Men, Masculinities and Intermarriage in Ezra 9-10 (Routledge Studies in the Biblical World) [1 ed.] 9781032342177, 9781032342184, 9781003321064, 103234217X

Citation preview

Men, Masculinities and Intermarriage in Ezra 9–10

Offering a reading of the intermarriage debate and expulsion of the foreign women in Ezra 9–10, this book engages with the production and performance of masculinities in this biblical text, shifting the focus away from the ‘foreign women’ to the men who are the primary actors in this work. This approach addresses the diversity of masculinities and the ways in which they are implicated in the production of power relations in the text. It explores the ‘feminized’ masculinity of the peoples-of-the-lands, the unstable masculinity of the golah, Ezra’s performance of penitential masculinity and the rehabilitation of divine masculinity. The rejection of the marriages and the call for the expulsion of the women and children are addressed as sites on which masculinities and power relations are configured. In doing so, this book sheds light on how women and the traits and performances culturally ascribed to women, femininity and inferior masculinities are appropriated to produce masculinities and negotiate power relations between men. It posits that the debate in Ezra 9–10 is not, ultimately, about the women themselves, but about bringing the masculinities, bodies and practices of dissenting men under the ‘management’ of those who wield the Torah in the narrative world of the text. Men, Masculinities and Intermarriage in Ezra-9–10 is of interest for scholars and students working on the book of Ezra specifically, as well as the Hebrew Bible and its world more broadly. It is also a valuable study for those working on masculinities and gender in the biblical world and ancient Near East. Elisabeth M. Cook is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Biblical Interpretation at the Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana in San José, Costa Rica where she has held the position of Rector since 2017.

Routledge Studies in the Biblical World

Routledge Studies in the Biblical World publishes edited collections and monographs which explore the Hebrew Bible in its ancient context. The series encompasses all aspects of the world of the Hebrew bible, including its archaeological, historical, and theological context, as well as exploring cultural issues such as urbanism, literary culture, class, economics, and sexuality and gender. Aimed at biblical scholars and historians alike, Studies in the Biblical World is an invaluable resource for anyone researching the ancient Levant. Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel Advancing Gender Studies in the Hebrew Bible Brian Charles DiPalma Religion, Ethnicity, and Xenophobia in the Bible A Theoretical, Exegetical and Theological Survey Brian Rainey Job’s Body and the Dramatised Comedy of Moralising Katherine E. Southwood Male Friendship, Homosociality, and Women in the Hebrew Bible Malignant Fraternities Barbara Thiede Embodiment of Divine Knowledge in Early Judaism Andrei A. Orlov Cultures of Mobility, Migration, and Religion in Ancient Israel and Its World Eric M. Trinka Men, Masculinities and Intermarriage in Ezra 9–10 Elisabeth M. Cook For more information about this series please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-inthe-Biblical-World/book-series/BIBWORLD

Men, Masculinities and Intermarriage in Ezra 9–10 Elisabeth M. Cook

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Elisabeth M. Cook The right of Elisabeth M. Cook to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-34217-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-34218-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-32106-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/b23091 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

In loving memory of my mother, Beverly Jean Steike (1932–2022)

Contents

Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Preface

ix x xii

1

Introduction: the problem with the foreign women in Ezra 9–10 Introduction 1 The problem with the problem of the foreign women  3 The ‘real’ women of Yehud  6 Embracing ambiguity  9 Outline of the book  11 References 18

2

What masculinities do to help Introduction 23 Gender matters  24 Men and masculinities in the Hebrew Bible  26 Gendering otherness  28 References 33

23

3

Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10 Introduction 38 The men of the golah 38 The enemy is a ‘she’  40 Daughters of the Canaanites  42 People of menstrual impurity  44 Golah masculinity and its discontents  46 References 52

38

1

viii  Contents 4

Mourning and masculinity Introduction 56 Ezra the man  56 Ezra the mourner  59 The power of mourning  63 Problematizing priestly performance  67 References 75

56

5

The masculinization of Yhwh Introduction 79 The silent god of Ezra 9–10  79 The problem of the exile for the masculinity of Yhwh  82 The supreme monarch  85 The benevolent provider  88 The imperial lawgiver  92 References 101

79

6

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities Introduction 105 Intermarriage and masculinities  105 Managing men  110 Foreign women and golah masculinities  116 References 125

105

7

Conclusion: masculinities matter Introduction 128 On men and masculinities in Ezra 9–10  129 Managing men  131 Beyond the text  132 References 135

128

Index137

Acknowledgements

I begin these acknowledgements with a special thanks to my doctoral thesis supervisor, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, for her guidance, insightful comments, constructive feedback, critique and encouragement. This book is a revised version of that thesis, which I submitted to the University of Exeter in 2019. I am grateful for the support of my co-workers and colleagues at the Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana in Costa Rica and the valuable insights my students have provided. A special and heartfelt thanks goes to José Enrique Ramírez, my friend and colleague, for countless hours of discussion and debate that sharpened my ideas and offered much-needed perspective and motivation. My family’s support and encouragement have been invaluable. I especially want to acknowledge my mother, Beverly Jean Steike, a woman whose strength, integrity and kindness I can only aspire to have. She passed away while I was completing this manuscript, and it is to her that I dedicate the book.

