Brandon Hurlbert

What is the purpose of the violence in Judges 19 and what does this narrative aim to accomplish in its readers? Phyllis Trible (1984), Cheryl Exum (1993), and more recently, Margaret Atwood (2019), suggest that this violence is viewed positively by the narrator and serves to reinforce patriarchal ideology. I propose that a different conclusion may be reached by adopting a ‘grammatical-cinematic’ approach. The goal of this approach is to read the biblical narrative through film, i.e., to tell the biblical story in the language of the cinema by focusing on the ‘cinematic sensibilities’ of the text. Using examples from Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, I argue that this approach can recover the agency and dignity of the woman and better visualize the brutality of violence. Finally, I argue that one can understand the object of the author’s critique to be the events and characters of the narrative.

The Ehud narrative in Judges 3:12-30 contains numerous historical and linguistic ambiguities that complexify interpretation and disallow a determinate reading. Recent interpreters have provided several competing –even contradictory readings – yet most conclude with a positive assessment of the character of Ehud. This paper proposes that the story may be read otherwise: Ehud is a negative moral example. This negative reading of Ehud is reached by attending to what is surprising in the narrative, namely, that assassinations of this nature are unprecedented both in the ancient world and as a means of deliverance in Israel’s history. This is further supported by the lack of YHWH’s involvement in the narrative and an atypical conclusion to the narrative. Ehud then can be seen as an idolatrous assassin that invokes his deity for manipulative and self-serving ends. He is no longer a positive moral agent, but another leader that ‘does what is right in his own eyes.