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

24 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
identical or not; and when the answer to that question is “no,” try to discern
what would be the difference.
Since most Hebrew terms identified for performers of an action are
participles (often qal, also nip`al, pi`el or hip`il), here the ones under
consideration are those in which the participle is acting as noun, not as verb.
Many are determined by the article, such as “Miriam, the prophetess” or “where
the prostitutes wash themselves.” There is a second form, in which the participle
acts syntactically as adjective to the corresponding noun for “person” (shortcut
for השׁא, שׁיא, םישׁנ, and םישׁנא, with or without a definite article). I have not
seen much written on this construction, although it is not easily searchable. The
closest remark appears in Tammi Schneider’s commentary on Judges. Speaking
of Deborah, she states about השׁא:
The term is problematic because the decision as to which meaning to translate
is, as always, a function of the translator’s interpretation of the text. Since little
work has been done on how the noun ´iššâ functions and is used in word plays,
it is not always clear how to translate the noun in each context. In the above
translations [quoted by her from Boling’s Judges, JPS, KJ and RSV Bible
translations] the translators view this noun as modifying the following noun
“prophetess” nabî’ah [sic] by making it feminine. While this may be its
function, the noun used for prophet is already in the feminine form. The noun
must function, at the least, as emphasizing the femaleness of Deborah or her
status as prophet, a title rare for women in the Bible. 12
In her masterpiece on prostitution in the Bible, published in 1989, Phyllis Bird
doubted any possibility of differentiating both uses of the participle, הנוז and
הנוז השׁא and, to my knowledge, nobody has proved her wrong. 13 After
examination of all instances of participles indicating occupation or profession,
alone or in apposition to “woman/en,” I am convinced there is a difference
between both constructions. I cannot say whether the difference stems from
chronological or geographical (regional) distance; from various economic
conditions; whether one became more loosely used or, on the contrary, it
became a technical term stemming from a general designation; or whether one
eventually replaced the other. I even realize that the evidence does not lend itself
easily to explanations and classification; otherwise it would have been noted
earlier.
12
Tammi J. Schneider, Judges (Berit Olam. Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry; Collegeville:
Liturgical Press, 2000), 64–65.
13
Phyllis A. Bird “‘To Play the Harlot,’” Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1997), 221–25 and more shortly in “Prostitution in the Social World and the Religious
Rhetoric of Ancient Israel,” in Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World (ed. Christopher A.
Faraone and Laura K. McClure; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 56 n.5.