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

160 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
majority of which occur in the palace. It is obvious that stories where servants
appear, especially if there is more than one, are located in wealthy households,
such as those of Abraham, Abimelech, Nabal or Boaz. Some of them are related
to King David, although not necessarily in the palace (the woman who helped
spy during Absalom’s revolt) or the dialogue between Michal and David about
his dancing in front of the women when the ark was brought to Jerusalem
(2 Sam 6:16, 20–23). There are also women who appear alone in the story. Thus
one cannot know how many dependents households usually had (in Naaman’s
household, for example, only one appears, 2 Kgs 5).
On the other hand, precisely because they are taken for granted, the amount
of information that one can collect on life conditions of female labor is
surprisingly small, starting from the fact that they very seldom appear in what
the reader would expect to be their working location (doing laundry, baking
bread, fetching water, cooking, grinding grain). Summarizing the information
collected in this chapter, what can be said is that in DtrH slaves and dependents
are found as part of the household, on the road carrying information, at the well
carrying water or accompanying their mistress. Much more than that is left to
the reader’s imagination.
Many of these economically dependent women were socially low. These are
permanent slaves, probably foreign and with no rights. Others were socially
better off, due to their being Israelites, even if indentured. For some of them
being a slave-wife or a concubine might have been a bonus in their social
location, but one should not presume too much, because social locations were
determined, as discussed in chapter 1, by several elements. The worth of these
women, what would ascribe them honor, is not explicitly stated. Yet, it does not
have to do with their sexual purity. Sexual purity is not the main quality of an
enslaved woman, whose whole body, at any rate, belongs to her master. By the
very assumption that they are where they are needed and they do what they are
expected to do, slave and dependent women are assessed as reliable workers.