SACRIFICING FEMALE BODIES AT THE ALTAR OF MALE PRIVILEGE

12 Pages·2012·0.1 MB·English

SACRIFICING FEMALE BODIES AT THE ALTAR
OF MALE PRIVILEGE: A BOSADI (WOMANHOOD) READING OF JUDGES 19
M Masenya (ngwana' Mphahlele) (UNISA)

Abstract
The present South African landscape is typified, amongst other evils, by violent acts committed on
women and children. This violence is entrenched in some church and family contexts, not only by
the women-unfriendly Bible interpretations, but also by the use of some of the violent biblical texts
themselves by those benefiting from patriarchy.
The present essay seeks to confront and challenge the violence perpetrated against the female folk
depicted in Judges 19 from the perspective of African women Bible readers in South Africa.

1. INTRODUCTION

She crosses a street, juggling her briefcase and her sack of groceries. Or she walks down a dirt
road... Or she hurries toward her locked car, pulling a small child along with her. Or she trudges
home from the fields, the baby strapped to her back.

Suddenly there are footsteps behind her. Heavy,rapid. A man's footsteps... She quickens her
pace in time to the quickening of her pulse. She is afraid. He could be a rapist. He could be a
soldier, a harasser, a robber, a killer. He could be none of these... He could be a man merely
walking at his normal pace. But she fears him. She fears him because he is a man. She has
reason to fear.

She does not feel the same way - on a city street or a dirt road, in a parking lot or field - if she hears a
woman's footsteps behind her.

It is the footsteps of a man she fears. This moment she shares with every human being who is a
female.

This is the democratization of fear.

The words from the above quotation (Morgan 1994:6) remind us of the volatility of the situation of
women and girl children in a patriarchal world. Even if some women may not have experienced the
violation of their bodies by men in one way or another, women and girl children live with this fear for
the whole of their lives. This is what Morgan has called "the democratization of fear" (ibid.), gendered
fear, the fear of those who are at the margins of patriarchal society.

It may be argued that in a society where one's value as a human being is defined in terms of how
one's body can benefit those in power, the latter will also determine the treatment which such a body
will receive. In our view, what ascribes value to humanity is not criteria such as race, class, sex and
age, but the conviction that all of humanity has been created in God's image.

This article seeks to show, amongst others, how patriarchy continues to define and control women's
sexuality. The text will hopefully reveal that patriarchy is a powerful system that continues to facilitate
male violation of the bodies of women and girl children. In the violation of these bodies, we therefore
see the interconnectedness of individual and systemic violence. If patriarchy as a system of
domination, perpetuated partly by religion, continues to advocate for male domination and female
submission, thus naturalising male superiority and female inferiority, it only makes sense that men will
find their violation of female bodies natural too. It is perhaps no wonder that rape statistics reveal that
most of the perpetrators are familiar members of communities (Sowetan 2002a and b; Cashman 1993;
Citizen 2002 ).
This text will not focus on violence against all women and girl children in South Africa as it is generally
acknowledged that female experience is not universal. Given the past history of racial inequalities in
South Africa, I suggest that African-South African1 women experience patriarchy differently from
women of other racial groups in this country. In some instances the dynamics of our racial history with its
intolerance to difference, become manifest in certain forms of violence experienced by some Black
women in South Africa even today (cf Capricorn Voice 2002:3-5).

It is in the light of the unique experiences of African-South African women, that in an earlier work
(Masenya 1996) I have developed what I have called a bosadi (womanhood) approach to the reading
of biblical texts. Though the approach acknowledges the significance of the knowledge of the contexts
that produced the biblical texts (1996:160-161), the latter are not its main point of preoccupation. It is
more concerned with the context of the African-South African women Bible readers with their unique
experiences. The latter will therefore shape the way in which they approach the Bible. The questions
which these women raise as they read the biblical text as it now stands (a literary approach which has a
women's agenda as point of departure), deal with the extent to which the text caters for their well being
as human beings in their own right (cf also, Exum 1995:65-90). Their experiences will therefore serve as
a hermeneutical key to unlock the reality of violence depicted in Judges 19. In my attempt to overcome
the violence perpetrated on female characters by the biblical narrator(s) / Deuteronomist, I will re-read
the text of Judges 19 to show how the text and the female folk's foreign location in patriarchal
contexts, contribute towards the perpetuation of violence against female bodies.