Abbreviations

AB ABull AcBib AHR AI BCAW BHS Bib BI BJS BS BTB BZAW CBQ CBR FAT FemRev G&S HALOT HBAI HR HSM HTR IBC JAOS JBL JBQ JFSR JHS JJS JSJ JSJSup JSOT

The Anchor Bible The Art Bulletin Academia Biblica The American Historical Review Acta Iranica Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies Biblica Biblical Interpretation Biblical and Judaic Studies Bibliotheca Sacra Biblical Theology Bulletin Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Catholic Biblical Quarterly Currents in Biblical Research Forschungen zum Alten Testament Feminist Review Gender & Society The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel History of Religions Harvard Semitic Monographs Harvard Theological Review Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Jewish Bible Quarterly Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion Journal of Hebrew Scriptures Journal of Jewish Studies Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Abbreviations  xi JSOTSup JSS JTS Lemir LD LHBOTS LSTS Millennium MM NCBC NICOT OBO OTE POST RAG RSBW SBLABS SBLMS SBLSS SBLSymS SJOT ST StP TDOT ThSoc TOTL Transeu VT VTSup WAWSup WBC ZAW

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series Journal of Semitic Studies Journal of Theological Studies Lemir: Revista de Literatura Española Medieval y del Renacimiento Lectio Difficilior: European Electronic Journal for Feminist Exegesis Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies Library of Second Temple Studies Millennium: Journal of International Studies Men and Masculinities New Century Bible Commentary New International Commentary on the Old Testament Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Old Testament Essays Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds Religion & Gender Routledge Studies in the Biblical World Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and Biblical Studies Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Studies Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Sociological Theory Studia Pohl Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament Theory and Society The Old Testament Library Transeuphratène Vetus Testamentum Supplements to Vetus Testamentum Writings from the Ancient World Supplements Word Biblical Commentary Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

Preface

I first came across Ezra 9–10 many years ago as I began my academic study of the Hebrew Bible. The treatment of the foreign women, their silence in the text and the divine legitimation awarded to their expulsion are not far removed from the lives of many women in Latin America, where I was born and live. The use and abuse of the Bible, to the detriment of women in particular, are prevalent in this region, both in the pulpit and the realms of government and policy-making. My first forays into the text focused on the ‘othering’ of these women and the ways in which this serves to ‘normalize’ their expulsion, a dynamic ever present in modern contexts. More interested in the ‘world of the text’ than its historical referents, I began to ask myself how and why a group of men could be convinced that Yhwh required them to expel their wives and children. This led me to inquire about the men and the role masculinities play in this admittedly uncomfortable text. As my research progressed, I had the discomforting realization that the women’s marginalization in the text is not limited to their expulsion. Even more disturbingly, they are used by the text as the ‘playing field’ for disputes concerning masculine performance and the demands of covenantal fidelity to Yhwh. When I began my foray into the study of masculinities in Ezra 9–10, there were few published studies on masculinities in the Hebrew Bible. As I write these words, the field has grown and blossomed, and numerous essays, collected volumes and monographs are available. This book locates itself among these studies and seeks to broaden the focus of gendered analysis of violence against women and ‘inferior’ men in biblical texts and modern contexts.

1 Introduction The problem with the foreign women in Ezra 9–10

Introduction The books of Ezra and Nehemiah have been productive sites for scholarly explorations concerning the history, literature, identity, social configuration and religious practices of Persian-period Yehud.1 Amid these discussions, Ezra 9–10 stands out as a particularly intriguing and controversial textual unit, especially as concerns the expulsion of the foreign wives called for in Ezra 10:2–5: We have been unfaithful to our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but now there is hope for Israel despite this. And now let us make a covenant with our God to expel all the women and those born from them, according to the counsel of my lord and those who tremble at the commandment of our God; and according to the Torah let it be done. It is perhaps not surprising that Ezra 9–10 rejects intermarriage, as it is a polemical matter in various other biblical texts.2 What has rested uneasily among many scholars and readers is the demand that men from the community of returned exiles, the golah in the book of Ezra,3 expel their wives and children in what is presented as an act of fidelity to Yhwh. Hugh Williamson’s evaluation that it is ‘one of the least attractive parts of Ezra-Nehemiah, if not of the whole OT’ is echoed by those who variously describe the measure as inhumane, radical, severe and ethically insensitive.4 Even more problematic is the absence of any clear explanation in the text that might explain why the women should be expelled and the families broken up. It is hardly surprising that scholarly inquiries into Ezra 9–10 have been intently focused on elucidating the reasons for the expulsion of the women and children.5 Not only are the women silent in this text, but the text is also largely silent about the women and their children. Scholars have sought to fill in these gaps by drawing on other biblical texts as well as historical reconstructions of Persian Period Yehud, along with anthropological and sociological models that might offer insight into the decision to expel the women. Many of these inquiries focus on the foreign women themselves – their identities and presumed influence and actions – as the key to deciphering the text. Claudia Camp observes this tendency in studies of Ezra 9–10 that ‘take at historical face value the textual claim that the problem lies only DOI: 10.4324/b23091-1

