Philosophy & Poetry

[Audiosmurf]

Wtf I didn't know the s in smartins stood for smart???

[sMartins]

Well ... in a way .... actually stands for many things, to name one, Martin, initially, stands for Martin McFly, from Back to the Future.

As far as smartness is concerned, it is more about 'Smart Teens'.

[sMartins]

The woman who laughed at God


It may sound strange but, in the Bible, when God chooses someone and entrusts him with a mission, he is usually, by human standards, at least on the surface, the most misguided person imaginable. The reader is typically led to welcome the divine election with perplexity, perhaps muttering to himself: 'Lord, choose someone else!' An invitation that, in more than one case, the chosen one himself addresses to God. In the most sensational episodes, then, the impression that God's choice is resoundingly wrong is destined to find confirmation and to become more acute during the subsequent developments of the story. To the point that the supposedly chosen one, little by little, begins to harbour serious doubts not only about whether he is up to the task, but about God's seriousness and trustworthiness. "Can he be trusted?" more than one character seems to ask.

Take, for example, the birth of the Jewish people. The most reasonable and quickest way for an entire nation to have only two founders is for a single married couple to have many children, each of whom has many children, and so on. So that, after a suitable number of generations, the amount of individuals generated reaches the proportions of an ethnic group. It would take - at least according to human common sense - a young person in the prime of life. The younger he is, the more time he has to generate many children. And being at full strength, in order to generate many children, will also have its obvious importance. He, then, should be married to a woman who is also hopefully very young and, above all, very fertile.

Well, God chooses Abraham. Abraham is seventy-five years old. And he is married to Sarah, who is barren. But let us go on, the best is yet to come. God cries out to Abraham: "Lekh lekhà!" that is, "Go away!". What is being prescribed is the uprooting, the departure from every fixed point, every certainty: "Go away from your country, from your homeland, from your father's house, to the land that I will show you. I will make you a great people'. The two elders leave the stability of their home and set out. Migrating, they arrive in the land of the Canaanites. Here God appears to Abraham: "To your descendants I will give this land," he tells him. At this point, it would seem, the destination has been reached and therefore the journey is over. All that remains is to settle there and start procreating as soon as possible.

Instead, the land of Canaan is overwhelmed by a terrible famine. So Abraham is forced to abandon it and go elsewhere. One can have doubts not only about the man but also about the place chosen by God. In any case, Abraham and Sarah settle in Egypt, even though they know they are out of their promised destination. Here Abraham begins to behave rather curiously: as if he no longer trusts God's protection and has become convinced that he must look after himself by all means. He says to his wife: "You see, I know that you are a woman of beautiful appearance. When the Egyptians see you, they will think, 'She is his wife,' and they will kill me'. The thought provokes some perplexity. Since time immemorial, it is not necessary to kill a man in order to lie with his wife; such a constraint would lead to a drastic drop in extra-marital relations or, perhaps, a tragic increase in murders. In any case, Abraham convinces Sarah to pretend to be brother and sister. Sarah's beauty must be truly remarkable. Word quickly reaches Pharaoh, who wants her in the palace and takes her as his wife. Out of consideration for her, Pharaoh hands out generous gifts to the supposed brother: goats, cows, donkeys, camels and slaves. Since time immemorial, the willing brother may have some advantage if the sister is loved by a man of power. It is no coincidence that in the Renaissance the beautiful Giulia Farnese was the lover of Pope Borgia and her brother, Alessandro, later became Pope under the name Paul III. But God does not love adultery. And so upon the blameless Pharaoh many misfortunes befell. The ruler of Egypt, in some way about which the Bible does not inform us in more detail, learns the truth and, rather displeased, asks Abraham for an explanation: 'What have you done to me? Why did you not tell me she was your wife? Why did you tell me: 'She is my sister'. So that I took her as my wife? And now here is your wife: take her and leave!" The two are escorted and taken to the border, literally expelled from the country.

Now Abraham, having got his wife back, has become a rich man "in cattle, silver and gold". And with such loot he returns to his starting point, namely the land of Canaan. The Bible, as is often the case, makes no comment. Nevertheless, it is difficult to avoid asking a few questions. And any answer seems puzzling. Did Abraham foresee everything? That is, did he foresee that, by passing off his wife as his sister, he would get rich and that then, thanks to God's irate intervention against Pharaoh, he would also get his wife back and leave Egypt unharmed? Is he really so cunning? Did he really use God as a pawn in his tortuous strategy, exploiting his wrath to his advantage? Or did Abraham not foresee the consequences of his lie, and was the wealth he received merely a reward from God? But for what merit would such a reward be bestowed? For making his wife prostitute herself?

The weirdness is bound to increase. It is time for God's third promise. All the land that Abraham can see as far as the horizon, from north to south, east to west, will one day belong to him and his descendants, who will be as numerous as the grains of sand in the desert. To us, today, this may not seem like a very attractive promise: what good is it to an individual for the fact that many people will share his blood when he is no longer on this earth? Yet, apparently, for a man of ancient Palestine, such a promise so pregnant with the future was heart-wrenching. Yet from such a promise comes the obligation of a new wandering: 'Arise, travel the length and breadth of the land, for I will give it to you'. It seems almost a mockery: the promise to possess that land in an unspecified future becomes the obligation to wander through it. Beware: not the right, the obligation. As if the promise of inheriting a house at a date to be determined became an obligation to immediately change its furnishings and furniture at one's own expense. There is no peace. So Abraham moves to the southern part of Hebron. But each town in the surrounding area is a tiny state with its own tiny king. Wars rage between these small, spiky fish. Four towns attack five others. The attackers win and raid. Among the vanquished cities is Sodom, home to one of Abraham's grandsons, Lot, who is taken prisoner. At this point, something happens that gives us the measure of how rich and powerful Abraham had become in this context of remote desert distress. From one of the defeated cities, a man comes to him and begs him to help the aggrieved. He pleads with him just as one pleads with a king. And indeed Abraham behaves like a king. He moves an army of three hundred and eighteen men against the four victors; he surprises them at night; he defeats them; he recovers the booty, freeing his nephew. On his return from the successful ambush, he meets the king of Sodom. The latter offers him to keep all the recovered wealth for himself, content to have his citizens free. But Abraham returns everything. He does not want to hold back: "Neither a thread nor a sandal shoelace".