In the next section, I thus begin with a reflection on how patriarchy naturalises and eroticises
female violence, a situation reinforced by patriarchal African culture and the androcentric biblical
interpretations common in our settings. This section will be followed by a re-reading of Judges 19
from an African-South African woman's perspective.

2. HER VIOLATION: HIS POWER, PRIVILEGE AND PLEASURE

The violation of female bodies has not only become normalised, but has become eroticized too in
male-oriented contexts. Male privilege, reinforced by systemic patriarchal structures, enables males to
take delight in the violation of the "other" Isherwood (1998:355) notes that,

Havelock Ellis, a renowned sexologist, advised men that it was their job to overcome women and not to
worry about inflicting pain as a woman's genitals are less sensitive than a man's and so roughness
simply added to pleasure. He was not alone in arguing that the missionary-position sex, advocated by
churches, was the most natural as it combined the woman's desire to be conquered with the male desire to
conquer.

As we will later observe, this kind of thinking can also be traced back to biblical times:

Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do
whatever you want to them; but against this man do not do such a vile thing (Judges19:24, italics
mine).

Joan Carlson Brown(1994:6) rightfully argues that sexual violence is neither about sexual need,
sexual interest nor sexual pleasure: "These are sexual assaults. The victims are not 'just' hit:
penises, even Coke bottles and broomsticks are used to assault women's sexuality...
Sexual assaults are the ways that patriarchy has to keep women and children in their place".

Given the level of legitimisation that patriarchy affords violence against women, what will hinder even the

1 The apparently repetitive phrase "African-South African" is used in this paper to refer to women from the indigenous
peoples of South Africa such as the Sothos, Zulus, Xhosas, Tsongas and Vendas. Though examples given in this paper
will be based on the Northern Sotho setting, the latter being my own social location, the assumption is that due to the
large number of resemblances between these ethnic groups, the experiences of Northern Sotho women in their interaction
with the Bible and with patriarchy in African culture, will apply to other ethnic groups as well.
uninitiated male to violate female bodies, without any guilt feelings? What will stop male HIV/AIDS
victims to seek "cure" by assaulting the bodies of babies? What will stop Roman Catholic priests from
violating children's bodies (see Cashman 1993). The question of the violation of female bodies by men is
thus a question of male power. Female bodies become sacrifices at the altars of male power and pleasure.

A link therefore exists between gender/female powerlessness and violence against women and
children. What is worse is that men and women have been socialised to believe that sex is most
enjoyable for women when it is painful. In this regard, Lebacqz (1998:72) argues that though sexual
arousal may follow biological patterns, what we find sexually arousing is not only culturally influenced, but
socially constructed. It therefore becomes understandable that male-oriented societies have a
tendency to confuse or even equate sexual activity with sexual violence.

It is even more disturbing, particularly for religious communities, that some sections of the sacred
scriptures are interpreted to support sexual violence against women and children. Most of our
churches and households are still patriarchal in their orientation. In these settings, male domination
and female subordination are advocated. In addition, literalistic, often violent, readings of the Bible
frequently still reign supreme. Women's sexuality is often still defined and controlled by men both in
the churches and in the households. All these give a glimpse that that the church and its sacred
scriptures, rather than being part of the solution to the problem of violence, are in fact part of the
problem.

Informed by the context portrayed above, the following section will focus on an African-South
African woman-friendly re-reading of Judges 19.

In this section I employ the hermeneutics of bosadi to re-read the painful text of Judges 19. As a point
of departure, a short glimpse of the socio-historical setting of the book of Judges will be suitable.

3. RECONSTRUCTING THE WORLD OF THE TEXT OF JUDGES 19

The Book of Judges describes the events in the historical period between the death of Joshua and
the tribal chaos before the birth of Samuel, the last judge in Israel (c 1250-1020 B.C.E). However, it
became clear to modern scholars that the Book is not the product of the tribal period, but was
composed in stages much later than the premonarchic era of Israel's history. There is general
agreement among scholars that the Book's final composition occurred more than four centuries after
the time of the judges (either in the exilic or post-exilic periods [c 587-398 B.C.E; cf also Exum 1988]).

