Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Nehemiah 12-13

The Facts (Chapter number: Verse)

12:43 - They offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. The joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.

13:23-27 - In those days I also saw Jews who had married women of Ashod, Ammon, and Moab; and half of their children spoke the language of Ashod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but spoke the language of various peoples. And I contended with them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair; and I made them take an oath in the name of God saying, "You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not King Solomon of Israel sin on account of such women? Among the many nations there was no king like him and he was beloved by his God and God made him king over all Israel; nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women?"

My Comments

If I had realized there were only two books left in Nehemiah I would have finished it yesterday. That'll teach me to not check ahead while reading for a post.

I'm seriously getting tired of the immense hatred and scorn God and his favored people have against foreign women and their children. Hatred and scorn which is then acted out on the foreign women and children and not the men who took them in the first place or the men. The men may get the lecture but it's the women and children who are forced to leave their husbands/fathers.

Often times I feel like a broken record on this blog. It feels like I don't even need to read through the entire Bible now, I seem to have all the main points down and from here on in it's just going to be me talking about the same shit over and over and over again. But it's also amazing how the Bible constantly talks so negatively about women. It just LOVES to repeat itself when it comes to warning men of the dangers of women, whether the women are foreign or whores or just women who darned to want a little more power for themselves.

These last few books seem hell bent on showing just how evil foreign women are. Nehemiah even brings up King Solomon and his affairs with foreign women to drive home his point. I mean, in that book the women were straight up referred to as his "errors." His errors and yet they are to blame for his sin.

I guess the biggest error is daring to let a woman have any sort of control over your life, including influence or control over what god you worship. For the Lord is a jealous god and he'll be damned if he's gonna let some sissy women lead his noble men away from him.

Again, I feel like a broken record.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate the Bible's abuse of pronouns? Nehemiah says "And I contended with them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair." Who the hell is "they?" I mean seriously, previously he was talking about the foreign women and children, so is that who he is talking about? If so he's really a huge asshole because who beats up a child and then pulls the hair out of its head? Even a child you dislike? I'd ask who does that to a woman but the Bible condones even worse behavior towards women so I wouldn't be surprised if it advocated such violence towards women. Or are "they" the men he is addressing in the men I assume he forces to take the oath? It could really go either way. Once can't just put in a pronoun without clarifying who that pronoun addresses like that. The semicolon leads one to believe that he is beating up the men who took the foreign wives. But the children and wives were the last people to be properly addressed so it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the children and wives are the "they" mentioned.

Seriously, I bet this reads so much better in the older dead languages. Especially Latin. You could have weird sentences like that and it would make sense in Latin. You just don't get the same kind of clarity in English.

Friday we start the book of Esther. Our first female book since Ruth. This should be interesting. :)

Friday: Esther

3 comments:

  1. Using the loathsome criterion that only men count for conversational purposes, the sentences make sense if read this way:

    In those days I also saw Jews [men] who had married women of Ashod, Ammon, and Moab; and half of their [the men's] children spoke the language of Ashod, and they [the men] could not speak the language of Judah, but spoke the language of various peoples. And I contended with them [the men] and cursed them [the men] and beat some of them [the men] and pulled out their [the men's] hair; and I made them [the men] take an oath in the name of God saying, "You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves."

    Only the line "they [the men] could not speak the language of Judah, but spoke the language of various peoples" seems like that word "they" should refer to the children. If it is the men, then they've fallen away from their tribal language and now speak as foreigners do.

    Also note, daughters are given and taken, the property of their fathers and husbands. I know we've said this so many times, but it's important in this sort of review to note this every time it comes up.

    "Often times I feel like a broken record on this blog." It's because the thing is repetitive itself, and is continuously abusive to women. I may take a shot at compiling a scorecard from your notes, by book, for positive and negative mentions of women. Your extracted verses will dramatically reduce my exposure to the text, so I might survive the attempt. :-)

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  2. I had hoped, if nothing else, that this blog would at least be good for data purposes, lol. Even if my ideas aren't that great I can rest in peace knowing I've done some of the more boring data collection for someone else to do with it what they will. :P

    And yes, it does make sense when you remember that pretty much anyone addressed in the Bible is a man. As long as you're constantly in that mindset I guess the pronouns aren't that confusing. Not sure how I can forget such a fundamental aspect of the Bible (women are not people) by now, but apparently I'm still fighting it. Maybe this is how women can still be Christian? The idea that they aren't people is so ridiculous that they forget or don't even notice that part.

    Which is kind of weird because honestly women's personhood is still a relatively new development. We've only been "people" for maybe 100 years, although it could be argued that that is based on a very low standard of personhood. Even today laws are still trying to be pushed through to pull our rights back or to treat us as less than. I mean seriously, we're still having issues with rape and consent laws. Seriously. Not to mention laws that get passed constantly in the US making it harder and harder for women to get abortions when they need them or birth control if they want it. Women are still not seen as people in many respects. We're still mainly whores, mothers, or virgins. People constantly defined by our anatomy and (possibly) second by who we actually are as people.

    I am not certain if religion is the main cause of this. Our culture does a good enough job keeping this message alive in popular culture without the aid of religion. But I do think religion is the base of all of it. We had churches and synagogues and mosques way before we had television and youtube and Britney Spears. Constant reaffirmation that women are less than and men are to rule and control for decades by religious officials is hard to shake. If we didn't have the base that women are less than and defined by their sexual activity (or lack thereof) I don't think we would have near as many problems as we do today trying to keep hold of the equality that we have fought so hard for.

    And I guess I needed to get that out of my system, lol. Sometimes I fear the Bible will break me before I finish it. Never fails to bring out the raging feminist in me. :P I might have to move on to a religion that's more woman friendly, like wicca or something. Wicca is a religion, right? Might have to do some research on it, see if it even has any official texts that I could read through.

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  3. "We're still mainly whores, mothers, or virgins." That reminds me of a line in "The Breakfast Club" uttered by Ally Sheedy. As I remember it, she's talking to Molly Ringwald's character and says that if Claire's a virgin then she's stuck up or prissy or something, but if she's not then she's a whore.

    I think this mostly shows that I'm old.

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