Genesis 29:32 ff; 30:14; 35:22; 37:21 ff; 42:22/37; 46:8 ff; 49:3 et al. The eldest son of Ya'akov (Jacob), fathered on Le'ah in Padan Aram. Like all first-born sons in the Tanach, the laws of primogeniture that we follow in the western world today are not in place; rather - probably because of the ancient tradition of the sacrifice of the firstborn, ultimogeniture was favoured, inheritace by the lastborn. 1 Chronicles 5:2 explains that: "Though Yehudah prevailed over his brothers, and from him came the leader, yet the birthright belonged to Yoseph". Which poses an interesting question about Bin-Yamin's status in the family, or even his belonging to it. In fact it is Bin-Yamin who will become the principal tribe, for it was Sha'ul of the Beney Jamun who became the first king, and it is in the tribal territory of Bin-Yamin that Yeru-Shala'im is situated.
The Tanach tells us that his name means "behold a son" (Genesis 29:32), but if so why does his mother claim, in the selfsame verse, that he was "a child for her affliction" (בעניי) - interestingly the same complaint that Rachel will make when she names her second child Ben-Oni (Genesis 35:18), albeit with a slightly different spelling (בן אוני). This name, with the loss of his primogeniture described in Genesis 49:4, links him with the other first-born sons: Kayin (Cain), Yishma-El, Esav etc; but also, etymologically, to that of Bin-Yamin as Ben-Oni, "child of my affliction". We can deduce easily, then, that the "affliction" is meant mythologically, and refers back to the Eden story, where the punishment for original sin is precisely the "affliction" of childbirth (and remember that Rachel's choice of name is made in the moments of her dying in childbirth). And remember that infertility is merely a customary form of religious expression: all women are infertile until the goddess bestows fertility.
The implication of this is that his name should be Re'u-Ven (רעו-בען), which meaning is entirely different (see notes to Re'u-El - רעואל), suggesting as it does "the mother weeping for her lost child" who, in Yisra-Eli mythology, becomes, yes, Rachel again (Jeremiah 31:15 and Matthew 2:18), but who was originally the mother-goddess weeping for her sacrificed divine-son: Ishtar for Tammuz, Eshet (Isis) for Osher (Osiris), Mary for Jesus etc.
Re'u-Ven is of course his tribe's eponymous ancestor. Numbers 32:33 gives the tribe's Transjordanian location as does Joshua 13:15 ff; which fact suggests they may have been Beney Edom or Beney Mo-Av and not Beney Yisra-El at all; linked geographically to Gad, their northern neighbours. The tribe of Re'u-Ven disappeared altogether quite soon after Yehoshua's occupation.
Ya'akov's blessing, which is usually the best clue to the astrological position of the tribe within the amphictyony and the annual sharing of Temple duties, is also found in Genesis 49:4.
"Re'u-Ven, you are my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power. Unstable as water, you shall not excel; because you went up to your father's bed; you defiled it - he went up to my bed!"This is the standard translation. The Yehudit runs as follows:
ראובן בכרי אתה כחי וראשית אוני יתר שאת ויתר עז פחז כמים אל-תותר כי עלית משכבי אביך אז חללת יצועי עלה
Re'u-Ven bechori atah kochi ve-reyshit oni yeter se'et ve yeter az. Pachaz ka mayim al totar ki alita mishkevey aviycha az chilalta yetsu'i alah.
The first four words - Re'u-Ven bechori atah kochi - present no problem: "Re'u-Ven, my first-born, you are my strength."
Ve-reyshit takes us back to the opening word of the Tanach, where Be-reyshit is understood not simply as the beginning, but the very beginning; in other words the source; from Rosh (ראש) = "head", or "beginning", or "source". Re'u-Ven is thus Yisra-El's strength and his source, but not "the beginning of my strength", because the word order is wrong for that. A strength and a source may suggest a river, but the tribe of Re'u-Ven was desert-bound. A spring then, perhaps, out there in the Mo-Avi desert? If so, we are in the territory of Mir-Yam (Miriam), where the Beney Yisra-El were to wander under Mosheh for the last part of their forty nomadic years - and we know of plenty of strong sources of water there, including Merivah.
Ve-reyshit (וראשית) is linked, by the word oni which follows it, to his mother's Avoni (אוני), not to his father's Kochi (כוחי): i.e. "the beginning of my affliction".
