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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > February 2003

Unlikely Heroes

Women as Israel

By Gary A. Rendsburg

Open your Bible at random and you will notice something striking: Female characters abound. And it’s not simply a lot of women, it’s a lot of strong women. These women are the antithesis of what we might expect from a patriarchal society. They are not passive, demure, timid and submissive, but active, bold, fearless and assertive. They are also not what we would expect based on contemporaneous Near Eastern literature, in which women generally do not play leading roles in the narrative. In the Bible, the pattern begins with the first female character, who is much more active than […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Robert Alter, “The Song of Songs: An Ode to Intimacy,” BR 18:04.

2.

See Lawrence E. Stager, “The Song of Deborah—Why Some Tribes Answered the Call and Others Did Not,” BAR 15:01.

3.

Notwithstanding the remarkable presentation of women throughout the Bible, almost without doubt the authors responsible for the biblical material were men. It is true that in general, ancient Near Eastern literature, including the Bible, is anonymous, and therefore one rightly could argue that “he or she” is called for when referring to the author. But when we possess the names of scribes, as we do from ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia, they are invariably men; with no evidence to the contrary, I assume the same is true of Israel.

4.

See Ellis Easterly, “A Case of Mistaken Identity: The Judges in Judges Don’t Judge,” BR 13:02; and Daniel I. Block, “Why Deborah’s Different,” BR 17:03.

5.

See Frank Anthony Spina, “Reversal of Fortune,” BR 17:04.

6.

See Janet Howe Gaines, “How Bad Was Jezebel?” BR 16:05.

7.

I refer to Genesis 16:12 pere’ ’adam “a wild ass of a man,” usually understood as an insult but in truth to be understood in very positive terms. The wild ass, or onager, is a noble beast, roaming the wilderness, undomesticated, with no human as his master.

8.

The Hebrew word is the general word for “play,” but it has a wide range of meanings, from expressions of joy to sexual overtones as well. See Jonathan Kirsch, “What Did Sarah See?” BR 14:05.

9.

Adele Berlin, “Ruth: Little Book, Big Theme,” BR 12:04.

10.

Tikva Frymer-Kensky, “Forgotten Heroines of the Exodus,” BR 13:06.