The Book forms part of Deuteronomistic history. Some scholars regard it as propaganda for the
reform policies of Josiah. According to Yee (1995:154), the corpus, Judges 17-21, as it now
stands, is the work edited by the Deuteronomist in an attempt to ideologically resolve the two
competing modes of production during Josiah's time: the familial mode of production and the
native tributary mode. The editor of this section, with a bias towards Josiah as king, would therefore
support the latter mode of production irrespective of the dire consequences it would have on the
peasants: "The conflicts between these two modes of production are quite evident in the
Deuteronomist's editorial statement: "There was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in
his own eyes" (Yee 1995:153).

The following paragraphs will give a glimpse of the socio-economic setting in which Josiah's
reforms took place in order to locate our discussion text in its socio-historical setting.

Josiah took over as king when Assyria had just damaged Judah economically due to its former
position as- a vassal state of Assyria. With the decline of the Assyrian power, Josiah saw an
opportunity not only to intensify his hold on Judah, but also to extend his control over the former
kingdom of Israel. According to Yee, his "religious" reforms made it possible for him to finance
his power base through taxes collected from the peasantry. He reorganized the system so that
the taxes, tributes and fees collected should flow directly into the coffers of Jerusalem by
bypassing the local leaders, the priests, who had also been having their share in the endeavour.
Significant to the understanding of Judges 17-21 is comprehending the existence of the local
class of Mushite (vis-a-vis the Zadokite) priests, who were pocketing their share of the collection
too (1995:155). If the Deuteronomist editor was pro-Josianic as we argue with Yee, it makes
sense that his portrayal of such priests (as well as their cultic centres) in this corpus of Judges 17-
21, would be negative to buttress the need for a Judahite king in Israel, and thus to also reveal
that the exact reason for the cultic and societal chaos depicted by every man doing as he pleased
during this period, was due to the lack of a proper king.

Yee's ideological reading of the background material informing the Book's writing persuades us
to see deep ideological struggles hidden behind the events which purport to characterize the
historical period of the judges in tribal Israel. She argues (1995: 156):

The socioeconomic and ideological conflicts between the tribal body and the tributary mode of
production, the competition between the Jerusalem priesthood and the rural Levitic priesthood, the
fiscal ambitions of king Josiah, the destruction of regional sanctuaries, and the centralization of
worship in Jerusalem all provided the material and ideological circumstances that produced
Judges 17-21. It is these power struggles, ideological dilemmas, and social contradictions that
the text tries to "resolve".

With the above short background to the social situation in the Judges period, we now turn to the text
of Judges 19.

4. THE NARRATION IN JUDGES 19

A certain Levite married a wife, a concubine from Bethlehem! The narrator in Judges 19 chooses not to
name the characters and thus to an extent makes them the victims of his narration. As we read 19:2
and 19:19, we may speculate that this was not an ordinary Levite. The latter could be counted
among other people such as the widows and orphans, whose needs were to be met by the
community (cf Deut 14:29; 16:14; 26:12). The Levite of Judges 19 appears to have been a rich man
on the following grounds: he had a servant, he had at least more than one wife, and his donkeys did
not go hungry because he had straw and fodder to feed them. The analysis o Yee above, on how
these country priests enriched themselves by collecting taxes from the peasants , throws some time
we must not forget that the pro-Josianic editor would not have had the capacity to depict the non-
Zadokite priesthood in a positive light. From the text we get an impression that the Levite had a
squabble with his concubine. The Hebrew word pilegesh means concubine. The word refers to a wife
of secondary status in some Old Testament texts ( cf Gen 16). What is tricky about the pilegesh of
Judges 19, is that though the narrator chooses to use this word rather than the word for legitimate wife
( ishah) it appears that she was not an ordinary pilegesh.This is buttressed by the observation that the
word neerah can be translated as newly married woman. Her father is also referred to as hatoh or
hatan, which literally means, “ he who has a son-in-law”, that is a father-in-law, in relation to the
pilegesh’s husband, the Levite. I therefore choose to translate the word pilegesh with the words “ a
legitimate wife”, one of the wives of the Levite (for a more elaborate explanation of this word, refer to
an article on the use of this word with reference to Hagar, the pilegesh/ concubine-wife of Abraham in
Genesis 16; Masenya 1998:271-287). In the Northern Sotho context from which I come, a pilegesh
would probably be of one of the older wives of an African polygamist. Such a speculation is warranted
by the kind of (harsh) treatment which the pilegesh of Judges 19 receives from her husband. In this
African social context, the older the wife in a polygamous marriage relationship, the less attention she
would receive from her husband.

