Continuing her examination of women in the Hebrew Bible, Rapaport retells and comments on six stories in which women stepped outside acceptable behavior to help their families or their people. They are Lot and his daughters, Dinah and Shechem, Judah and Tamar, David and Batsheva, Amnon and Tamar, and Ruth and Boaz. By day she is an attorney specializing in sexual harassment cases. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

BIBLICAL SEDUCTIONS

SIX STORIES RETOLD BASED ON TALMUD AND MIDRASHBy SANDRA E. RAPOPORT

KTAV PUBLISHING HOUSE, INC.

Copyright © 2011 Sandra E. Rapoport
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60280-170-7

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.............................xviiINTRODUCTION................................xxiONE Lot & His Daughters.....................3TWO Dinah & Shechem.........................59THREE Judah & Tamar.........................149FOUR David & Batsheva.......................241FIVE Amnon & Tamar..........................325SIX Ruth & Boaz.............................397NOTES.......................................527BIBLIOGRAPHY................................605INDEX OF SOURCES............................611GENERAL INDEX...............................621

Chapter One

Lot His Daughters

GENESIS 19:30-38

And Lot went up from Zoar and settled in the mountain, and his two daughters were with him, because he was afraid to settle in Zoar, so he settled in the cave, he and his two daughters. And the elder one told the younger one, "Our father is old; and there is no man in the land to come to us in the [natural] manner of all the land. "Let us give our elderly father wine and we will lie with him; thus will we live on through our father's seed." And they gave their father wine that night; and the elder [daughter] came and lay with her father, and he did not know that she lay [with him] and that she arose [from him]. And it happened on the morrow, the elder said to the younger, "Now have I lain last night with my father; let us give him wine again this night, and you will come and lie with him, and we will live on through our father's seed." And they fed their father wine on that night also; and the younger arose and lay with him and he did not know that she lay [with him] and that she arose [from him]. And the two daughters of Lot became pregnant from their father. The elder gave birth to a son and she called his name Moav; he is the father of Moav to this day. And the younger also gave birth, and she called Iris name Ben Ami; he is the father of the sons of Ammon to this day.

We encounter Lot's daughters here at the low point of their young lives. These girls—known in the Bible only as "the elder" and "the younger"—in the space of a matter of days or even hours, have gone from being the virginal daughters of Lot and his wife in the city of Sodom, to motherless refugees huddling in a cave. They have been irrevocably transformed, much as the landscape they inhabit has been scarred and altered, by the sudden and cataclysmic destruction of their world.

The Bible reader must ask, How did they come to be here? For the answer let us hark back to biblical events that took place years before the evening described in chapter 19 of the book of Genesis, where the great drama of the city of Sodom unfolds.

LOT PARTS WAYS WITH ABRAHAM

Lot had parted ways with his dynamic and pious uncle Abraham some years earlier, after violent quarrelling had broken out between the two men's shepherds. Their substantial flocks had overlapped one another grazing the same pastures, and in the time-worn way of the world, the land was not big enough for both to live together in peace. So Abraham had offered Lot independence, suggesting that Lot go either to the north or to the south, and that he, Abraham, would be content to wander elsewhere in order to keep the peace. Lot portentously turned his face eastward, and when he saw the verdant, well-watered Jordan Valley, he chose to settle there, in the city of Sodom. The Bible tells us that at that time, well before God thought to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the valley—reaching to the settlement of Zoar—had the lush appearance of the Garden of Eden and the land of Egypt.

The alert Bible reader should detect the text's hints of evil events to come: The Bible tells us that Lot chose to travel eastward, mikedem, the same direction—and using the same exact Hebrew word—that Adam and Eve were banished when God chased them from Eden. In fact, the Almighty stationed the heavenly guards at the eastward-facing gate of Eden, wielding the flaming and revolving sword of God in order to prevent unworthy mankind from returning there. The Bible text has made it plain that flight in an eastward direction is a flight away from the sacred space, the space of harmony and unity. The fact that Lot chooses to settle in the east—mikedem—is an indicator that Lot's vision is flawed, and that—like Adam and Eve, his biblical progenitors—he is making a wrong choice that will inform his character and will reflect tragically upon him for the rest of his days.

Lest we miss the reference to mikedem, the Bible also tells us that in Lot's eyes the Jordan Valley resembles the land of Egypt. This is a reference to Abraham and Lot's ill-advised journey into that land, where Abram's wife—and Lot's sister, Sarai—had been abducted by the Pharaoh. It was in Egypt that the Pharaoh, after glimpsing Sarai's fabled beauty, had held her prisoner in his palace, and subjected her to the terrors of abduction and near-rape. It is telling that in Lot's eyes the verdant land to the east reminds him of this same land of Egypt, a land of verdant natural physical beauty, but also one where immorality and sexual depredation rule, and from which he and his uncle and sister had narrowly escaped with their lives. By juxtaposing the Jordan Valley and Sodom and Gomorrah with Egypt, the Bible issues a subtle and tacit admonishment to Lot for his myopia in choosing to settle in Sodom because of its resemblance to Egypt. The careful reader expects that Lot will pay a high price for his choice.

So Abraham remained in Canaan, and resumed his isolated, nomadic life, and Lot parted from his uncle, settling in Sodom, the most lush of the cities in the valley. Lot even sought to straddle the best of both worlds—pastoral and urban—by keeping his flocks nearby, right outside the city walls. He could not quite abandon his nomadic roots even as he strove to become a city dweller. Perhaps Lot felt he could weather whatever this Egypt-like city had in store, and that in the meantime—as was the case when they left Egypt—he would amass great wealth. We will see that Lot's abandonment of the semi-nomadic life in favor of an urban existence will spell trouble for him. In fact, the Bible loses no time in telling us in the very next verse about the character of the inhabitants of Lot's new home.

WHO ARE THE SODOMITES?

And the men of Sodom were evil and sinned before God exceedingly. Gen. 13:13

This verse is packed thrice-over with expressions of the corruption of the Sodomites, Lot's adopted neighbors. First it tells us that the men of Sodom were evil. Then it says that they were sinners against God. And third, that their cruel acts placed them beyond the pale of acceptable behavior. It is the rabbis of the midrash who elaborate. The word "sinner" refers to the fact that the Sodomites sinned in matters of money and property in their daily interactions. They refused to give even a penny to the outstretched hand of the alms-seeker, and they outlawed the centuries-old custom of offering hospitality, food and drink to wayfarers. The word...