There are a myriad of references to shame in the Psalms and it would take too long to examine these here. However, one theme which we have not addressed in biblical references is that of being seen as shameful by God. Shame in our own eyes, shame in the eyes of our community have been recurring themes, but ‘shamed by God’ has not. Robin Stockitt points to references in the Psalms that show that biblical writers can define shame in terms of divine abandonment. He provides some examples:

Psalm 89: “‘You have rejected, you have spurned, you have been very angry with your anointed one. You have renounced the covenant with your servant and have defiled (shamed) his crown in the dust. … You have cut short the days of his youth, you have covered him with a mantle of shame.” (Ps. 89:38f,45). The king was not guilty or lacking in obedience. “The king had placed his trust in YHWH but had appeared foolish. It looked as if his trust had been misplaced. As Bechtel puts it, ‘both the violation of trust and the reversal of expectation caused shame.'” (Stockitt: pp114-115.)

Psalm 25: 1-3: ‘To you O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I have trust, let me not be shamed.” In this and other Psalms the psalmist explicitly and publicly puts “his trust in YHWH, therby exposing him to the risk of being taunted or mocked by others less devout than himself. He therefore cries to the Lord that he would not suffer humiliation and shame in the eyes of his adversaries.” (Stockitt: p115.)

Psalm 35: 4, 26: “The corollary of this is that the one who has been shamed asks that the Lord would vindicate his faith by shaming his opponents … Here God is the subject of the act of shaming, suggesting that God’s shaming is connected to both his judgement and to a sense of disclosure. By shaming the opponents of the Psalmist, God is making plain their deceit and hypocrisy for all to see. The psalmist is not so much demanding revenge but that the falsehood of his enemies be recognised as falsehood. God’s active role in shaming can be seen also in the NT where the same collection of meanings is evident. … [see 1 Cor.1:27]. Here God is seen to be exposing the false wisdom and strength of those who do not know him. He is judging the hardness of their hearts by shaming them.” (Stockitt: p115.)

He comments finally that “shame in the biblical material does not have the primary meaning of private individual embarrassment that it has come to mean in the present day. Rather, shame has the sense of being in a place or location where there is a loss of honour, recognition and dignity. It is experienced in the public domain, it is corporate in its mechanisms and it is potentially devastating in its consequences.” He too sees shame as having a capacity to destroy our very being. (Stockitt: p115.)

References:

Please see the bibliography on this site.

Today we return to another example provided by Saul M. Olyan

“The rhetoric of honor [and shame] is introduced twice in Lamentations 1. In verse 6, we are told that ‘all her honor has gone forth from the daughter of Zion’. The wider context of the poem suggests that this loss of honor is as a result of the humiliations Jerusalem has endured: her defeat, her exile, the loss of the Temple, the disloyalty of her allies, the desperation of her people. Her diminishment is extreme; she has descended from a position of honor to a place of shame. … In verse 8 we are told that ‘all who honoured her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness’; in verse 11 she states: ‘See YHWH and look, for I am despised’.” (Olyan: p216.)

This passage is interesting in that, rather than being a narrative, it is a lament. The author laments over Jerusalem and one of the principal concerns in this lament is her disgrace, her shame. The enemy’s scorn and laughter is unbearable (Lam. 1:7). It is worth noting also that the equation in this lament is between sin and impurity, rather than sin and guilt – ‘Jerusalem has sinned greatly and so has become unclean’ (Lam. 1:8).

References:

Saul M. Olyan; “Honour, Shame, and Covenant Relations in Ancient Israel and its Environment“; in Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 115, No. 2, Summer 1996; p201-218.

Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12 (and Psalm 22)

John J. Pilch asks us to consider Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 as classic passages where shame appears. In these two passages, the language is all about humiliation at the hands of enemies. “Second Isaiah describes the Suffering Servant as having an appearance that was ‘marred beyond human semblance’ (Isa. 52:14, cf. Ps. 22:6) and as being ‘despised and rejected by men’ (Isa. 53:3, cf. Ps. 22:6).” (Pilch: p105.)

Pilch parallels Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, in both passages the word ‘despised’ literally means ‘shamed’. These unidentified enemies of the suffering servant of Isaiah and the psalmist know how to destroy a person. They “are culturally astute. They know how to add to the shame of the lamenter’s predicament. They mock him; laugh at him with an ear-to-ear laugh and ‘wag their heads’ (Ps. 22:7).” (Pilch: p106.) He asks his readers to take careful note of the ‘sign language’ in Isaiah 53, ‘wagging the head’, or shaking the head, at someone is a picture worth a thousand words in the cultures of the Old Testament!