One other challenge facing the translators of verse 2 is the Hebrew rendering of the reason why the
pilegesh decided to desert the Levite. I agree with Exum (1988:260) that citing harlotry (in line with
the Hebrew rendering of this text), and translating the Hebrew word zanah, which means to have illicit
sexual intercourse, as a reason for the pilegesh to leave the husband, does not make sense in this
context (1993:260). Such a translation renders the pilegesh as the offender, a serious offender,
given the fact that the sexuality of wives belonged to their husbands in that context. In a context where
the wife was the property of her husband, where adultery committed by a married woman was
punishable by death, and also given the secondary nature of the status of the Levite's wife, as well as
the humiliation which the men involved (cf the pilegesh's father and her husband) would experience
when shamed by a woman of such a low status, it does not make sense to me that the woman
could confidently flee to her father's house on account of the prostitution she had committed (cf
also Boling 1975:273-274). Why would a Levite, who was well versed in the law, run after such a
woman, particularly after she had committed such a shameful act?
I therefore agree with Holladay's (1971:90) translation of the verb zanah in its qal imperfect yiznah to
mean: "feel a dislike for". The Levite most probably offended his wife so much that she "became angry
with him" (NRSV), and decided to seek refuge in her father's house. Could it have been an early
divorce if we follow the rendering that the designation neerah in this textual context means a
newly married woman?

In my view, the observation that he pursued her in order "to speak tenderly to her and bring her
back" (Jdg 19:3) reveals that the Levite, rather than his wife, is the perpetrator of whatever led
to the pilegesh's decision to desert him.

Boggling to the mind, however, is the hospitality which the Levite received from the father-in-law.
Though we understand that according to the rules of hospitality in those days, it was the
responsibility of the host to provide hospitality and safety to the guest, it appears that the present
hospitality is a bit exaggerated (cf the host extending the days of his son-in-law's stay), a
situation which gets close not only to the manipulation of the guest but also reveals the Levite's
inability to make a sound judgment. It could be construed that extending the son-in-law's
stay was an exercise of male control and manipulation, not on the female but on a fellow man.
If Mieke Bal's (1999:323-326; 1988:80-93) thesis for a patriarchal marriage (one in which a
wife of a nomadic husband is allowed to stay in the house of her father after marriage due to the
nomadic nature of her husband's life) is correct, the question is why the father-in-law would
persuade his son-in-law to stay longer because in accordance with the expectations of such a
marriage, where both of them were then, is actually where they were supposed to be. As a
result, there would thus have been no need for the Levite to be in a hurry to leave the place,
particularly if he was the offender. As such, he would have no choice but to bow to whatever
suggestion his father-in-law could give in compensation for what he had done to his daughter.
What amazes an African-South African woman reader of this story regarding hospitality, is the
apparent absence of the mother in the house. Hospitality in this traditional context was/is
basically shown by women. One can speculate that with a woman being the manager, mother
and carer in the patriarchal Israelite household (Meyers 1983:569-593), she could probably
have done a better job than the male hosts portrayed in this text, if her task was not only to do the
bidding of the male host from behind the scenes, that is. The latter statement is, however, not meant
to disempower men from household chores. In ancient Israel, hospitality was, nevertheless, mainly
shown by men (cf the narrator of Jdg 19 who presents a man [host] hosting other man/men), though
the important tasks of food preparation were probably performed by women.

The Levite appears to be a weak man who was lacking in sound judgment as is revealed by the
following:
1. When persuaded by the father-in-law to remain for the
fourth day, he ultimately agrees. This should, however,
also be understood in the light of the hospitality rules of
the time, according to which the visitor was expected to
succumb to the wishes of the host (cf Fewell & Gunn
1993:133).
2.
3. Even on the fifth day he was almost persuaded to stay,
only to be firm at the wrong time, when the sun had set!
How could he determine to set out for a journey in the
night? Was he not wise enough to anticipate the horrors
of the night?

