest whiff of a gasp inside a church which was more used to hearing of God as Lord, King and Father.
But God as midwife...takes us nicely to Shiphrah and Puah (who??), midwives who safely delivered Hebrew babies in defiance of powerful male incitement to genocide under the despotic Egyptian Pharaoh in Exodus 1:15-21.
John Bell (again) speaks of a time when he was invited to speak at Westminster Abbey. Looking through the set readings in preparation for his sermon he noted it was Exodus1:1-14 and 2: 1-10 (Joseph's story rounded off; beginning of Moses's story) because Exodus is all about Moses, right?
Right; but where was the passage about the midwives? Expunged from the Lectionary apparently. Had it not been for the women who feared God more than they feared male power there would not have been a Moses, or any baby boys.
When Shiphrah and Puah are summoned before Pharaoh to explain why the male babies are continuing to be born, they are courageous and witty: 'Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women - they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.'
Way too much detail for Pharaoh - how can he possibly tell if this is technically correct or not?! He goes silent, while the God who brings to birth blesses the midwives with babies of their own.
I can't say I've ever given birth before the midwife arrived but I'VE COME QUITE CLOSE...