He was brave and munificent. He deserves an award. And here comes the voice of God for the fourth time. "Your reward will be very great." Abraham looks sceptical and replies, "What will you give me?" Evidently he has already given up the promise of a son and that of a territory. He expects to hear a new promise, even one that is likely to be broken. Then he explicitly complains of disappointed expectations: he has no son and his heir will be one of his servants, a certain Eliezer of Damascus. But God contradicts him and renews the old promise: 'Not this one, but one born of you shall be your heir. His descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the celestial vault. Then Abraham, in spite of the precedent, has a surge of confidence. "He believed the Lord," says the Bible. God also renews the promise to give him the land that stretches as far as the eye can see. But too much is too much. And Abraham is assailed again by doubts: "Lord my God, how shall I know that I shall possess it?". It is a back-and-forth of surges and retreats. Abraham's faith is a heart that is constantly expanding and contracting. A roller-coaster vertigo stuns the old man.

Notice that the question is almost an accusation: "Lord my God, how shall I know that I shall have possession?". How can one trust, in short? God's answer is another promise. Only this he seems able to do: promise. Promise in a more and more solemn, more spectacular, more perturbing way. God asks in sacrifice a cow, a goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon. Then the prophecy rises, tearing open the veil that hides the vision of the future. The descendants of Abraham will be strangers in a country that is not their own, enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. But how?!? And the promise of having a vast territory for themselves? That will only come later. One day they will come out of the land of oppression bringing with them great riches. And, then, having reached the fourth generation, they will finally settle in the land that was promised to Abraham. After the prophecy, night falls and a miraculous flame passes through the quartered cow, goat and ram. All very solemn. And very convincing.

But Sarah does not seem at all impressed. On the contrary, she says to Abraham: 'Behold, the Lord has prevented me from having a progeny'. Remarkable. Not only does she not believe that God will give her a son, but she is convinced that it was He who prevented her from having one. From donor to embezzler. From builder to wrecker. From author of a miracle to nature's impediment.

So the woman takes the initiative; wanting a child from Abraham, she devises a method that is somewhere between adoption and surrogacy. She has an Egyptian slave, Hagar. She is hers: she belongs to her as an object, she considers her an extension of his body. Two more arms for housework, two more legs to go to the well to draw water. But, above all, a second womb. She commands Abraham: " Couple with my slave girl: perhaps I will be able to have children by her". But she has miscalculated. Abraham impregnates Hagar, and the pregnant slave girl now feels more important than her mistress, she has no more regard for her. She feels she is Abraham's favourite (perhaps she is now). Sarah has another body in Agar, but her second back turns her back on her, her second pair of feet puts their heels on her head. With much effort, the domestic storm is quelled and a balance is restored. The child is born and Abraham names him Ishmael. He became a father at the age of eighty-six.

Thirteen more pass without a son from Sarah. Then God proffers for the fifth time, to a ninety-nine year old Abraham, his promise, which by now is hardly credible. A command is again associated with it. This time it is not an animal sacrifice, but something more intimate and painful: a piece of his own flesh. All descendants of Abraham (at the moment still entirely hypothetical, if not phantom) are ordered to have their foreskins removed. The penalty is expulsion: 'Let the uncircumcised male, whose member flesh has not been circumcised, be eliminated from his people: he has violated my covenant'. But by now God is no longer credible; his promises appear literally ridiculous. So much so that Abraham prostrates himself before him and, taking advantage of the fact that his face is hidden, laughs. He thinks: 'To one of a hundred years old can a son be born? And can Sarah, who will soon be ninety, give birth?". Then he turns to God: "If only Ishmael could live before you!". Of having a son by Sarah he has lost all hope. He would be content with the surrogate, the son of the slave girl. It would be enough for him if God did not take him away too. So God insists: Abraham will have a son by his own wife. Perhaps in an attempt to be more convincing, he makes the promise a little less vague: he imposes the name of the unborn child. It is a very strange name: Isaac, or rather, in Hebrew, Izchàq: verb zachàq, to laugh. Isaac (Izchàq) literally means 'he laughs' or 'he will laugh'. Did God see Abraham's laughter? But was he not angered by it? Did the laughter bring the gift of a son closer instead of pushing it away? The promise is that Sarah will give birth in exactly one year's time: 'At this time next year'.

Abraham seems to regain confidence. He circumcises himself and circumcises Ishmael and all the slaves in his house. But something is still missing. God feels the need to appear and prophesy to him the birth of a son for the sixth time in twenty-four years. It is the merciless heatwave, Abraham sits at the entrance to his tent. Again, the text is obscure. First it says that God appears to Abraham. Immediately after that Abraham sees three men in front of him. How do these two statements fit together? Is God one of the men, while the other two are simply his angels? Is God one being composed of three human bodies? Again, we can only speculate.

He hosts the three (who may be one); he asks his wife to bake buns; he kills a calf; he brings fresh milk and sour milk. The visitors eat. Then an exchange of lines ensues that would baffle anyone. The three ask where Sara is. So they don't know? God is not omniscient? If he is not, how can he predict the future? How can he promise Abraham descendants as numerous as the grains of sand in the desert and the stars in the celestial vault? Abraham answers that his wife is right there, simply inside the tent. In fact he has just prepared the buns. And here is the sixth promise: "I will return to you in a year at this time and then Sarah, your wife, will have a son". Here more than one thing does not add up. Even in the previous promise, the fifth, it was said that the child would be born exactly one year from that date. So the two announcements were made on the same day? That would be the only way for both to be true. But what sense does it make for a god to appear twice on the same day carrying the same promise? Sure, it happens that an forgetful, slightly tired and confused person repeats the same sentence twice. But can God behave like that? On the other hand, the alternative hypothesis is even more disconcerting: if the announcements were not made on the same day, at least one of them is wrong.

Be that as it may, inside the tent, at the sixth pledge, almost a quarter of a century since the first, at the ripe old age of eighty-nine, Sara bursts out laughing. Yes, after Abraham, Sara laughs too. Sara laughs. And that is when the miracle takes place.

God reacts as if offended. He asks Abraham: "Why did your wife Sarah laugh when she said, 'Will I really be able to give birth while I am old'? Is there anything impossible for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you and Sarah will have a son". Now it is no longer possible to postpone. If God does not keep his promise, if he withdraws it in order to punish Sarah in a fit of anger, he would prove her right: we should deem him worthy of mockery. But Sara is afraid, she thinks she has gone too far. She fears the consequences and desperately tries to deny the evidence: "I did not laugh!".

This point is very important: God reacts as if he has been offended and Sarah is startled at the idea of having angered him. Hers is not a laugh of joy. It is a trivial fact, but it needs to be reiterated in order to get rid of the hypocrisies we will discuss in a moment.

