Isaiah 43, 19      Listen to the song: Rejoice will the Wilderness

2004~~~Dedicated to my daughter-in-love Efrat-Rut ~~~2011

Jeremia 31,21 Included in the same song: Rejoice in the Wilderness

MESSIAH Bat-Sheva & David or The HIDDEN FEMALE THREAD of REDEMPTION in the BIBLE

MESSIAH DAVID AND BATSHEVA
 INTERPRETATION 2004

Second Page

How can Bathing Bat-Sheva, the widow of Uria, the Canaanite,
help David, the murderer of her husband, become "Messiah"?

The hidden female thread of redemption hints at an answer.

Judah needs to be prepared for his task as the ancestor of David,
Judah, Yehuda, from whom all Yehudim, Jews, "Juden" in German, derive their name.

The first step is to tightly connect Judah and David by 10 generations,
like the 10 generations between Adam and Noah and Noah and Abraham,
never mind that between Judah and David more than 600 years have passed .

The second step was - to insert an outrageous sex scandal in the middle of the Josef story.

Josef, despite his very physical savior role for Ja'aqov's family and the world at whole,
is not counted among the tribes.
While all decisive names appear just once, there are about 6 different Josefs in the Bible.
It is Yehuda, who in the Josef story emerged as the future leader, someone who "stands in the breach"

see my book Second Chapter: Guarantorship-Solidarity-Responsibility 3. The Law of Life
and see "My Life's Testimony to my Life's Learning" p. 328 about Yehudah

Another triptych composed itself: Ratner's two showing-off Josefs framing Chagall's hidden Tamar and hiding Yehuda

It is exactly this context, in which a mystical author inserts the story of Tamar and Yehuda's role in it:
"Megilat" TAMAR

Yehuda fucks his daughter-in-law, thinking her a whore, and when she is reported to be pregnant, he orders to burn her. Why not? This continues to happen, for example in Jordan, even today. The feminists there demand, that suspected women (not suspected men, of course) will at least be brought to court, The statistics (at least, there are statistics) said some years ago, that about 90 women are being slaughtered without trial every year. When the bold and smart Tamar sends the proofs that it was Yehuda who impregnated her, Yehuda is brave enough to admit it, which makes him Yehuda[=the one who admits] and a leader after all. Thus he precedes his descendant David, who was capable of admitting and repenting 2.S 12:13

The story ends with the birth of twins,
preferring - as in the tradition of the Esav-Ya'aqov story - the younger one:
Peretz, interpreted by the midwife: "why did you break through?"
Gn 38:29
In later tradition "Ben-Peretz" is a title for the Messiah.

The future meaning of this son and his name stays hidden,
until a seemingly boring list by the pedigree obsessed author of "Chronicles" highlights it.
Gathering some traditions about Peretz' sons and grandsons and inventing the rest,
he manages to present a full-fledged pedigree of 10 generations for David,
though in the original context not even the father of his father Yishai, Jesse, is known.
Also David is made the seventh son, though in the original there were eight.
David, the seventh, the crown, the king, the symbol of the future redeemer.

Yehuda and Tamar by David Bennet 2001   David, the Psalmist by Phillip Ratner

The Chronicler felt the intention of the Tamar story and thought,
that he needed to add more flesh and bones to this intention.
Since he wasn't gifted as a story teller, but very gifted as the composer of genealogies,
he invented two parallel pedigrees, splitting off from Peretz son Hetzron [see "Megilat" Efrat].


Both include hints as to different aspects of redemption, far from people's dreams and limitations.

This is, how "Efrat" gets her roles.
Not through stories of situations and dramas,
but through her connection to certain biblical figures.
One role of Efrat was being the second wife of Caleb,
seemingly a link in the genealogy from Tamar to David,
but covertly identified with the great Caleb,
the only one among the desert generation of Hebrew slaves,
"in whom there was another spirit",
the spirit of self-determination


No artist has ever given attention to Efrat.
That's why photos have to be inserted instead, photos of the Efrat, whose new name stimulated this research.

Sometimes for better ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Mother-in-Love, Rakhêl, and Daughter-in Love, Efrat-Rut ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~and sometimes for worse
[watching this triptych again, I see, that black and white, white and black are balanced...]

Efrat, the name whose first and last letter are also the first and last letter of the 22 Hebrew letters,

and Efrat, the name, which, if read reversed, means "she will heal".

