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

HIDE AND SEEK: MISCELLANEOUS WOMEN | 207
seems not to be the best translation either, at least as the parallel term for
“timbrel”; perhaps it refers to some accompanying instrument, such as rattles.
In other texts, like 1 Sam 29:5, תולחמ refers to the whole event and more
precisely to singing rather than dancing. Perhaps, in the line of some notices
about oral tradition of dirges for Saul or for Josiah (see below), there is here
already the beginning of that tradition of David’s growth against Saul’s demise
(that the latter would certainly not appreciate) carried on: “Is this not David, of
whom they sing to one another in the dances, saying …” (תולחמב).
There are still two texts in which it is not clear whether the persons or the
action are intended. On the one hand, because the saying could be understood as
the literary device called “abstract for concrete,” since there is no dancing
without dancers (and it adds to gender-balance by having each a different plural
form). 132 While I do not reject the traditional understanding of the term, I want
to posit that “dancer/s” is another possibility at least as good as “dancing” in
Exod 32:19 and in Song 7:1. 133
Exodus 32:19. Here Moses approaches the camp after forty days with YHWH
on the mountain and he sees תלחמהו לגעה־תא “the calf and (some) mĕHōlōt”
(no article and no direct object marker in the second one, which most
translations take to be “the dancing”). He sees “dancing.” What prevents one
from thinking that what he saw were “dancers”? What kind of dancing can be
performed without dancers? Or are we to think that these were male dancers?
Song of Songs 7:1. Here, the Shulammite is compared to םינחמה תלחמ.
This
is a construct chain, the first noun being feminine singular (incidentally, the only
singular of תלחמ in the Bible) and the absolute, a dual term. Translations go in
the line of “dancing between two lines of dancers” or “two choirs,” “dancing in
front of two camps or two armies,” and other expressions. Here again, even
though one may take the feminine singular תלחמ to mean “dancing” of
(whatever the two camps mean), it may as well mean “a dancer.” 134
I return now to the verse under scrutiny in 1 Sam 18. The main difficulty
with my proposal is, as stated, that there is no irrefutable proof that the noun
could mean “dancer” in addition to “dancing” or “dance,” although there are two
texts where this translation is equally possible. The second difficulty is the fact
132 Wilfred Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to Its Techniques (JSOTSS 26; repr. with
corrections; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 314.
133 Since the preposition ב is not that common accompanying persons, I have not included
תו/לוחמב, with or without article vocalization, such as they appear in Ps 149:3 or Judg 21:21.
134 See Exum, Song of Songs, 211–213 (translation) 228–230, who recognizes that part of the
difficulty in understanding the intention of these lines is that “the comparison ... is difficult to
fathom.” (228) She opts for “the dance of two camps.”