What is also disturbing about the narrator, though this pattern was basically followed by most
narrators in the Hebrew Bible, is the silence of the woman, the very subject who, as a matter of fact,
had set the ball rolling for the events just narrated. In verse 10, the Levite and his concubine are
portrayed as starting the journey together. However, the reader is not clear whether joining the
company of the Levite was the concubine's choice or her father's. Having found no "home" with h,er
husband - the new patron after marriage - she sought "home" with the former patron - her father.
However, here she was, finding herself in the hands of the same man from whom she ran away! It is
thus uncertain whether she would find a home to be provided by the husband as a place of safety this
time

As the day was far spent, a servant gave sound advice, i.e. that the three of them should seek
hospitality in the nearby city of the Jebusites (19:11). This time, the Levite did not allow himself to
be manipulated by another man. Perhaps it depended on the class of the manipulator in question,
or given the context of honour and shame in which these events took place, the Levite would not be
in a position to bear the shame resulting from the bad advice of someone with a lower status than
his, if the servant's proposal was to yield negative fruits. Due to his intolerance for the non-
Israelites, he pushed the company to carry on with the journey. In his heart he had concluded that
the "others" in terms of ethnicity would not be as hospitable as his own. Little did he know the kind of
treatment he would receive from those belonging to the "inner circle"!

Not finding hospitality in Gibeah of Benjamin, they however found hospitality from an old Ephramite
man residing in Gibeah (Jdg 19:20). It only makes sense that a stranger would know how to take care
of fellow strangers. He determined to take care of all their needs irrespective of the guest's "unusual
statement": "We your servants have straw and fodder for our donkeys, with bread and wine for me
and the woman and the young man along with us. We need nothing more" (19:19). In my context, this
statement is unusual because a visitor is supposed to "have short horns" as a Northern Sotho
proverb expresses, which means that a visitor needs first to watch the situation in the place s/he is
visiting and accept whatever is offered by the host. However, the Levite was perhaps so desperate to
get accommodation that he had to convince the host that his guests would definitely not be a burden to
his (the host's) resources.

The moment of merriment and hospitality would unfortunately not last long as they were interrupted
by a mob, "a perverse lot" whose command to them reminds us of the words of the men of Sodom
to Lot's male guests in Genesis 19:8: "Bring out the man who came into your house, so that we may
have intercourse with him" (Jdg 19:22). The host did not hesitate but immediately refused to abide
by their instruction: "No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do
this vile thing" (19:23). Almost knowing that the mob would not be satisfied with his response, he
went on to make an offer: "Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them
out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them; but against this man do not do such a
vile thing" (19:24).

What is particularly questionable as one reads this horrifying passage is: if the men of Gibeah should
not do a vile thing to the man because he is the host's guest, what about the pilegesh? Was she
not a guest? If the innocent virgin daughter and the pilegesh (whose voices we are not allowed to
hear) were sexually harassed by these strangers, would that not be a vile thing? Who then
defines what proper sexuality should entail? If the mob was demanding to have intercourse with the
servant of the guest, would the host have responded in the same way?

A two-fold irony is narrated in the following verses: the guest, not the host, is the one who "offers
hospitality" to the perverse mob: he seized his own wife, who was also a guest, and put her out to
them! One who was supposed to find a home, not only as a guest but with the man she had fled
from four months before, was thrown outside of the comfort of the home to be assaulted sexually -
the worst of all forms of sexual assaults - she was gang raped the whole night!

As if he was not satisfied with the torture to which he had exposed his wife, an exercise far removed
from his earlier intention "to speak tenderly to her and bring her back" (Jdg 19:3), the first words with
which the wife is greeted only reveal how rude and heartless the Levite was (or was portrayed by the
pro-Josianic Deuteronomist to be): "Get up," he said to her, "we are going". Getting no response from
her, he put her on the donkey and on entering his house, he cut her body into twelve pieces, limb
by limb, and sent it throughout all the territory of Israel. To the men whom he sent throughout
all Israel he said:

"Thus shall you say to all the Israelites, 'Has such a thing ever happened since the day that
Israelites came up from the land of Egypt until this day? Consider it, take counsel and speak out.'"

As I conclude this narration, I cannot but agree with Phyllis Trible (1984:65) that:

The betrayal, rape, torture, murder, and dismemberment of an unnamed woman is a story we want to
forget but are commanded to speak. It speaks of the horrors of male power, brutality and
triumphalism; of female helplessness, abuse and annihilation. To hear this story is to inhabit a world
of unrelenting terror that refuses to let us pass by on the other side.

