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

HIDE AND SEEK: MISCELLANEOUS WOMEN | 167
“King Jehoiachin of Judah gave himself up to the king of Babylon, himself, his
mother, his servants, his officers, and his palace officials. The king of Babylon
took him prisoner in the eighth year of his reign.” (2 Kgs 24:12, NRSV)
Besides “servants” םידבע, there are several other terms, which usually go
unnoticed. Many of them are mentioned in passing. In Jer 51, for instance,
YHWH recounts destruction of several groups by Babylon, addressed in second
masculine singular: “By you, I will smash the shepherd (הער) and his flocks …
the farmer (רכא) and his team (of oxen) … governors and deputies” (v. 23).
While הער is attested once in feminine (Rebekah), the term רכא “farmer/s”
appears seven times, all masculine and, notably, six of them in the prophetic
corpus. 15
There are also all those groups said to have become enslaved by the
Israelite/Judean victors from the time of the “conquest” on; there are also several
brotherhoods returning to Yehud with Ezra and Nehemiah, whose legal status is
unclear, but were hereditary and ascribed to the large organizations. Finally,
there are a few other lexemes not clearly translatable, belonging to the semantic
field of unfree servitude.
Among the groups that came back from Babylon one finds the םיניתנ,
“devoted ones” and the המלשׁ ידבע ינב, “descendants (or company) of
Solomon’s servants” (Ezra 2:43, 55 // Neh 7:46, 57, etc.) and, if Albright was
correct, also a guild of temple musicians, the לוחמ ינב “members of the
orchestral guild” (1 Kgs 5:11). 16
These seem to be designations for hereditary groups bound to the great
institutions, which then must have included women, even though the terms are
only masculine in gender. Scholars have shown that many laborers for the great
institutions in Babylon lived with their own families and were enlisted as such,
if sources are correctly interpreted. Other groups, like the Babylonian nadītus,
were priestesses who lived secluded in cloisters (but they were not slaves, on the
contrary). 17 Thus, it would not be far-fetched to suppose there were women
considered female workers by the great institutions themselves.
It is hard to assess how much these institutions influenced the social
organization of their time. Likewise, it is hard to make generalizations about its
15 And mostly in late texts, see 2 Chr 26:1; Isa 61:5; Jer 14:4; 31:24; 51:23; Joel 1:11; Amos 5:16.
Commenting on the latter, James L. Mays, Amos: A Commentary (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1969), 98 reflects on the ironic character of farmers and vinedressers called upon to bury their
expropriators.
16 Eng: 4:31. On the לוחמ ינב see W. F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, 127
(quoted by Baruch Levine, “The Netînîm,” JBL 82 [1963]: 212 n.28). Both the Chronicler and Qoh
2:8 recognize male and female singers (mentioned together); I deal with musicians below.
17 Harris, “Organization,” 121–2; Dandamaev, Slavery in Babylonia, 547 n.113.