2  Introduction with foreign wives’.6 This appears to be Bob Becking’s assumption when he addresses the ‘mixed marriage crisis’ by asking questions about the women: ‘What intrigues me is the question of the identity of these women. Who were they? Why did they evoke the anger of the community?’7 These and other similar questions render the women the problematic figures in the text; scholars examine their ethnicity, ties to local inhabitants, assumed religious and sexual proclivities and cultic status in search of clues to decipher this uncomfortable text. This approach places the burden of proof on the women as the key to unlocking the mysteries of the text and, for some scholars, its assumed historical referents. In effect, it makes the women responsible for their fate. While Ezra 9–10 offers little information about the women, who they are or what they have done, it has much to say about the men. Indeed, men, not women, are the primary actors in Ezra 9–10. Men take wives and bring them into the golah, an act that involves establishing relations between golah men and the male kin of these daughters (9:2). Men accuse other men (9:1–2), gather (9:4; 10:1, 9–10), mourn, pray, tremble, fall to the ground, weep (9:3–10:1), propose covenants (10:3), swear (10:5), make pledges (10:19), fast (10:6), issue orders that threaten the property and status of other men (10:8), plan (10:13–14), voice dissenting opinions (10:15), carry out the plan (10:16–17) and occupy all the social and cultic roles in the text. It is men’s bodies that are encountered, men’s relationships that are disputed, golah men’s cultural memory of captivity and plundering that is memorialized (9:6) and the men’s relationship with Yhwh that is called into question (10:2). As Tamara Eskenazi notes, Ezra 9–10 shows no interest in this female Other per se but only in convincing Judahite men and the community as a whole that their actions endanger everyone and that they must separate from any foreign wives.8 However, studies of Ezra 9–10 have not sufficiently analysed, problematized or considered how these men are constructed and deployed in the text as men. Nor have these narrative players’ masculine performances, attributes and bodies been the object of gendered analysis. This chapter highlights the problematic burden placed on the women in many scholarly approaches to Ezra 9–10 as they seek to explain their expulsion and that of their children. It proposes a reading of the text that shifts the focus of analysis from the women to the men and male groups that populate this text. This reading does not attempt to fill in the gaps left by the text concerning the foreign women. Instead, it addresses them as intrinsic to the narrative world the text produces, a conceptual, material and embodied ‘world’ in which characters are deployed, and gendered bodies, identities and power relations are performatively enacted. In this narrative world, the identities, relationships and performances disputed are not those of the women but rather those of the men and male groups. What is at stake is not the fate of the women but that of the men who act upon them in ways that threaten power relations internal to the group and its relationship to Yhwh. This narrative world is one in which the authoritative status of the Torah and that of the

Introduction  3 figure of Ezra are disputed and in which they function as sites on which cultural memory is constituted, memorialized and debated in Second Temple Judaisms and beyond.9 The problem with the problem of the foreign women The foreign women are a problem for the golah in Ezra 9–10, and they are a problem for biblical scholars, one that they seek to resolve. The text, however, offers limited information about these women. Ezra 9 describes them with the term ‘daughters-of-them’ (‫ – )בנתיהם‬that is the daughters of the peoples-of-the-lands from whom the golah is to maintain separation (9:1–2).10 Ezra 10 uses the term foreign women (‫ ;נׁשים נכריות‬10:2,10,11,17,18,44) and indicates that they have given birth to children (10:3,44). A more elaborate, although still ambiguous, description is provided of the peoples-of-the-lands to whom the women belong: they are associated with the abominations of ‘Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites’ (9:1); they are impure due to these abominations and contaminate the land (9:11) and they are ‘abominable peoples’ (‫ )עמי התעבות‬with whom the golah should not intermarry (9:14). What precisely these ‘abominations’ are, how they generate impurity and in what way the peoples-of-the-lands are related to ancient indigenous inhabitants of the land of Canaan and other neighbouring peoples are not clearly stated. Scholars look to other biblical texts concerning intermarriage and other biblical foreign women to fill these gaps. Reconstructions of the social and historical context of fifth-century bce Yehud also play an important role in scholarly interrogations of the text. The terminology used in Ezra 9–10, and characterizations of foreign women in the Hebrew Bible more generally, have led many scholars to conclude that Ezra and the community gathered around him reject the women because they are either apostate, foreign, sexually deviant and/or impure.11 The association with ‘Canaanites’ and other undesirable peoples in 9:1 (whether these are understood as a social, genealogical construct or a pejorative reference to those who are not Israel) may suggest to readers that the women were prone to lead Israel after other gods and to participate in practices deemed unsuitable for Israel.12 Pentateuchal prohibitions against intermarriage with the indigenous inhabitants of Canaan view the daughters of those peoples as a particular threat to (male) Israel’s fidelity to Yhwh (Exod 34:15–16; Deut 7:1–4). In Ezra 9, however, there is no indication that the peoples-of-the-lands follow other gods or that their daughters incite the golah to worship them. The designation ‫( נׁשים נכריות‬10:2,10,11,17,18,44), a label that describes other ‘problematic’ women in the Hebrew Bible, reinforces the image of the women’s religious and ethnic otherness. Solomon’s ‫ נׁשים נכריות‬turn his heart from Yhwh towards the gods of their peoples (1 Kgs 11:1–8). Nehemiah refers to Solomon in his exhortation against the Yehudite men who had married ‫ נׁשים נכריות‬from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab (Neh 13:23–27). His explicit concern, however, is that the children of these marriages had forgotten how to speak Yehudite (Neh 13:24). The book of Proverbs uses the term in its singular form to designate the ‘strange’ woman (‫ )נכריה‬whose sexual guiles threaten to lead Israelite men down the wrong path.13

