THREE • The Hebrew God and Gender

The traditional understanding of deity in Hebrew scripture has assumed that Yahwism was always monotheistic, that the Hebrews had a unique religious perspective totally different from and opposed to that of their ancient Near Eastern neighbors. This view holds that they worshipped one god, male and transcendent, and rejected the validity of all other gods. The disappearance of goddesses, then, is seen as a result of the male monotheism of Hebrew religion. New interpretations of Hebrew scripture, however, informed through recent archaeological finds from both Hebrew society and the religions of the ancient Near East, have drawn a much more complex picture of the development of the Hebrew understanding of deity.

The picture of Hebrew religion as originating among desert nomads who fled slavery in Egypt and adopted a covenant binding themselves to an exclusive relationship with a national god at Sinai, entering Palestine as foreign invaders, has been thrown into question. Norman Gottwald, particularly, has pioneered a view of Israel that describes its origin in a confederation of tribes in the Canaanite highlands who were opposed to oppression by the tributary system of the coastal cities. This group of tribes adopted a distinct national identity, represented by a national god, but they did not differ in material culture from their Canaanite neighbors. The story of the exodus from Egypt may represent the experience of a small group of former Egyptian slaves who joined this confederation. The story may have been appropriated by Israel's first king, Saul, as a national charter myth to dramatize resistance to Canaanite tributary oppression, characterizing it as a revolt against the great empire of the era, Egypt. But the exodus, in this view, was not actually a shared historical experience of most of the tribes that became Israel.1

YAHWEH AND THE GODS AND GODDESSES OF CANAAN

Studies of early Israel have suggested that the Hebrews in the period of the judges and early monarchy were not monotheists in the fashion that developed later. These early people did not believe that Yahweh was the only god and that all other gods were simply nonexistent, nor did worship of Yahweh as the primary national god exclude other gods from the cult of Yahwism itself. The later war against the worship of Baal or Asherah does not reflect an Israelite fall into apostasy, with the people defecting to other religious cults foreign to Yahwism, as the biblical reformers interpret it, but an effort by later reformers to purge plural elements from an earlier Yahwism.² These earlier Canaanite elements included the identification of Yahweh as El, enthroned over an assembly or council of gods. Thus, Psalm 82 opens with these words: “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” This divine council of gods was later interpreted as angels, or the “heavenly host” (1 Kings 22:19, Isa. 6:1–8, Jer. 23:18, Ps. 89:5–8).

Early Yahwism also identified Yahweh, like Baal, as a God of storm and fructifying rain and possibly identified Asherah, the consort of El, as the consort of Yahweh-El.³ Symbolism from the Canaanite background of the tribes of Yahweh was part of the early cult of Yahweh, including “high places” (hilltop cult sites) and trees or wooden poles symbolic of trees (asherah, meaning the cult object, as distinct from Asherah, the name of the Goddess). By the time of the early monarchy, these asherah were probably seen as representing an aspect of Yahweh rather than a separate deity. But they continued to appear in official as well as popular Yahwism to the time of the exile in Babylonia. An inscription on a pillar in a burial cave at Khirbet el-Qom, near Hebron, dated from the eighth century BCE, speaks of Yahweh and “his Asherah” blessing someone called Uryahu and protecting him from his enemies. Two eighth-century BCE inscriptions on jars found at Kuntillet Ajrud, in the Sinai between Gaza and Aqabah, read, “I bless you by the Yahweh of Samaria and by his Asherah,” and “I bless you by the Yahweh of Teman and by his Asherah.”⁴

These inscriptions have excited fierce debate among scholars about whether they testify to the worship of Asherah as a Goddess consort of Yahweh or whether the term “his asherah” reflects the symbolic tree pole as a cult object associated with Yahweh but no longer viewed as a separate deity.⁵ Evidence of popular veneration of a female figure has also been found in two sites, one near Jerusalem and another in Samaria, both from the eighth century BCE. These areas have yielded female figurines with molded heads and breasts, sometimes with arms holding the breasts, on pillar bases that flare at the bottom. Additionally, these pillar figurines have often been found in domestic settings from the eleventh century BCE (fig. 18).⁶ Thus, some association of a female figure or her cult representation was common in Yahwism down to the sixth century BCE.

FIGURE 18
Asherah figurine from the period of the Hebrew monarchy. Height 7 in. Tell Duweir, Palestine. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Harris D. Colt and H. Dunscombe Colt, 1934 [34.126.53])

The reform movements of the ninth and eighth centuries BCE, associated with the prophets Elijah, Elisha, and Hosea, insisted on a strict monolatry, the worship of Yahweh alone. These movements did not take the form of an attack on the asherah or other cult symbols that had been part of earlier Yahwism; instead, they attacked the worship of Baals from surrounding peoples with whom Israel's kings were allying. The reformers believed that these alliances with powers outside Israel would subjugate the people to those who would milk the Israelite peasantry for tribute and who would also bring in their cults and set them up side by side with that of Yahweh.7 The prophets denounced this Baal worship as apostasy and a rejection of Israel's national god, but their denunciations did not involve expelling the asherah, associated with an indigenous Yahwism.⁸

In the seventh-century Deuteronomic reform movements, these symbols of asherah and altars in high places fell under suspicion as being contrary to the strict worship of Yahweh. They were then purged from Israelite worship by reformers who sought to centralize the cult of Yahweh in Jerusalem and abolish other sites of worship in the “high places.”⁹ This stricter reform movement, however, did not necessarily deny that other gods existed for other nations; it asserted only that Israel should worship Yahweh alone. A more complete movement from monolatry to monotheism did not take place until the exile in the sixth century BCE. When Hebrews found themselves in exile in Babylonia, they felt the need to insist on God's exclusive role over all nations, even those who did not “know” Yahweh.¹⁰ Thus, Second Isaiah declares, “I am the Lord and there is no other; besides me there is no god” (Isa. 45:5).

