The Silent Screaming of TamarFrom series Significant Biblical Women.
Tamar: name meaning 'date' (fruit) or 'palm tree'.
Rape. Not a subject you hear much about on Sunday mornings in church. Not a subject you talk about over dinner. Not a subject anyone really likes to talk about. Yet here it is in the middle of 2 Samuel; rape is exposed and brought out into the open. There is a reason this story is in the bible, and it’s not something we should skip over because we find the subject difficult.
Tamar's nightmare
Rape is a daily reality for women all over the world. In the UK there are 167 reported rapes per day. In the Democratic Republic of Congo a study by the American Journal of Public Health found that a woman is raped every 85 seconds (2011). A woman made in the image of God, being abused by another made in the image of God. This is destruction of humanity at its very core.
Let’s get one myth out of the way: rape is about power, control and the destruction of a woman. It is not about lust.
And so it is with Amnon’s rape of Tamar, his sister.
Easy to point the finger
It’s all too simple to point the finger at Amnon, the rapist and disassociate ourselves from him – we’d never rape anyone, right? Yet what about the others in the story? Each step of the way we find men involved in making choices that either enable the rape to occur or prevent justice following it.
There’s Jonadab, the friend of Amnon, who chooses to place the idea of rape into Amnon’s head. Then there’s Absalom, Amnon’s brother, who adds to Tamar’s silence by telling her to keep quiet about the rape. Instead of seeking real justice for Tamar he used the events for his own selfish revenge, killing his brother later on. And then there’s King David who is furious when he hears about the rape but does nothing. He is the King. He has the ability to bring justice into this devastating situation but he chooses to do nothing. Tamar’s own father lets her down. Finally, the servants would have heard her screams for help, yet they turned a blind eye.
We can of course make excuses for each of the people involved here. Yet as UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon says, ‘Violence against women is never acceptable, never excusable, never tolerable.’
Do we make our own excuses for not getting involved?
Silent screaming
The consequences of rape are often life-long. If you survive the rape, you face the immediate physical effects: STI’s, HIV, vaginal infections, difficulty urinating, passing faeces, menstrual cycle affected, unwanted pregnancy, abortion and more. Add onto this the psychological, emotional and social scars of fear, insomnia, depression, suicidal feelings, rage, guilt, nightmares, fear of men, fear no-one will believe me, he could rape me again. I feel dirty, cheap, valueless.
Rape is happening to the body of Christ. And we are all part of that body; when one part hurts then we all suffer. After the ordeal, Tamar ‘went away shrieking and wailing’ (2 Samuel 3:19 AMP). In the case of rape, one part of our body is screaming whilst the other often turns a blind eye.
Unless we are providing safe spaces for women to speak out about abuse we may be complicit in creating a culture of silence.
Please visit our Restored website to see how you can respond.