4  Introduction However, the ‫ נׁשים נכריות‬in Ezra 10 do not lead Israel after other deities, teach Israelite children to speak other languages or sexually entice the men of the golah. Donald Moffatt argues that Ezra 9–10 alludes to these images and incorporates them into the construction of the foreign women as a ‘powerful symbol’ that encompasses their role as ‘agents of apostasy, contagious impurity, an alluring temptation that carried destruction for the community’.14 Willa Johnson further develops this characterization when she describes the women in Ezra 9–10 as ‘alluring, defiling, and mysterious’ due to their foreignness.15 While the ambiguity concerning these women may indeed render them mysterious, any reference to their role as ‘agents of apostasy’ or ‘an alluring temptation’ is far from evident. Such conflations of Ezra 9–10 with other biblical foreign women may lead to conclusions that are not warranted. The study of the foreign women in this text should consider their distinct characterization and deployment in the narrative world of Ezra 9–10. The writers of Ezra 9–10 had ample opportunity to highlight any unacceptable religious practices, inappropriate sexual behaviour or cultural issues if these had been of concern, but they did not. Unlike other ‫ נׁשים נכריות‬in the Hebrew Bible, the women in Ezra 9–10 are awarded no speech, no actions are attributed to them specifically and they are not accused of any wrongdoing. Furthermore, characterizations of other biblical foreign women do not convincingly explain why the women in Ezra 9–10 and their children must be expelled from the families of golah men. David Janzen argues that the text does, in fact, explain the expulsion of the foreign women: ‘they are polluting (‫ )נדה‬women who have polluted the land with their impurity (‫’)טמאה‬.16 Employing anthropological models developed by Mary Douglas and Richard Fenn,17 he characterizes their expulsion as a witch-hunt, a ritualized act that tends to target women.18 He draws on Sherry Ortner’s nature/culture model to posit that the community views the women as threatening because their gender roles identify them with ‘nature’ rather than ‘culture’. It is not surprising that when anxiety seizes a community that it is about to disintegrate it will look to women as the root of the cause when there is no other group that may be easily located. They are the people most easily associated with the anti-social. And when a society has strong external boundaries, it will not hesitate to see women as really under control of the foreign, that force par excellence that opposes the social.19 Since the problem is the impurity of the women, ‘it is no wonder that the solution is to force the women out’.20 The expulsion ultimately benefits the community, he concludes, as it addresses the exacerbated social anxiety and weakening internal adherence to social norms generated by the presence of Persian military and foreign traders.21 It functions to produce assent to a pre-existing worldview, norms and authority structure threatened by the inappropriate actions of the men who brought the women into the community.22 Janzen’s argument is based on the impurity of the women, who are ‘sources of pollution’.23 In Ezra 9:11, however, impurity is ascribed not solely to the women but to the peoples-of-the-lands as a whole. Thus, his analysis uncritically adopts

Introduction  5 naturalized gender dichotomies and stereotypical associations of women with magic, nature and deviancy.24 Furthermore, since Janzen’s study is predicated on the fundamental historicity of the text, he is more interested in proposing historical scenarios and anthropological models that might explain the ‘witch-hunt’ in Ezra 9–10 as something that actually happened than in the more nuanced and complex narrative dynamic of the text itself. The terminology of impurity in Ezra 9:11 is the focus of various studies, especially as it contrasts with the characterization of the golah in Ezra 9:2 as ‘holy seed’ (‫)זרע הקדׁש‬. These discussions focus significantly on determining the ‘category’ of impurity referenced by the text ‒ be it ritual, moral, genealogical, sexual or a combination thereof – as a key to understanding why the women had to be expelled. While some argue that Ezra 9:11 references ritual impurity,25 Jonathan Klawans posits that the text is concerned with ‘moral impurity’ that derives not from contact with an impure person or object but from sinful ‘defiling acts’ that morally defile the sinner as well as the land and the sanctuary.26 He identifies this moral impurity specifically with the foreign women, arguing that the ‘abominable acts of the women in question defile the land of Israel’.27 As noted, however, it is the peoples-of-the-lands, rather than the women, who are characterized as impure in Ezra 9:11. Thus, if moral impurity is indeed at stake, the defiling ‘abominable acts’ that contaminate the land in Klawans’ analysis should not be attributed to the women alone, but to their kinship group, the peoples-of-thelands (9:1,11,14). For Christine Hayes, at stake in Ezra 9 is genealogical impurity, an innovative conception of impurity prevalent in Second Temple Period texts.28 The problem with the marriages in Ezra 9–10 is that the foreign women taken as wives by golah men would profane the holy seed (descendants) of the golah (Ezra 9:2;11).29 Along similar lines, Eve Feinstein argues that in Ezra 9–10, intermarriage threatens Israel’s collective genealogical essence since the ‘polluting women’ contaminate the ‘pure male Israelite body’.30 Rather than focus on categorizing and systematizing biblical impurity, a debated matter in and of itself,31 T.M. Lemos suggests a more focused analysis of what impurity constructions do in a biblical text. She asks, for instance, ‘how conceptions of impurity’ intersect with other aspects of identity and performance in biblical texts and how ‘individual texts and authors draw upon and manipulate these conceptions’.32 This approach would consider the gendered and performative effects of impurity ascriptions in Ezra 9–10; that is, how impurity is implicated in the production of the foreign women as well as the gendering of the peoples-of-thelands and the men of the golah.33 Scholars also suggest that the Torah prohibitions referenced in Ezra 9:10–12 may explain the expulsion of the women and children. While the terminology and phrasing suggest the writer was familiar with Deuteronomy 7:3–4 and Leviticus 18:24–30, in particular, there are significant differences as well.34 Ezra 9:11 echoes Leviticus 18:24–28 in its concern with the contamination of the land resulting from the abominations of its indigenous inhabitants.35 However, the Levitical text does not discuss Israelite intermarriage nor does it characterize the taking of indigenous

