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

INTRODUCTION:
ON FEMALE LABOR IN THE HEBREW BIBLE
“Non-formal economies” is an expression used in my country to speak of those
economic sub-systems not belonging to a recognized business. Because they are
too low in the socioeconomic scale to afford paying taxes and because they do
not fit into the welfare system, nobody protects the rights of people involved in
such economic activities. Countless men, women, and children are unable to
succeed in a given socio-economic system, falling into the gaps and—although
an active part of their society—becoming expendable in the eyes of many. And
being symbolically expendable, their lives are literally spent in brothels,
sweatshops, child pornography, prostitution, and other modern enslaving
systems, while the world watches impotently or just looks away. 1
This is not a new phenomenon. The biblical record is filled with
“expendables,” people who are economically dependent and thus bound to work
for others and/or depend on others’ good will: foreign slaves, indentured
Israelites, daily laborers, artisans, prostitutes, women and children with no man
to protect them. 2 Israel’s very beginnings are traced back to being expendable in
1 Of course there were and are dissenting or alternative voices. To take one example close to us,
liberation theology has been instrumental in reminding the church that God‘s evaluation of people is
not that of the status quo, which deems expendable anyone who does not conform to its game, but,
on the contrary, that God chooses those despised by society to carry on God‘s plan. Only recently
has liberation theology started to go beyond general socio-economic and political categories and
focus more particularly on the socio-economic, political, and theological consequences of injustice
and oppression for women.
2 The Oxford Dictionary Online (n. p. [cited 1 September 2011] Online: http://oxforddictionaries.
com/view/entry/m_en_gb0959850#m_en_gb0959850) defines “work” as, 1) “activity involving
1