Let us continue. To Sarah's words, God is forced to counter: "Yes, you did indeed laugh!". He nails her to her responsibility: but this guilt is not followed by a punishment, but by a reward; the fulfilment of the promise. After a year, Sarah gives birth to a son and names him Isaac, or Izchàq, 'he will laugh'. Here is the point I was referring to earlier when speaking of hypocrisies: at birth the mother utters a sentence that must appear intolerably scandalous to the translators, because they systematically deviate from the literal meaning in the most convoluted ways. Some examples: 'Reason for joyful laughter God has given me', or 'Object of a smile God has made me', or 'The Lord has made me a reason for joy'. In this way it seems that Sarah is simply laughing with contentment at the birth of her son, as any mother might. But she does not say so. The literal meaning of the sentence that comes out of her mouth is quite different. I would like to submit it to you by translating it word for word. We are in the book of Genesis, chapter 21, verse 6: "Zechòq (laughter) 'asàh (made, produced, caused) li (to me) Elohim (God)". "God made me laugh", this is what Sarah says; she remembers the laughter that erupted in her tent at God's sixth promise, she remembers that moment when the solemn voice seemed ridiculous to her. That moment when she offended God (or God pretended to be offended). She continues: "Whoever hears (this story), he will laugh".

Not only is Sarah's laughter inscribed in the divine plan, but anyone else who hears (or reads) the story is also expected to be moved to laughter by God's bizarre behaviour. That laughter is not simply the effect of Isaac's birth, but the cause (or part of it): it is at least the straw that broke the camel's back, the final tug that breaks the string, the spark that triggers the explosion.

Faith is considered by Christian doctrine to be a theological virtue, and the saints are often presented to us as examples of adamantine and unshakable faith. But the Bible tells us of Abraham, the patriarch of patriarchs, who passes from faith to scepticism several times, in fearful, drunken waves. It shows him defying God, provoking him, ignoring his providence by taking the initiative by his own (and improper) means. We often focus on veneration, respect, psychological subjection to God, or the priest, or authority in general. But the Bible shows us Abraham and Sarah laughing at God, and a miracle following their laughter, like a fire that needed that spark to blaze.

We do not truly love people when we idealise them, when we put them on a pedestal, when we enclose them in a shrine of perfection, when we hold them as unquestionable authorities, when we blindly rely on them. It is always necessary to fight those we love, to question their words and actions, to see their mistakes clearly, to test their limits until we feel anger melt into tenderness in our guts. Perhaps, indeed, we can only truly love someone we have laughed at. And perhaps God desires to be loved in this way by us.

[sMartins]

The prophet who did not know God


In Hebrew, the different books that make up the Bible have one of their first words as their title. Genesis is Bereshit (In the beginning). Leviticus is Vaiqrà (And He said). Deuteronomy is Debharim (Words). Exodus is Shmot (Names); in fact it begins like this: "These are the names of the sons of Israel who entered Egypt with Jacob and arrived each with his family: Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Aser".

But, among the many names that appear in that book, there is one dark and supermassive one, around which all the others revolve; like the stars of a galaxy around a black hole. The name of God.

Let us go in order.

Exodus, Chapter 1. The Jews in Egypt proliferate to the point that Pharaoh considers them a threat. They are now more than the natives. What if, in the event of war, they allied themselves with their enemies? So 'forced labour superintendents were imposed on them'. The expression is not entirely clear because the Jews in Egypt are technically not slaves, for the simple reason that they are not prisoners of war; they are simply immigrants. So how can the Egyptians put them to 'hard labour'? Perhaps by making it impossible for them to have access to certain trades (as was also the case in Italy during fascism). And by making conditions particularly harsh for them in the few remaining ones. The Bible instils in us the doubt that between a slave and an exploited worker the difference is not always so clear-cut. In any case, the oppressed Jews continue to multiply. A fact that seems paradoxical, but is perfectly believable. Even in the modern world, on average, those who live in poverty have more children than those who live in wealth. So Pharaoh imposes a ruthless law: every male infant of the Hebrews will be killed by drowning, thrown into the Nile. A mother from the tribe of Levi hides her baby for three months. Then she puts it in a papyrus basket coated with tar and entrusts it to the river. Pharaoh's daughter is bathing, sees the basket carried by the waters, finds the baby inside the basket, adopts him. She gives him the name Moses.

Moses grows up being doubly foreign. He belongs to a people of foreigners oppressed as slaves in the land of Egypt; yet he is raised outside the embrace of this people, deprived of his family, without eating their food or listening to their stories. In him, the sense of foreignness is destined to grow even greater. One day, the Bible says, 'he went to his brothers and noticed the heavy labour they were burdened with'. Evidently, the Jews were relegated to a specific area, a kind of ghetto, which Moses had never entered. Immediately he encounters an abuse: an Egyptian harasses a Jew. And Moses, the Jew raised among the Egyptians, looks around; he sees no one; he kills the Egyptian; he buries him in the sand. The next day he returns among the Jews. He sees two of them arguing among themselves and tries to intervene. But his answer is categorical: he is an outsider and must not meddle in matters that do not concern him: "Who has made you a ruler and judge over us? He can no longer be with the Egyptians, because the Egyptians oppress his people; but he still cannot be with his people, because his people do not consider him part of them. Then the Jew who has so bluntly rejected him asks him a question that alarms him: 'Do you perhaps think of killing me, as you killed the Egyptian?' So his secret has not survived a single day! And indeed, Moses learns, Pharaoh (supposedly a member of his family) has decided to put him to death for that murder.

There, now the path to absolute foreignness is successfully completed. He flees to yet another foreign land, Midian, in Arabia. He finds himself neither a member of the royal family nor a slave: a shepherd of flocks. And it is here, while shepherding animals, that he witnesses a prodigy: 'The angel of God appears in a flame of fire in the midst of a bush'. Reading the sentence, one might think of a human figure (the angel) in the midst of flames, themselves in the midst of the bush. But no, there is no human figure. The Hebrew word translated as angel, malàkh, literally means simply 'messenger'. Human likeness is only the most frequent form that God's messengers take. The burning bramble bush does not contain an angel, because it is - itself - an angel. The burning angel/bush shows itself to be miraculous in two ways. The first is that it burns without consuming itself. The second is that it speaks. And, being a messenger of God, he speaks on his name. He is not an ambassador or a vicar, but a manifestation. He does not speak saying, 'God told me to tell you that...', but 'I, who am God, tell you that...'.