6  Introduction daughters as an act that contaminates the land. Instead, it warns Israelites against imitating the practices of the inhabitants of the land and being themselves vomited out by the land (Lev 18:26–28). Ezra 9:12’s exhortation against intermarriage references Deuteronomy’s prohibition (Deut 7:3; cf. Exod 34:15–16) against intermarriage with the inhabitants of the land the Israelites are to possess. The Ezra text, however, omits the religious rationale that follows and is the primary concern in Deuteronomy: ‘for your sons will be turned away from following me to serve other gods’ (7:4).36 Furthermore, the Pentateuchal texts alluded to in Ezra 9:11–12 do not prescribe expulsion as a way of addressing the presence of foreign women brought into Israelite households through marriage. The ‘real’ women of Yehud Inquiries into the social and historical context of early fifth-century bce Yehud seek out information external to the biblical text to fill in the gaps and illuminate the women’s identity, as well as the reasons for rejecting the marriages and decreeing the expulsion of the women and children. These reconstructions draw on sociological theories, anthropological models, material evidence and extrabiblical textual sources concerning the political and social history of Persian period Yehud and the circumstances of Persian rule in the region. Demographic and epigraphic studies seek to shed light on the social world of Yehud and the effects of the ‘return’ from exile after the Persian conquest of Babylon.37 Material and textual sources concerning Yahwistic groups in Samaria and Egypt are called upon to elucidate the internal workings of cult and society in Persian Period Yehud.38 Sociological and anthropological approaches address the impact of exile and return on social configurations, ethnicity and identity.39 The broad historical context in which these studies locate the events narrated in the book of Ezra is the deportation of Judeans by their Babylonian conquerors at the end of the sixth-century bce and the exiles’ return to Yehud under King Cyrus of Persia after his conquest of Babylon. A fundamental shift in the territorial, political, social and religious conditions triggering the transformation of Judah into Yehud is associated with the exile – an event cast in the Hebrew Bible and historical–critical studies as a definitive moment in the ‘history’ of this people.40 The conflict with the peoples-of-the-lands in the book of Ezra is located by most scholars in this context of ‘return’, settlement and encounter with the local inhabitants, institutions and practices.41 It is in this context that many scholars locate the debate issue of intermarriage and the expulsion of the foreign women that come to the fore in Ezra 9–10. Feminist scholars Tamara Eskenazi and Christianne Karrer-Grube have sought out data concerning the lives and experiences of women in postexilic Yehud that might bring the (Jewish) women in Ezra 9–10 ‘out from the shadows’ and explain the issues at stake in the text.42 Eskenazi draws on the information the Elephantine Papyri provide concerning the Judaic community in Egypt to reconstruct women’s roles, judicial rights and status in Persian Period Yehud.43 Since the women of

Introduction  7 Elephantine could inherit land and initiate divorce, Eskenazi concludes that the marriages in Ezra 9–10 threatened golah land possession. The women’s expulsion sought to preserve land ownership within the lineage of the golah and ensure more favourable conditions for Israelite women.44 Christiane Karrer-Grube also refers to data from the Papyri as she seeks to uncover the women present in and behind the text but rendered invisible by the ideology of the writers.45 As Annalisa Azzoni observes, however, the Elephantine Papyri reflect a very different context from Yehud, and their use for reconstructing women’s lives in Yehud merits due caution.46 Furthermore, such efforts to fill in the gaps concerning the ‘historical’ women of Persian period Yehud fail to attend to the world the text constructs and isolate the women, in Roland Boer’s words, from the ‘matrix of the text itself’,47 one that is predominantly male and in which women are silent and silenced. This narrative world, as Julia Kelso notes, presents a society that appears to function ‘disconcertingly well enough without women’48 – one that requires scholarly attention. Issues of land ownership and inheritance are more broadly addressed by scholars who posit economic issues as the basis for rejecting the marriages – and as motivation for the marriages themselves. Assuming the golah was in control of the land,49 golah land possession may have been placed at risk by these marriages if the sons of these unions, or even the wives themselves, could inherit the land.50 On the other hand, if the golah was not in control of the land, some golah men could have sought out these marriages to elevate their status and gain access to the land.51 Several studies appeal to external influences, such as Persian policy concerning marriage ties among provincial elites, to explain both the marriages and their rejection.52 Still others suggest that the marriages were illegitimate or that the women were secondary – and therefore expendable – wives.53 In all of these scenarios, the focus of analysis is on the women, their identity, social status, legitimacy as wives and mothers or the threat they represent to golah lineage. The rationale in these studies draws on matters external to the text and problematically assumes that it reflects a historical encounter between returned exiles and indigenous inhabitants. Most significantly, they fail to consider the narrative world of the text; how that world is imagined and constructed and how men and masculinities are prescribed, enacted and performed in this narrative world. The text’s ambiguity concerning the women’s identity has led to significant discussion, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, and is seen by some as a key to understanding the threat they represented for the golah. The assumed influx towards Yehud from neighbouring regions during the exile, references to the ethnicities of the foreign women in Nehemiah 13.23–27 and conflicts between the golah and regional elites in Ezra 4–6 lead some scholars to suggest that the women belong to neighbouring peoples.54 However, Bob Becking finds little evidence for a significant presence of foreigners in Persian period Yehud and concludes that the list of nations Ezra 9:1 uses to describe the peoples-of-the-lands is a ‘cypher’ for persons connected to competing Yahwistic sanctuaries.55 Benedict Hensel similarly argues that the intermarriage disputes in Ezra and Nehemiah likely reflect