The shaping of the characteristics of the Hebrew God from the time of the judges and early monarchy to the exile shows a process of convergence in which roles played by Canaanite gods such as El, Baal, and Asherah, and perhaps Anat, were attributed to Yahweh. This was followed by a process of separation in which the cult of Yahweh was strictly distinguished from worship of the Baals associated with other peoples. This distinction did not, however, prevent Yahweh from continuing to be depicted in the role of a storm and rain God, drawn from the influence of Baalism in indigenous Yahwism. As Tikva Frymer-Kensky has shown, a picture emerged of Yahweh as an omnicompetent deity who brought together in “himself” most of the roles associated formerly with a pantheon of male and female deities.¹¹

But convergence of divine roles in the person of Yahweh had its limits. Yahweh was male and could take over roles associated with female deities, especially sexuality and reproduction, only in limited ways. Although male, Yahweh is never depicted as having a penis or as actively sexual, unlike other male gods such as Enki or Baal.¹² Yahweh is also separate from the realm of death. He is a warrior who kills but is not vulnerable to death. Unlike Baal, he does not die or descend into the underworld. Thus, sex and death become realms of the unholy, from which God is separated, and from which those who worship him must separate themselves in order to come into the presence of the holy.13

Early on, Yahweh is identified with El, the high God of Canaanite religion. The Hebrew Bible contains no polemic associated with El, perhaps because no separate cult was associated with El at the time. El was the original God of the peoples who became Israel. The name Israel was itself an El name, not a Yahwist name.¹⁴ Yahweh is even seen as one of the sons of El, who has been given Israel as his particular people among the nations (Deut. 32:8–9). El comes to be a generic word for God. It is assumed in the priestly tradition (Gen. 4:26, 15:2) that El was the name under which Yahweh was known in the time of the Patriarchs, with the name Yahweh being revealed only to Moses during the exodus: “And God said to Moses, ‘I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as El Shadday, but by my name of Yahweh I did not make myself known to them” (Exod. 6:2–3).

Yahweh takes over all the functions associated with El as high God, an elderly, fatherly figure enthroned amid a divine council. Like El, Yahweh is seen as compassionate and merciful. The El cult center at Shechem was taken over by Yahwists. Like El (and Baal), Yahweh is sometimes represented as a bull—for example, at the Yahwist shrines at Dan and Bethel, sponsored by the king Jeroboam.¹⁵ But these representations were attacked as idolatrous by the Deuteronomist reformer who recorded the story (1 Kings 12:28–31).

Yahweh also takes over the characteristics of Baal as a storm God who brings fructifying rain. Indigenous Baal figures were often tolerated within Israel's national religion by being identified with Yahweh.¹⁶ But Baal cults of other peoples were seen as primary rivals of Yahweh precisely because they claimed to bring the same gifts as Yahweh to humanity: rain and the harvests of grain, oil and wine, wool and flax. In Hosea, Israel's apostasy is described as looking to foreign Baal cults to give “her” these gifts, which are Yahweh's province:

For she said, “I will go after my lovers, they bring me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.”... she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine and the oil. . . . therefore I will take back my grain in its season, and my wine in its season and I will take away my wool and my flax. (Hosea 2:5b, 8a, 9a)

Like Baal, Yahweh is a storm God whose voice is thunder and whose glory is shown in flashes of lightning: “The voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders, the Lord over mighty waters,... the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire” (Ps. 29:3, 7). He rides the sky chariot of the dark rain clouds: “He rode on a cherub and flew, he came swiftly on the wings of the wind, he made darkness his covering around him, his canopy thick clouds dark with water” (Ps. 18:10–11). Rain becomes preeminently the province of Yahweh.

As Yahweh's global reach increases, it is even said that other nations are foolish to think that they can receive rain apart from him. In Jeremiah's words, “Can any idol of the nations bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers?” (Jer. 14:22). For Zechariah, all nations will eventually be defeated and come up to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh and keep the festival of booths. Those who do not will receive no rain (Zech. 14:16–17). The withholding of rain is the central way that God punishes Israel's apostasy and the evils of other nations. Thus, Amos sees God as punishing Israel and seeking to recall her from her apostasy by sending no rain or sending it only erratically (Amos 4:7–8).

Another area in which Yahweh appropriates the roles of Baal is the subduing of Yam, or the sea. Yahweh's work in laying the foundations of the cosmos is often referred to as his conquest of the sea and the monsters of the deep, Rahab and Leviathan. In the Baal texts, it is Baal who defeats Yam, although Anat is said to have defeated Yam as well. This is also reminiscent of Marduk's defeat of Tiamat, the dragon of chaos.17 Job asserts that “by his power he stilled the Sea; by his understanding he struck down Rahab” (Job 26:12). Psalm 74 declares, “You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters, you crushed the heads of Leviathan” (13–14; also Ps. 89:9–10).

God's future deliverance of Israel from oppression is summoned by recalling God's primordial work in subduing Rahab. Thus, Isaiah cries out, “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord! Awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago! Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?” (Isa. 51:9). Isaiah also declares, “On that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea” (27:1).

Yahweh is preeminently a war god, a role often linked with the destructive aspects of storm gods and goddesses. The language for Yahweh's violence in war is reminiscent of that of Anat, who wades in blood up to her hips, who is drunk with war lust, who heaps up corpses and laughs in derision at her enemies.¹⁸ In Hebrew scripture, too, the slaughter of enemies is compared to a harvest. In Deuteronomy 32:42, Yahweh promises, “I will make my arrows drunk with the blood, and my sword shall devour flesh, with the blood of the slain and the captives.” God laughs at the nations that conspire against him: “He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord has them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury” (Ps. 2:4–5).

The corpses are heaped up, stink, and rot: “The Lord is enraged against the nations and furious against their hoards; he has doomed them, has given them over for slaughter. Their slain will be cast out, and the stench of their corpses shall rise; the mountains shall flow with their blood. All the host of heaven shall rot away....” (Isa. 34:2–4). The blood bath is compared to treading the wine harvest; God's robes are red like those who trample the grapes: “I have trodden the wine press alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their juice spattered on my garments and stained all my robes” (Isa. 63:3). The time for divine vengeance is compared to harvest time: “Put in the sickle for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the wine press is full. The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great” (Joel 3:13).

This martial imagery was probably not derived directly from the tales of Anat's military prowess. Anat is never mentioned in Hebrew scripture and apparently was not an indigenous deity for Yahwist Canaanites. These descriptions seem to have become a part of monarchical traditions and were shared by the Hebrew monarchy, which assigned them to Yahweh.19 War in the ancient Near Eastern cultures was generally the sphere of males and particularly of kings, although victory was attributed to war goddesses such as Inanna/Ishtar and Anat. In Israel, the male god controls this sphere on behalf of his elect, Israel.

