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

FEMALE WORKERS RELATED TO THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD | 259
that, whenever possible, the wet nurse would belong to the upper social
echelons, so that her milk would enhance the child’s assets. 72
Perhaps that would explain also why Deborah was so important to Rebekah
the matriarch that even her burial place became an etiological name—and one
related to grief: “And Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse (תקנימ), died. And she was
buried below Bethel, under the oak tree; so they named it the Oak of Tears or
Allon-bakuth” (Gen 35:8). Shaul Bar has proposed that Deborah was also a
professional crier and thus her burial place got a name related to her duties. 73
She is the only other biblical תקנימ recorded (Gen 24 and 35), always
“Rebekah’s wet nurse,” even when her mistress travels to get married to Isaac. 74
As it happens also in 2 Kgs 11, it is not clear what were their responsibilities
after they ceased to breast-feed. Whether Deborah belonged to the lower classes
or not is never attested; besides this lack of information, the Genesis narratives
are notably difficult to locate and thus, we do not risk making assertions on this
issue.
Assante and other scholars have called to our attention that the Akkadian
term qadištu, usually interpreted to mean “sacred prostitute,” meant “wet nurse”
in some texts. In other texts, she seems to be responsible for childbirth, rather
than wet nursing. Although there remains much to be understood, at least for the
time being some data seem clear. In his book on birth in ancient Babylon, Stol
enumerates several groups of religious women acting in different functions
during childbirth:
A hymn extolling the free citizens of Babylon, records these lines about the
three well known classes of religious women: “Women who have learned
insight at their work: the entu-votaries (nin.dingir.ra) who are faithful (?) to
their husbands, the nadītu-women who give the womb life by wisdom, the
qadištu-women who … in purification water. They respect the taboo, they
observe the interdict, they pray … They are reverent, observant, minding the
good. Daughters of the gods …”. The second and third classes of these women
are here involved in childbirth. 75
72 This would be confirmed by some kings’ claim to have been breast-fed by deities. Debora or
Moses’ mother did not belong to the governing élite: perhaps that is why they are singled out.
Cynthia R. Chapman, “‘Oh that you were like a brother to me, one who had nursed at my mother's
breasts.’ Breast Milk as a Kinship-Forging Substance,” JHS 12 art. 7 (2012), n. p. [cited 2 January
2013]. Online: http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/300/journal_hebrew/pdf/2012/article_169.pdf.
73 Shaul Bar, “The Oak of Weeping,” Bib 91 (2010): 259–274. He notes that usually trees served as
burials in emergency situations and were not worship places (at least, not to the religious orthodoxy).
74 The other instances of the participle hip`il do not refer to “real” women: Isa 49:23 uses the figure
of the תקנימ in an oracle of reversal of fate, when the queens of far lands will nurse Israel.
75 Maarten Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting (with a chapter by F.A.