Out of the fire and brambles come solemn words: God has seen the oppression of his people and wants to free them from slavery in Egypt, Moses will have to go to Pharaoh (with whom he is by no means on good terms, since he has put him to death) and convince him to let the Hebrews leave the country, after which he must lead the people to a new land.

To this programme Moses opposes a number of objections, all quite reasonable. For example, in order to convince Pharaoh to let the Hebrews leave Egypt, depriving himself of an immense labour force, and to convince the Hebrews to follow him on a long journey to a new land, one must be a great orator, indeed one must have the ability to captivate and subjugate minds with the power of speech alone, a dialectical ability close to hypnosis. Instead, Moses is not a good speaker. In fact, he is a stutterer: "I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue myself" he says to the bush. To this remark, which is at least understandable, God reacts with irritation: " Is there not your brother Aaron, the Levite? I know that he can speak well". He continues: "You shall speak to him and put the words to be spoken on his lips"; "He shall speak to the people for you; then he shall be for you as a mouth, and you shall act for him as God". Why then not call Aaron, the brother of Moses, directly, one wonders?

But stuttering is not the only limitation that makes Moses appear grossly unfit for the task for which he is called. There is another, even more problematic flaw. And precisely it is the fact that he, as we have said, when he was only three months old, was placed in a papyrus basket, entrusted to the waters of the Nile, rescued by Pharaoh's daughter, raised by Pharaoh's family. Therefore, despite being Jewish, throughout his childhood and youth he ate, drank, dressed, talked, thought, and prayed like an Egyptian. Without ever hearing about the things that all Jews hear about from childhood: about the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and above all God. So yes: the man called to act as the intermediary between the God of the Jews and the Jews is the only Jew in the world who does not know who God is! And indeed, before making the stuttering objection, he asked God questions from which his growing perplexity about the latter's project emerges.

He says to God: "Behold I come to the Israelites..."; note that he does not call them "my people" but "the Israelites". "... and I say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you." Another remarkable detail: he does not say: "the God of our fathers", but "of your fathers". "They shall say to me: What is his name?"." Just like that: mah shmo? In Hebrew, literally: "What is his name?". Since he does not know who God is, he assumes that the Jews could also ignore him. He takes their perplexity and their question for granted. Moses does not have an answer (he does not know who God is) and so he asks God himself for instructions: "Mah omàr alehèm?", "What do I say to them?".

The moment is unspeakably comic and, at the same time, unspeakably solemn. On the one hand we have a prophet who is solemnly sent by God to a people and reacts with bewildered perplexity. On the other the Creator of the universe is about to proclaim his name.

And God answers: "Heyèh asher heyèh". Let us stop. Heyèh is the first person of the verb to be in a form conventionally called 'imperfetto' in Italian, but in reality it has no precise temporal collocation; translating it into our language, as the case may be, it is rendered with a simple past, present or future tense. Since God is answering a question about his identity, I assume (and many assume with me) that he is speaking in the present tense. Then the literal translation would be this: 'I am what I am'. Nothing more, nothing less. A very short and very simple sentence that can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways. From those that seem too simple to seem right to those that seem too clever to seem plausible. Of all the ambiguous, elliptical, hopelessly obscure points in the Bible, this is probably the most ambiguous, the most elliptical, the most obscure. A labyrinth of mirrors multiplying hypotheses. A black hole of meanings.

"I am what I am" could be a reluctant answer, as of one who refuses to reveal himself; a bit like "you are not allowed to know" or "in due time you will see (or we will see)", a kind of "it will be what it will be".

Or, conversely, we could interpret it as an answer that reveals a profound truth. But which one?

'I am what I am' could mean 'my identity is unchanging (unlike yours)'. Earthly beings are constantly changing, often in contradictory ways. And sooner or later they vanish into nothingness. They are and they are not, because their presence is always precarious. They are perpetually transient. They cannot truly say: 'I am what I am', but rather: 'I am what I temporarily find myself to be', 'I am what I become, from time to time'. Only God can say thus: 'I am what I am'. Therefore this is his true name.

Or, conversely, 'I am what I am' could mean 'I am what I am from time to time', 'it is not possible to stop me in a form, to define me by a name'. We mere mortals have a fixed form and name. God decides for himself, he is omnipotent and can take any form he desires. Impossible to enclose in a form, to stop in a name. He evades all definition. Thus the phrase 'I am what I am' replaces the name He cannot have.

But 'I am what I am', absurdly, could even be interpreted as 'I am no big deal', 'I have to be accepted as I am, with my flaws, weaknesses, limitations'; as when the expression 'it is what it is' is used. And one could go on.

Not only that. Immediately after pronouncing this phrase, God instructs Moses to use an even more concise version: "You shall say to the Israelites: 'I Am sent to you'".

The instruction, although the result of the infinite wisdom of the Almighty, from the limited and human point of view of Moses, is simply unserviceable. He has been asked to go to a people who are his own, but to whom, after all, he is a stranger. He must announce that he has been sent - by their God, no less. He fears their perplexity and the question as to the identity of the sender. And God commands him to answer simply: to them "I Am sent me". A sentence that does not even stand up grammatically, and which seems to have been made on purpose to increase the perplexity and distrust of the listeners.

Instead, Moses would be in great need of reassurance. A few lines earlier, when God solemnly commanded him: 'Now go! I send you to Pharaoh. Bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt'; Moses asked him a question: 'Who am I to go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?' Even this question can be interpreted in different ways. At least two. "Mi anòkhi?", "who am I?", can mean "I do not feel equal", "I am not worthy". Alternatively, the sense in which the question can be understood is more literal. Moses was born into a Jewish family, raised in an Egyptian one, the Jews tell him not to meddle, the Egyptians condemn him to death, he is a shepherd in a foreign land, and a god he does not know asks him to liberate a people he knows nothing about. His identity is an enigma to him, he does not know his place in the world. And, in despair, he asks the voice coming from the fire: "Mi anòkhi?", "Who am I?".

In the entire collection of sacred books that the Jews call Tanàkh and the Christians call the Old Testament, no character is greater than Moses. He liberates the people of Israel, he talks to God and receives the Tablets of the Law, he teaches the law to the people. The Jews call him Moses ràbenu, Moses our teacher. Here the Bible shows him to us at the height of his frailty and bewilderment. Even from such a condition one can ascend to the most dizzying heights. Perhaps only from such a condition.

