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

130 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
three main arguments: 1) the political power of Egypt over Palestine at the time
Abraham and his family are thought to have lived (2000–1720 B.C.E.) argues for
the improbability that Egypt would have given its own citizens as slaves to
foreigners; 2) the constant mixing on the part of Western Euro-American
theologians of J and E sources. If Gen 16 and 21 are studied on their own, he
argues, Hagar’s depiction varies, being Abraham’s wife in one tradition, and an
Egyptian slave in the other; and 3) that Hagar is the first real matriarch, being
the only woman who receives a promise similar to that received by Abraham. 39
Waters’s challenge to Western Euro-American theology is welcome and to be
celebrated. Especially his third point is well taken and it has been recognized
particularly by women embracing gender and class studies. 40 On the point that
affects our research more directly, however, I do not understand his view that an
Empire would not have also produced slaves. He states,
The Abrahamic period in Israel is usually designated as lasting from 2000 to
1720 B.C.E. This is the time of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, during which period
the areas of Damascus (Syria) and Canaan remained under the domination of
Egypt. This is also the time of the twelfth dynasty in Egypt. Since Egypt was in
a strong military position at that time, it certainly would not have allowed its
citizens to be held as slaves by those who were under its domination. As a
39 John Waters, “Who Was Hagar?” in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical
Interpretation (ed. C. H. Felder. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 198–199. Waters, 189 argues for an
original tradition in which Hagar was a free Egyptian, wife of Abraham; tradition which suffered a
later Israelite re-shaping which made a slave of her. Although not all his arguments are convincing
to me, his effort to call attention to elements which point at Hagar’s depiction as a free woman
(arrangement for an Egyptian wife for her son, her independence, her condition of being the only
real “matriarch,” and the flavor of the story, as he calls it) should be taken into consideration in order
to see the tension between these two traditions, the fluidity of a woman’s status, and how scholarship
is slowly being recognized as biased.
40 Here is just a sampler of scholars from different social locations: Elsa Tamez, “The Woman Who
Complicated the History of Salvation,” in New Eyes for Reading (ed. J. Pobee & B. von Wartenberg-
Potter. Geneva: WCC, 1986), 5–17; Maricel Mena López, “Raíces Afro-Asiáticas en el mundo
bíblico. Desafíos para la exégesis y hermenéutica latinoamericana,” RIBLA 54 (2006)17–34. Cited 4
September 2012. Online: http://www.ribla.org/; Milton Schwantes, “Hagar and Sarah,” in Faith
Born in the Struggle for Life: A Re-reading of Protestant Faith in Latin America Today (ed. D.
Kirkpatrick. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 76–83; Trible, Texts of Terror, 9–35; Renita Weems,
“Do You See What I See? Diversity in Interpretation,” Church and Society 82 (1991): 28–43; Mary
Callaway, Sing, O Barren One: A Study in Comparative Midrash (SBLDS 91. Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1986), 18–23; Savina Teubal, Hagar the Egyptian: The Lost Tradition of the Matriarchs (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), 235–50; Jo Ann Hackett, “Rehabilitating Hagar: Fragments of an
Epic Pattern,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel (ed. P. Day. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989),
12–27.