Oni (אוני) itself is translated incorrectly here as "strength", it should probably be pronounced Avoni (אוני), but in either case here again is that most unexpected link to Bin-Yamin's other name, Ben-Oni (בן אוני) and to On, the city where Yoseph served as High Priest/Vizier. Re'u-Ven is Le'ah's "child of my affliction" in exactly the same way and by the selfsame name as Rachel's Bin-Yamin, the explanation for Bin-Yamin's other name being given in Genesis 35:18. Note also that the Samaritan Pentateuch calls him Bin-Yamim with a final Mem (ם), though this may simply be an Aramaic spelling variation, or even more likely a scribal error.
Yeter se'et ve yeter az (יתר שאת ויתר עז): "The excellency of dignity and the excellency of power" is not only meaningless, but does not even translate the given text. "Excellency" is obviously used in the English to try to contain the pun (Al totar - אל תותר) in the next verse, but it doesn't work. Se'et (שאת) = "kingship". Re'u-Ven is the "beginning of kingship", i.e. the heir apparent. But he will lose this status as soon as another son is born, because ultimogeniture and not primogeniture applies.
Az (עז) is much more interesting still. It too means "kingship" or "majesty" (cf for example Psalm 96:6). But Ez (עז) is the she-goat, as Izim (עזים) is the goat's hair which Ya'akov wore when he stole Esav's blessing (another case of the supplanting of the first-born). The cult of Yisra-El, as we have seen repeatedly, is a goat- or sheep- cult, not a bull-cult. Re'u-Ven's desert neighbour is Gad, the goat-god. Here the sacred kingship is being explicitly linked to the goat-god through the word Az. Re'u-Ven as heir apparent is the goat-god-to-be. The implication of this verse, hidden by the Redactor, now reveals itself: "The source of kingship is the goat-god." And of course it is Ya'akov/Yisra-El, the man who is giving this blessing, who currently serves as sacred king, surrogate for the goat-god on Earth, a title he won at Penu-El and which will be passed on, not to first-born Re'u-Ven, but to Yoseph (whose coat after his "death" was soaked in goat's blood), and finally to Bin-Yamin. Note that Bin-Yamin's mother was Rachel = "a ewe". The sheep cult and goat cult, as we know from the story of Ya'akov in service to Lavan, were treated as one and the same.
Yeter (יתר) is connected to Ve-Yeter (ויתר) two words on, and to al totar (אל-תותר) in the following verse. See notes to Yitro (Jethro) and Re'u-El for this.
A verbal jest is also being made with Az (עז) and Az (אז) in the two verses.
Pachaz ka mayim (פחז כמים): why is Re'u-Ven compared with water when his territory is in the desert? Does it mean something else? The translation gives "unstable" for Pachaz, but it means "to leap" or "bound" or "gambol" and is used of boiling water, of lascivious temperaments, and of course of fledgling lambs and kid goats. Either meaning gives added weight to the mythological symbolism. Mayim (מים) means "water" but also the goddess of the water. "Lascivious as the water-goddess" leads neatly into the tale about to be retold of Re'u-Ven and Bilhah, the latter being the water-goddess' priestess; but it also fills in the gap about the water-source we were seeking in the desert earlier.
Al totar (אל תותר) continues the pun on Yeter (יתר) in the previous verse. "You shall not excel" is again meaningless. As Yitro (Jethro) was the priest-king of Midyan, so Re'u-Ven would hope as first-born to become the priest-king of Yisra-El. "You shall not succeed me" is thus a more accurate translation.
The reference to his father's couch is the story of Re'u-Ven sleeping with Bilhah, Rachel's "handmaiden" in Genesis 35:22. As with Av-Shalom (Absalom) later (2 Samuel 16:21), to seize the king's harem is tantamount to a coup d'état. Just as Av-Shalom lost his inheritance when David resisted this, so here Re'u-Ven. In the ancient world a king served for a seven or eight year term - a great year as it was called - after which he was ritually immolated and a new king "resurrected" in his place. When kings began to feel reluctant to lose their lives in this way, they looked for ways to serve a second or even third term. Ya'akov served seven and then seven, even before he became the sacred king of Yisra-El at Penu-El and served yet a third term of office. David served seven at Chevron, then moved on by another marriage to Yeru-Shala'im, and appears to have gone on making more sacred marriages precisely in order to validate his continuing reign for three more seven-year terms; as Shelomoh (Solomon) did after him. Sacrificing first-born sons (who were supposed to take over) as surrogates for the father, became an accepted practice, as we know from the Egyptian plagues, the Akeda, Moloch worship in Yeru-Shala'im etc. Re'u-Ven's failed coup is being used here as a pretext for his disinheritance, but it is false, because we know that the Beney Yisra-El practiced ultimogeniture, and so he would have been disinherited anyway.