[sMartins]

The wisdom child of lust


Time of war. King David remains quiet in his palace: he has sent his most trusted man, Joab, to command the army. One late afternoon, while his soldiers are fighting valiantly against the Ammonites, the king wakes up from his nap. He goes out onto the terrace to stretch his legs and take a breath of air and, from this height, he sees a woman bathing below. She is very beautiful. Very beautiful. He unleashes his servants to get news. The servants are not slow to inform him: it is Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite. The man, of course, is busy at the front. So the king sends his messengers to fetch Bathsheba and accompany her to the palace. She is perhaps intimidated, perhaps fascinated by his power and wealth; they have sex.

A few weeks later a happy event occurs. Or rather, an event that is usually described as happy, but which in this case is a very big mess. Bathsheba has become pregnant. She informs David. And David devises a simple and seemingly foolproof plan. He grants Uriah leave to return home. The war-weary soldier will lie down with his wife ( because, since time immemorial, woman is the rest of the warrior), so that when the child is born, the good soldier will not be suspicious.

We proceed. David instructs the trusty Joab to send Uriah to him. Uriah leaves the battlefield and presents himself before the king. The king asks him how the war is going. This, of course, gives rise to some perplexity. Does the king have no messengers? Does he not have trusted men to keep him up-to-date on the fortunes of the military campaign? What sense does it make to summon a random soldier from the battlefield, perfectly unknown until then? Perhaps Uriah is a naive man and suspects nothing. Perhaps he is clever and has already figured it all out. The Bible does not untangle the knot. But, depending on what you choose to think, the text tells two different stories, albeit with the same words and actions.

David dismisses the soldier, telling him to go home and wash his feet (a gesture that brings relief after a long journey). He also sends home a real delicacy, a dish from the table of the king himself: it must be a big feast for Uriah that night.

But Uriah does not return home to his wife. Instead he camps outside the palace with other servants of the king and sleeps under an uncomfortable tent. The fact is reported to David. The king calls Uriah back and urges him to go home to his wife (as he deserves): "Have you not come from a journey? Why then have you not gone down to your house?". To which Uriah replies that he has no heart to eat, drink and sleep under his roof and lie with his wife while the rest of his people are at war, camped under tents in the open country. "For your life and the life of your soul, I will not do such a thing!" Uriah's words are a resounding moral slap in the face to the king (involuntary? Voluntary?). Out of solidarity with his comrades in the war, he dares not sleep with his own wife; David instead takes advantage of the war to pleasure himself with his soldiers' wives.

The king orders the Hittite to stay one more day and depart the next day. The Hittite must obey. The king invites him to dinner in his palace: he gets him drunk and hopes that the wine will sap his will and unleash his libido. But the wine is not enough; Uriah does not return to his wife; he still sleeps outside the palace, under a tent, with the king's servants. The plan has failed.

The dawn of the day comes when the Hittite will return to fight the Ammonites. David then plays his last remaining card. He entrusts Uriah with a letter to be delivered to Joab. In the letter is written: "Place Uriah in the front row, where the melee is most raging; then withdraw from him so that he may be struck down and die". It is an execution disguised as death in battle. Cruel detail: the condemned man, unaware, has the task of delivering the sentence to the executioner.

But 'where the melee rages' is an indication written by a man who naps in his palace in the afternoon and has no idea what is happening at the front. There is no melee: the war is not in the open field; the Israelites are besieging the Ammonite city of Rabba. The riskiest thing they can do is to get very close to the city walls, perhaps to one of the gates. At that point the besieged could launch a surprise attack with a handful venturing out: although such an action may seem foolish, it is a possibility that exists and has a name in the military lexicon: a sortie. The more recklessly the besiegers approach, the more likely the sortie becomes.

So Joab sends Uriah and other men close to one of Rabba's gates; the one that, we are not sure why, he considers protected by the more aggressive soldiers. He is lucky: the Ammonites attack with a sortie and the melee begins. Uriah is killed along with many other soldiers and many officers.

Joab sends a messenger to the king to inform him of what has happened. But first he instructs him. If the king should become angry and say that they were careless in coming so close to the walls, he must be told: 'Your servant Uriah the Hittite is also dead. This will instantly calm him down, indeed put him in a good mood.

The messenger departs. He arrives before the king. He reports. The king, as expected, gets royally angry and gives a lecture. He shouts: 'Why did you come so close to the city to give battle? Did you not know that they would throw from the top of the walls?" The messenger plays the joker: "Your servant Uriah the Hittite is also dead". And the king, as expected, calms down. He tells the messenger to console Joab, to explain to him that these things happen; that one should not take it too hard: "You shall say to Joab, 'Do not be distressed by this, for the sword devours here and there.

Bathsheba, learning that her husband is dead, mourns for the days established by the customs of the place and time, after which David takes her with him and makes her his bride. The problem is solved: the child to be born will be the legitimate child of two married people. Of course, in order to give the impression of having respected the existing morality and not cause a scandal, many innocent lives had to be sacrificed.

But nearby there are those who speak directly to God, and see clearly even in the thickest darkness. The prophet Nathan visits David and tells him a story. The Bible skips any preamble: we find the prophet already intent on the narrative. Nathan proposes the story to David as a real fact on which the king must pronounce judgment? Is the fact presented as a fictional event? We cannot know. In any case, the story narrated is as follows. In a town lived two men, one very rich and the other very poor. The rich man owned a large number of cattle: oxen, cows, goats, sheep and so on. The poor man has only one sheep, a small one, which he himself had the patience to raise. Then Natan embellishes the tale with a detail that is quite improbable, but which adds a comic and at the same time pathetic touch. The poor man loved his little sheep so much that he fed her his bread, made her drink from his cup and let her sleep with him. Well, it happens that the rich man hosts a traveller. But when it is time to offer him a meal, instead of drawing on his rich resources, he steals the sheep from the poor man, kills it, and makes a meal of it for the stranger.

Hearing Nathan's words, David goes into a rage: the man who has done such a thing deserves death; for him there must be no mercy! David shouts out all his indignation, burning with rage. But Nathan interrupts him by piercing him with two words: "Attà haìsh!", "You are that man!". He, King David, who can dispose of all the concubines he desires, he to whom no woman will say no, he who can give vent to his libido in every conceivable way, has taken away the wife of a poor man (one of his faithful soldiers) and condemned him to death. Only now do David's eyes open.

