I. Jacob:
(12) If my father touches me, I shall appear to him as a trickster and bring upon myself a curse, not a blessing.” (13) But his mother said to him, “Your curse, my son, be upon me! Just do as I say and go fetch them for me.” (14) He got them and brought them to his mother, and his mother prepared a dish such as his father liked. (15) Rebekah then took the best clothes of her older son Esau, which were there in the house, and had her younger son Jacob put them on; (16) and she covered his hands and the hairless part of his neck with the skins of the kids. (17) Then she put in the hands of her son Jacob the dish and the bread that she had prepared. (18) He went to his father and said, “Father.” And he said, “Yes, which of my sons are you?” (19) Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau, your first-born; I have done as you told me. Pray sit up and eat of my game, that you may give me your innermost blessing.” (20) Isaac said to his son, “How did you succeed so quickly, my son?” And he said, “Because your God יהוה granted me good fortune.” (21) Isaac said to Jacob, “Come closer that I may feel you, my son—whether you are really my son Esau or not.” (22) So Jacob drew close to his father Isaac, who felt him and wondered. “The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau.” (23) He did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like those of his brother Esau; and so he blessed him. (24) He asked, “Are you really my son Esau?” And when he said, “I am,”
II. Joseph
III. Shaul
These three texts are just a snippet of men in the Tanakh who disguise themselves in order to be safe, to fit in. Disguising oneself in clothing can be both an act of safety but also of deception. The Hebrew words for clothing and betrayal share the same root: ב.ג.ד.
I chose these three narratives because all are about men who transgress their roles through covering themselves and revealing themselves in some capacity. Each of them has homoerotic relationships, some hidden and others in plain sight. I see these men participating in a form of gender play, (re)shaping what masculinity in the bible looks like. Their experiences can be mapped on to the unique life courses, rites of passage, and experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals.
Through the lens of gender and queer criticism, we can see these moments as ones of "closeting" and "coming out." They shed light on the way men in the Tanakh who are subordinately masculine must change themselves, temporarily or for long stretches of time, in order to "pass."
They also teach us about masculinity, in our world and the world of the Torah. Male power, today and in the Hebrew Bible, is both fragile and zero-sum, maintained through subjugation of women and subordinate men.
I am inspired by these three characters in what their narratives provide on their own, but they are also interesting to question how they fit individually and together in the formation of Israel as a nation. Jacob’s identity becomes Israel by his change in name; after the steamy wrestling scene, his shift in identity confirms that he deserved the blessing reserved for Esau and is meant to become the father of the Israelite nation. Joseph’s identity represents the birth story of the Northern kingdom of Israel, symbolized by his sons Ephraim and Menasseh. Saul marks a sea-change in the organization of the body-politics of the Israelite people as the first political figure, the first king. Saul marks a shift from the prophetic model toward a government that the people identify with, and held the crises that created that need. Seen together, we see an arc from founding patriarch to semi-foreign king to king, showing the evolution and complexity of characters throughout the Hebrew Bible. This evolution also reflects the identity of the Israelite people as they “grew up” from a small family network into a full-fledged nation, with needs reflecting those changes. For a people born and bred in diaspora, coming out and hiding remains a prescient theme. This dynamic will impact what kinds of leaders the Israelite people seek and need, and how that leader acts in tandem with God. In the evolution of Israel today, what leadership do we need? How are women and queer people leading in new ways?
There is also the father-son motif present in these three narratives; Jacob and Isaac and the tense scene that they held, Jacob then repeating the affliction of favoritism onto his own sons, causing deadly rifts. Joseph miraculously reunites with Jacob and has a tender death scene, though still with reckoning. Saul’s father issues are with Samuel but also, for all three, with God. God is temperamental and distant from Saul whereas God was present for Jacob and Joseph in visceral, material ways.
I cannot say that the Hebrew Bible is entirely against closets. They appear again and again, passed from one character to another through clothing and betrayal. Closets allow for unique plots to develop and characters to emerge in new ways. Perhaps the Hebrew Bible is fine with hiding, but for a prescribed amount of time and only with the Divine’s permission and plan. The closet can be a place of rebirth or of death. In these narratives, the renewal is tangled with loss, ruptures and healing in families of origin and adoptive families, resulting in the blending of kingdom and of identity.
Jacob, subordinate in masculinity to his brother, was closeted in his brother’s hyper-masculinity garments and closeted himself before his father. Joseph is a gender-bending character from his inception. He shows what it means to hold a hybrid identity of Israelite in a foreign kingdom, balancing the needs of his new station in Egypt and the resurfaced wounds from his family of origin. His tears, the inability to hold it in anymore, and bravery in finally coming out echoes the experience of so many queer people, and all people who know what it feels like to hold something that must come out. Saul is a tragic character; he is proof of the crushing pressure of expectation and the painful downward spiral that can occur when Divine support is withdrawn. He dies in the shell of himself and his role as king, turning to queer characters like the woman of EnDor to reach across realms and make sense of his fate.
This “Hidden and Revealed” analysis can be applied to characters like Moses and Samson. More pressingly, I hope to expand to female characters Rebecca, Tamar, and Esther.