Yahweh takes over not only spheres of gods and goddesses that had come to be seen as socially male but also the sphere that was primarily regarded as the realm of women and the work of mother goddesses: conception, the shaping of the child in the womb, birth, and child care. The original shaping of humanity from the clay of the earth—the role of the Mother Goddess Ninhursag in Sumerian myth—is transferred to Yahweh in Genesis. It is “the Lord God [who] formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). In Genesis 1:27, God creates both male and female together “in the image of God” and blesses them, commanding them to be “fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.”

In Genesis 2, God creates only the male from the dust of the earth and creates the animals as his partners. But when these prove inadequate companions, God then creates the woman out of the man's own flesh in order to give him a partner that is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:21–23). Thus, Genesis seems to imagine a time, somewhat like that in the Gilgamesh epic, in which the male was wild and animals were his companions, followed by a time when his life was humanized through relationship with a female.20

God not only creates the first humans; he is also responsible for successful human conception. It is he who “opens or shuts the womb,” either allowing male insemination to cause pregnancy or preventing it from doing so. This, as Howard Eilberg-Schwartz points out, curtails the sexual potency of the Hebrew male. It is God, not the male, who determines whether sexual insemination causes the woman to become pregnant.²¹ God is seen as shaping the child in the womb, bringing it to birth, and keeping it safe throughout its development.

These roles are also attributed to God in relation to Israel as a whole. Here, too, God is the power of conception and successful birth; God is the compassionate mother who guides Israel's footsteps.²² Thus, in Deuteronomy 32:18, Israel is rebuked for its unfaithfulness to God, by comparing it to those forgetful of their mothers: “You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.” In Numbers 11:12, Moses complains that the burden of being responsible for Israel's well-being is too heavy for him, declaring that it is God, not he, who is Israel's mother: “Did I conceive this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a suckling child’?”

God's labor on behalf of Israel can be compared to a mighty warrior and to a woman in labor: “Now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant” (Isa. 42:14). In Psalm 22:9–10, a cry for God's help takes the form of reminding God of this role: “Yet it is you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother's breast.” In Isaiah 42:3, it is God who reminds Israel that it “has been borne by me from your birth, carried from the womb.”

God's motherly care extends throughout Israel's life. It is both creational and salvific: “Even to your old age I am he, even when you turn gray I will carry you. I have made and I will bear. I will carry and will save.” God's loving care for Israel exceeds even that expected of mothers: “Can a woman forget her nursing child or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these may forget yet I will not forget you” (Isa. 49:15). These descriptions do not make God female, but they do make him the mothering father who supersedes actual fathers and mothers as the reliable parent.²³

ISRAEL, GOD'S WIFE: THE REVERSAL OF SACRED MARRIAGE

As we saw in chapter 2, ancient Near Eastern societies developed a powerful metaphor for the special relationship of kings and deities—namely, the sacred marriage, in which a goddess espouses a king and establishes him on his throne. Inanna/Ishtar and Anat, who are the divine side of the sacred marriage, are not visualized as docile wives but as impetuous, sexually aggressive, independent queens who bestow their favors where they will. Inanna/Ishtar is the patron of prostitutes as well as the divine consort of kings. The lusty behavior of these goddesses links them to storms and war.

The portraits of these goddesses defy later Western stereotypes of acceptable female behavior—behavior that could also be seen as questionable by the ancient patriarchal societies of the Near East. Such judgments seemed to happen in those moments when the culture shifted from seeing these goddesses as deities, whose arbitrariness must be accepted by dependent humans, to seeing them as females in relation to dominant males. In this optic, the goddesses could be derided as misbehaving women. In the Gilgamesh epic, for example, Gilgamesh responds contemptuously to Inanna's offer of marriage, condemning her as sexually promiscuous: “Which of your lovers have you loved forever? Which of your little shepherds have continued to please you? Come, let me name your lovers for you.”24 As chapter 2 recounts, the hero Aqhat in the Ugaritic myths derides Anat for demanding his bow, claiming that such a weapon is inappropriate for a female.

In Israel, female deity is eliminated, with motherly qualities taken over by a divine father. As Eilberg-Schwartz points out, this creates a dilemma for the appropriation of sacred marriage symbolism, since the marital relation of a male god and a male king would be homosexual. The only way to assimilate this language heterosexually is to feminize Israel as a bride or wife of God.²⁵ But when the prophets described Israel as God's bride, they were addressing the male elites, including kings and the leadership class of officials and priests. Thus, these male elites had to imagine themselves collectively as female in relation to God. Hebrew females were then even more severely distanced from the places of power and communication with God, lest they imagine that they, and not the male leadership class, were the primary object of this spousal relationship of God and Israel.

The prophets who developed this language casting Israel as God's bride primarily used it to condemn and polemicize against the male elites for their alliances with the foreign powers around them—Egypt, Assyria, and smaller powers such as Tyre—which jeopardized the independence of Israel. These alliances typically brought foreign cults into the capital cities of Israel and Judah, Samaria and Jerusalem. Ahab, for instance, ruler of the northern kingdom, created an alliance with the king of Tyre, marrying his daughter Jezebel, who was then allowed to bring her Phoenician Baal cult, seen as idolatrous by the prophets, to Samaria.²⁶ But the primary reference of the prophetic polemic was political. It was not simply the danger of foreign cults but the political alliances themselves that were threatening. Alliances with larger foreign powers meant accepting them as overlords and paying tribute to them, further impoverishing the Israelite peasantry, already bowed under taxes to the Israelite elites themselves.27

The prophets, then, used the metaphor of Israel as an unfaithful wife to God in order to denounce the elites for entering into these alliances. This metaphor was shaped to imagine Israel as wife turned harlot, engaging in promiscuous sexuality, prostituting herself to foreign powers. Israel is not just occasionally unfaithful. She is depicted as willful, impetuous, and voraciously sexual, a language reminiscent of Inanna/Ishtar and Anat, but used here to condemn the kings of Israel for their political relationships. The image of the harlotbride goddess, revered as the patron of human kings in the ancient Near Eastern sacred marriage, is reversed to depict a patriarchal God punishing a human harlotwife, symbol of an unfaithful nation and its kings.

