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Amnon and
Tamar: The Love/Hate Connection In Shmuel II Perek 13 we read a disturbing story of incestuous rape. Amnon, one of King David's sons, falls in love with Tamar (David's daughter) and plots to rape her. And it came to pass after this, that Avshalom the son of David had a fair sister, whose name was Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved her. And Amnon was distressed that he fell sick for his sister Tamar; for she was a virgin; and Amnon found it hard to contrive anything with regard to her. The Tanach goes out of its way to express Tamar's outstanding beauty, introducing this characteristic even before mentioning her name. Amnon becomes infatuated to the point of "love-sickness" for Tamar. He decides that he must rape her. 11: "And he said to her 'come lie with me'" Despite her protestations of 12: "for no such thing ought to be done in Yisrael" nonetheless 14: "but he would not hearken to her voice; and he became stronger then she, violated her, and lay with her." Immediately after the rape, we find an unusual set of psukim:
Amnon, who had been totally infatuated and in love with Tamar, is now described as hating her and to a greater extent than he had loved her. How did this intense love turn into an even greater hatred? What caused this change? And what motivated Amnon to throw Tamar out of the house? There have been several attempts to answer these problems. The first of these emerges from Pirkei Avot 5:19:
This Mishnah attempts to explain the reason why love sometimes fails. It does not answer our specific question of why love turns to hatred. Instead, it notes that any relationship which is based on a transient factor will not last. Rashi elaborates that regardless of the factor on which this love is dependent, it will fail if it is not inspired by true closeness and friendship. Amnon's love fits this prototype. His love for Tamar is more fittingly described as lust, and when he has satisfied his original desire, the love no longer exists. This Mishnah provides a partial answer to our question. Rashbetz however, points to the incompleteness of this resolution. He states that the failure of love does not necessarily equal hatred. The absence of one does not automatically imply the existence of the other. Not all psychologists agree with this point; instead they find a close link between love and hatred. Many relationships are described as "love-hate" relationships where one's feelings continually shift between intense love and intense hatred. When a couple separates, the love that once existed between them is often transformed into hatred; the intense emotion remains but the valence has changed from positive to negative. Max Beerbohm elaborates that "of all the objects of hatred, a women once loved is the most hateful." Investing all of one’s feelings into loving someone can cause intense hatred if these feelings are spurned or proven to be misdirected. With this premise in mind, it is necessary to examine the mechanism by which love changed to hatred. Perhaps, when Amnon became aware of the fact that he had hurt Tamar, he felt ashamed. The hatred which ensued developed as a result of his sense of shame for having violated an innocent virgin, none other than his own sister. The Roman historian Tacitus states that it is "human nature to hate those whom you have injured." As a logical consequence of hurting another, one begins to hate that person and her very presence becomes disconcerting. Dorothy Zeligs pursues this idea in her work Psychoanalysis in the Bible. She explains that Amnon, in order to defend against the intense anger he felt toward himself, directed this anger toward Tamar. Zeligs states that "the victim tends to become hateful in the eyes of the aggressor.” The perpetrator attempts to deal with his act of injury by focusing all the passions and emotions that caused him to commit the injury into hatred for his victim. In this way, he absolves himself of all responsibility for his actions. Thus, the more intense the original passions and desires, the greater the hatred that results. As Gunn states: "Excess of love at the beginning, excess of hate at the end." Rav Soloveitchik in his work Al Hateshuva approaches the story of Amnon and Tamar in a similar fashion to that described above, with one major difference. He explains that the motivating factor in Amnon's change in attitude was, in fact, the sin itself. The moment that Amnon sins and realizes what he has done, the sin becomes abhorrent to him. Thus, he strives to distance himself from the sin. Just as a person suffering from an illness tries to numb and reduce his pain, so too a sinner tries to distance himself from both the cause and the pain of the sin. After sinning, the natural human reaction is to feel embarrassment. Although this may seem illogical, this is precisely the point; feelings are not regulated by logic or intellect but instead change unexpectedly. Rav Soloveitchik writes: Before the sin, Amnon had been so totally bewitched by Tamar’s beauty and had not understood why he had felt this way. Similarly, after the sin, Amnon became repulsed by her and could not bear to be near her -- again for no reason that he could comprehend. This is the masochistic effect of sin. After the sin, Amnon hated himself for having sinned, and this self-loathing was projected outward in hatred toward Tamar. Disgust mingled with shame caused hatred. Amnon identified Tamar with the sin itself and therefore hated her for what she represented. This was the only way that Amnon could relate to his sin -- by cutting himself off and distancing himself from it. The Rav extrapolates the message of the story of Amnon and Tamar to a general lesson about sin. When a person sins, the cause of the sin will become abhorrent to him and he will want to distance himself from it as much as possible. Not only will he distance himself from the actual sin, but he will also take precautions to ensure that he will not be able to sin again by making fenses. For example, if a person ate non-kosher food, he might ensure that he never walked past the restaurant again so that he would never feel those original, illogical, misdirected desires. In the case of Amnon and Tamar, this is a clear part of Amnon's reaction. In pasuk 17 of the original story, it states: "Then he called his servant that ministered to him, and said, Put now this woman out from me , and bolt the door after her". Having unsuccessfully asked Tamar to leave, he orders his servant to send her out and lock the door behind her. Amnon is so repulsed by Tamar that he cannot bring himself to say her name and calls her "et zot". He tells his servant to bolt the door because his disgust makes him afraid of her. This shows the extent to which sin affects a person; he becomes consumed by guilt and will go to great lengths to remove himself from the sin. Based on the above understanding, we learn a lesson in love, and sin. Eternal love will only be achieved if it is motivated by inherent, long-lasting factors. Conversely, love based on transient factors which contain no inherent value will always have the potential to vanish. Yet, the deeper lesson of this story relates to man’s response to sin. Amnon's irrational and surprising reaction to his sin was not caused by his intellect or any conscious thought on his part. Rather, as the Rav explains, it was a natural reaction. There was no time for thinking; instead Amnon reacted in an instinctive, emotional way over which he had no control. Like Amnon, many sinners experience the desire to remove the cause, consequence and indeed, all memory of their sin. Through a psychological analysis of the story, we reach the conclusion that Amnon's reaction was the natural, almost inevitable, consequence of the circumstances. Whether the switch in Amnon's feelings was brought about by a response to the fact that he hurt her, or as a consequence of his having sinned, a feeling of guilt ensued which led to his intense hatred of Tamar. |
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