Here in Isaiah 53, guilty or innocent, but most probably innocent, the Suffering Servant is utterly destroyed by the shaming of others. Shame reaches right to the core of the Servant’s being and feels like torture, like dying.

References:

John J. Pilch; “Introducing the Cultural Context of the Old Testament;” Wipf & Stock, Eugene, Oregon, 1991.

Another example of shame in the Old Testament world the use of shaming is the formal sanction of political shaming. Lyn Bechtel points this out: “One of the characteristics of warfare in the ancient Near East (and especially Assyria) was the use of psychological warfare. It was within this area of psychological warfare that shaming was employed. … A captured vassal was not just vindictively tortured; he was made a public example for all to see, so that he served as warning by demonstration of what happened to delinquents. It was publicity, not necessarily pain, that was the primary motive for shameful and inhumane treatment of captives. The Assyrians openly boasted of their shaming and violence because a reputation for shame and violence was the main means of softening up and incapacitating an enemy population in advance” (Bechtel: p63). It was as though it was better to die than be shamed in this way.

Prisoners were marched naked and bound, exposing them to the heat, but also exposing their private parts to mockery. The captives nakedness was symbolic of the defencelessness of their nation and demonstrative of its failure to attain victory. “Shaming made it possible to dominate and control defeated warriors because shame was restrictive and psychologically repressive. The victors would not have to worry about a counter-offensive if the enemy warriors were psychologically demoralised and rendered physically ineffective and defenceless” (Bechtel: p64). Their shame was total, they had been destroyed, they had no honour, they were effectively dead. They were no threat!

“Captive warriors or kings were made to walk naked, to grovel in the dust abjectly, or to feel helpless and defenceless in order to ‘put them down’ into … Conversely, putting others down had the effect of strengthening the confidence and sense of superiority of the victors.” (Bechtel: p64.)

So, Isaiah is asked by God in Isaiah 20 to walk naked and barefoot throughout Jerusalem as a graphic image of prophecy. He is called on to make clear to Israel the consequences of an alliance with Egypt and Cush. It will only result in shame. “Walking naked involved double shame: the shame that Isaiah experienced from being naked in the presence of his community, and the shame the people of Jerusalem would have experienced when they saw the shameful sight. … It was unpleasant to see because the public shame of one member of the community reflected shame on the entire community.” (Bechtel: p66.)

Isaiah is shamed himself, and those who see his graphic demonstration of prophecy feel the strength of the message because they can understand Isaiah’s shame, and because they are shamed themselves by his uncovered naked presence.

References:

Lyn M. Bechtel; “Shame as a Sanction of Social Control in Biblical Israel: Judicial, Political, and Social Shaming;” in Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Issue 49, 1991; p47-76.

These four passages are all expressions of abandonment. Brueggemann places them in the context of the exile. He notes that, for many interpreters, Isaiah 40-55 is an “intentional, salvific response to the complaint from the Abyss in the book of Lamentations.” (Brueggemann: p101; cf., Linafelt: pp62-79.)

This connection is exemplified by Isaiah 49:14-15 and Lamentations 5:20: “The complaint … in Lamentations 5:20 as well as in Psalm 22:1 is that YHWH is unfaithful and neglectful. It is YHWH’s failure to be faithfully present in Israel that results in the suffering and shame of the exile.” (Brueggemann: p101 – my emphasis.)

In Lamentations, there is no response to the assertion of abandonment, in Isaiah a response or challenge to the assertion is forthcoming. However, “in these texts, Israel’s claim of divine abandonment is taken at face value, without the characteristic hedges often proposed in the rationality of the church.” (Brueggemann: p103.)

In each of the first three of these passages we might be tempted to argue that the abandonment was perceived by Israel but not real, because God woud never abandon his own. In the fourth passage (Isaiah 54) we cannot escape the reality of the abandonment, at least fidelity to the text will not allow us to do so: “For a brief moment I abandonned you … in overflowing wrath, for a moment, I hid my face from you …” says YHWH (Isaiah 54:7-8). “No justification for divine abandonment is offered. The poetry leaves us with only the brute fact of divine abandonment,” (Brueggemann: p103) on the lips of God, no less.