Narrative is not only this, it is also this: we listen to or read about events that happened to someone else in a time and place even very remote (or never happened, if it is a myth, a fictional story); and in that other person we recognise ourselves, and we get to know ourselves (because we happen to finally see something of ourselves that we ourselves wanted to keep hidden from our gaze). We understand, obscurely or lucidly, that that story concerns us, and looks at us. It watches us in the sense that sometimes it even happens to feel observed. Of wondering: 'How does this narrator, whom I have not met and who has not met me, know so much about me?' The fact is that, in the infinite labyrinth of human affairs, so many different paths happen to cross at least at one point. If we humans have been telling stories since time immemorial, since the time of the primitives gathered around the fire, if the millennia-old stories in the Bible still shock and enchant us, it is because of this. Because something in those stories cries out to us: "Attà haìsh!", "You are that man!" (or "At haishà!", "You are that woman!").

The son of David and Bathsheba will die still in the cradle. The second born of the couple will be Solomon, the future king. The ruler whose wisdom has become proverbial. The one who will build the temple. So a union tainted by adultery and bloodshed will produce a just and wise king. Lust in this case produced much wisdom.

The paths narrated by the Bible are always rough and winding. It is impermeable to the celebration of men and their leaders; refractory to any hagiographic rhetoric. There are no heroes without blemish or fear in it. Its protagonists almost always stain themselves with horrible guilt or cover themselves with ridicule; or both. I have already written it and I will say it again: it is a narrative where every king is naked, every prince has the voice of a frog, no sleeping beauty can sleep soundly. Therein also lies its frightening charm.

[sMartins]

The folly of counting men


Among the many pages of the Bible that are puzzling, difficult to explain, sidereally far from our mentality, one is found in the first book of Chronicles, chapter 21. This time the puzzling behaviour is not that of a human or that of God, but that of Satan. We read: 'Satan rose up against Israel'. We expect darkness and fire, the most chilling depravity, hordes of the possessed, orgies of unbridled abomination. Instead, the text goes on like this: "He urged David to take a census of the Israelites". Now, it makes no sense for us to think that it is Satan who suggests a census. We find nothing evil or perverse in the idea of counting the citizens of a nation, dividing them into categories, producing statistics and so on. The National Statistics Institute exists in the light of day and is not considered by anyone to be a perverse den of Satanists. Yet in the biblical episode, the idea of such a practice immediately generates a sense of anguished unease. Joab, the faithful servant who had helped David get rid of Uriah the Hittite, this time dares to try to dissuade him: "Why does my lord want this enquiry? Why does he want to bring this guilt upon Israel?". But the king is immovable. So Joab carries out the census and brings the result to David: one million one hundred thousand men fit for arms. As the Bible informs us, the result is wrong. Because Joab did not include in the count either those belonging to the tribe of Levi or those belonging to the tribe of Benjamin. No, this was not an oversight, but a disobedience, "because the king's order seemed to him an abomination". Since he was asked to perform a morally wrong task, he could not openly disobey the sovereign, so he performed it incompletely; hoping that in this way his guilt would be less severe. His is sabotage for good. I was an employee of a company for ten years and I think something similar happens, in different ways, countless times, even today. Often the negligence of an employee hides, at least in the employee's intentions, a conscientious concealment: an attempt to limit the damage that the wickedness of the order received from above would produce. Certain lazy and forgetful employees are perhaps a plague on companies, perhaps they are guardians that keep them going.

But David's guilt is too great for a miscount to undo, so God strikes the country (the Bible fails to say with what vexation). Then even David, who had not listened to Joab, realises the seriousness of his deed. He addresses God thus: 'By doing such a thing I have sinned grievously. Forgive, I beseech thee, the iniquity of thy servant, for I have committed sheer folly'.

David has a court seer, Gad, a man who speaks directly to God and can report his words. The seer tells David that God asks him to choose one of the following punishments: three years of famine; three months of fleeing before his enemies, tormented by the fear of being killed; or three days of plague brought by an angel. David chooses the shortest catastrophe that does not touch him directly: the plague. Thus hell rages. In an unspecified time, in any case no more than three days, seventy thousand Israelites die. And the slaughter seems destined to increase in size. God sends an angel to destroy Jerusalem. He takes the form of a man suspended in the air, with a sword in his hand. He stands right above the yard of a farmer, a certain Ornan the Jebusite. The angel is called an 'exterminator': malàkh hammashechìt, literally 'angel of ruin'. Before the devastation brought by him is total, God stops him by shouting: "Enough! Withdraw your hand!". So in this case the angel is not an apparition of God, but his emissary, one who carries out his orders.

The episode, strangely enough, is narrated twice in the Bible. In addition to the first book of Chronicles, it is found in the second book of Samuel. Obviously, the two accounts have close similarities, but also some differences. The most striking one is that in Samuel the census is not suggested by Satan, but ordered by God. In any case, the intent is the same, that of provoking misfortune: "The anger of the Lord was kindled again against Israel, and he incited David against the people in this way: 'Come on, take a census of Israel and Judah'". And, at the moment when the book of Samuel has to tell of God stopping the hand of the exterminating angel, it uses an expression that may seem surprising to us: "The Lord repented of that evil and told the angel who was destroying the people...". The word, which in the official version of the Italian Bishops' Conference is translated as 'He repented', innachèm, comes from a root that, to be precise, means both to be sorry and to feel pity and to console. A single verb brings these three meanings together because, perhaps, it is impossible to divide them. We are not really sorry for something until we have not even had the thought of consoling the victim, of repaying them at least in part for the evil they have suffered. Many 'I'm sorry but I have to tell you' or 'I'm sorry but that's how it is' accompany unpleasant statements that are inflicted with sour satisfaction, without the slightest desire to console anyone. In that case, the pronounced 'I'm sorry' is a pure form, nothing more than a figure of speech. In any case, the astonishing fact remains that God is sorry for an act He has ordered and feels pity for His own victims.

So now both David and God are repentant of their most recent deed. The story goes on to inform us that King David and the elders of the city are dressed in sackcloth as a sign of penitence when, in the distance, they see the angel hanging in the air. They prostrate themselves on the ground. Then David addresses God with a sentence that sounds like an indictment of both himself and the Almighty: "Was it not I who ordered the census of the people? I have sinned and done evil; what have they, the flock, done? Lord my God, let thy hand be upon me and upon my household, but let it not smite thy people. If many innocents are dying of the plague, the fault is certainly David's, who chose this punishment (for another of his faults); but it is also God's, who offered this choice to David and commanded the angel to carry it out.