8  Introduction competing cultic centres and disputed ties between high priestly families in the Persian and Hellenistic periods.56 A related proposal that has gained significant traction among scholars suggests that the peoples-of-the-lands, and therefore the foreign women, were not foreigners but non-exiled Judahites who did not meet the stringent requirements of Israelite identity proposed by the Ezra-group.57 For the purposes of this study, however, more important than the identity of this group is how it is constructed and deployed in the text. The women’s identity likewise comes to the fore in discussions concerning the negotiation of ethnic boundaries and identity markers in the context of exile and return.58 Intermarriage is a prime site for this negotiation, as it establishes new kinship ties and threatens to blur the boundaries between groups.59 Therefore, as Katherine Southwood argues, control over intermarriage is one of the behaviours typically associated with contexts of return migration and resulting hybridity.60 The expulsion of the women participates in boundary construction by creating a ‘new, anomalous, zone between the categories consisting of supposedly “foreign” women, their children, and those who had married such women’.61 Discussions concerning identity and ethnicity emphasize social and historical circumstances behind the text more than the world portrayed and constituted by the text. Problematically, most assume a historical conflict between the golah and indigenous inhabitants of the land that is not borne out by other texts of the period, such as Chronicles, Haggai and Zechariah, nor by external sources and archaeological data.62 The question to be addressed in this book does not concern the actual circumstances of return but how the book of Ezra portrays and memorializes this past and how gendered identities and performances are implicated in the community’s decision that some men should expel their wives and children. Gender, however, is all too seldom addressed in studies of Ezra 9–10, much less the gendered identities of men.63 While identity is clearly at stake in the text, Claudia Camp insightfully notes that most studies fail to recognize that the Israelite identity being constructed is a ‘male identity’.64 She argues that the trope of intermarriage depends on the construction of Strange Woman. Such a construction does imply an identity issue, but the identity problem is at base one of gender identity, male identity, in particular, rather than political/ religious identity.65 Thus, the scholarly gaze upon the biblical women who are rendered prone to religious, cultural, sexual and ethnic otherness and ‘absented’ in and by the text does not sufficiently consider how men, male bodies, men’s religious practices, sexuality, social status and gendered identities are constituted in the text. Historical, anthropological and sociological approaches have contributed much to ongoing discussions concerning the world behind the text, but uncertainties prevail. Furthermore, claims that Ezra 9–10 offers a broadly reliable degree of historicity must contend with the disputed dating of the text and compelling inner-textual evidence that various sources and editorial hands were involved in

Introduction  9 this composition.66 Discussions of these text- and literary-critical issues do little to clarify the ambiguities in the text and, indeed, contribute to them. The final redaction of the so-called ‘Ezra narrative’ (Ezra 7–10) has been dated to various periods, ranging from a time very close to the events it references to the Hellenistic and even Hasmonean eras.67 Issues of dating inevitably rely heavily on scholarly assumptions concerning the historicity of the figures Ezra and Nehemiah, the relationship between the books that bear their names and the perceived reliability of chronological markers in these texts.68 Scholars also discuss the unity and composition of chapters 9 and 10 due to their diverse terminology and what some identify as distinct approaches to the issue of intermarriage.69 The shift from firstto third-person narration and the repeated sequence of events in 9:1–5 and 10:1–8 also point to a complex editorial process.70 While some scholars advocate for one source that an editor then adapted,71 others find distinct editorial hands that introduce their perspectives on the issues narrated in the text.72 Still, others posit several textual layers that reflect different approaches to or versions of the intermarriage crisis.73 While these studies offer insight into text-critical issues, they provide little insight into the expulsion of the foreign women in the world of the narrative. Furthermore, they are just as tentative and disputed as reconstructions of the text’s social and historical context.74 As Ehud ben Zvi argues, text-critical analyses of Ezra 9–10 ultimately call into question the ‘reliability of these texts for reconstructing the historical Persian Yehud in general and that of the alleged periods of Ezra and Nehemiah in particular’.75 This book suggests that the ambiguities and silences in Ezra 9–10, both historical and literary, may be better served by engaging with them as constitutive elements of this narrative world. Embracing ambiguity At first glance, Ezra 9–10 follows a familiar narrative storyline that begins with a problem, moves towards a turning point and ends with a resolution. The narrative begins with an accusation against some of the men of the golah who have taken daughters from the peoples-of-the-lands as wives for themselves and their sons (9:1–2). Following Ezra’s mourning and public prayer over this infidelity, an assembly gathers (9:3–10:1) at which Shecaniah calls for a covenant with Yhwh to expel the women according to the Torah (10:2–3) and enjoins Ezra to enforce the measure (10:4–5). Several verses later, Ezra follows up by exhorting the gathered assembly of ‘the men of Judah and Benjamin’ to ‘separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and the foreign women’ (10:11). They agree to do so and implement a plan to this effect (10:12–16). The remaining verses list the names of the men found guilty of marrying foreign women (10:17–43). There are, however, several twists and turns in the development of the narrative. It announces the problem of intermarriage three times: in 9:1–2, where Ezra responds with mourning and prayer (9:3–15); in 10:2–3, where Ezra responds by having leaders in the community swear to expel the women (10:4–5) and again in 10:10–11, where Ezra exhorts the men and calls for separation. Ezra’s return

