Is there anyone among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?
Benlin Alexander, 2015
In the stories of the Old Testament, woven among examples of faith and failure, is a disturbing thread connecting some of the narrative’s most recognizable and influential figures, yet amidst sin’s stain, God’s character glimmers from an unexpected source.
Jacob
In Genesis 34, Jacob’s family arrives in the vicinity of a Canaanite town called Shechem. His daughter Dinah goes out to meet the young women and instead encounters the prince of the town, named Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite. Using language that echoes Eve’s taking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3), Shechem saw Dinah and took her, an assault by a powerful man on a foreign woman apparently isolated from her family protectors.
Unsatisfied by the initial taking, Shechem desires to keep her and asks his father to speak to Jacob about marriage. Perhaps wisely, Jacob waits to reply until his sons return from the field, yet when they do, he still does not speak. The sons take over the negotiation with intent to deceive. They usurp their father’s position, agree to the marriage on the condition all the men of Shechem be circumcised, then exploit the vulnerability resulting from the mass circumcision by mercilessly attacking the city, slaughtering the men, enslaving the women and children, and plundering the town’s material goods. Wronged by Shechem the man, they wrong Shechem the entire town, evoking the memory of (Genesis 6-11) pre and post-Flood strongmen who through violence consolidated power and acquired famous names.
Through it all, Jacob remains silent, speaking out only on his deathbed (Genesis 49), unwilling or unable to help his daughter.
Judah
Judah’s daughter-in-law Tamar loses her first husband, Judah’s oldest son, to tragedy and her second husband, Judah’s second son, to God’s discipline after he cruelly misuses her. She then languishes, abandoned because Judah fears losing his third son if he marries them as custom demands for the preservation of the firstborn’s line (Genesis 38). Tamar desires the marriage and to have children, likely because she has limited options for a family, economic security, and someone to care for her as she grows old. Denied and effectively abandoned by Judah for many years, she resorts to dressing as a prostitute and deceiving Judah into sleeping with her so she might become pregnant. When Judah discovers her pregnancy, he threatens to burn her for participating in prostitution until she confronts him with evidence he is the father, at which time Judah acknowledges her as more righteous than he because he had denied her marriage to his remaining son. Had Judah followed through on his threat, he would have killed his own unborn sons.
Judah abandons his daughter-in-law, sexually uses her, threatens to kill her, and relents only when it becomes clear he is at fault.
Jephthah
The warrior judge Jephthah rashly promises God he will offer as a burnt offering the first thing that emerges from his house when he returns from defeating the Ammonites (Judges 11). When his daughter comes out dancing to celebrate his victory, he is devastated but insists he must honor his vow. She requests a period to mourn but accedes to his demand.
Jephthah apparently burns his daughter on the altar.
David
The story of David’s daughter Tamar unfurls slowly in layers of deceit (2 Samuel 13). Her half-brother Amnon desires her. He lies to their father, lies to family and servants, lies to and isolates her. Despite her desperate pleading, he brutally misuses then discards her, leaving her shamed and without recourse, her potential destroyed, her life ruined. Like Jacob’s sons, Tamar’s brother Absalom seeks murderous revenge. Like Dinah, Tamar disappears from the story.
Like Jacob, David says and does nothing.*
Each of these men is a leader in Israel, chosen by God to represent him to the nations, yet each catastrophically fails to care for the vulnerable in his own house.
God’s pattern of movement
Genesis 1 and 2 are each paradigmatic stories of God making an ordered land and placing people there to live in relationship with him. They and later Eden passages present a combined portrait of a well-watered mountain garden where God meets with people. In generation after generation, God takes his people on a similar journey:
In Genesis 1, from the formless and void to a land populated with plants, trees, and animals
In Genesis 2, from the empty ground where God forms man to the Eden garden
In Genesis 6-9, from the watery waste to Noah’s mountain vineyard
In Genesis 12, from a region of violent, powerful rulers to a fruitful land promised as an inheritance to Abram’s descendants
In Exodus, from the hostile spiritual desert of Egypt to God’s tangible presence on Sinai
In Numbers – Joshua, from the wilderness to the fruitful land of Canaan
From the earliest books of the Bible, God’s consistent work is evident, moving his people from the empty wilderness to a Garden of Eden-like place where he will provide for and be in relationship with them.
One leader imitates God’s pattern
Tucked away among stories of conquest, deceit, failure, and victory in the book of Joshua is another account of an Israelite leader and his daughter. We first meet Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite in Numbers 13 when he is sent out with Joshua and ten others on a leaders’ reconnaissance of the land of Canaan. In Numbers 14, when the leaders return, God himself identifies Caleb as one “with a different Spirit who followed me fully.” In the remaining short bursts of Caleb’s story we have, he stays true to God’s assessment, steadfast in obedience, comprehending and implementing God’s vision.
In Joshua 15, Caleb’s daughter Achsah is newly married to a future, righteous judge of Israel, Othniel. She boldly approaches her father, dissatisfied. Her inheritance is a wilderness. Unexpectedly, in this tiny passage, we find the faintest glimmer of hope among the Israelite leaders’ relationships with their daughters. The man who fully follows God imitates God’s character by adding to his daughter’s wilderness inheritance a new territory, a Garden of Eden-like fruitful land with double springs.
In Numbers 14, Caleb briefly stood alone as an advocate for God’s vision of bringing the Israelites into the land of Canaan, the land God intended as an inheritance for them, where he would dwell with them. In Joshua 15, Caleb stands alone among the stories of his fellow Israelite leaders and their daughters, not silent or powerless to act, but, as God consistently does, hearing her, recognizing her plight, and giving her a fruitful place to thrive.
*Thanks for this connection to Dr. Joanna Kline, whose Harvard PhD dissertation and upcoming book dwell extensively on parallels between David’s and Jacob’s families