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The Hebrew word bat means daughter. The plural is banot.
It may come as a surprise to some readers, especially those devoted to the Psalms, that bat also means some kind of settlement. 045The more difficult question is what kind of settlement the word bat designates.
For example, in Psalm 48:11, we read “Let Mount Zion rejoice, let the daughters (banot) of Judah be glad because of thy judgments.” And Psalm 97:8 says: “Zion heard and was glad; and the daughters (banot) of Judah rejoiced because of thy judgments, O Lord.”
Were these our only texts, it might be difficult to argue that banot means something other than, literally, daughters. The Psalms are, after all, poetry. And it is certainly a satisfying image to picture the daughters of Judah in linen gowns dancing for joy at the judgment of the Lord.
But the term banot is also used in some very prosaic passages in the Bible. In the account of the distribution of tribal territory in Joshua banot is frequently used to refer to a settlement of some kind. Joshua 15:45 speaks, in the King James Version, of “Ekron with her ‘towns’ (banot) and her villages.” Joshua 15:47 refers to “Ashdod with her ‘towns’ (banot) and her villages, Gaza with her ‘towns’ (banot) and her villages.”
A number of other items are used in the Bible to designate different kinds of human settlements. Iyr, for example, is the equivalent of a city. Sometimes banot is translated as the equivalent of iyr (see 1 Chronicles 2:23; Judges 11:26; 1 Chronicles 7:28) in the King James Version. For the most part, however, modern translations render banot as “villages.” The New American Standard Bible drops a footnote to a translation of banot as “villages” in Numbers 21:25 to say that literally the word means “daughters.”
Were it not for the numerous examples of banot as some kind of settlement, we might understand “daughters of Judah” in Psalm 48 and Psalm 97 literally. In fact we should understand the phrases as a poetic reference to settlements in the territory of Judah.
In Psalm 9:14 we read in the King James Version, of the “daughter (bat) of Zion,” but the context here makes clear that daughter cannot be understood literally, but must refer to a settlement of some kind. This demonstrates rather conclusively that the poetic uses of “daughters (banot) of Judah” in Psalm 48 and 97, quoted at the beginning of this article, also refer to settlements.
The passage in Psalm 9:14 is very specific:
That I may recount all thy praises
That in the gates of the daughter of Zion
I may rejoice in thy deliverance
(Revised Standard Version)
The reference to “gates” makes it clear that a settlement is referred to and not dancing maidens!
The more difficult question is to what kind of settlements banot refer.
One possibility is that banot were suburbs of major cities—just outside the walls. Despite the importance of the walls for defense, extensive residential suburbs were often built beyond the walls during times of prosperity and urban growth. Some people preferred the insecurity of living outside the walls to the smells and congestion of the older city inside them. Jerusalem frequently expanded in this way. Professor Nachman Avigad found suburban settlements outside the walled city of Jerusalem from the early 8th century B.C. although these suburbs were later enclosed with a new wall.
My own view, however, is that this is not what is referred to by banot. Since these suburbs inevitably fall to an enemy, there would be no need to mention the fall of such suburbs separately—as Joshua does repeatedly.
The more likely meaning of banot is supported by new regional approaches to archaeological problems which stress interrelations within a region (see Amnon Ben-Tor, “The Regional Study—A New Approach to Archaeological Investigation,” BAR 06:02). Banot were, I believe, not simply villages, but rural villages which were commercially, politically, and socially dependent on a larger city that dominated the region. It is this descent and dependency which is implied in the Biblical text by the use of a word which also means daughter(s). In modern terminology we might call these daughters “rural centers.”
The banot are settlements which derive from the city and also depend on it.
Too often in the past we have tried to understand cities and towns as entities wholly unto themselves. In fact, cities and major towns were the social, political, and commercial nodes of regions. A whole network of rural centers settled by peasant farmers depended on the larger urban center in a variety of ways.
We are accustomed to this concept in thinking about the Greek polls, but it also applies to ancient Syria-Palestine—and indeed throughout most of the great empires of the ancient world. For example, in Roman times Gaza was the center of a region which extended seven or eight miles from the city. Jerusalem generally commanded an area with a radius of 15 to 20 miles, especially if smaller towns, such as Bethel, are included as dependent settlements.
Ancient cities were very densely settled. Nearby hilltops would have a small village with its fields in the valleys. Some of these villages developed at some distance from the city and those which were better situated developed some urban functions, perhaps in trading or administration. These were the banot or daughters.
In rural settings in the modern world, a pattern or hierarchy of settlements has been observed. At the smaller end of the scale, rural centers appear. Studies in Wisconsin and in England have shown a tendency for these to be only four to six miles apart. If this is the case in the age of the motor car, there would have been an even greater need for them in the days when most ordinary people travelled by foot or donkey.
In his study of Roman settlement in Britain, I. Hodder has recognized such centers (vici) as subsidiary to the civitas or territorial capitals. They are frequently found on the borders of city regions, perhaps developing in response to inter-regional trade.
A study of the settlement patterns of ancient Palestine shows that there were many settlements near the edge of the regions of the larger cities, and a number of these were larger in size and wider in function than the usual village. These were among the banot.
Banot are more than mere villages. For villages there is another Hebrew word: H T R—hatzar. The banot or “daughters” were not necessarily walled (see Dan Bahat’s article “Did the Patriarchs Live at Givat Sharett?” BAR 04:03) nor of an urban nature as we would understand it today. They did fulfill some subsidiary administrative and commercial functions of a city of those times.
It is interesting that an Israeli scholar writing in English in BAR (Ephraim Stern, “Excavations at Tell Mevorakh are Prelude to Tell Dor Dig—What a Daughter Site Can Tell Us About Its Mother,” BAR 05:03) uses the term “daughter” to refer to a settlement dependent on a larger urban center seven miles away. Tell Mevorakh, Ephraim Stern explains, was a “daughter of Tell Dor.” No doubt Dr. Stern was consciously or unconsciously drawing on the Biblical associations of the term—and quite correctly so.
