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

8 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
This reinforces the realization that any definition will always have sufficient
exceptions to question its validity, and that looking at female labor in the Bible
requires much more than looking at terms for “slave.” It also requires
imagination and the courage to cut clean at some points. It is not mine to say
whether I hit the mark. What I can say is that this is a vast field in which there is
much to be done and also much we will probably never be able to know.
Women other than those called המא, החפשׁ, and הרע also worked in the
ANE. I have found in the Hebrew Bible about twenty-five feminine nouns or
participles denoting what we would call professions or occupations (see Charts
IV to IX). 16 Many of these occupations are also attested for men, with no
explicit criteria about division of labor across gender, age or status lines. Other
terms are only mentioned in feminine; and still other, masculine (mostly plural)
terms, could in theory include women as well. These terms attest to the variety
of tasks women assumed, besides their daily household chores. And one may
also imagine there were many others not attested in the sources available to us.
In her analysis on sex and gender in ancient Mesopotamia, Julia Asher-
Greve contends that social stratification was ascribed by “rank, status,
profession, occupation, etc.” The “second sex” comprised five categories,
ranging from “family women” to “[p]rostitutes, tavern keepers, seductresses,
witches and magicians, foreign women [whose s]ocial status depends on
occupation, behavior or circumstances.” 17 In the Hebrew Bible one finds
mentioned, among others, female slaves, bakers, cooks, harlots, perfumers,
child-care providers, messengers, and women who are said to draw water for
herds, spin and weave, wail and sing. Masters also had a wide range of women
at their disposal for sexual service: the so-called “concubines” (secondary
wives?), captive brides, slaves, and “loose” women. Their dependency
determines their inclusion among lower-class people—their dependency being
not only legal but, more importantly, socio-economic, as those women provided
sexual and reproductive services besides other, regular household tasks. In other
words, except perhaps for the very rich families, everyone worked, from the
paterfamilias to the least of the slaves. Would every dependent woman be
expected also to produce offspring for the household and perhaps pleasure for
the master, if thus required? 18 It is hard to give a definite answer; probably—as
16 I do not claim to have been thorough; there was no list available to me (except for the list on
professions recorded in the Ras Shamra publications) and it is fairly easy to overlook some text or
term. To these difficulties one must add that the number also varies according to criteria adopted in
reference to hapax legomena, relational terms (like the “concubine”) and other dubious cases.
17 Julia M. Asher-Greve, “Decisive Sex, Essential Gender,” in Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near
East: Proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2–6, 2001 (ed.
Simo Parpola and R. M. Whiting; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Institute for Asian
and African Studies, University of Helsinki, 2002), 16. Seductresses and foreign women are not
exactly professions (or, perhaps, seductresses were, but how to find them?), so they are left out.
18 In the laws on forbidden sexual relations in Lev 18 there is no prohibition of a master-slave
relation, which might indicate that they were not considered close kin. Tikva Frymer-Kensky, “The