The Characterisation of God in the Stories of the Ark

2021 ◽  
pp. 167-185
Author(s):  
Rachelle Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Divine Violence

The Divine Violence of the ark in 1 Sam 6:19 and 2 Sam 6:7 springs from the misalignment of the holy transcendent God being present in the ark. The conception of divine presence does not conform to JE, Priestly, Zion-Sabaoth, or Deuteronomistic theology precisely, but it contains elements found in all of these traditions, confirming that the transcendent God is understood as actually present in the ark in 1 Sam 6:19 and 2 Sam 6:7. God is characterised as holy in these narratives, but God also shows no privilege for God’s own people, treating them akin to the Philistines. God is angry in 2 Sam 6:7, and the concept of anger as an unleashed volatile rage is explored. The thought of Walter Benjamin is used to suggest that the Divine Violence of the ark is beyond ethics: it cannot be justified, but it also does not justify other acts of violence.

The Violence of the Ark

2021 ◽  
pp. 154-166
Author(s):  
Rachelle Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Violence

Proposals that the violence of the ark in 2 Sam 6:7 can be explained in terms of punishment or educative violence are reviewed and shown to be unsupported by details in the text. Unlike the parallel account in 1 Chr 13 and 15, no laws are sufficient to ensure safety from the ark and the ark is simply removed. Similarly, there is a lack of evidence for punishment or educative violence in 1 Sam 6:19. It is proposed that the violence of the ark remains inexplicable, and fits the concept of Divine Violence as defined by Walter Benjamin. Divine Violence is neither a means to an end or end to a means, it is beyond law. It irrupts in the context of a misalignment in the world and is beyond ethics.

The Ethics and Characterisation of God, and the Rejection of Saul

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-130
Author(s):  
Rachelle Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Ethical Evaluation ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Physical Dimensions ◽  
Prior Action

In dialogue with the thought of Martha Nussbaum, divine emotions point to God’s cherished projects and are relevant for the ethical evaluation of divine violence. There is complexity in analysing ancient concepts broadly labelled ‘emotions’ that hold emotive, cognitive, and physical dimensions, including regret and favour. Divine regret suggests that the divine violence against Saul is not a repayment of Saul’s guilt but a repayment of God’s own prior action in making Saul king. Divine regret is an emotion/cognition that is not based on an attempt to determine good and evil but on divine attachments and values, the need to remove Saul, and God’s favour for his neighbour. God’s characterisation is also described through the phrase ‘according to [God’s] own heart,’ and divine presence indicated the divine spirits upon Saul and David.

Who is Able to Stand before the LORD, this Holy God?

2021 ◽  
pp. 151-153
Author(s):  
Rachelle Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
The Right

Two accounts of the ark’s violence in 1 Sam 6:19 and 2 Sam 6:7 have prompted a multitude of interpretations in scholarship. Most explanations for the violence of the ark assume the violence is related to the right (or wrong) treatment of the ark. Even if these interpretations acknowledge that the violence is out of proportion to the transgression, they propose, nevertheless, that a known law has been broken; or the violence establishes a custom for the ark’s treatment or endorses the ark’s holiness. This chapter introduces the thought of Walter Benjamin whose work gives categories to understand divine violence as neither preserving or creating law.

Reconceiving Immigration Politics: Walter Benjamin, Violence, and Labor

2019 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
INÉS VALDEZ
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Production Chain ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
Emancipatory Politics ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Immigration Politics ◽  
Coalition Of Immokalee Workers ◽  
The Stability

This article theorizes the circulation of violence in the realms of immigration and labor. Through Walter Benjamin, I conceptualize the relationship between racial violence and law, and note that although violence can support the authority of law, excessive violence makes law vulnerable to decay. This tension between authority and excess is eased by humanitarianism. I find clues for disrupting this circulation in Benjamin’s twin notions of the real state of exception and the general strike, introduced two decades apart and invested in theorizing how labor and other marginalized groups threaten the stability of law supported by violence. This reconstruction proceeds alongside an examination of the contemporary US regime of immigration enforcement, which combines the excessive violence of detention and deportation with marginal humanitarian adjustments, which ultimately legitimate violence. On the disruptive side, a Benjaminian reading of labor activism by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers offers three dimensions of emancipatory politics: (a) practices of refusal (to engage on the terms of the immigration debate), (b) the establishment of historical constellations (of racial regulation of labor constitutive of law), and (c) divine violence (through exposure of lawful violence in the food production chain).

