ABSTRACT
Given that Solomon ibn Gabirol (c. 1021–c. 1058) was orphaned by his biological father at a young age, re-orphaned later by his patron Yequtiel ben Ḥassan, and never was a father himself (as far as we know), it is with particular interest that we turn to a love-and-lust poem in which Ibn Gabirol references biblical sons whose behaviors enrage their fathers. Our previous chapter on a Hebrew poem, “‘His instruments are the instruments of Simeon and Levi’: Ibn Gabirol and the silence of Jacob” (Chapter 4), discussed a similar instance of biblical fathers and sons in a love poem. There, the poetic composition, “הלנצח יעירני” (ha-Lanetzaḥ ye`ireini), hinged on a particularly gruesome account concerning the children of Jacob: the violent vengeance wrought by Simeon and Levi against the people of Shechem for the kidnapping and rape of Dinah, and Jacob's subsequent fury at their behavior. The current discussion concerns a Hebrew desire poem with a similarly harrowing remez (allusion) to a biblical family: the rape of Tamar, daughter of King David, by her half-brother Amnon, eldest son of King David (recorded in 2 Sam. 13). In this poem, the sexual violation of the family's daughter is the central focus of the remez rather than a side point, as it is in the Simeon and Levi poem, which focused on the brothers' reactions.