Then God tells the angel to tell the seer Gad to tell David that an altar is to be erected in the yard of Ornan the Jebusite, on which the angel floats. David obeys and walks towards the yard of Ornan, who, unaware of the divine apparition, is peacefully threshing wheat. He has an angel right above the courtyard, but pays no attention. David offers to buy the land. Finally the farmer looks up from the ground and notices the miraculous presence. At the vision, his four sons run away to hide. The farmyard is sold for the price of six hundred shekels of gold. The math is soon done: one shekel is about ten grams. So six hundred shekels is about six kilos of gold. On that land will be built - no less - the temple of Jerusalem; but it will not be built by David, who by now has too much blood on his hands, but by his son Solomon.

Having reached the end of the story, it is inevitable to ask oneself what is the point of unleashing this pandemonium over a census. The answer to perplexity is sometimes found in the Bible itself. Exodus, chapter 30, verse 11. God says to Moses: "When you take a census of the Israelites, each one of them shall pay to the Lord the ransom of his life at the time of the census, lest a scourge befall them. The passage goes on to specify the amount of the sum (half a shekel) and other details. In practice, a sort of 'tax on life' was envisaged. Being in the world was evidently perceived as an utterly precarious thing, constantly under fire from hostile forces. As long as someone's existence was not put down on paper, he could hope that fate (or whoever) would forget about him. But once counted, a religious offering had to be paid. David, on the other hand, counted the Israelites without making them pay anything: it was inevitable that misfortune would befall the people.

But there is another element. Counting also appears in the book of Hosea, chapter 2, verse 1. "The number of the Israelites shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor counted." Now, the expression "cannot be measured nor counted" can be interpreted in at least two ways. The first is "it is impossible to measure and count", i.e. the Jews will literally be innumerable, too many to count. The second meaning is 'it is not permitted to count them'. Even today, tradition-conscious Jews have qualms about counting the people present, especially in a religious context. An example. For Jewish prayers to be publicly recited, there must be a minimum number of ten adult males, the so-called miniàn. Here, it may happen that, being gathered in the synagogue for a prayer, a Jew refrains from making explicit statements such as: 'Here, there are eight of us, two are missing'. But prefers to skirt around the issue cautiously, perhaps nonchalantly throwing in a: 'There are not seven of us'. And wait for someone else to comment half-heartedly, as if mindlessly: 'Eh, and on the other hand, there aren't nine of us either'.

Why, one may ask. The answer I have had in my frequentations of the Jewish world is that the value of a single human being is incalculable and that each human being, being unique, cannot be gathered into homogeneous groups. Therefore, one cannot add up human beings in the same way one adds up fruits, vegetables, cattle.

To sum up: everyone is unique, the value of human life is infinite. Certainly, sacrosanct thoughts. But nowadays they are repeated so frequently that they have become commonplace. And one suspects that such utterances are often matched by nothing, that they are pure habit, like certain 'sorrys' mentioned above. In this story, however, for once, the matter is taken terribly seriously: complete with angels of doom, kings dressed in sackcloth and temples erected in peasants' farmyards for atonement.

[sMartins]

The murderous theologian


Nebuchadnezzar II, king of the Assyrians, one of the very few biblical characters to have space in the history books, wages war against a much more obscure ruler than himself, a certain Arpacsad. The fact remains that the latter, in his time, must have enjoyed a certain amount of consideration, because several peoples sided with him: the mountain dwellers (unspecified), the people of the Tigris, those of the Euphrates, a king who has also now fallen into oblivion: Arioch, ruler of the Elamites. Nebuchadnezzar also summoned a multitude of peoples asking them to fight at his side: the Persians, the people of Damascus, Lebanon, Carmel, Gilead, Galilee, those beyond the Jordan, as far as Jerusalem, the inhabitants of Egypt and Ethiopia, to name but a few. However, all of them, ignorant of the fame that the ruler would have in the future, snubbed him blithely and denied him their support. "In their eyes he was like an ordinary man", so says the Bible.

It then happens that Nebuchadnezzar overwhelms the armies of Harpacsad and his allies. There follow for him - hear, hear! - one hundred and twenty consecutive days of feasting and revelry. However, the intense and prolonged recreation is not enough to quench the Assyrian king's indignation and thirst for revenge against those who have denied him the alliance. So he summoned Holofernes, his supreme general, put him at the head of an immense army of one hundred and twenty thousand foot soldiers and twelve thousand horse archers and hurled him around the world to punish those who did not stand up to him against Arpacsad. The ruler indulges in magniloquent and macabre imagery: 'Those of them who fall shall fill their valleys and every stream and river shall be filled with their corpses until they overflow'.

The military campaign gets off to a flying start. Holofernes devastates and plunders city after city. From a certain point on, indeed, the populations spontaneously surrender before even fighting. On his arrival, they go out to meet him and greet him, acclaiming him with song and dance. Similarly, he destroys all their temples and cuts down the sacred forests: all the land must worship only one god: Nebuchadnezzar.

Word of these facts reaches the Israelites of Judea. They fear for the temple in Jerusalem and react to the fear in two different ways; neither of which is to run towards the enemy dancing and playing the kettledrums. The first is to close all the mountain passes leading to Judea, so that the Assyrians find the way barred. The second is to weep and despair. They dress themselves in sackcloth and cover their heads with ashes, they raise cries to God. Those who live in Jerusalem prostrate themselves before the temple, and cover even the altar with sackcloth. Great lesson: of course, one can weep and despair, but not before having done everything possible.

Holofernes does not see the ash-covered heads, does not hear the groans, but he hears about the men lined up on the mountain passes and becomes furious. He cannot understand that they do not go towards him surrendering as he has become accustomed to seeing. Holofernes makes proclamations in the same magniloquent and macabre style as his king: 'We will burn them in their homes, the mountains will be drunk with their blood, their fields will be filled with their corpses'. He besieges a city in the mountains, Bethulia. He shuts down all access routes and occupies the water sources. The advice of the strategists, on the other hand, is clear: better not to confront the inhabitants in the open field, but to force them to stay within the walls and wait for them to die of hunger and thirst. The advice turns out to be right. After thirty-four days of siege in Bethulia, there is not a drop of water left. Even the cisterns are empty.

Then the people gather and call in one of the city leaders, Ozia. They accuse him of making the wrong choice by not immediately declaring surrender. They also venture a theological interpretation: the suffering they are suffering is God's punishment for their sins and those of their fathers. If one surrenders, one only follows God's will; if on the other hand one resists, one resists his will and, at the same time, prolongs and exacerbates his punishment. Ozia is cornered. He must find an answer that does not turn the whole people against him and that, at the same time, is not a supine admission of guilt. He proposes to hold out for five more days. If God does not rescue them in that short time, it is a sign that he really wants their surrender; then they will obey him. It works: the people are dejected, but the anger is quelled; Ozia has foiled the lynching and remains in charge of the city.

