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

136 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
One has to notice that the law contemplates certain rights for the Israelite in
debt-bondage, and it explicitly does so for the man and the woman on equal
terms. Notable is also the fact that these situations foresee, if Westbrook is right
in his interpretation, that the slave has someone (a father, master or relative)
who is able to exercise the right of revenge or ransom. In case slaves were
foreigners and they were far from home, this would have been very hard to
accomplish. 50
What would have been the implications were the distrainee an unmarried
daughter? If the text considers the possibility of losing an eye because of
punishment, and even dying in the hands of the distrainor, her sexual usufruct by
the master or another person for the master’s profit can be assumed even if not
attested in the laws. If and when that daughter was freed because of her lost eye,
what opportunities awaited her, being poor, lacking an eye, and very likely, also
her virginity? Would such a woman have any other possibility than secondary
marriage (or staying unmarried at home?) or some type of dependent situation
from then on? Regrettably, the laws do not respond to these questions, and we
are left to imagine how society would act.
Three Test-Cases on Women
Three biblical laws deal with special situations concerning bound women;
special situations because “the various laws that treat of extramarital sex
evidence a strong feeling in Israel that sexual intercourse should properly be
confined to marriage, of which it was the essence (Gen. 2:24) and the principal
sign. Thus the victim of rape, the slave girl, or the female captive taken for
sexual pleasure, must become, or must be treated as, a wife (Exod. 21:7–11;
Deut. 21:10–14).” 51 To these two texts mentioned by Bird, may we add Lev
19:20–22, concerning the compensation to a male whom a slave had been
assigned but became pregnant from another one before the owner took
possession of her. Laws concerning sexual offenses in Deut 22:13–29 do not
pertain, because they apply to free women, not to (en)slave(d). 52
Exodus 21:7–11. 53 This law starts with a reference to the immediately preceding
Academic Press, 1994), 181–85.
50
With Leuchter, “Manumission Laws,” 637–38 and others, I take the six/seven years of Deut 15:1–
18 as the length for debt-slavery in Israel.
51
Bird, “Images of Women in the Old Testament,” 24–25.
52 See Pressler, View of Women, 21–43.
53 Here it is understood that Exod 21:2–6, like Deut 15:12–18 and Lev 25 apply both to male and
female debt-slaves, provided the female was not bought for concubinage, as in Exod 21:7–11. For
further discussion on these laws see MacDonald, Position of Women, 50–65 on Biblical law codes;
Pressler, “Wives and Daughters,” 147–72; Joe M. Sprinkle, “The Book of the Covenant”: A Literary