‘Suspected killer’: Tamar’s plight (Gn 38) as a lens for illuminating women’s vulnerability in the legal codes of Shona and Israelite societies

Abstract

The story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 is one of the most intriguing stories in the Hebrew Bible. While it yields many useful insights into the character of God, the nature of sin and the aspiration of our redemption, it is equally offensive when one looks at it from a human rights perspective, considering, in particular, the vulnerable and defenceless woman, Tamar. Her being returned to her father’s house is portrayed as acting in accordance with the law for a childless widow (Lv 22:13; Rt 1:8). However, using the critical hermeneutical lens, it becomes apparent that the real motive that drove Judah to send her away was his fear lest his only surviving son Shelah should share the fate of Er and Onan, whose deaths he plainly attributed to Tamar’s doing. As such, Tamar was deprived of the right to marry Shelah as provided for in the levirate marriage law. Using feministic hermeneutics and the comparative approach, this article foregrounds the vulnerability experienced by women, especially when their husbands mysteriously or suddenly pass away. Because of the patriarchal hegemony of African and Israelite societies, childless widows often find themselves ostracised from the same families which they thought they were now part and parcel of by virtue of having married into that family. Much of the ostracism emanates from the fact that they are usually fingered as the prime suspects responsible for having played a part in their husbands’ deaths. Hence, the crux of this article is to present the interface between the Israelite and African worldviews, highlighting the parallels between the plight of widows in the Israelite and Shona societies.

The Gibean solution (Jgs 19-21) - a mirror to reclaiming women dignity in Zimbabwe

“…Feminist interpretation therefore not only condemns the violence inflicted on the voiceless woman but also seeks to re-tell the story from her vantage point and portraying her as embodied cries of outrage (See also, Mwandayi & Chirongoma 2020;Sande & Chirongoma 2021). Assuming that the story is familiar to most people, we deliberately avoid re-telling it all over and move straight to look at how the Zimbabwean context of feminised violence is in dialogue with the Gibean incident of feminised violence.…”

A re-reading of Judges 19 in juxtaposition to the Zimbabwean women’s vulnerability to ‘punitive rape’

“…In the second part of the article, we then explore how these two women's experiences can be used as resources to seriously engage the problem of rape in contemporary Zimbabwe. The article draws to a close by countering the human rights violations, depravity and dehumanisations clouding the Judges 19-21 narrative and the case of Munengami, through proffering a theology of hospitality and human dignity as resources for reclaiming and restoring the humanity and dignity of women exposed to diverse forms of gender-based violence in our contemporary times (Mwandayi & Chirongoma 2020;Sande & Chirongoma 2021).…”