The vividness of this sexual metaphor of harlotry, of imagining unfaithfulness to Yahweh as “whoring” after other nations, has misled modern interpreters into assuming that the primary sin being denounced was sexual. Drawing on Herodotus's questionable description of prostitution in the Babylonian temple, interpreters have also assumed that temple prostitution was characteristic of ancient Baal worship,²⁸ and thus that idolatrous worship of these gods entailed engaging in ritual prostitution. Exactly who was prostituting themselves is not clear: Israelite men going to Canaanite temple prostitutes, or Israelite women becoming temple prostitutes?

This framework of sacred prostitution as the context for the interpretation of Israel as the “whoring wife” is increasingly being discarded by a better understanding, both of ancient Near Eastern religion and of Israel's political and economic situation vis-à-vis foreign powers. Studies of the extensive personnel records of ancient temples show no evidence of any such practice of sacred prostitution. Although ordinary prostitutes were common enough in all these societies, including Israel, there is no evidence that sexual orgies were a part of official temple worship or that a class of priestesses performed as sacred prostitutes.²⁹

Once this misleading hypothesis is cleared away, it becomes possible to explore the metaphor of Israel as a sexually promiscuous wife as a vivid way of denouncing the unfaithfulness of the male elites for their political alliances with foreign powers. Yet the vividness of this metaphor, as it is elaborated by the prophets Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, is startlingly graphic in its description of the wife's voracious promiscuity and God's sexually punishing wrath. This graphic detail makes it hard to remember that the primary activity being denounced as “whoring” is not female sexual promiscuity but male elite political alliances.

This metaphor is first developed in the eighth century BCE by the prophet Hosea, who described himself as marrying “a wife of whoredom” and having “children of whoredom,” whom he names Jezreel, Lo-Ruhamah (unpitied), and Lo-Ammi (not my people), in order to symbolize the unfaithfulness of Israel to God and God's threatened punishment. These children are told to plead with their mother (Israel) that “she is not [God's] wife and [God is] not her husband, that she put away whoring from her face and her adultery from between her breasts” (Hosea 1:2). God threatens not only to abandon Israel for her misdeeds but also to punish her. God will withdraw his rain and make her (the land) a wilderness and a parched land, with-drawing the harvest with which God has previously fed and clothed her (wine, grain and oil, flax and wool). This withdrawal of rain and the subsequent drought and impoverishment are imaged as sexual punishment: “I will strip her naked and expose her as in the day she was born” (2:3); “I will uncover her shame in the sight of her lovers and no one will rescue her out of my hand” (2:10).

Hosea's predictions of disaster would be fulfilled by the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom in 721 BCE. By the time of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel—on the eve of the Babylonian conquest in 587 BCE and the two decades that followed—the focus had shifted to Judah and the city of Jerusalem.30 God's unfaithful wife is embodied in Jerusalem, the capital city, the center of the political intrigues with foreign powers that risk bringing on the threatened disasters. Jeremiah excoriates the unfaithfulness of the people of the city as worse than that of any married woman, for most women would not forget their bridal gifts or their wedding day: “Can a girl forget her ornaments or a bride her attire? Yet my people have forgotten me, days without number” (Jer. 2:32). Her forgetfulness will be punished, and she will be led away as a captive to a conquering power, just as the northern kingdom was subjugated by Assyria: “How lightly you gad about, changing your ways! You shall be put to shame by Egypt, as you were put to shame by Assyria. From there also you will come away, with your hands on your head” (2:36).

Jeremiah throws in the question of whether God will ever restore Jerusalem to independence, asking whether a man can take back a divorced wife: “If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her?” He suggests that the land itself would be polluted by such a restoration, just as the sexual act is polluted if a man takes back a woman who has been with another man: “Would not such a land be greatly polluted? You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me? says the Lord” (Jer. 3:1). Jerusalem is seen as having prostituted herself in every place: “Where have you not been lain with? By the wayside you have sat, waiting for lovers.” This promiscuity has “polluted the land with your whoring and wickedness” (3:2).

But the city's punishment is at hand. It is already desolate, even as it futilely negotiates to fend off disaster, like a prostitute who vainly decks herself with finery as her lovers are about to kill her: “And you, O desolate one, what do you mean that you dress in crimson, that you deck yourself with ornaments of gold, that you enlarge your eyes with paint? In vain you beautify yourself. Your lovers despise you. They seek your life” (Jer. 4:30). Jerusalem will be violated like a woman who is gang-raped: “It is for the greatness of your iniquity that your skirts are lifted up and you are violated” (13:22). God himself will hand her over to public rape: “I myself will lift up your skirts over your face and your shame will be seen” (13:26).

Ezekiel, writing shortly after Jerusalem's destruction, develops in still more vivid detail the metaphor of the unfaithful wife, whom God himself punishes by handing her over to be raped by her former lovers.31 In chapter 16, Ezekiel recalls the mixed Canaanite heritage of Jerusalem before it became a Yahwist capital, by comparing it to a bastard infant girl born of mixed parentage who was exposed to die, put out naked in the blood of her birth: “Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: your origin and your birth were in the land of the Canaanites, your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. As for your birth, on the day you were born, your navel was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped with cloths... but you were thrown out in the open field” (Ezek. 16:1–5).

God passes by this exposed infant girl and decrees that she should not die. When she grows into nubile girlhood, he adopts her as his wife. He washes her and adorns her with all the ornaments of a beloved bride of a rich husband. But Jerusalem vainly trusts in her beauty, not realizing that it depends totally on God, and she turns to other relationships: “You... played the whore because of your fame, and lavished your whoring on any passerby.” She uses God's gifts to enter into relations with many peoples, Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, Chaldeans. Unlike typical prostitutes, who take money for their favors, Jerusalem paid for her relations to these “lovers.” The tribute that Jerusalem had to pay to these other nations is compared to a whore who pays lovers to come to her (Ezek. 16:31–34).

Because of all these abominations, God will hand Jerusalem over to these same lovers to punish her: “Therefore O whore, hear the word of the Lord,... I will gather your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated: I will gather them against you from all around and will uncover your nakedness to them” (Ezek. 16:35–37). These “lovers” will strip Jerusalem bare, destroy her monuments, and loot her wealth. This looting by foreign conquerors is compared to an adulterous woman exposed in the public square, with a mob invited to stone her to death: “They shall bring up a mob against you and they shall stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords” (16:40).