Informed by the African-South African context, several questions arise, for instance, how
should one respond to such a violent text and how should one re-read and re-hear the story of
the unnamed pilegesh of Judges 19 in an attempt to overcome the violence perpetrated against
women in this text?

I will respond to the story under two sub-headings:

1. At the bottom of the victims' ladder: The female lot

2. Home: A place of safety or a place of horror?

2.1. At the Bottom of the Victims' Ladder: The Female Lot

Judges 19 does not reveal only the male/female power dynamic, since other dynamics of
power such as class, male-male, and status, also occur (cf also Jones-Warsaw1999:126-142).
Therefore to interpret the whole corpus forming the conclusion to the book, Judges 19-21, as
solely portraying the power dynamics between males and females with the latter always
emerging as male victims is to underestimate other power dynamics notable in this text.
However, I wish to hasten to argue that irrespective of these other powerdynamics,
females remain at the bottom of the ladder of victims as the following examples will undeniably
reveal:

2.1.1. The Unnamed Characters

That the narrator chooses not to name all characters (irrespective of their gender), thus creating a
distance between him and them, shows that injustice is not only done on the female characters, the
pilegesh and the virgin daughter, but on the male characters too (cf Bal 1999; Yoo 1997:41 ;Coetzee
2002:55). However, as is the case in a patriarchal world, the woman and the daughter are not
named by their personal names, but in terms of their relationship to their male patrons, thus
victimizing them even more: the host's virgin daughter should have been regarded as a valuable
asset to her father as her dowry was supposed to be in line with her virgin status, while the pilegesh, a
woman in marriage - an honourable institution in those days and in African-South Africa today -was
regarded as of a secondary status, even though she was the legitimate wife.

The (lack of) naming thus reflects something of male control of women's sexuality.

2.1.2. Male control of female sexuality

As already implied above, the naming of women sheds light on the men who control the sexuality
of the females concerned, a situation similar to that of the majority of women in my context. Even in
Christian church settings, girl children are exhorted to keep their virginity more than boy children. In
the circumcision schools, they are reminded of their responsibility to take care of the sexual
needs of their husbands once they are married. Once in marriage, their sexuality belongs to their
husbands only, and not the other way round. Her husband's sexuality can, however, be shared with
others. Many African proverbs give men such latitude, in that a woman's sexuality belongs to her
husband alone, a situation similar to that in ancient Israel. One such proverb literally reads: A man
is a pumpkin plant, he spreads. The proverb means that a married man can have other sexual
partners outside his marriage. The Levite in Judges 19 however, when under pressure, broke the
rules of the game by pushing his wife outside, to be ravaged sexually by strange Israelite men! With
such a one-sided control over female sexuality, reinforced by the power and privilege given to men
in a patriarchal context, it only makes sense that there are many instances of sexual violence (cf
marriage rape and incest) which remain privatised and therefore unrecorded in
many a patriarchal household, some if not many of which find endorsement from the sacred texts
(Jdg 19:24; 1 Cor 7:5). It is men - not God, though they sometimes do it in the name of
God - who decide that it is not a vile thing to rape an unmarried young girl and a married woman!
However, if a man rapes another man, it is seen as a vile thing.

2.1.3. Women: The Silenced Lot

The Levite's father-in-law manipulates his guest, the son-in-law, by persuading him to stay longer
than he had apparently intended. Fewell and Gunn (1993:132) question whether this delay arises
from the father-in-law's concern about his daughter's possible mistreatment at the hands of the
Levite or his delight at seeing his son-in-law.

Yee (1995:162) is of the opinion that "cross-cultural studies point out that the host-guest
relationship is essentially one of unequal power relations. The flamboyant display of generosity
by the father-in-law toward the Levite symbolises the moral and conceptual subordination of the
guest to the host".

Even here the woman, who in my view was supposed to be the key player because her action led
to the Levite's visit to her father's house, was conspicuous by her silence. Not only was she
invisible by her lack of name, but also by her silence. This is indeed a dangerous form of
silence! Silenced all the way through, even when she was thrown out to the rapists! This was
definitely not silence by choice. Being surrounded by foreigners to her sex, thus a stranger in a
patriarchal setting, the male (strange) narrator chose to silence her to what can be designated an
event akin to serial murder (a gendered violence in which a man rapes and killed a number of
females). The unnamed woman of Judges 19 is definitely a victim at the bottom of the victims'
ladder.