Efrat, known also as Efrata, a Canaanite name ,
which can mean both a place and a person,
[like Yehuda, like Yisrael, like Ha-Maqom ...]
is connected to Rachel, the Mother of Israel,
who forever weeps over her children,

If you click the red chakra, you'll hear Ra'ayah, my daughter-in-love as well, sing the song, which caused me to call myself Rakhêl

She was promised that she would be comforted and that her children would return,
but where does this happen?

It's the author of the Tamar-Efrat genealogy who gives us at least a hint.
For Efrat is - among some other great things - the mother of Bethlehem,
also a place and a person at the same time.

The Messiah myth - contrary to David's biography - gives great importance to Bethlehem as the place of birth of ---whom?

"And thou, Beth-lehem Eph-ra-tah ",
I remember this verse in German from my Christmas childhood,
and though the quote of Micha's prophecy [5: 2-3] in the New Testament leaves out "Efrata",
it is there in my memory:
"Und du, Bethlehem Ephrata..."

Und du, Bethlehem Ephrata, die du klein bist unter den Staeten in Juda, aus dir soll mir der kommen, der in Israel Herr sei, welches Ausgang von Anfang und von Ewigkeit gewesen ist. Indess laesst er sie plagen bis auf die Zeit, dass die , so gebaeren soll, geboren habe; da werden dann die uebrigen seiner Brueder wieder- kommen zu den Kindern Israel.

And thou, Beth-lehem Eph-ra-tah though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth; then the remnant of his brethren stall return unto the children of Israel.

See "ve-ata Bet-laekhem Efrata" among my 2012 songs (Nr. 19)


But were hints enough?

Finally an extremely gifted story teller stood up, maybe as late as in the third or second century
before the birth of the Jew from Nazareth who is believed to have brought redemption,
though no redemption has been in sight for the two thousand years which the whole world counts since then.

The author of "Rut" read that pedigree in Chronicles very, very carefully.
And that's how s/he came up with this little novel,
so small in volume, so excellent in writing, so profound in its message:

Rut, the R and T were taken from T - M - R and E - F - R - T.
The story takes place in Bethlehem.
But not from the beginning.
The beginnings are in Jordan, then called Moab.

In order to establish the belief in the ONEness of God,
the then present belief in a split Deity - in my research called Canaanism - had to be fought.

In the fight a vital trait in Canaanist beliefs got lost too - the feminine aspect of Deity .
And with it the acceptance of body and body's attraction to body - desire and passion.

Since Eve - it's the woman who is to be blamed for the man's uncontrollable sexual drive,
the "foreign women " had to be banished from Israel, right from Abraham until Esra.

To restore the balance at least symbolically,
the author of the Tamar Scroll gives Yehuda a Canaanite wife expressively
(though it's not clear, what other women were there available, we don't hear about more cousins,
brought to Canaan, like Rivka, Rachel and Lea; and Josef married an Egyptian wife anyway)

She is called Bat-Shua, which the author of Chronicle cunningly mixes up with Bat-Sheva,
meaning, that the Tamar scandal comes to interpret the Bat-Sheva scandal.
Wasn't Bat-Sheva the wife of Uriyya, the Hittite, i.e. the Canaanite?
And didn't this make her a Canaanite herself?

It's not written, where Tamar came from. No country, no father , no mother are mentioned.
In any case she marries the first of the Bat-Shua sons, Er, and when he died, the second, Onan.
She probably was meant to be a Canaanite herself,
that's how she learnt to be a "qedeshah", a holy prostitute.

The author of Rut hates all this ambiguity.
He states clearly, that Rut was a Moabite,
which means, she belonged to a non-Jewish people
which was even more despised than general Canaanites.

Rut is meant to marry Boaz, a yet impersonal link in the Chronicler's genealogy.
This Boaz is made the Goel of the land of her dead father-in-law and her dead husband.
He could have been anything,
why this 21 time emphasis on Goel and Geula, redeemer, redeeming and redemption?

Because the ancient technical term of redeeming the lost property of a family
had since long extended its meaning:
God himself is the redeemer of Israel from exile and political dependency,
to the redeemer of humankind from all hardships and finally from all "sins"...

Since Rut was meant to balance the male symbol of redemption, presented as David's Son,
the act of ge'ulah had to be the central event in the story.
The central technical event!
For there are more emotionally moving situations in the little story:
The crooked way of how Rut tempted Boaz.
Why this crooked way?