It is true that these “two admissions whereby YHWH concedes that Israel has ben abandoned are promptly countered by two assurances: ‘… with great compassion … I will gather you; … with everlasting love (hesed olam) I will have compassion on you,’ (Isaiah 54:7-8). It is profoundly important that the two positives do not nullify the two previous negatives.” (Brueggemann: pp103-104.)

It is also important from my perspective to note the broader passage in which verses 7 and 8 have been included. The promise of YHWH is the removal of shame: “Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. Younwill forget the shame of youyr youth and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood.” (Isaiah 54:4.) However, in Isaiah 54, “there is no way around it. YHWH does, from time to time, ‘exit’ the drama of Israel’s life.” (Brueggemann: p104.)

We stay with Brueggemann a little longer. He asks us to abandon usual responses to these passages and others like them in Scripture. These responses include five different strategies for dealing with  passages that talk of Israel’s abandonment by God: (1) disregard – we have ignored them; (2) justification – clearly Israel’s sin was grievous and provoked this response; (3) judgement that it only seems to Israel as though she has been abandoned, when she has not; (4) philosophical subtlety – presence in absence, or the idea that speculating on God’s absence is evidence of belief in God’s background presence; (5) evolution – the idea that the evolution of Israel’s religion also includes God becoming a better God. (Brueggemann: p105-109.)

Instead, Brueggemann asks us to consider the text as a drama. He suggests that usually we Christians approach any text with some preconceived notions about God, with a particular understanding of God’s nature. “Such a view may be plausible from some other perspective, but it is of little help in taking the specificity of the biblical text seriously.” (Brueggemann: p109.) Brueggemann proposes, rather, that we posit a ‘rhetorical man’ as opposed to a ‘serious man’. He draws on Richard Lanham’s ideas here:

“The serious man possesses a central self, an irreducable identity. These selves combine into single, homogeneously real society which constitutes a referent reality … This referent society is in turn contained in a physical nature itself referential, standing ‘out there’, independent of man.”(Lanham: p1.)

By contrast,

“Rhetorical man is an actor; his reality public, dramatic. His sense of identity, his self, depends on the reassurance of daily histrionic reenactment. He is thus centered in time and concrete local event. The lowest common denominator of his life is a social situation. And his motivations must be characteristically lucid, agonistic … He is thus committed to no single construction of the world; much rather to prevailing in the game in hand.” (Lanham: p4.)

These ideas are of great signifcance for us as we consider these texts, and particularly so in the light of anthropological work by Bruce J. Malina and others which identifies: (a) the pivotal values of Old Testament cultures as honour and shame; (b) people in those cultures as being dyadic personalities – concerned how they were seen by others and living up to or through those perceptions; (c) group as more important then the individual; and (d) social life as being a game of competing for the ‘limited good’ of honour, and endeavouring to avoid being shamed. Lanham’s ‘rhetorical man’ seems to fit this cultural understanding very well.

Brueggemann further points out that “the world of rhetorical man is ‘teeming with roles, situations, interventions, but … no master role, no situation of situations, no strategy for outflanking all strategies … no neutral point of rationality from the vantage point of which the ‘merely rhetorical’ can be identified and held in check’.” (Brueggemann: p112, quoting Fish: p215.)

Brueggemann is not arguing for a particular understanding of the culture of the day. He is, rather, asking us to take the text seriously at face value. However, his proposal of the ‘rhetorical man’ looks and feels suspiciouly like the ‘man’ or ‘woman’ of the culture of the time. He or she was someone who would have read or heard the text in the way that Brueggemann suggests. The anthropological work of Malina and others supports Brueggemann’s proposal that we read the text dramatically. Or we could argue that Lanham/Brueggemann’s ‘rhetorical man’ is no mere hypothesis but rather the ‘man’, or ‘woman of the street’ in Old Testament times. Or we might go even further and say that the ‘rhetorical man’ demonstrates the model that anthropologists have proposed for understanding the cultures of the Scriptures, specifically that those cultures were dominated by the values of honour and shame, has validity!

References:
Walter Brueggemann; “Redescribing Reality: What We Do When We Read the Bible;” SCM, London, 2009
Stanley Fish; “Rhetoric.” In Critical Terms for Literary Study, edited by Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, pp203-222. Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago, 1990.
Richard A. Lanham; “The Motives of Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance;” Yale Univ. Press’ New Haven, 1976.
Tod Linafelt; “Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament, and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book;” Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000.
Bruce J. Malina; “The New Testament World – Insights from Cultural Anthropology;” Westminster John Knox, 1993. See also the work of other members of the Context Group of which Malina is a part.