In chapter 23, Ezekiel develops an extended metaphor that compares the two kingdoms and their capitals, Samaria and Jerusalem, to two sisters of one mother, both of whom are married to God.32 But both prove to be voracious whores. Even when Samaria is punished by God for her promiscuity by being carried into captivity by Assyria, her sister does not learn from this but becomes an even worse whore. She had played the whore in Egypt in the days of her youth, and as she turns to new paramours, she fondly remembers the outsized penises of her former lovers, “whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose emissions were like that of stallions” (Ezek. 23:20). But God will bring up all these lovers (nations with whom Jerusalem has entered into alliances) to assault her: “They will cut your nose and your ears [as one taken into slavery] and your survivors will fall by the sword” (23:25). This terrible suffering is only what Jerusalem deserves: “Your lewdness and your whoring have brought this upon you, because you have played the whore with the nations and polluted yourself with their idols” (23:29–30).³³

Although these punishments sound terminal, the prophets assume that they are temporary, a deserved punishment, but one to be followed by reconciliation with God and restoration to the land, once Israel has repented. Unlike an ordinary patriarchal husband who turns over an adulterous wife for stoning, God takes back the rejected wife in some future time of reconciliation. Hosea speaks of this future reconciliation most endearingly. Yahweh not only will take back his unfaithful wife but also will restore their original love relationship, as it existed when she was young and pure in the desert era, before the entrance into the land: “Therefore I will now allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her” (Hosea 2:14).

This reconciliation will also restore all the gifts of prosperity that God has taken from her in his wrath. She will again have lush vineyards. She, in turn, will pledge her undying loyalty to her true husband, and they will never again be parted. Peace and justice will then flow in the land: “I will abolish the bow and the sword and war from the land and make you lie down in safety. And I will take you for my wife forever. I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:18–20).

This extended metaphor for the relation of Israel and God seems to demand an extraordinary double consciousness on the part of Israel's male elites. On the one hand, they must see their own political wheeling and dealing in the optic of an unfaithful wife who has prostituted herself to numerous paramours. They must identify the terrible violence that has been afflicted on them by conquering foreign powers—burning their cities, raping their wives, killing their children, leading them into slavery—as deserved punishment for their sins. At the same time, they must take the side of God even in his grim rage, which punishes an adulterous wife by handing her over to gang rape, mutilation, and dismemberment, knowing that they and their families are actually the ones being described. Their hope lies in some indefinite future, when they have given up such alliances and God will again love them and restore them to well-being. As males, they must then imagine themselves wooed and caressed by this same God who has battered them.34

SEXUAL LOVE REDEEMED: THE SONG OF SONGS

From this punitive, patriarchal use of the marriage metaphor for God and Israel, one turns with relief and surprise to the Song of Songs (also known as the Song of Solomon). This collection of love poems was probably assembled sometime between the fifth and third centuries BCE. It began to be accepted as sacred literature sometime in the first century BCE, interpreted as an allegory of the love relation between God and Israel.³⁵ By the second century CE, this interpretation had become official, and Rabbi Akiva (50–135 CE) forbade singing it in secular banquet halls (an indication that it was still being used as popular literature).³⁶

But the world of sexual love portrayed in the Song of Songs is radically different from the world portrayed by Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. One might suggest that they represent divine-human marital love gone awry. By contrast, the Song of Songs pictures such love as it should be, that original idyllic bliss in which God first espoused Israel in the desert and the future restoration of that blissful love.³⁷ But what the Song of Songs depicts is not wedded bliss but premarital young love. Here, romantic sexual delight is a paradise in and for itself; it is not tied to marriage, reproduction, family, or national interests.

The relationship of the loving couple is egalitarian and mutual, not hierarchical. The social world is woman-centered. The young woman operates out of her “mother's house”; no father or paternal authority is present. Her quest for her male lover takes place in a realm of bonding among female peers. She appeals to her women friends to help her. The male lover operates on the margins, in the outside world of nature, coming in and out of the picture. The young woman is the dynamic center and speaks the majority of the lines. She moves out of and back into her matricentric world, her “mother's house,” seeking the young man in the city, hesitating to let him in when he comes to her window, drawing him into her garden.

The egalitarian and female-centered characteristics of these poems have suggested to some a female authorship.38 In the context of ancient Israel or other ancient Near Eastern societies, this is not a far-fetched idea. Women are known to have been professionals in music and poetry for celebrations and laments, functioning in the secular sphere of culture rather than the official world of male-dominated cult and text.³⁹ The viewpoint of the poems is secular, ahistorical, nonnational, personal; perhaps this was the sphere of female rather than male culture at the time.

The language abounds with innocent sensual delight that knows no guilt. Our senses are intoxicated with perfumes, the scents of flowers, the voice of the turtle dove, the soft fur of fawns, the tastes of sweet wine and delicious fruits. The season is springtime, when nature awakes, when trees and plants bud, the time of singing and flowers, when the earth recalls paradise. Above all, we are intoxicated by the promise of sexual love yet unspoiled, its seeking and finding, its kisses and caresses, sweet-smelling bodies lying in nightlong embrace in soft bowers and gardens of delight, asking only that their happiness not be interrupted prematurely: “Do not bestir or awaken love before its time” (Song of Sol. 2:76).

The first poem opens with the maiden's appeal for the lover's kisses: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. For your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out” (Song of Sol. 1:1–3). The maiden is suntanned from working in the vineyards, consigned to this task as a little sister by her “mother's sons.” But she appeals to her lover not to disregard her, because she is “dark but beautiful.”⁴⁰ The two lovers lie entwined, her body exuding the fragrance of nard, his body, lying “between my breasts,” compared to sweet-smelling spices and blossoms, myrrh and henna flowers (1:12–14).

The young woman compares herself to a “rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley, a lily among brambles,” small flowers that grow wild, while the young man is “an apple tree among the trees of the wood” (2:1–3). She longs for his sweet taste and embrace: “Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love. O that his left hand were under my head and that his right hand embraced me” (2:5–6). The young man is like a gazelle or a young stag who bounds over the mountains, who comes up to her window and whispers to her to “arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone” (2:8–11).