W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-192
Author(s):  
James Edward Ford
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Fugitive Slave ◽  
The Law ◽  
Critique Of Violence ◽  
General Strike

Notebook 3 continues to build on the concept of the multitude. Du Bois calls the region of the multitude that pursues truth and justice the “dark proletariat.” This chapter theorizes the dark proletariat’s revolutionary force analyzing the argument and form of Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction, especially the chapters on “The General Strike” and “The Coming of the Lord.” With this analysis, Du Bois’s account of the dark proletariat during the Civil War marks the historical expression of the divine violence Walter Benjamin identifies but cannot historically locate in his enigmatic essay “Critique of Violence.” Divine violence undoes the guilt that binds the oppressed to the law and State. While Benjamin sought his example among the working class in Europe’s metropoles, Du Bois makes the figure of the fugitive slave the protagonist of his narrative.

scholarly journals A dupla máscara da anarquia: Black Blocs, Anonymous e outros fenômenos │ The double mask of anarchy: Black Blocs, Anonymous and other phenomena

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Capeller
Keyword(s):  
Critical Appraisal ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
The Other ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Antonio Negri ◽  
Political Demonstrations

RESUMO Uma tentativa de determinar o verdadeiro sentido das manifestações de 2013 no Brasil por de uma dupla articulação entre as contradições sociais e políticas dos próprios manifestantes, de um lado, e as contradições estéticas e culturais expressas pela grande mídia, assim como pela chamada mídia independente, durante a cobertura dos eventos acima mencionados, por outro. Nessa análise, tentamos interpretar o conceito de “violência divina” de Walter Benjamin, alinhado ao conceito de “poder constituinte” tal como analisado por Antonio Negri, com o auxílio do estudo de Giorgio Agamben sobre o “estado de exceção”, para uma nova abordagem da questão da violência nas manifestações e da forma ambígua com que a grande mídia, assim como a chamada mídia independente, lidou com esta questão. Nosso texto acaba com uma análise crítica de dois fenômenos distintos, errônea ou corretamente associados como “anarquistas”: os vários grupos de anonymous e de black blocs que então surgiram, povoando a superfície dos acontecimentos.Palavras-chave: Estado de exceção; Violência divina; Poder constituinte; Black blocs; Anonymous.ABSTRACT An attempt to determine the real meaning of last year’s political demonstrations in Brasil by a double articulation between the social and political contradictions of the demonstrators themselves, on one hand, and the cultural and aesthetical contradictions expressed by the big media, as well as by its independent internet counterpart, during their coverage of the above mentioned events, on the other. Throughout this analysis we try to interpret Walter Benjamin’s concept of “divine violence" aligned with Antonio Negri’s study of “the constituent power” and Agamben’s work on the juridical concept of the “state of exception” to try to cope with the violence associated with these demonstrations and the ambiguous way that both the independent and the big media dealt with it. Our analysis ends with a critical appraisal of two distinct, and yet rightfully or wrongfully related, so-called anarchist phenomena: the innumerable groups of black blocs and anonymous that were, from then on, emerging to the surface of the events.Keywords: State of exception; Divine violence; Constituent power; Black blocs; Anonymous.

Divine Violence and Divine Presence: Reading the Story of Uzzah and the Ark in 2 Samuel 6 with Slavoj Žižek

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Rachelle Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
Divine Presence ◽  
Slavoj Zizek ◽  
Slavoj Žižek ◽  
Masoretic Text ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
2 Samuel

Abstract This article interprets the story of the outbreak of God against Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6 as an act of “divine violence,” a concept described by Slavoj Žižek in his book Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. In previous interpretations of 2 Samuel 6, the violence against Uzzah has been understood either as a punishment for a transgression, or as a capricious act of God’s power. Slavoj Žižek describes “divine violence” as violence, which is not a means to an end, and which irrupts from a position of vulnerability and impotence. By looking at the details of the Masoretic Text of 2 Samuel 6, it will be argued that the violence of God in this story should also be interpreted as divine violence: it lacks meaning as a punishment for transgression, and it stems from the vulnerability of God’s presence in the ark rather than from God’s transcendent power.

Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachelle Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Divine Retribution ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Book Of Samuel ◽  
Babylonian Exile

Much of the drama, theological paradox, and interpretive interest in the book of Samuel derives from instances of God’s violence in the story. The beginnings of Israel’s monarchy are interwoven with God’s violent rejection of the houses of Eli and of Saul, deaths connected to the Ark of the Covenant, and the outworking of divine retribution after David’s violent appropriation of Bathsheba as his wife. Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel explores these narratives of divine violence from ethical, literary, and political perspectives, in dialogue with the thought of Immanuel Kant, Martha Nussbaum, and Walter Benjamin. The book addresses such questions as: Is the God of Samuel a capricious God with a troubling dark side? Is punishment for sin the only justifiable violence in these narratives? Why does God continue to punish those already declared forgiven? What is the role of God’s emotions in acts of divine violence? In what political contexts might narratives of divine violence against God’s own kings and God’s own people have arisen? The result is a fresh commentary on the dynamics of transgression, punishment, and their upheavals in the book of Samuel. The book offers a sensitive portrayal of God’s literary characterisation, with a focus on divine emotion and its effects. By identifying possible political contexts in which the narratives arose, God’s violence is further illumined through its relation to human violence, northern and southern monarchic ideology, and Judah’s experience of the Babylonian exile.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document