{"id":778,"date":"2009-01-05T01:27:58","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T05:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tabsir.net\/?p=778"},"modified":"2009-01-05T01:28:35","modified_gmt":"2009-01-05T05:28:35","slug":"rizpah-and-the-politics-of-vengeance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tabsir.net\/?p=778","title":{"rendered":"Rizpah and the Politics of Vengeance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nRizpah protecting the bodies of her sons, by George Becker, left; William Cullen Bryant, right<\/em><\/p>\n

With Gaza ablaze, the political woes of contemporary Palestinians continue to echo past tragedies on the same blood-drenched ground. Consider the vengeance of the Gibeonites<\/a>, both a purge and a scourge in the early days of Israel’s King David. Setting aside who is who for the moment, the biblical account recorded in the book of II Samuel describes a weak David with a struggling economy (called a famine in those days). The Gibeonites, who sought vengeance for their slaughter by the former King Saul, demanded seven of his sons, and David agreed. The princes were soon hanged in eye-for-an-eye justice. Yet the queen mother of two of the sons spent five months protecting the bodies from being devoured by beasts not shaped like humans. Her name was Rizpah<\/a> and she can be seen as a maternal heroine or a distraught widow. <\/p>\n

Like so many of these seemingly sacred stories, almost any moral can be teased out of the narrative. Should the lesson be “Do not make deals with the enemy, even when you are weak”? I can see both supporters of Hamas and Israeli hardliners applauding the message. Or might it be possible to read the story in a more sane hindsight as a referendum on the futility of vengeance? Were the matter simply an eye for an eye, it could theoretically stop after the first act of vengeance, but this region has seen an infinity of eye-gouging that no blessed peacemakers have yet been able to stop. My own preference is for Rizpah fighting off the vultures of violence, less an act of protecting only one’s own than defiance of the perpetual killing that makes martyrdom a virtue on both sides.<\/p>\n

Once again, I prefer to tune out the talking heads and let a poet of the past speak: <\/p>\n

Rizpah<\/strong>
\nby William Cullen Bryant <\/a>(1794-1878)<\/p>\n

And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they
\nhanged them in the hill before the Lord; and they fell all seven
\ntogether, and were put to death in the days of the harvest, in the
\nfirst days, in the beginning of barley-harvest.<\/p>\n

And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for
\nher upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water
\ndropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the
\nair to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.
\nII Samuel 21:10.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hear what the desolate Rizpah said,
\nAs on Gibeah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rocks she watched the dead.
\nThe sons of Michal before her lay,
\nAnd her own fair children, dearer than they:
\nBy a death of shame they all had died,
\nAnd were stretched on the bare rock, side by side.
\nAnd Rizpah, once the loveliest of all
\nThat bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul,
\nAll wasted with watching and famine now,
\nAnd scorched by the sun her haggard brow,
\nSat mournfully guarding their corpses there,
\nAnd murmured a strange and solemn air;
\nThe low, heart-broken, and wailing strain
\nOf a mother that mourns her children slain: <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I have made the crags my home, and spread
\nOn their desert backs my sackcloth bed;
\nI have eaten the bitter herb of the rocks,
\nAnd drunk the midnight dew in my locks;
\nI have wept till I could not weep, and the pain
\nOf my burning eyeballs went to my brain.
\nSeven blackened corpses before me lie,
\nIn the blaze of the sun and the winds of the sky.
\nI have watched them through the burning day,
\nAnd driven the vulture and raven away;
\nAnd the cormorant wheeled in circles round,
\nYet feared to alight on the guarded ground.
\nAnd when the shadows of twilight came,
\nI have seen the hyena\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eyes of flame,
\nAnd heard at my side his stealthy tread,
\nBut aye at my shout the savage fled:
\nAnd I threw the lighted brand to fright
\nThe jackal and wolf that yelled in the night.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ye were foully murdered, my hapless sons,
\nBy the hands of wicked and cruel ones;
\nYe fell, in your fresh and blooming prime,
\nAll innocent, for your father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crime.
\nHe sinned\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut he paid the price of his guilt
\nWhen his blood by a nameless hand was spilt;
\nWhen he strove with the heathen host in vain,
\nAnd fell with the flower of his people slain,
\nAnd the sceptre his children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hands should sway
\nFrom his injured lineage passed away.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But I hoped that the cottage roof would be
\nA safe retreat for my sons and me;
\nAnd that while they ripened to manhood fast,
\nThey should wean my thoughts from the woes of the past.
\nAnd my bosom swelled with a mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pride,
\nAs they stood in their beauty and strength by my side,
\nTall like their sire, with the princely grace
\nOf his stately form, and the bloom of his face.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, what an hour for a mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heart,
\nWhen the pitiless ruffians tore us apart!
\nWhen I clasped their knees and wept and prayed,
\nAnd struggled and shrieked to Heaven for aid,
\nAnd clung to my sons with desperate strength,
\nTill the murderers loosed my hold at length,
\nAnd bore me breathless and faint aside,
\nIn their iron arms, while my children died.
\nThey died\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand the mother that gave them birth
\nIs forbid to cover their bones with earth.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The barley-harvest was nodding white,
\nWhen my children died on the rocky height,
\nAnd the reapers were singing on hill and plain,
\nWhen I came to my task of sorrow and pain.
\nBut now the season of rain is nigh,
\nThe sun is dim in the thickening sky,
\nAnd the clouds in sullen darkness rest
\nWhere he hides his light at the doors of the west.
\nI hear the howl of the wind that brings
\nThe long drear storm on its heavy wings;
\nBut the howling wind and the driving rain
\nWill beat on my houseless head in vain:
\nI shall stay, from my murdered sons to scare
\nThe beasts of the desert, and fowls of air.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rizpah protecting the bodies of her sons, by George Becker, left; William Cullen Bryant, right With Gaza ablaze, the political woes of contemporary Palestinians continue to echo past tragedies on the same blood-drenched ground. Consider the vengeance of the Gibeonites, both a purge and a scourge in the early days of Israel’s King David. Setting … Continue reading Rizpah and the Politics of Vengeance<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,94,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-israeli-conflict","category-bible-and-holy-land","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabsir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabsir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabsir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabsir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabsir.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tabsir.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabsir.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabsir.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabsir.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}