The young man appears and disappears. The young woman calls to him from her bed, but he gives no answer. She rushes out of her house, seeking him in the city streets. She appeals to the sentinels who keep the night watch to help her find him. She finds him and brings him home, to her mother's house. Again he appears at her window, puts his hand through the lattice, and calls for her to open it. But she hesitates; and when she rises, he is gone. Again she rushes into the streets to find him. This time, the sentinels beat her for being out at the wrong time of night and snatch off her light mantle. She appeals to her female friends, the daughters of Jerusalem, to help her find him. In response to their joking question, “What is your beloved more than another beloved?” (5:9), she sings the praises of his radiant beauty. Already, she is directing her steps to where he has gone: “Down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to pasture his flock in the garden and to gather lilies” (6:2). In anticipation of this love nest, she can declare their union: “I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine” (6:3).

As she praises his beauty, so he praises hers: “How graceful are your feet in your sandals, O queenly maiden! Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand. Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat encircled with lilies. Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.” The lover compares her to a stately palm, her breasts like its date clusters. He vows to “climb the palm tree and lay hold its branches” (7:7–8). Or her breasts are like grape clusters, her kisses like wine (7:8–9). The maiden responds: “I am my beloved's and his desire is for me” (7:10). She calls him to “go forth into the fields” with her, to go to the vineyards to see whether the vines have budded, the grape blossoms have opened, the pomegranates are in bloom: “There I will give you my love” (7:10–12).

The last poem appeals to the hope for permanence in their love: “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm” (8:6). Her brothers still think of her as a girl: “We have a little sister and she has no breasts” (8:8), but she is already mature: “My breasts are like towers” (8:10).41 The song ends with a final promise that her vineyard is for him, her prince, and an appeal for her loved one to come quickly: “Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon a mountain of spices” (8:14).

How did such love poetry, which never mentions God and ignores the rules of patriarchal marriage, become the “holy of holies” of Hebrew scripture?⁴² Most scholars today insist on the complete secularity of the poetry, believing that it lacks any allegorical reference to the union of God and Israel. Michael Fox sees a close parallel to Egyptian love poetry of the twelfth and eleventh centuries BCE. ⁴³ Like the Song of Songs, this Egyptian poetry is secular and personal, celebrating non-marital love play between a young man and a young woman. Both praise each other's beauty and moan about their love sickness. In one such poem, the beloved is described by the boy as “lovely of eyes,” “sweet her lips,” “long of neck, white of breast, her hair like true lapis lazuli, her arms surpass gold, her fingers like lotuses.” The girl longs to see and kiss him: “My heart leaps up to go forth to make me gaze on my brother tonight. How lovely it is to pass by.”44 Although a thousand years older than the Hebrew poem, this Egyptian poetry was widely known in ancient culture and could have inspired a similar poetry in Israel.

Samuel Noah Kramer, pioneer scholar of Sumerian texts and culture, supports a different approach. He believes that the background of the Song of Songs is the ancient Near Eastern sacred marriage ritual. He suggests that this ritual was adopted under the monarchy and that Solomon, mentioned as author and archetypal king in the Song, engaged in an adaptation of the sacred marriage with a priestess representing the Goddess Astarte.⁴⁵ Kramer points to elements that are all reminiscent of the sacred marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi: the similarity of the language that describes the lover as king and shepherd, both titles of Dumuzi; the lush imagery of agricultural abundance, with flocks, grains, fruits, wine, perfumes, and flowers; and the description of the couple drawing into the garden to make love.

But the Song of Songs lacks the key purposes of the sacred marriage: the renewal of nature through the couple's lovemaking and the installation of the king on his throne through the love of the goddess. Nature is indeed lush in the Song, but it is the natural reality of springtime. It is not made fertile through the lovers' embraces. There is no evidence that sacred marriage rites were actually carried out in Israel, and it is unlikely that the Song is derived from the text of such a rite. Yet the lush language of love in vineyards and gardens of agricultural abundance, found in the poetry of the goddess and the king from Babylonia and Urgarit, may well have provided conventions for the celebration of young love, tropes which then passed into secular poetry. This seems to me a more likely explanation for the similarity of language in the Sumero-Akkadian and Hebrew poetry.

But why did the rabbis appropriate these poems and make them sacred writ? Taken on the literal level, the description of nonmarital sexual pleasure was offensive to their moral outlook, and thus they tried to guard against a literal reading. It is not enough to say that the rabbis needed to appropriate the poems because they were popular in the Hebrew secular culture; in fact, much that was popular was judged as immoral and repudiated. One can only assume that the rabbis themselves loved the poems; they appealed to a deep longing in them for innocent and blissful love. They were able to rationalize the appropriation of the poems by claiming that they represented the love between God and Israel—the true love between God and his people as it originally was, as it should be, as it will be in redemptive times.

The allegorizing of the Song of Songs as the love between God and Israel fundamentally masks its meaning. Its sensuality becomes spiritualized as a love of the mind, not the body. Indeed, its Christian monastic interpreters insist that it can be safely read only by those who have transcended and purged themselves of the temptations of physical erotic desires.46 Its egalitarian mutuality between girl and boy is transformed into a hierarchical relation between an all-powerful male God and a feminized, dependent Israel. Nonmarital sexual pleasure is construed as spiritual marriage. Female initiative is transformed into feminine passivity, awaiting the coming of the dominant male. A woman's optic is transformed into that of patriarchal males who interpret themselves collectively as the “brides” of a male God in a way that hides a homoerotic spirituality beneath symbolic heterosexuality.⁴⁷

WISDOM, GOD'S FEMALE “SIDE”?

The Wisdom literature—Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiasticus (also known as the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach), and the Wisdom of Solomon—contains a personified female figure, Wisdom, that seems at times to be a secondary manifestation, or hypostasis, of God. Scholars of this literature have debated whether Wisdom is simply a literary device, a metaphor for God's wisdom, or a being that has ontological status “alongside” Yahweh.⁴⁸ The background or origin of this figure is also the subject of inconclusive controversy. Some argue that Wisdom was drawn from the Egyptian Goddess Ma'at, who represented the wisdom of the gods, or from the Goddess Isis.⁴⁹ Others have seen reflections of Canaanite or Mesopotamian goddesses such as Astarte or Inanna.⁵⁰ John Day has pointed to Western Semitic literature, such as the Wisdom of Ahiqar, where wisdom is personified in language similar to that found in Proverbs.⁵¹

Other scholars have seen in Wisdom a reappearance of the Hebrew Goddess Asherah, whose tree pole long existed within Yahwist worship. Her fertile “tree of life” was appropriated into Yahweh's identity, even as her residual symbol, the tree pole, was purged from Yahwist cult sites by the time of the exile. Judith Hadley suggests that Wisdom is not so much a survival of Asherah as a compensation for her loss. With her functions absorbed into Yahweh, she is reconceived as a female expression of God, mediating between God and “man” (Hebrew male religious leaders).52

My view is that many of these ideas about the background of Wisdom are plausible. But they are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive; rather, they are elements in a broad array of possible cultural influences. The Wisdom figure of Hebrew literature is an original creation that transformed these influences into a new configuration, which has no exact precedent in these past expressions. But who were the creators, and what was the social context of this new configuration?

