Sexual Violence and the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

Sexual violence has become a topic of significant interest for biblical interpreters. This is perhaps not surprising; after all, the Hebrew Bible contains many examples of sexual violence, including rape, rape threats, sex trafficking, gender-based violence in warfare, femicide, and other forms of sexual exploitation and violence. While early work on the topic was often part of larger studies of women, gender, or violence, more recent work tends to focus specifically on sexual violence. Feminist biblical scholarship has played a significant role in elevating sexual violence as a matter of importance for study. More recently, the #MeToo movement and increased popular awareness of rape culture have influenced the development of the field. “Rape culture” refers to the idea that rape is not an isolated or individual event, but rather part of a larger continuum of forms of sexual violence that encompasses both everyday microaggressions and extreme acts of sexual violence. Along with “rape culture,” “rape myths”—the false cultural assumptions about rape that uphold rape culture—often appear in these discussions. Following broader trends in feminist and womanist scholarship, many analyses of sexual violence also explore postcolonial, anti-imperial, and intersectional perspectives. Key texts for scholarship on sexual violence include the rape of Dinah (Genesis 34), the rape of Tamar (2 Samuel 13), the gang-rape and murder of the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19–21), Bathsheba and David (2 Samuel 11), the “marriage metaphor” in the prophetic books (especially Hosea 1–3, Jeremiah 3, and Ezekiel 16 and 23), and the rape of Daughter Zion (Lamentations 1 and 2). Texts describing the treatment of female captives in warfare and other intersections of sexual and martial violence also draw significant attention, as do the laws regulating rape. However, scholarship is not limited to these texts, as the bibliography shows. The study of sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible is a dynamic, important, and still-growing field, and it should prove of interest to all attentive readers of biblical texts.