10  Introduction to mourning in 10:6, after the leaders have sworn to expel the women in 10:5, seems rather strange. The second gathering of the assembly (10:7) is also curious since it had already gathered in 10:1. The matter appears settled when ‘all the assembly’ agree to separate from the peoples-of-the-lands and the foreign women (10:12). This is followed, however, by a lengthy investigation (10:13–17) and some objectors who arise out of nowhere (10:15). Finally, the priests (once again) pledge to expel the women (10:19). Most curious of all is the absence in the Masoretic Text of a concluding statement indicating whether or not the women and children were finally expelled (10:44).76 These repetitions, inconsistencies and ambiguities may be considered constitutive elements of the narrative world the text constructs and transmits. In this narrative world, repeated reports of Ezra’s mourning (9:3–5; 10:1; 10:6) have implications for the construction of the character of Ezra, his embodiment and performance of masculinity, relationships between men and male groups, and even the masculinity of Yhwh. The various men and groups that assemble around Ezra and those involved in addressing the issue of intermarriage are similarly considered in terms of the social and gendered dynamic they evidence and produce. Not only is Ezra 9–10 ambiguous about the identity of the women and the reason for their expulsion, but it is also vague concerning the very ‘success of the operation’, as Joseph Blenkinsopp notes.77 While one might reasonably expect the narrative to announce that the men named in Ezra 10:18–43 had indeed expelled their foreign wives and children, it does not. Translated literally, the Hebrew text of 10:44b states that ‘there were among them women who had put/placed (‫)ׂשים‬ sons’.78 Most modern translations amend this phrase on the basis of the more satisfactory conclusion in 1 Esdras 9:36, which reads, ‘all these married foreign women and they sent them away with their children’.79 Williamson, however, insists that the Masoretic Text, ‘though problematic, is not impossible’ and should be preferred on the basis of the principle of lectio difficilior potior.80 His translation accordingly reads: ‘All these had married foreign women, and some of the women had even borne children’.81 Some scholars posit that the dissolution of the marriages is already indicated in 10:17; others suggest that the expulsion was never intended to occur.82 These approaches do not, however, adequately address the implications of this final clause for readers of the received text. If Ezra 9–10 does not conclude either by announcing the expulsion of the women or by lamenting the community’s refusal to abide by that which Yhwh – through Ezra – ordains, then this final verse merits a closer look. The redactor of the Masoretic Text concludes by noting that the men who married foreign women have been identified (‫ )כל־אלה נׂשאו נׁשים נכריות‬and that some of the wives of these men had ‘put’ or ‘placed’ sons (‫)ויׁש מהם נׁשים ויׂשימו בנים‬. The first statement is consistent with Ezra’s charge to the heads of the families in 10.16 after the assembly introduces a plan to address the matter of the foreign women: ‘let all in our towns who have taken foreign wives come at appointed times’ (10.14). The three-month investigation accordingly concludes when those in charge ‘came to the end of all the men who had married foreign women’ (10.17) and report on their findings (10.18–43). The second statement in 10:44 suggests that

Introduction 11 some of the wives have given birth to sons for the golah men, but it employs terminology not used elsewhere to designate giving birth. The fathers do not engender sons, nor do the women conceive and give birth; instead, they ‘put’ sons – presumably in the households or the land. This phrasing raises various questions, including the men’s role in a critical masculine performance – the engendering of sons. These brief reflections on Ezra 10:44 highlight issues that pertain to masculinity. First, the verse identifies the infidelity of some golah men as the primary issue in the text and addresses this issue by identifying those who had married foreign women. Second, it problematizes male participation in reproduction and descent, key performances of masculinity in the Hebrew Bible, by distancing the men from the sons that have been ‘put’ by the women. Third, it highlights the problematic issue of which sons – or, more precisely, whose sons – may be rightfully ‘placed’ in the land. The final verse of Ezra 9–10 thus suggests that the issues debated in this narrative world are not primarily about who the women are and what they did to deserve expulsion. Ezra 9–10 is about men; it is about male bodies and relationships; it is about the golah and its deity. At stake are relations of power between men and male figures and even the status of Yhwh, matters intricately tied to masculinity and its embodiment, production and performance. The silence of and about the women is not a tangential matter, nor are their productive bodies; these are appropriated by the text in the interests of the world it produces and the men and male deity who inhabit this narrative world. Outline of the book This book interrogates the construction of masculinities as they are represented, constituted, performed and embodied in the narrative world of Ezra 9–10. It considers the issues debated in the text as they pertain to culturally situated masculine roles, bodies, performances and ideals. The study is organized into seven chapters, including this Introduction and a concluding section. Following the agenda set out in this Introduction, Chapter 2 develops a framework for studying masculinities in Ezra 9–10. It highlights contributions from critical studies of masculinities and biblical scholarship’s engagement with these approaches. The chapter explores the culturally situated images of masculinities in biblical texts and ancient West Asian iconography, especially as these gendered constructs and relations are implicated in discourses of disputed masculinities. Chapter 3 begins the analysis of masculinities in Ezra 9–10 by identifying the men of the golah in Ezra 9–10 and how they are represented. It then addresses the contrasting representation of the peoples-of-the-lands, from whom the golah is to remain separate. The chapter argues that Ezra 9–10 strategically feminizes the peoples-of-the-lands. It locates them in subordinated female social and kinship roles, employs feminizing ethnic constructs and attributes ‘feminine’ impurity to their bodies and land. This analysis gives way to an interrogation of golah masculinities that reveals how the text undermines its own claims concerning this group’s dominant status over the indigenous inhabitants of the land.