Leo Perdue fixes the sociohistorical context for the first development of the Wisdom figure in the book of Proverbs as the early periods of exile (late sixth and fifth centuries BCE) in the colony of Yehud (Judea), under Persian rule. The Zadokite priests of the restored temple in Jerusalem were the local leaders of the colony recognized by the Persian administration. A class of sages formed the scholarly supporters of this priestly leadership. These leaders, recently returned from exile through Persian patronage, sought to establish their legitimacy as the continuation of the Hebrew monarchy, which had reached its height under Solomon. They also were anxious to reclaim land that had passed into the hands of foreigners and those of mixed parentage during the exile.⁵³

Perdue views the figure of Wisdom as a creation of this scholarly class and a representative of their interests. She epitomizes their claims that their teachings represent both historical continuity with Solomon and the ongoing expression of God's wisdom. By rooting Wisdom in God's creation of the world “in the beginning,” their teachings become permanent and unchangeable, representing the foundations of the cosmos itself. Only through schooling oneself in these teachings does one have life. This way of life is also the way to wealth and worldly success. Those who accept it adhere to the established world order, identified as rooted in God's cosmic order, with its promise of patronage through the local leadership class and its imperial sponsors. Those who defy or reject it are on the path of disaster, and ultimately of death.

The call issued by Wisdom to come and learn from these sages and thereby become one of them is addressed to young men of families affluent enough to spare their sons from gainful labor for a time. These young men stand at the crossroads between various “calls” and temptations—some are tempted to dally among the pleasures of the city and neglect the hard work of intellectual discipline, for example, while others might be tempted to leave the strict endogamy of the renewed Jewish community for marriage into families of mixed parentage and culture. Still others could be tempted to follow dissident apocalyptic visionaries who would resist Persian rule, hoping for divine intervention to overthrow it and restore an idealized, independent Davidic monarchy—revolutionary schemes that could bring on the punishing wrath of Persia, as would happen later in Roman times.

The counterpart to Lady Wisdom in the book of Proverbs is Dame Folly, who sums up all the temptations that lure young men to such disasters.54 Ultimately, the crossroads at which these young, unschooled men stand lead in opposite directions, between life and death. To choose the way of Wisdom is to choose life; to follow Dame Folly is to sink down into Sheol, the dark underworld of the dead.

The stark contrast between these two female mediators, one who leads to life and the other to death, is established in the first chapter of Proverbs. The sage addresses the potential student as father to son. His teachings are the continuation of the wisdom learned in the family from his parents: “Hear my child, your father's instruction and do not reject your mother's teachings” (Prov. 1:8). Here, father and mother stand as a unified voice for the young man, urging him to move toward success and avoid the path of death. The “sinners” who tempt the young man in the wrong direction are presented not simply as idlers but as a gang of robbers and murderers. They say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood; let us wantonly ambush the innocent.... We shall find all kinds of costly things, we shall fill our house with booty. Throw in your lot with us; we shall all have a common purse” (1:11, 13–14).

Having warned the young man against this rival gang, Wisdom speaks in the first person, crying out in the streets, the city squares, the busy corners, and at the entrance to the city gates. Her voice is one of stern rebuke, warning of impending calamity for those who fail to heed her call. In language reminiscent of war and storm goddesses such as Inanna/Ishtar, this calamity is imagined as a “panic” that “strikes you like a storm,” a “whirlwind,” bringing “distress and anguish.” When this just retribution befalls those who reject Wisdom's call, it will be too late to call for her help. Anat's bloodthirsty laughter echoes in Wisdom's threat: “I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when panic strikes you” (1:26–27).

But all is not yet lost. There is still time to repent. If those who stray turn and accept Wisdom's call, the good life awaits: “Those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster” (1:33). The wisdom promised here involves not only the inward cultivation of the soul but also concrete material benefits: to be “healthy, wealthy, and wise,” protected from ill fortune; to be assured of “length of days and years of life,” “abundant welfare,” “favor and good repute in the sight of God and of the people,” “healing of your flesh and a refreshment for your body,” “your barns... filled with plenty,” “your vats... bursting with wine” (3:2, 4, 8, 10). In Wisdom's right hand is “long life”; in her left hand, “riches and honor” (3:16). In an ancient metaphor reminiscent of the tree goddess of plenty, Wisdom is “the tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy” (3:18).

Lady Wisdom, with all the promises of the “good life” in her hands, is again and again contrasted with the “other woman,” a seductress with “smooth words” who appears to promise happiness but whose ways lead to death (2:16–19). Her lips “drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps follow the path to Sheol” (5:3–5). In chapter 5, this woman represents the temptation to marry into “alien” families of non-Jews, or those of mixed parentage. The young man is warned that such intermarriage enriches others instead of building up his own group: “You will give your honor to others,... strangers will take their fill of your wealth and your labors will go to the house of an alien” (5:9–10).

The solution is strict endogamy, embracing a wife from one's own group and clinging to her all life long: “Drink water from your own cistern. . . . Let them be for yourself alone and not for sharing with strangers.” The faithful wife from one's own group is hymned in the love language of the Song of Songs: “Rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. May her breasts satisfy you at all times; may you be intoxicated always by her love” (Prov. 5:18b-19).⁵⁵

The “other woman” from outside one's group is defined as an adulteress, one who is already married but who seeks to seduce the young man whose feet are straying into other pastures. The threat here is not sex with prostitutes, but marriage with a woman of another group. The “smooth tongue of the adulteress,” with her beauty and seductive ways, is distinguished from the prostitute: a prostitute can be bought for the price of “a loaf of bread,” but this “wife of another... stalks a man's very life” (6:24–26).