2.1.4. Male Hosts Manipulating Male Guests

The issue of the unequal power relations between host and guest depicted in the preceding
paragraph is also notable in the present episode.

The men of Gibeah (who as matter of fact could be regarded, communally with the old man,
as host to the Levite and his companions), were determined to abuse the male guest sexually.
There was therefore a definite tendency towards the manipulation of male guests by male hosts.
In this setting, heterosexual ideology, which landed the pilegesh rather than her husband into a
mess, took the upper hand on homosexual ideology. The first thing that a man in a male-oriented
context will try to avoid is to allow other men to "treat him as a woman"! Men refuse to be
reduced to a state where they will "never again be men". This would even be exacerbated by the
status of the male perpetrators - "a perverse lot". The shame the Levite would have to carry in
such a situation would have been unbearable.

The above analysis reveals the observation that throughout Judges 19 female characters remain at
the bottom of the victims' ladder, an imposed social location we must resist as modern readers of
the text. We must, as far as possible, refuse to remain victims and determine to overcome the
violence inflicted on us by the systemic structures, our brothers and fathers.

2.2. Home: A Place of Safety or a Place of Horror?
In Northern Sotho, the word gae, translated home in English, is a passionate word which usually
has the following connotations for females: for girl children, it refers to the place that gave birth to
them, in which they were/are nurtured by caring parents, though most of the time, girls grew under
the care of their mothers. Hence the saying ngwana wa ngwanenyana molao o o t$ea lapeng
which literally means: a girl child gets a law from the family. This is a place to which a young girl could
flee when confronted with the harsh realities of life outside the home. She had the confidence that
at home she would find herself in good hands (of both mom, dad, siblings, and members of the
extended family).

In marriage, she changed homes. In our patri-local settings (not in the sense used by Bal2 for the
setting of the marriage of the Levite and the concubine, but in the sense that the bride leaves her
father's household to reside in the household of the husband's father), a married woman's new home
would be the husband's household (though changing patterns are common today where the husband
lives outside his father's household together with his nuclear family). As a matter of fact, however, a
married woman's original "home" does not cease to be such. Practically however, it almost ceases to be
a home because in this culture, it is believed that lebitla la mosadi ke bogadi, "a married woman's
grave is at the husband's place". This means that irrespective of the treatment that a married woman
receives from the new place, she must now come to grips with the reality that her husband's place is
(supposed to be) her new "place of safety".

We may ask an important question as we conclude this section is: do we still provide safe
homes in our settings

^ According to Mieke Bal (1988:80-93;1999:323-326), the marriage between the pilegesh and her
husband was patri-local in the sense that a husband was allowed to stay with his in-laws, at her wife's
place after marriage. Such an arrangement was necessitated by the nomadic life led by the husband.
today? In my view, the male folk denied the females of Judges 19 a home in what were supposed to be
homes for them. The former, privileged by a patriarchal system, could successfully sacrifice the female
bodies at the altar of male privilege.

When the pilegesh sought for a home at her father's house, perhaps fleeing the ravages of an
aborted marriage, having herself realised that that which was supposed to be her new home, had
failed to be one, she found none! Instead, her father chose to hand her over to his son-in-law, one
who not only failed to provide a home for her, but also failed to be a home to her!

When the virgin daughter expected to get temporary protection from her father, the head and
protector of members of the patriarchal household, she was betrayed not by a boy friend or a close
girl friend, but by one who had fathered her! Not in a deserted place but in the "safety and
comfort" of a home. At that moment of betrayal, she probably came to grips with the harsh
reality that not all people are safe in the patriarchal household/home as some people are safer than
others and have more privileges than others. The privileged ones will also determine which
bodies are worth being sacrificed and which are not! According to her father, her body could be
ravished and treated in whatever strange manner men saw fit, this time, not in the home, but
outside the home. In my view, the old man could just as well have invited the mob to come and
harass the daughter right inside the "home" seeing that such a violent, deadly instruction ironically
came from inside the home. In this way, the truth could have been revealed clearly: that which
was supposed to be a place of safety, was as a matter of fact, a place of horror. However, the
daughter by chance (?), perhaps also privileged by her being "purer" than the pilegesh in terms
of sexuality/virginity, was not thrown out. The question can thus be asked: how many daughters
are caused to flee to our "streets" in search of a "home" because of the sexual abuse which they
have experienced, not only from members of the extended families such as uncles and
cousins but also from their fathers? Another moot question is: how many of our daughters
continue to give themselves up to prostitution because we have made them homeless by failing to
provide homes for them?

