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

FEMALE WORKERS RELATED TO THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD | 247
group םיפאה are mentioned in Jer 37:21, where King Zedekiah orders that
Jeremiah be fed daily a loaf of bread from the bakers’ street. Leviticus 24:5
stipulates how to do the baking of the bread for the tabernacle, but it is not clear
whether this bread is to be brought in by the people or baked at the temple. The
instructions for bread preparation—verbs in second masculine singular—could
apply to anyone, while the priest is the only one to set them on the table, at least
with regard to the Jerusalem temple. The text probably combined diverse
traditions, so that at this point the reader cannot know what was intended by the
text, and can only choose one or another explanation. 32 If loaves were made in
the temple, questions arise concerning the degree to which this task belonged to
a specialized group (like the Levites or temple slaves) and the degree to which
women from the priestly families had any ritual responsibility. 33
Research conducted in two other fields also sheds light on this ancient
occupation. One of them has to do with non-Yahwist rituals (variously
interpreted in the Bible as “whoring,” “vain,” “abominable,” and so forth).
These were particularly attractive to women, because the official religious
system left no room for their active performance. Since religious occupations are
not our goal here, this will be a very short mention. Jeremiah is one of the
prophets whose voice raises against adoration of the Queen of Heaven (Jer
7:18). Perhaps his accusation that “the women knead dough, children gather
wood and fathers kindle fire” reflects what was normally the distribution of
household chores. 34 Apparently, this would not be “work” in the sense we are
studying here; on the other hand, perhaps it was not required or even common
practice that every family would knead and bake their own cake—and there
were, for sure, many families with shortage of hands or ability, that perhaps
are often masculine in form but not in intention, it is hard to determine whether the baker of the
saying is only intended to be a male.
32 Gerstenberger, Leviticus, 358–60 stresses lay participation. It seems to us, however, that these
loaves would have been baked in the temple, since the temple would have had control over the
bread’s quality and would also have had easy access to resources, both material and human. Noth,
Leviticus, 177 points out that the original “thou” addressed Moses and not the priests. He leaves
open the question, who fulfilled Moses’ role in post-exilic times, when Moses is obviously not the
addressee? On women as participants in ritual, see Mayer I. Gruber, “Women in the Cult According
to the Priestly Code,” in Mayer I. Gruber, The Motherhood of God and Other Studies (South Florida
Studies in the History of Judaism; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 49–68; Phyllis A. Bird, “The Place
of Women in the Israelite Cultus,” 81–102; “Israelite Religion and the Faith of Israel’s Daughters,”
Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1997), 103–20.
33 Cf. L. Díez Merino, “XI Congreso de la Organización Internacional para el Estudio del Antiguo
Testamento (IOSOT) (Salamanca, 28 agosto–2 septiembre 1983),” EstBibl 42 (1984): 166–67.
Quoting M. Gruber, “Women in the Cult According to the Priestly Code.”
34 See also Isa 44:9–20, especially v. 19.