In chapter 7, we are treated to a steamy scene of this “other woman,” who lies in wait for the young man in the streets, “decked out like a prostitute,” “loud and wayward.” As he wanders by, she seizes and kisses him, enticing him into her house with the promise of a night of lovemaking while her husband is away. In the language of love poetry, she says: “I have decked my couch with coverings,... I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,… come let us take our fill of love until morning, let us delight ourselves with love, for my husband is not at home” (7:10–19). This scene gains vividness because it has been glimpsed through a lattice window (by whom? Wisdom as the teacher who stays inside the home?): “For at the window of my house I looked out through my lattice and I saw … I observed”(7:6, 7).56

The culminating picture of these two rival women, Wisdom and Folly, is found in chapter 9 of Proverbs. Here, Wisdom is the hostess who invites the untutored to her banquet. In a language reminiscent of a Near Eastern goddess who builds a “house” (temple) as the seat of her presence and lays out a feast, Wisdom has “built her house, hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table” (9:1–2). She sends out her servant girls (teachers as representatives of Wisdom?), who call the prospective students from “the highest places in the town.” Her invitation to “eat of my bread and drink of my wine” is the call to spiritual growth: “Lay aside simpleness and live, walk in the way of insight” (9:5–6).⁵⁷

Wisdom's rival, Folly, is described as a deceptive “look-alike.” She too takes her seat “at the high places of the town, calling to those who pass by... you who are simple turn in here” (9:14, 16). But her drink and bread are stolen pleasures, tasted in secret; her guests are already on their way down to Sheol (9:17–18).⁵⁸ If the call of Wisdom and that of Folly look and sound so much alike, how can the “simple” tell them apart? The surest way is to stay close to home and not to stray into the houses of “aliens.”

Despite the superficial similarity of Wisdom and Folly, they are polar opposites. Wisdom not only brings life; she is the life principle of the cosmos itself. Folly belongs to the realm that God does not enter, a realm that is outside creation itself—Sheol, the underworld of the dead. This identification of Wisdom with the foundation of God's creation is revealed several times in Proverbs. “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth, by understanding he established the heavens” (3:19–20). The description of her cosmological role in chapter 8 asserts that Wisdom was created by God “at the beginnings of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.” Before anything else was created, “depths,... springs abounding in water,... mountains,... earth and fields or the world's first bits of soil,... I was there” (Prov. 8:22, 24, 25, 26, 27).

Wisdom is described as God's first creation. She is his child and his assistant, who was “beside him” as he “marked out the foundations of the earth” (8:22–30).⁵⁹ Wisdom's role in creation is not just as a “helper,” however. She is the place where God's joy and satisfaction in his creation, and especially in the creation of humans, overflow: “I was daily his delight, rejoicing with him always, and delighting in the human race” (8:30b–31).⁶⁰ Wherever God rejoices in his creation, she is there.

This cosmological role of Wisdom is repeated with variations in Ecclesiasticus and Job. Ecclesiasticus (the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach) declares that “all wisdom is from the Lord and with him it remains forever” (Ecclus. 1:1). Thus, Wisdom is not a separate divine hypostasis, but simply God's wisdom. Yet she is also God's creation: “She was created before all other things... it is he who created her, he saw her and took her measure.” This created wisdom was poured out “upon all God's works.” She is also the special gift of those who love God, “created with the faithful in the womb, an eternal foundation among humans and among their descendants she will abide faithfully” (1:4, 9, 14–15). Although Wisdom permeates all creation and is given to all who seek the Lord, her definitive “incarnation” is the Torah.61 It is in the commandments of Moses that she was given her “resting place,” taking “root in an honored people, in the portion of the Lord, his heritage.” All those who obey these commandments “will not sin” (24:11, 22).

Job has a more skeptical take on the capacity of humans to know Wisdom and obey her commands. Only God knows the way to wisdom; it is hidden from all human eyes. It dwells with God in the secret places of the cosmos, far beyond human experience. Humans have technical skills, but God's wisdom is mysterious, like God's ways themselves, far transcending human capacity to know and understand (Job 28).⁶²

In the Wisdom of Solomon, a work of the Hellenistic Jewish community of Egypt from the early first century BCE, Wisdom's cosmological role expands.⁶³ She is the inner spiritual life of the soul, which is, at the same time, the immanence of God's divine spirit that permeates the cosmos: “She pervades and permeates all things, for she is the breath of the power of God and a pure emanation of the glory of the almighty.” In language that would later be echoed in the Christian doctrine of the cosmological Logos, “she is the reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God and the image of his goodness” (Wisd. of Sol. 7:24–25, 26).

Wisdom is the divine presence that accompanies God's people, Israel, throughout their journey, protecting them from idolaters. To love her, to commune with her, is to connect God's eternal spirit with the human soul and thereby ensure immortal life.⁶⁴ Here, Wisdom takes on a distinctly Hellenistic soteriological role, the assurance of eternal life (perhaps to rival the Isis mystery religion, discussed in chapter 4). She answers questions about the soul's capacity to survive death and to ascend to live forever with God and even suggests that it is better to die unmarried and without children. This assertion seems to valorize the sort of ascetic life found in the Egyptian Jewish sect of the Therapeutae (examined in chapter 4).

We have left the earlier Hebraic world, where life was bounded by human finitude, and a grim Sheol after death, and which saw children as the chief means to affirm ongoing life. The soul now has a heavenly future, and Wisdom is its means and guide to heaven. This concept of Wisdom would be continued and transformed in Christianity. Rabbinic Jewish thought would replace it with the feminine figure of Shekinah, the immanent presence of God in the Jewish community (fig. 19).

FIGURE 19
Shekinah holds the baby Moses, third century CE. Wall mural, Dura synagogue.

Where are women in the vision of Wisdom? At first glance, Wisdom seems to give women an exalted identity as quasidivine mediators between God and “men.” But a more careful examination reveals the androcentrism of this vision. Although the picture of Wisdom may contain whispers of real women as counseling wives and mothers, women as seekers of knowledge and teachers of wisdom are absent or invisible.⁶⁵ The world of wisdom is defined by relations between men, between human men and a male God, played out in relations between fathers and sons, male teachers and students.66 Femaleness appears as two contrary liminal symbols on the borders of this male world, between human males and God, and between human males and death, the polar opposite of God. Women as agents, as seekers of wisdom in their own right, cannot insert themselves into this world of male-male relations without fundamentally reconstructing its gender symbolism.