2 Samuel 16:21, as we have seen, has Achi-Tophel, King David's father-in-law, advising Av-Shalom to go into the harem and take the women as his own, "and all Yisra-El will hear that you are abhorred by your father; then will the hands of all who are with you be strong." 2 Samuel 3:7 finds Av-Ner treasonable for trying to do the same thing to King Sha'ul, and 1 Kings 2:13-23 has the same for Adoni-Yah.
Chilalta (חללת) really means "to profane the Temple sanctuary", which is what Re'u-Ven did when he - to all intents and purposes - raped the high priestess. "The king's bed" is symbolically the Holy of Holies, for it is there that the Earth and sky symbolically and symbiotically conjoin to engender the remade world each spring; the actual king surrogating for the god, the priestess for the goddess, in the sacred marriage. The story of Zeus castrating Ouranos (or Chronos in some versions) records a successful coup of the same sort.
What is particularly interesting in this context is that the second and third sons, Shim'on and Levi, are also disinherited, and in their case, treated as a pair, precisely because they avenged the rape of their sister Dinah by Chamor (חמור), the heir to the throne of Shechem - and unacceptable to Yisra-El because he belonged to an ass-cult, not the sheep/goat cult of Yisra-El. Clearly that prince was attempting to do precisely what Re'u-Ven had attempted: to secure a throne through marriage to a royal princess (i.e. a priestess, because all the children of the sacred king were dedicated automatically as priests and priestesses).
Yetsu'i (יצועי): "my bed". The root is Yatsa (יצע) = "to spread out". Psalm 63:7 and 132:3 use it to mean a couch or bed, as does Genesis here. But much more famously 1 Kings 6:5 ff uses it for the three storeys of the side chambers of Shelomoh's temple, five cubits in height apart. What were the side-chambers used for? It hardly needs guessing, does it, in the light of the above. The Sanctuary was dedicated to YHVH (1Kings 8), the principal god of Yisra-El; the inner court was common space; as with Christian cathedrals, the side-chambers - along with several other constructions built separately from the Temple - were Lady Chapels, which is to say shrines dedicated specifically to The Lady in her many forms (1 Kings 11:7-8).
A verbal jest is also being made with Az (עז) and Az (אז) in the two verses.
Pachaz ka mayim (פחז כמים): why is Re'u-Ven compared with water when his territory is in the desert? Does it mean something else? The translation gives "unstable" for Pachaz, but it means "to leap" or "bound" or "gambol" and is used of boiling water, of lascivious temperaments, and of course of fledgling lambs and kid goats. Either meaning gives added weight to the mythological symbolism. Mayim (מים) means "water" but also the goddess of the water. "Lascivious as the water-goddess" leads neatly into the tale about to be retold of Re'u-Ven and Bilhah, the latter being the water-goddess' priestess; but it also fills in the gap about the water-source we were seeking in the desert earlier.
Al totar (אל תותר) continues the pun on Yeter (יתר) in the previous verse. "You shall not excel" is again meaningless. As Yitro (Jethro) was the priest-king of Midyan, so Re'u-Ven would hope as first-born to become the priest-king of Yisra-El. "You shall not succeed me" is thus a more accurate translation.
The reference to his father's couch is the story of Re'u-Ven sleeping with Bilhah, Rachel's "handmaiden" in Genesis 35:22. As with Av-Shalom (Absalom) later (2 Samuel 16:21), to seize the king's harem is tantamount to a coup d'état. Just as Av-Shalom lost his inheritance when David resisted this, so here Re'u-Ven. In the ancient world a king served for a seven or eight year term - a great year as it was called - after which he was ritually immolated and a new king "resurrected" in his place. When kings began to feel reluctant to lose their lives in this way, they looked for ways to serve a second or even third term. Ya'akov served seven and then seven, even before he became the sacred king of Yisra-El at Penu-El and served yet a third term of office. David served seven at Chevron, then moved on by another marriage to Yeru-Shala'im, and appears to have gone on making more sacred marriages precisely in order to validate his continuing reign for three more seven-year terms; as Shelomoh (Solomon) did after him. Sacrificing first-born sons (who were supposed to take over) as surrogates for the father, became an accepted practice, as we know from the Egyptian plagues, the Akeda, Moloch worship in Yeru-Shala'im etc. Re'u-Ven's failed coup is being used here as a pretext for his disinheritance, but it is false, because we know that the Beney Yisra-El practiced ultimogeniture, and so he would have been disinherited anyway.
