Ear­li­er this week, Julie Baretz wrote about lead­ing Chris­t­ian tours of Israel and why she decid­ed to make aliyah. Her book, The Bible on Loca­tion: Off the Beat­en Path in Ancient and Mod­ern Israel, is now avail­able. She has been blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series.

The idea for my book, The Bible on Loca­tion, grew from a study project designed to enrich my pro­fes­sion­al capac­i­ty to guide bib­li­cal sites in Israel. I set out to delve more deeply into the post-Torah books of the Tanakh – the ones that chron­i­cle the Israelites’ tri­als and tribu­la­tions after arriv­ing in the Promised Land – so that in addi­tion to read­ing the sto­ries on site, I could also pro­vide com­men­tary and food for thought. 

Just as my teacher and I opened the Book of Joshua to the sto­ry of Rahab and the Israelite spies, an arti­cle appeared in the week­end news­pa­per about a rehab pro­gram for pros­ti­tutes in Israel. This led to an intrigu­ing dis­cus­sion of Rahab’s pos­si­ble moti­va­tions for assist­ing the spies and betray­ing her peo­ple. As we read on, many fas­ci­nat­ing ques­tions arose, often in response to cur­rent events but also in the wake of cryp­tic infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the bib­li­cal authors and edi­tors. Why is it stat­ed that Ehud Ben Gera was left-hand­ed? Why did Sam­son reveal the secret of his strength to the obvi­ous­ly manip­u­la­tive Delilah? Why didn’t David pun­ish his son Amnon for rap­ing his sis­ter Tamar? Did Ahab and Jezebel have a good mar­riage despite the zero-tol­er­ance cam­paign she waged against his prophets? 

Ear­ly on in the study process I knew I want­ed to share what I was learn­ing by writ­ing a book. I chose twelve sto­ries with com­pelling ques­tions and set off to the library in pur­suit of the answers, wad­ing through books and arti­cles on his­to­ry, archae­ol­o­gy, lit­er­ary crit­i­cism and rab­binic thought. I gath­ered threads from myr­i­ad sources and then wove them into com­men­tary that answered my questions. 

The process of lit­er­ary sleuthing was exhil­a­rat­ing, but I soon real­ized that twelve sites didn’t suf­fi­cient­ly cov­er the bib­li­cal nar­ra­tive arc or the geo­graph­ic diver­si­ty of Israel. I chose eight more sto­ries to com­plete the pic­ture, but ran into a wall with the prophet Elisha, Elijah’s suc­ces­sor. I wasn’t able to con­nect to him, but as the sub­ject of fif­teen bib­li­cal sto­ries, I couldn’t ignore him. I even­tu­al­ly found two illu­mi­nat­ing arti­cles on the sto­ry of Elisha and the wealthy Shune­mite woman (II Kings 4). One lucid­ly explained the prophet’s role in the birth, death and resus­ci­ta­tion of the woman’s child, and the sec­ond dis­cussed a com­men­tary by an Israeli politi­cian who, in a mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion infused with Israeli polit­i­cal real­i­ty, accused Elisha of adul­tery. Good stuff, but nei­ther arti­cle answered a curi­ous ques­tion: why did the Shune­mite woman, who had no sons, rebuff the prophet’s attempt to reward her with the birth of a baby boy? 

I sniffed around for hints in the text. Shunem is men­tioned a few times in the Tanakh, most notably as the home­town of Abishag, a beau­ti­ful young woman who was select­ed to warm the elder­ly King David in bed (I Kings 1). Maybe Shunem was well-known for its fetch­ing females? Per­haps a lim­it­ed but pro­tect­ed gene pool was pro­duc­ing out­stand­ing beau­ties with sim­i­lar fea­tures? It may then fol­low that the same inbreed­ing result­ed in a trag­ic genet­ic muta­tion which caused death in infant males, which might explain why the Shune­mite woman didn’t jump for joy at the prospect of con­ceiv­ing a boy (I know, it’s a stretch). Yet, if the bio­log­i­cal father came from a dif­fer­ent gene pool the results could be dif­fer­ent. This the­o­ry wouldn’t hold water aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, but I could respect­ful­ly present it as a midrash – tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tion of text. 

In a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture from the oth­er nine­teen chap­ters of the book, I wrote the com­men­tary on II Kings 4 in the voice of the Shune­mite woman. In pre­sent­ing her ver­sion of the sto­ry, the two biggest chal­lenges were explain­ing the genet­ic real­i­ty with­out using the word ​‘genet­ics’; and elu­ci­dat­ing how she con­ceived with­out specif­i­cal­ly nam­ing the father or cast­ing asper­sions on her hus­band or the prophet. 

Is this mod­ern midrash con­vinc­ing? Read chap­ter 17 and decide for yourself.

Julie Baretz received her license from the Israel Gov­ern­ment Tour Guides train­ing pro­gram in 1987. Since then she has guid­ed thou­sands of Jew­ish and Chris­t­ian vis­i­tors to sites all around the coun­try. Read more about her and her work here.

Relat­ed Content:

• After Abel and Oth­er Sto­ries by Michal Lemberger
• Read­ing List: Bible & Bib­li­cal­ly Inspired Stories
• Read­ing List: Birthright Alum­ni Read­ing List