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

PROSTITUTES AND OTHER SEX WORKERS | 289
The two contrasting concepts “loaf of bread” and “costly desire” seem to be
understood literally, implying that the prostitute’s price is pennies compared to
the luxuries a married woman would expect from a lover—and perhaps the
wronged husband too.
The meaning of nepeš y e qārāh (RSV’s a man’s very life, literally “a precious
life”) is disputed. nepeš has many meanings including “soul”, “person” and
“life”. However, Driver argues that it sometimes means “abundance”, and that
since yaqār (this word is not directly translated by RSV) means “precious”, the
phrase should be rendered by “costly abundance”: that is, the adulteress, unlike
the prostitute who is satisfied with a little bread, demands a life of luxury from
her lover. Thomas (VTSuppl. 3, 1955, pp. 283–4) renders nepeš y e qārāh by “a
weighty person”: that is, she will only accept a wealthy man as her lover. But
Driver’s and Thomas’s interpretations agree in seeing here a contrast between
the prostitute’s modest demand and the excessive cost of a liaison with a
married woman, who may ruin her lover by her excessive demands. 57
That prostitution is safer than adultery is the general biblical view, based on
the fact that for the male it carries a monetary compensation to the woman for
her occupation, with no further ado, while adultery carries all the dangers of a
jealous husband and further problems between families or clans. The teaching
does not consider whether a prostitute needs more than some pennies thrown at
her, especially in terms of health care, provisions for her elderly years (if she
survived), children, safety, and affection.
On the other hand, the JPS translation offers us a window into another
interpretation for the terms הנוז השׁא. They translate Prov 6:26, “for on account
of a harlot a man is brought to a loaf of bread, but the adulteress hunteth for the
precious life.” Let us put on hold the harlot since that is, precisely, our
discussion. What concerns me here is the other part of the first sentence. The
subject of the sentence is not, in this translation, the poor prostitute who contents
herself with a loaf, but the man who, on account of her, loses everything. If it is
the man who loses everything, then the proverb is not setting antonyms but
rather similar situations, that of losing everything. The fact that the verses
immediately preceding and following this one are all of synonymic parallelism
would support this interpretation. This translation helps, of course, our
contention that the phrase הנוז השׁא can mean a woman other than a “harlot.”
For a man can spend all his fortune on a harlot’s bed; but it is more likely that
56 Taking הרקי שׁפנ as “costly abundance,” on the basis of שׁפנ as “abundance” in Isa 58:10; W.
McKane, Proverbs, 329; Scott, Proverbs, 61: “But a married woman hunts with keener appetite.”
NRSV: “but the wife of another stalks a man’s very life.”
57 Raymond N. Whybray, Proverbs (NCBC. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 105–6.