Women at Work in the Deuteronomistic History - International Voices ...

88 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
no neutral political fora to determine international boundaries, rights, and
conflict-resolution, nor was there a democratic distribution of power to ensure
internal cooperation between different parties. In fact, Lenski considers that
“warfare was a chronic condition in virtually all agrarian states.” 29 This means
that those who master military technology, political maneuvering, and wealth
profit further. Always, according to this scholar, it is also a determinant in
producing social inequality through the development of a military elite. 30
Constant warring means that as long as the state is victorious against its
neighbors, it increases in size, redistributes land as reward to those most loyal
and heroic, and promotes population mixing by relocation of population. But it
often means also murder of males and pregnant women, rape of women, and
sale into enslavement of defeated groups. Conversely, if the state loses the war,
its people will be depleted of their land, killed, raped, or enslaved. 31
Warfare is a vast area covering ideological, military, technological,
economic, and other aspects of a state’s organization which must be treated only
briefly here; but it needs to be quickly brought up because it is clearly present
throughout the OT and also because it has a large bearing on women. 32
Early in the monarchy foreign policy becomes a source of increasing military
activity. Once the Philistine threat is dealt with during the reign of David,
attention is turned to Israel’s neighbours and the king invades the Transjordan,
subduing Moab, Ammon and Edom (2 Sam 8:1–14) ....
Also early in the years of the divided monarchy, foreign policy entails
constant warfare between Israel and Judah over the control of the lucrative
“Benjamin saddle,” the highway linking the coastal trunk road (the Via Maris)
with the Jordan Valley and the Kings’ Highway (1 K 15:16). 33
Supported by extra-biblical studies on the effects of war on armies and on
their victims on the enemy’s side, T. R. Hobbs shows how a war meant
wounded and deformed (surviving) men, starvation during siege, polluted water
supply, diseases, slaughtering, destruction, and deportations. The ANE was not
an exception to these maladies. Although Hoffner asserts that in Hittite society
captives enjoyed a higher status than slaves, he mentions several texts that
allude to the allocation of captives to their captors, mainly high officers and
29
Lenski, Power and Privilege, 196. He even states that there is evidence for internal strife when
there were no external ones.
30
Lenski, Power and Privilege, 193–94.
31
Lenski, Power and Privilege, 194–97 on agrarian systems and warfare in general.
32
Even if there were periods of peace and prosperity, external enemies, wars and the curse of the
sword are integral part in the story of Israel’s life already since Gen 4, although not all are inter-state
wars yet.
33
T. R. Hobbs, “An Experiment in Militarism,” in Ascribe to the Lord: Biblical and Other Studies in
Memory of Peter C. Craigie (ed. L. Eslinger & G. Taylor; JSOTSup 67; Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1988), 471.