Peter J. Sabo

The Lot Complex: The Use and Abuse of Daughters in the Hebrew Bible by Peter J. Sabo A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Religious Studies University of Alberta © Peter J. Sabo, 2017 Abstract This study explores the daughter stories of the Hebrew Bible from literary, psychoanalytic, structuralist, and deconstructionist perspectives. In seeking to understand how daughters and daughterhood are presented I provide close readings—paying attention to the rhetorical strategies, themes, motifs, and symbols—of discrete narratives of daughters and consider how they function within the biblical text at large as well. Because the biblical text assumes that a woman must always be defined in subordinate position to her patriarch, this is also a study about the daughter-father pair. These two family members are the most juxtaposed to each other in terms of gender, authority, and cultural privilege, and thus provide rich insight into the gender ideology of the Hebrew Bible. The story of Lot and his daughters serves as a paradigmatic example. The daughters are initially presented as passive objects, fully under the control and power of their father—by the end of the narrative, the daughters are active agents while the father is the object of their seduction intended to preserve his seed. In between the mother and sons-in-law are introduced and erased, typifying the absence of biblical mother-daughter relationships and the fraught triangular affinity between fathers, sons-in-law, and daughters. Full of ambivalence and irony, this story reveals many of the symbols and patterns, projections and (repressed) desires, and fears and fantasies that characterize biblical daughter stories. From the Lot story, I proceed to analyze the narratives of the first woman of the Hebrew Bible (eventually named Eve), Rachel and Leah, Dinah, the daughters of Judges (Achsah, Jephthah’s daughter, the Timnite daughter, the Levite’s pilegesh, and the daughters of Jabesh- Gilead and Shiloh), Tamar (Gen 38), Ruth, Merab and Michal, Tamar (2 Sam 13), and the Daughter of Zion. Each story is read on its own but also in regard to how it corresponds and ii contrasts to the other stories and the broader themes and concerns that are associated with biblical daughters. Like Lot’s daughters, these women display how biblical daughters both affirm the patriarchal ideology of the biblical text while disturbing and problematizing it as well. iii Preface This thesis is an original work by Peter J. Sabo. Some of the research conducted for the thesis appears in revised and expanded form in peer-reviewed publications by the same author. Portions of Chapter 1 appear in Peter J. Sabo, “Blurred Boundaries in the Lot Story.” Pages 433- 44 in History, Memory, Hebrew Scriptures: A Festschrift for Ehud Ben Zvi. Edited by Ian D. Wilson and Diana Edelman. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015; and in Peter J. Sabo and Rhiannon Graybill, “Mythical and Biblical Caves: A Speleology.” Biblical Interpretation (forthcoming, 2017). Portions of Chapter 3 appear in Peter J. Sabo, “Drawing out Moses: Water as a Personal Motif of the Biblical Character.” Pages 409-36 in Thinking of Water in the Early Second Temple Period. Edited by Ehud Ben Zvi and Christoph Levin. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentlische Wissenschaft. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014. Portions of Chapter 5 appear in Peter J. Sabo, “Poetry Amid Ruins.” Pages 141-57 in Poets, Prophets, and Texts in Play: Studies in Biblical Poetry and Prophecy in Honour of Francis Landy. Edited by Ehud Ben Zvi, Claudia V. Camp, David M. Gunn, and Aaron W. Hughes. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015. iv Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Preface............................................................................................................................................ iv Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Lot and His Daughters: Incestuous Origins ................................................................ 19 Lot’s Wife and The Erasure of the Mother ............................................................................... 19 Lot and his Sons-in-Law ........................................................................................................... 31 The House of the Father (The Giving Away of the Daughters) ............................................... 40 Lot and His Daughters: From the Father .................................................................................. 60 Daughters of Patriarchy ............................................................................................................ 85 Chapter 2: In the Beginning, She Was a Daughter? ..................................................................... 93 Metaphor, God’s Fatherhood, and the Theme of Similarity and Difference ............................ 97 Genesis 2 and The Family’s Genealogy ................................................................................. 102 Genesis 4: The Woman’s (Pro)Creation ................................................................................. 112 Chapter 3: Of Bed-tricks, Stick-tricks, and Body-tricks: Rachel and Leah, and Jacob and Laban ..................................................................................................................................................... 129 The Bed-trick .......................................................................................................................... 133 The Stick-trick ........................................................................................................................ 145 The Body-trick ........................................................................................................................ 157 Addendum: Dinah ................................................................................................................... 177 Chapter 4: “Go and Lie in Ambush in the Vineyards”: Daughters in Judges ............................. 193 Achsah..................................................................................................................................... 196 Jephthah’s Daughter................................................................................................................ 208 The Daughter from Timnah .................................................................................................... 233 The Levite’s Pilegesh and The Daughters of Jabesh-Gilead and Shiloh ................................ 239 Chapter 5: Daughters, Kings, and Gods ...................................................................................... 265 The Ruth Corpus: Ancestresses of David ............................................................................... 266 Merab, Michal, and Tamar: Daughters and David ................................................................. 284 The Daughter of Zion: David’s City ....................................................................................... 307 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 326 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 335 v Introduction What is man that the itinerary of his desire creates such a text? --Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Unknown to her, a daughter keeps her father awake, The worry she gives him drives away his sleep: In her youth, in case she never marries, Married, in case she should be disliked, As a virgin, in case she should be defamed And found with child in her father’s house, Having a husband, in case she goes astray, Married, in case she should be barren. Your daughter is headstrong? Keep a sharp look-out That she does not make you the laughing stock of your enemies, The talk of the town, the object of common gossip, And put you to public shame. --Sirach 42.9-11 So we’ll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too— Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out— And take upon us the mystery of things As if we were God’s spies --Shakespeare, King Lear, 5.3.11-17 The dominant ideology of the Hebrew Bible assumes that father and son are structurally homologous. This is the central presumption by which the text proceeds, as the line from one generation to another is imagined through a “chain-male” linkage. The typical biblical genealogy, for example, moves along quite nicely without the mention of women. Of course, the Hebrew Bible is not exclusively homosocial—it is, after all, a corpus deeply concerned with family and ancestry—and women appear at strategic points to play important roles. 1 What strategic purpose is played by daughters, the most absent and invisible member of the biblical family?1 This study will explore this question by offering a literary and comparative analysis of the stories of daughters in the Hebrew Bible. Unsurprisingly, daughters are not as prominent as mothers. A daughter as such does not participate in extending the family, and until she has transitioned to a wife and mother she plays an ambivalent role in the father’s house. Indeed, there is no daughter

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