If the virgin daughter of our text, a female, one at the margins of patriarchal society, has survived the
ordeal, one of her kind will not. This is the pilegesh whose father returned her to the man who had
previously failed to provide a home for her.

It is no wonder that even at this critical moment, a moment in which the truth of his earlier words "to
speak tenderly to her and bring her back" (Jdg 19:3) would be put to a serious test, that this man of
weak character, failed to pass the test so easily. He had the guts to pose as guest in a house that is
not his, and exercise his power as a husband by seizing his wife and handing her over to vile
strange men for nothing other than rape! He, who according to the mob's instruction, was supposed
to be "hospitable" to them, by having sex with them, handed over the powerless other, his wife, for
the same purpose! As they raped her all night outside the presence of the one who was supposed
to provide home for her, he with his integrity and male dignity spent the night enjoying the comfort of
the home, which he has ironically failed to provide.

As if to reveal what a heartless person he was, not perhaps satisfied with the treatment which his
wife had received, he commanded her the following morning to be ready to get going!

At home, he used the sacrificial knife (cf also Gn 22:10) to chop her body into pieces (Jdg 19:29)!

3. JUDGES 19 IN THE CONTEXT OF THE LIVES OF AFRICAN-SOUTH AFRICAN WOMEN
TODAY

It is well nigh impossible to forget this terrifying story because the experiences of an
unnamed pilegesh in Judges 19 are currently repeated in many a heterosexual marriage as
many women in these marriages continue to experience rape from their husbands sometimes
even in the name of god (cf newspaper reports and reports from counselees). It is written in the
Book that a man is the head of the wife (cf Eph 5:23), that each spouse should always be
available to the other for conjugal rights: "Do not deprive one another except perhaps by
agreement for a set time, to devote yourself to prayer..."(1 Cor 7:5). The definition of what
constitutes the word of God in the Bible is, as a matter of fact, the word of those who benefit from
patriarchal systemic structures. In these contexts, women understand that their sexuality should
be controlled by the family heads. They have been socialised to understand that their status
should be defined in terms of marriage and that divorce is against the will of God. Given such a
state of affairs, these women will mostly choose to remain in such abusive marriages. In some
settings, many a woman would not even mind to sacrifice their daughters to abuse by men in
order to keep their marriages intact (cf the many newspaper reports in this regard). In such
contexts traditional African cultural views about women/men relationships, cemented by violent
biblical texts and biblical interpretations, serve to make women's lot the most unbearable of all in
the sense that that which is supposed to be a home for married women, a home outside their
father's houses, fails to be just that. He who is supposed to provide a home for her away from the
care of her parents does not only take delight in violating her sexually, but through the pressure
caused by the stress he subjects her to, he will succeed to tear her into pieces and make her a
divided person (cf the pilegesh of Judges 19). As a result, her identity, which was supposed to be
formed and nurtured in this new "home" gets lost. In more severe instances, particularly in
which a married woman purposes to define and control her own sexuality, this could lead not
only to her being killed but also to the murder of the perpetrator, her husband!

It is disturbing to note that even the Christian church, which is supposed to be a place of safety, a
spiritual home for abused women and children, does not always pass the test. How can a church
which still advocates male domination and female submission fare well in this regard? How can a
church which consistently and deliberately addresses God as Father (because the Bible says so)
hope to provide solutions to children (both boys and girls) who continue to be abused by their
earthly fathers? How can a church which continues to idolize marriage and the submission of
wives to their husbands at all costs hope to bring healing to many women who continue to be
broken by such spouses? How can such a church have the capacity to affirm young women who
want to actualise their God-given purposes outside marriage?

Yet the Christian church, if it operates within the confines of God's will for humanity with integrity,