Caring for the Dead in Ancient Israel

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The cult of dead kin in ancient Israel was a complex of practices in which the living offered care to the dead. As reflected in the Hebrew Bible, this could take the form of food and drink offerings, commemorative monuments, invocation of the name of the dead, and the protection and repatriation of human remains.

Such ritual care negotiated the ongoing relationships between the living and the dead. Examining the practices and participants of this cult illuminates the dynamics of family and household religion in ancient Israel and its relationship with the Jerusalem Temple.

Reconstructions of an Israelite cult of dead kin have circulated within biblical studies for several decades. But despite a wealth of scholarship on death and the dead in the Hebrew Bible, treatments of the cult of dead kin often rely on problematic assumptions and methodologies, which require significant revision. Here, we will focus on the role of women in the cult of dead kin and the cult’s supposedly reduced status in the post-Exilic period.

While previous studies argue that women were entirely excluded from participation in the cult of dead kin, my recent book posits that women could be both caregivers and recipients of that care; that they were active in the transmission of tradition, genealogical descent, and the ritual observance of the cult of dead kin.¹ Consider the following biblical episodes: Jacob commemorates his wife Rachel by erecting a stele (Genesis 35:20); the eunuch in Isaiah 56:5 lacks sons and daughters to commemorate him in death; Rizpah defends the exposed remains of her dead sons and others from Saul’s extended family (2 Samuel 21:10); and Psalm 106:28 interprets the cultic activity of Moabite women in Numbers 25:2 as sacrifices for the dead. Though the cult of dead kin was often patriarchal and concerned primarily with male actors (e.g., the story of Absalom’s monument in 2 Samuel 18:18), women did occupy an important position within this cult, one that has been overlooked in the biblical text and related literatures. The role of women is particularly well attested in moments of crisis, when social and political order was disrupted in various ways.

In the Hebrew Bible, the performance of the cult of dead kin may be used to create, affirm, or challenge 022 relationships between the living and the dead. This strategy of making kin through cult is particularly relevant in texts dating to the Exilic and post-Exilic periods, when biblical writers often referred to the exiles in Babylon as figuratively “dead.” The trauma of exile cast doubt onto preexisting ideologies, particularly the covenant between YHWH and Israel and the inviolability of Jerusalem and its Temple. The forced migration of Judahites to Babylon further challenged these concepts and begged the question whether YHWH had been defeated by a foreign power—if not, why would the national god of Israel willfully abandon his people? Some biblical texts go so far as to question whether the exiles may continue to worship YHWH in a foreign land.

Two prophetic texts from the post-Exilic period—Ezekiel 37:11-14 and Isaiah 56:3-5—respond to these anxieties using the imagery of the cult of dead kin and casting YHWH in the role of caregiver to the dead. In Ezekiel’s famous Valley of Dry Bones scene (Ezekiel 37:11-14), the deity exhumes and repatriates the remains of the “dead” Israelites in exile. This mode of care for one’s dead kin also appears in the stories of prominent biblical figures, including Jacob (Genesis 49:29-32; Genesis 50:12-14) and Samson (Judges 16:31). Similarly, in Isaiah 56:3-5, the deity constructs a stele for the childless eunuch, thus commemorating the dead in place of his offspring. By depicting YHWH in this way, these texts show that the covenant between YHWH and Israel is still valid. Both the exiles and the eunuch, who seemingly have no hope of receiving commemoration and care in death, are still under the power and protection of YHWH. These acts by the deity himself leverage the imagery, practices, and ideologies of the cult of dead kin, and biblical writers are using them to make a point about covenant in the post-Exilic period.

Recognizing that these passages draw on the practices of the cult of dead kin challenges previous reconstructions that posit a reduced status for the cult in the post-Exilic period. Rather than indicating the subversion of the cult of dead kin in this period, these texts suggest instead that biblical writers assume the existence of the cult and evaluate it positively—to such an extent that YHWH himself is portrayed as the practitioner par excellence. In light of such observations, we have to reconsider another paradigm: centralized cult and local forms of cult, such as the cult of dead kin, must be in opposition. The depiction of YHWH as divine caregiver for the dead in the post-Exilic period troubles this central-versus-local binary. In fact, it shows that the biblical writers draw heavily on the imagery and practices of family religion to articulate their ideologies about the national deity, including notions of covenant and divine sovereignty. Women naturally played a vital role in the family-centered cult of dead kin.

Both individual families and entire nations are in a constant state of remaking themselves, always losing and gaining new members. It is the ongoing project of both social groups to maintain some degree of continuity in spite of this constant change. The maintenance of social cohesion greatly depends on rhetorical strategies that treat that cohesion as natural and self-evident rather than overtly asserted or challenged. Ritual, then, is a particularly potent tool in this discourse. The rituals constitutive of the cult of dead kin, which was a fundamental feature of Israelite family religion, offered richly symbolic ways to create, affirm, or contest affiliations in different spheres of Israelite society—including the internal hierarchies of families, the politics of kings, and the relationship between Israel and its national deity.

The cult of dead kin in ancient Israel was a complex of practices in which the living offered care to the dead. As reflected in the Hebrew Bible, this could take the form of food and drink offerings, commemorative monuments, invocation of the name of the dead, and the protection and repatriation of human remains.