Battered Scripture:

A Review of “Battered Love: Marriage, Sex and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets”

Kevin Vail

B-501: Intro to the Hebrew Bible

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Renita Weem’s volume Battered Love: Marriage, Sex and Violence in the

Hebrew Prophets was written, according to the author’s introduction, to explore the

questions “What in the image of a naked, mangled, female body grips the religious

imagination? What can humiliating women and mutilating their bodies have to do with

talk about God’s love for a people?” and “Why do demagogues appeal to sexual images

to frame what they have to say about political anarchy and religious idolatry?”(1995, p.

1). Her methods of examining and exegeting the relevant texts include the use of “the

insights of gender criticism, literary studies, studies of the erotic, and sociological and

ideological analyses” (p. 6). Weems argues that these “newer methodological

approaches” enable her and other scholars who embrace them to “step outside the

sublime ideology of the text, to understand where the text gets its power and to find ways

to challenge as much as possible the power it has over us. She claims that “[O]ur

criticism does not intend to destroy the Bible” but rather aides in “reading and

interpreting the Bible” ethically, responsibly and intelligibly (p. 110-1). I would assume

her intended audience includes seminary studies and other fellow scholars of Biblical

literature, particularly those who are focused on studies of the First Testament. Weems

seems intent on demonstrating “how popular norms and attitudes about women, their

bodies and sexuality, lent themselves to manipulation and exploitation by the prophets as

the sought to win their male audience to a certain way of thinking” (p. 2).

Weem’s examination of the use of the marriage metaphor in the books of Hosea,

Ezekiel and Jeremiah leads her to conclude that this metaphor presents YWHW “as a

raging, betrayed husband who batters and humiliates his promiscuous wife (Israel) into
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subjection”. She argues the audiences of each of these prophets believed “sexual

infidelity and indecency in women were insufferable” and that “extreme behavior in

wives called for equally extreme behavior by husbands” (p. 52). This metaphor served to

maintain the patriarchal power structure, the right of the powerful to retaliate physically

against those less powerful and “reinforced existing stereotypes about gender relations in

marriage” (p. 79).

Weems views the god portrayed by the prophets of the First Testament to be a

god who “does not save, does not protect and does not obliterate one’s enemies” however

she admits that “God suffers and anguishes with Israel in its calamity….” and “stands

ready and willing to comfort a weeping nation, dry her eyes and reward her for her trials

with an invitation for renewal” (pp. 82-83). Despite Weems and her co-religionists

misgivings about the scriptures she admits, “many of us cannot simply ignore it and

create for ourselves an alternative canon that would more accurately and justly represent

our scientific, moral and social outlook” (p. 111).

I would imagine that Weem’s work has earned her high accolades from her peers.

Indeed the endorsements reprinted on the back cover make claims such as “Renita

Weems may well have given us one of the most significant texts in biblical scholarship in

our time” (attributed to Delores Williams, Union Theological Seminary) and “Anyone

struggling for justice, who has appealed to the Hebrew prophetic tradition, must read this

book” (attributed to Rita Brock, Hamline University). Weems embraces and endorses all

the latest methodologies and assumptions of higher critical thought and I’m sure this

makes her very popular within modern academia.

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I do not have the space here to fruitfully engage with all of Weem’s assumptions

and errors. My reaction to this text is one of mixed anger and sadness. The anger is

rooted in my perception of this text as simply the most blasphemous, incoherent text I’ve

ever had to read. The sadness stems from the recognition that Weems undoubtedly and

whole-heartedly believes her analyses to be inspired by faith. As I read, the text that came

to mind most often was from Isaiah 6:9, “Go, and say to this people: Keep on hearing, but

do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive” (ESV). Many of the prophets

experienced such rejection and misunderstanding, for as God, through the pen of Paul,

wrote, “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing” (1 Cor 1:18, ESV) and

prophetically anticipating the response of the world to the Gospel, “For the time is

coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will

accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from

listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Tim 4:3-4, ESV). Weem’s faith

commitments appear to be firmly with the radical fringe of Marxist feminism rather than

with a biblical faith in God and in the scriptures as His inerrant word. She imagines

herself qualified to pass judgment on the text as merely the creation of “unenlightened”

men who sought to use their rhetorical power to bring people into line with their

ideology. The idea of God’s inspiration of the text is completely absent from her work.

She has forgotten or simply denies, I know not which, “the word of God is living and

active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of

joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12,

ESV).