Dangerous Sisters of the Hebrew Bible

7: The Daughters of Adam, Moab, theLand, and Israel

PART III Sisterhoods 7 The Daughters of Adam, Moab, the Land, and Israel In the previous parts, I identified a biblical sister story that is centered upon the vulnerable patriarchal home and that reflects the Bible’s implicit gender ideology. Although there are ideal sisters like Rebecca and Miriam, who support their natal households, most of the Bible’s sisters are dangerous. Dangerous sisters threaten their households by conspiring together, asserting agency or desire, or eliciting desire in others. They challenge patriarchal authority and societal norms like incest taboos that protect the patriarchal family. My analysis not only reveals the prominence of dangerous sisters, it reveals the important narrative role they play in weakening rival patriarchs, thereby enabling the Bible to focus on its designated family. My analysis also shows how dangerous sisters help preserve the Bible’s patriarchal values by encouraging proper behavior. As destabilizing figures, dangerous sisters contribute to and reflect the vulnerability of their natal households. To protect the ideology that supports the patriarchal household, dangerous-sister stories warn women to control their desires, to remain within their proper familial roles, and not to defy patriarchal authority. They also warn men to be aware of dangerous sisters who can wreak havoc within even the most secure households. I now broaden my focus and consider the Bible’s sisterhoods—women’s networks that are not necessarily defined by immediate kinship ties. In this part, I examine narratives that include groups of women that function as cohesive units. My goal is to understand how the Bible represents sisterhoods, and to consider how sisterhoods function within their narratives as well as within the Bible at large. As we will see, sisterhoods raise many of the same anxieties that actual sisters raise, and their narratives share common themes and concerns with the sister stories in the Bible. Yet, because sisterhoods extend beyond the family, sisterhood narratives cast wider nets than the sister stories. Their focus is more broadly on society and not on a particular family as in 119 the sister stories. Whereas ideal sisters support their natal households in their narratives, ideal sisterhoods support Israelite society. Dangerous sisterhoods are destabilizing figures that threaten Israelite society. Marriage is a central concern of the sisterhood narratives as it is of the sister stories. Ideal sisterhoods ensure appropriate marriages that strengthen patriarchal Israelite society, whereas dangerous sisterhoods threaten those structures. Given the prominence of dangerous sisters in the Bible, it is not surprising that dangerous sisterhoods appear frequently in the Bible, and I begin this chapter with their stories. Like the dangerous-sister stories, these narratives function as cautionary tales designed to encourage proper behavior and support patriarchal norms. They demonstrate the dangers of sororal solidarity and improper alliances though on a much broader scale than sister stories do. As we will see, dangerous sisterhoods weaken Israelite society and threaten its defining relationship with God. More surprising, given the prominence of dangerous sisters, are the ideal sisterhoods that play significant roles within their narratives and within the Bible at large. In the next chapter, I examine the daughters of Jerusalem, an ideal sisterhood that appears in the Song of Songs. In the final chapter, I consider the ideal sisterhood formed between Ruth and Naomi—perhaps the Bible’s most significant relationship—in the book of Ruth. Ruth and Naomi’s ideal sisterhood, I argue, redeems dangerous sisters and sisterhoods and offers an essential paradigm of human relationship. My conclusion considers the theological implications of Ruth and Naomi’s sisterhood and why sisterhoods may, in general, fare better than sisters in the Bible. The groups of women who appear throughout the Bible are identified most often as daughters. In Gen 6:1-4, divine sons are attracted to ‫האדם‬ ‫בנות‬, human daughters. In Gen 34:1, Dinah leaves home to see the daughters of the land, ‫הארץ‬ ‫בנות‬. Moabite daughters, ‫מואב‬ ‫בנות‬, seduce the Israelites in Num 25:1-5, and Jephthah’s daughter spends her last two months alive among the daughters of Israel, ‫ישראל‬ ‫בנות‬. The daughters of Jerusalem, ‫ירושלם‬ ‫בנות‬, appear throughout the Song of Songs. These daughters form sisterhoods—social networks of women that are not necessarily defined by immediate kinship ties. Living in small villages that consisted of several family compounds, it is likely that these young women were in fact distantly related to each other and comprised a clan.1 The frequent mention of these sisterhoods indicates that women were not confined to their individual households...