The Social Dimensions of Ritual Violence

This chapter discusses the various ways in which violent rites might have an impact on the shaping of social relationships in the world of the biblical text. The author’s primary interest in this chapter is to illuminate how ritual violence might function to terminate, perpetuate, and even create connections between individuals, groups, or polities. Texts examined include 1 Sam 22:12–19, the story of Saul’s mercenary Doeg the Edomite’s execution of the priests of Nob; 2 Sam 10:1–5, the Ammonites’ public humiliation of David’s embassy of comforters; 2 Sam 16:5–13, the cursing, stoning, and dirt casting of Shimi the Benjaminite as David flees Jerusalem before Absalom’s army; 2 Sam 20:1–22, the execution of the rebel Sheba ben Bikri by the inhabitants of Abel Bet Maacah; and Neh 13:25, the account of Nehemiah’s violent, coercive rites targeting his intermarried opponents.

The Role of Circumstantially Dependent Rites in Ritual Violence

This chapter examines a number of ritual actions whose meaning and significance are entirely dependent on the circumstances in which they occur. An agent might be depicted using such rites to cause a foe or wrongdoer injury. But texts suggest that under a different set of conditions, the very same rites can have beneficial functions not only for the agents who undertake them but also for those on whom those agents might act ritually. Circumstantially dependent rites include hair manipulation, disinterment and the movement of the remains of the dead, the burning of corpses or bones, and circumcision. Such rites contrast with other ritual acts that are portrayed as injurious to a victim under any and all circumstances (e.g., public stripping or blinding) as well as rites that always produce some kind of benefit for both agent and patient (e.g., honorable burial or clothing the naked).

Ritual Violence Prescribed

This chapter considers the representation of violent rites in legal texts. The chapter begins with a review of scholarly debates on the nature and function of biblical law and then moves on to consider striking examples of prescribed ritual violence for punitive purposes (Deut 13:7–12; 25:5–10; and Lev 24:19–20). After this, violent rites that serve nonpunitive purposes are investigated. These include animal and human sacrifice as well as the rites of Num 5:11–31, as the latter have a probative dimension in addition to their punitive aims. A detailed consideration of the rites of mass eradication (the ḥērem) rounds out the chapter.

Conclusion

After summarizing the arguments of previous chapters, the author compares the representation of ritual violence in the three types of literature that have been considered, focusing on both continuities and differences. Each literary type is characterized by diversity with respect to violent ritual acts, and each includes representations of violent rites with physical and/or psychological dimensions. Yet there are differences. Although the aim of historical prose is to represent the past and oracular, oneiric and visionary texts tend to have a present-future orientation, prescriptive texts most often speak in general, hypothetical terms. And while personification plays no role in ritual violence in legal texts and narrative, it is central to visionary, oneiric, and oracular texts, whose function often includes a predictive element, in contrast to both prescriptive and prose texts. The author ends with a consideration of what the study of ritual violence contributes to our understanding of both violence and ritual.

Violent Rites Narrated

Narratives of ritual violence set in Israel’s past are the focus of Chapter 2. Among the texts the author analyzes are the Golden Calf story in Exod 32, the narrative of Gideon’s destruction of his father’s Baal altar in Judg 6, the account of David’s psychological abuse of his Moabite prisoners in 2 Sam 8, and Nebuchadnezzar’s capture and brutalization of King Zedekiah of Judah in 2 Kgs 25. These narratives illustrate well the physical and psychological nature of punitive ritual violence and its varied targets (altars, bones, corpses, the bodies of living persons, iconic representations of deities). Narratives of violent rites are particularly striking for their rich representation of corpse abuse and their many depictions of the manipulation of conventional mourning rites by hostile agents seeking to harm others through ritual means.

Introduction

In this introduction, the author seeks to theorize violence, ritual, and ritual violence. The author argues that violence is best understood as action that is intended by an agent to do harm to a patient in some way in the sociocultural context in which it occurs, and the author understands rites as functioning both to realize and communicate social change and continuity. Ritual violence, for its part, combines characteristics of both violence and ritual, often employing inversion of established rites as a strategy to accomplish injurious goals such as the humiliation of a political opponent or wrongdoer. After reviewing ritual violence in biblical scholarship, the introduction ends with an outline of the shape of the book and comments on the author’s approach to the material (strictly academic) and on what we can know of violent rites in ancient Israel.

Ritual Inversion and Mitigating Rites as Components of Ritual Violence

This chapter focuses on ritual inversion as a phenomenon as well as what the author calls mitigating rites. While ritual inversion might transform agents into patients; advocates and defenders into antagonistic aggressors; or routine, nonviolent and, frequently, beneficial rites into hostile, punitive ritual acts, mitigating rites are an instrument used to diminish the negative effects of violent, injurious ritual action, and include both commonplace rites such as mourning and burial and exceptional ritual acts such as extended vigils. Although ritual inversion is a phenomenon attested in contexts far removed from violent rites as well as in settings of ritual violence, mitigating rites are by definition always connected to punitive, violent rites since their function is specifically to lessen the baleful impact of such ritual violence in its aftermath.

Ritual Violence Envisioned

Passages that speak of violent rites imagined in the present or future are the focus of this chapter. These texts are typically found in prophetic materials and works characterized by apocalyptic eschatology and are cast in the form of visions, dreams, or oracles. In contrast to narratives set in the past that depict acts of ritual violence or legal texts that prescribe violent rites, the writers of violent, ritualized imaginaries situated in the present or future frequently draw on metaphor to construct their compositions. Four representative texts are the focus in this chapter: Ezek 16:35–43, an oracle that imagines a series of violent rites of punishment deployed against a personified Jerusalem; Zech 5:5–11, a prophetic vision of personified Wickedness; Jer 22:18–19, Yhwh’s promise of a dishonoring, animal-like burial for King Jehoiakim of Judah; and Dan 3:31–4:34, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of his own transformation into a domesticated animal brought about in part by violent rites.