We have thus arrived halfway through the book entitled Judith; but of Judith, as yet, not even a shadow has been seen. And here she is, at last, in chapter eight of sixteen. She is the young widow of a rich man. She owns gold, silver, slaves, cattle, land. And she manages them herself. She learns of Ozia's decision and she sends for him and the other two chiefs of the city, the elders Cabri and Carmi. They arrive and she scolds them in no uncertain terms, as if they were her subordinates. They had no right to say what they said. They cannot claim that if help does not arrive within five days (from whom, then?) that is a sure sign that God wants them to surrender. Who are they to dictate to God how he should communicate his will? Who are they to dictate to God when He should intervene? And surrendering is out of the question: Bethulia is one of the strongholds that prevent passage into Judea. If the city was taken, the Assyrians would sweep into Jerusalem and destroy the temple.

Ozia replied that Judith's speech was correct, but late. The people were restless and urged him to promise to surrender. He swore they would surrender in five days and now he must keep his word. His only concern, in short, seems that of not losing face. The propriety of his behaviour towards God, on the other hand, does not seem to interest him.

Apparently there is no solution. But Judith says: 'I want to perform a deed that will pass from generation to generation to the children of our people. Great lesson: one can act, but not before discussing theological issues.

Judith takes off her widow's clothes, that is, her sackcloth. She washes herself. She applies perfumed ointments. She combs her hair. She places a diadem on her forehead. She wears the clothes of the feast. She adorns herself with necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings. She goes to Ozia and the elders, who are dazzled by her beauty. She orders them to open one of the city gates. The door opens. The Jewish Venus comes out and heads towards the enemy. She goes down the valley until some Assyrian sentries spot her, stop her and question her: 'Of what people are you? Where do you come from? And where are you going?" Judith answers. She says she is an Israelite and is fleeing the city of Bethulia, soon to be taken by them. In exchange for safety, she offers information to conquer all the surrounding mountains without a single Assyrian perishing. She asks to be taken to the general. The request is granted. A hundred soldiers escort her towards Holofernes' tent. The scene is almost surreal. Let us imagine her in modern dress: a young woman in a long dress, with a string of pearls, lipstick, lacquered nails, high heels; surrounded by a hundred soldiers in camouflage suits and helmets, wielding their submachine guns.

Word spreads in the Assyrian camp and many curious soldiers rush to see the newcomer. At last Judith enters the general's tent. Holofernes looks more like an oriental ruler: he is sprawled limply under a shining canopy of gold, purple, emeralds and other precious stones. The woman prostrates herself in submission. The soldiers make her stand up. Judith speaks. First she flatters Holofernes: 'We have already known by fame your wisdom and the cunning wiles of your genius, and it is known throughout the land that you are the best in the whole kingdom, expert in knowledge and marvellous in military feats'. Then he informs him that his victory is at hand. For the Israelites are about to perform an unfortunate deed and their God will punish them, sending them to ruin and placing them in the hands of the enemy. In fact, Judith explains, forced by hunger they have decided to eat the cattle and the wheat, the oil and the wine that God has forbidden them to touch. She will pray to her God and know from him when the Israelites have committed their sin. At that moment Holofernes will be able to launch his attack without fear. After helping him conquer Bethulia, Judith will lead Holofernes to conquer all of Judea until she shows him how to take possession of Jerusalem. Thanks to her directions, this will happen without resistance, with the greatest of ease. "You shall lead them away like sheep without a shepherd, and not a dog shall bark before you."

It should be noted that, in the whole of the preceding account, there is no trace of the food consecrated to God, which the Jews cannot touch, nor of the willingness of the inhabitants of Bethulia to touch it. The whole story of this terrible sin is a pure theological invention of Judith. But, apparently, it is a convincing invention. Holofernes rejoices and savours the victory. After three days, he has a banquet prepared for his servants, with no soldiers among the diners. Judith is of course also invited to the banquet. The general is determined to seduce her. He urges her to drink with them and give herself up to joy. Judith seems willing to humour him: 'Yes, I will drink, sir, for today I feel life expanding in me, more than all the days I have lived'. Holofernes is in rapture and anticipates the embrace. He drinks more than he has ever drunk in one day.

Night arrives, the banquet comes to an end. The other guests stagger back to their tents. Judith and Holofernes are finally left alone. But Holofernes is now dead drunk, lying on his bed, stunned by alcohol. Judith removes the general's scimitar from the wall and grasps it with her right hand, grabs Holofernes' hair with her left hand, invokes God: 'Give me strength at this moment'. He slashes Holofernes' neck, but does not decapitate him. He then raises his arm and strikes again. This time the head detaches itself from the body. With an extreme gesture of contempt, Judith rolls the decapitated corpse off the bed. Then she leaves the tent and, in the night, goes back up to Bethulia, with the Assyrian general's head in a saddlebag for provisions. She shouts to the soldiers on guard to let her in: 'Open up, open the door at once'. The word spreads and the whole city rushes to see the victorious woman and the severed head of the enemy. Judith orders it to be hung on the ramparts of the wall.

Early the next morning, the Israelites descend towards the Assyrian camp in battle gear. The Assyrians prepare for battle, but do not find the general, so they go to his tent. They call for him, but he does not answer. The scene is unusual. The soldiers turn to their attendant to rouse their sleeping superior: 'Wake our lord, for those slaves have dared to descend to give us battle, to their utter ruin. But their general cannot lead them that morning. And his head has been carried off by a Jewish servant, who has also disappeared. They finally understand. And they are terrified. They flee hastily: 'They were panic-stricken and no one wanted to stay near their comrade, but they all scattered in flight in every direction across the plain and up the mountains. The threat of the dreadful Nebuchadnezzar dissipated.

The powerful and famous king, the skilful general, the wise elders of the city, the thirsty and fearful citizens. In narratives, one often encounters characters who simply play their role, and thus let the story run its course towards a destination that seems inevitable. Here, I, in my small way, prefer another kind of character and person. One who is elusive, indocile to definitions, not reducible to one role, perhaps because she combines many different ones: the widow and the Venus, the theologian and the murderess. Whoever is like that, I think, has the strength to change the trajectory of events, to make facts take unexpected turns. And it can come at any time, even when no one was expecting it. Even in the middle of the book that bears her name.

[noindyfikator]

Can you explain with 2 sentences why you spam this thread with walls of text? What is this about?

[sMartins]

No, I cannot.
I'm sorry.

[Rodimus]

skipped.