I was privileged to write a chapter about the book of Judges for a volume that honors my doctoral advisor, professor Nili S. Fox. My contribution is called “Consider Her: Body-Talk as a Literary Strategy in the Book of Judges,” and the volume is called (eds. Kristine Henriksen Garroway, Christine Elizabeth Palmer, and Angela Roskop Erisman, pp. 15-48. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2022).

Book Description

“The clothed and adorned body has been at the forefront of Nili S. Fox's scholarship. In her hallmark approach, she draws on theoretical models from anthropology and archaeology, and locates a text within its native cultural environment in conversation with ancient Near Eastern literary and iconographic sources. This volume is a tribute to her, a collection of essays on dress and the body with original research by Fox's students. With the field of dress now garnering the attention of biblical and ancient Near Eastern scholars alike, this book adds to the growing literature on the topic, demonstrating ways in which both dress and the body communicate cultural and religious beliefs and practices. The body’s lived experience is the topic of section one, The Body Lived. The body and the social construction of identity is discussed in section two, The Body Cultured, while section three, The Body Adorned, analyzes the performative nature of dress in the biblical text” (The Body, back cover).

Chapter One Summary

“Kenneth C. Way’s chapter sees the body take center stage in the literary strategy of the book of judges. The vivid physicality in narrative description draws attention to a reversal in the corporeal fortunes of Israel, from subjecting enemy bodies to slaughter and mutilation, to themselves suffering violence and symbolic national dissolution in a concubine’s dismemberment. Ideological reflections on relationships of power and ethnic identity are communicated through the rhetorical use of the bodies of self and other” (The Body, pp. 5-6).

Excerpts from Chapter One

Enemy Bodies (Judges 1