2 Samuel 16:21, as we have seen, has Achi-Tophel, King David's father-in-law, advising Av-Shalom to go into the harem and take the women as his own, "and all Yisra-El will hear that you are abhorred by your father; then will the hands of all who are with you be strong." 2 Samuel 3:7 finds Av-Ner treasonable for trying to do the same thing to King Sha'ul, and 1 Kings 2:13-23 has the same for Adoni-Yah.
Chilalta (חללת) really means "to profane the Temple sanctuary", which is what Re'u-Ven did when he - to all intents and purposes - raped the high priestess. "The king's bed" is symbolically the Holy of Holies, for it is there that the Earth and sky symbolically and symbiotically conjoin to engender the remade world each spring; the actual king surrogating for the god, the priestess for the goddess, in the sacred marriage. The story of Zeus castrating Ouranos (or Chronos in some versions) records a successful coup of the same sort.
What is particularly interesting in this context is that the second and third sons, Shim'on and Levi, are also disinherited, and in their case, treated as a pair, precisely because they avenged the rape of their sister Dinah by Chamor (חמור), the heir to the throne of Shechem - and unacceptable to Yisra-El because he belonged to an ass-cult, not the sheep/goat cult of Yisra-El. Clearly that prince was attempting to do precisely what Re'u-Ven had attempted: to secure a throne through marriage to a royal princess (i.e. a priestess, because all the children of the sacred king were dedicated automatically as priests and priestesses).
Yetsu'i (יצועי): "my bed". The root is Yatsa (יצע) = "to spread out". Psalm 63:7 and 132:3 use it to mean a couch or bed, as does Genesis here. But much more famously 1 Kings 6:5 ff uses it for the three storeys of the side chambers of Shelomoh's temple, five cubits in height apart. What were the side-chambers used for? It hardly needs guessing, does it, in the light of the above. The Sanctuary was dedicated to YHVH (1Kings 8), the principal god of Yisra-El; the inner court was common space; as with Christian cathedrals, the side-chambers - along with several other constructions built separately from the Temple - were Lady Chapels, which is to say shrines dedicated specifically to The Lady in her many forms (1 Kings 11:7-8).
The tribe of Re'u-Ven, like those of Shim'on and Gad, did not survive long after Yehoshu'a. It occupied the east bank of the river Yarden (Jordan), and was titular head of the eight Le'ah tribes. It presumably "seduced" Dan and Naphtali into confederacy. A conference of tribes was held in Yehudah, at Eder near Beit-Lechem. As no "son" resulted from the rape, it was regarded as a mutiny only. The full tale is told in Joshua 22.
Deuteronomy 33:6 gives Mosheh's rather brief blessing of Re'u-Ven; his equivalent of the Hikavtsu of Ya'akov in Genesis 49:4 which is discussed in detail above. Mosheh simply states: Yehi Re'u-Ven al yamot ve vi yehi metav mispar - יְחִי רְאוּבֵן, וְאַל-יָמֹת; וִיהִי מְתָיו, מִסְפָּר" which is ambiguous in its meaning; possibly "Let the tribe of Re'u-Ven live and not die out, though they are few in number", possibly ""Let Re'u-Ven live and not die, and his people not be few."
Deuteronomy 33:6 gives Mosheh's rather brief blessing of Re'u-Ven; his equivalent of the Hikavtsu of Ya'akov in Genesis 49:4 which is discussed in detail above. Mosheh simply states: Yehi Re'u-Ven al yamot ve vi yehi metav mispar - יְחִי רְאוּבֵן, וְאַל-יָמֹת; וִיהִי מְתָיו, מִסְפָּר" which is ambiguous in its meaning; possibly "Let the tribe of Re'u-Ven live and not die out, though they are few in number", possibly ""Let Re'u-Ven live and not die, and his people not be few."
1 Chronicles 5:3 names Re'u-Ven's sons as Chanoch (חֲנוֹךְ), Palu (פַלּוּא), Chetsron (חֶצְרוֹן) and Karmi (כַרְמִי).
1 Chronicles 4:1 has both Chetsron and Karmi among the sons of Yehudah, leaving scholars to wonder if perhaps those two were later admitted into Yehudah at the time when the remainder of the tribe "disappeared", which is to say became absorbed into Mo-Av. Possible. But just as possible that these were standard family names, and several fathers used them.
Copyright © 2019 David Prashker
All rights reserved
The Argaman Press
No comments:
Post a Comment