12

Introduction

Chapter 4 examines Ezra’s masculinity, specifically his performance of mourning and lament. While many scholars deem Ezra’s performance inappropriate for a man of his standing, this chapter argues that it plays a key role in the reconfiguration of golah masculinity, as required by the liminal status of the group. Social and cultic roles within the golah are reconfigured as they become mourners with and around Ezra. Ezra’s mourning rituals modify his body and position him in subordination to Yhwh, where, as the privileged wielder of the Torah, he is dominant over other men and mediates the golah’s relationship with the deity. Chapter 5 turns to Yhwh and explores the impact of exile and Persian imperial rule, as portrayed in the text, on the masculinity of the deity. Here, the silence and passivity of Yhwh in Ezra 9–10 come to the fore, suggesting that the god of the golah is either absent and defeated or unconcerned with minor issues in Jerusalem. The Persian kings, as portrayed in the book of Ezra, provide a model for rehabilitating Yhwh’s masculinity. Yhwh is constructed not only as the hyper-masculine deity of the golah but also as an imperial suzerain in control of the imperial kings who do his bidding. Chapter 6 argues that the rejection of intermarriage in Ezra 9–10 serves as the locus for the construction of golah masculinities and the negotiation of power within the golah. It explores how these marriages challenge authority structures within the golah and how socio-religious power is configured by the call to expel the women and children. It considers how the foreign women are appropriated for the production of community identities, even as they and their bodies challenge the logic of separation that pervades the text. Chapter 7 concludes and summarizes the book and lays out the contributions of masculinity studies for broadening the scope of gender-critical analysis, especially the study of texts in which women are absent, silent and/or subjected to violence. Notes 1 Recent studies include, among many others, Lester L. Grabbe, “Elephantine and EzraNehemiah,” in Elephantine Revisited: New Insights into the Judean Community and Its Neighbors, ed. M.L. Folmer (University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2022), 55–66; Bob Becking, “Was Ezra a Persian or a Yehudite Leader?” in Transforming Authority: Concepts of Leadership in Prophetic and Chronistic Literature, ed. Katharina Pyschny and Sarah Schulz (Boston: De Gruyter, 2021), 171–84; David Janzen, The End of History and the Last King: Achaemenid Ideology and Community Identity in Ezra-Nehemiah (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021); Benedikt Hensel, “Ethnic Fiction and Identity-Formation: A New Explanation for the Background of the Question of Intermarriage in Ezra-Nehemiah,” in The Bible, Qumran, and the Samaritans, ed. Magnar Kartveit (Boston: De Gruyter, 2018), 133–48; Christl M. Maier, “The ‘Foreign’ Women in Ezra-Nehemiah: Intersectional Perspectives on Ethnicity,” in Feminist Frameworks and the Bible: Power, Ambiguity, and Intersectionality, ed. L. Juliana M. Claassens and Carolyn J. Sharp (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 79–97; Steven James Schweitzer, Worlds That Could Not Be: Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016); Donna Laird, Negotiating Power in EzraNehemiah, Ancient Israel and Its Literature (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2016); Ehud Ben Zvi and Diana Vikander Edelman, eds., Imagining the Other and Constructing Israelite Identity in the Early Second Temple Period, Library of

Introduction  13

2 3 4

5

6 7 8

9 10

11

12

13 14 15 16 17

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2014); and Bob Becking, Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Construction of Early Jewish Identity, Forschungen zum Alten Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). See Gen 24:3–4; 26:34–35; 27:46; Exod 34:16; Deut 7:3–4; Josh 23:7,12; Judg 3:5–6; 1 Kgs 11:1–8; Neh 13:23–29. The book of Ezra uses the term the golah (‫הגולה‬, ‫ )בני הגולה‬for this community, and it will be used as such throughout this book. H.G.M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, ed. David Hubbard and Glenn Barker, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985), 159. For other scholarly responses to the expulsion of the women, see discussion in Katherine E. Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10: An Anthropological Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 73–74. Ehud Ben Zvi, “Re-Negotiating a Putative Utopia and the Stories of the Rejection of the Foreign Wives in Ezra-Nehemiah,” in Worlds That Could Not Be: Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, ed. Steven James Schweitzer (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 104–28. Claudia V. Camp, “Feminist- and Gender-Critical Perspectives on the Biblical Ideology of Intermarriage,” in Mixed Marriages: Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period, ed. Christian Frevel (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 306. Bob Becking, “On the Identity of the Foreign Women,” in Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Construction of Early Jewish Identity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 58. Tamara C. Eskenazi, “Imagining the Other in the Construction of Judahite Identity in Ezra-Nehemiah,” in Imagining the Other and Constructing Israelite Identity in the Early Second Temple Period, ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and Diana Vikander Edelman (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2014), 250. See also Tamara C. Eskenazi, “The Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, ed. Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 513. See Ben Zvi, “Re-Negotiating a Putative Utopia,” 105–28. There are two plural forms of the designation ‘peoples-of-the-lands’ in Ezra 9–10: ‘peo�ples of the lands’ (‫עמי הארצות‬, 9:1,2,11) and ‘peoples of the land’ (‫עמי הארץ‬, 10:2,11). In this book, peoples-of-the-lands is used as a general designation for these peoples unless more specificity is required. See Donald P. Moffatt, Ezra’s Social Drama: Identity Formation, Marriage and Social Conflict in Ezra 9–10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013); Willa Mathis Johnson, The Holy Seed Has Been Defiled: The Interethnic Marriage Dilemma in Ezra 9–10 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011); A. Philip Brown II, “The Problem of Mixed Marriages in Ezra 9–10,” Bibliotheca Sacra 162 (2005): 437–58; David Janzen, WitchHunts, Purity and Social Boundaries: The Expulsion of the Foreign Women in Ezra 9–10, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002); Jacob Martin Myers, Ezra, Nehemiah, The Anchor Bible, 1st ed. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1965). Cf. Deut 7:3; Exod 24:15–16; Josh 23:6–7; Judg 3:5; Lev 18:2,24–30; 20:23. See F. Charles Fensham, The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 124–25; David J.A. Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, New Century Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 119–20. Prov 2:16; 5:20; 6:24; 7:5; 23:27. Moffatt, Ezra’s Social Drama, 152. Johnson, The Holy Seed Has Been Defiled, 99. David Janzen, “Scholars, Witches, Ideologues, and What the Text Said: Ezra 9–10 and Its Interpretation,” in Approaching Yehud: New Approaches to the Study of the Persian Period, ed. Jon L. Berquist (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008), 61; Janzen, Witch-Hunts, 19. Cf. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, 2nd ed. (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1973); Richard K. Fenn, The End of Time: Religion, Ritual, and the Forging of the Soul (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1997).

14  Introduction 18 Janzen, Witch-Hunts, 78–83. 19 Ibid., 80. Cf. Sherry B. Ortner, Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 21–42. 20 Janzen, Witch-Hunts, 42. 21 Ibid., 55. 22 Janzen, “Scholars, Witches, Ideologues,” 66–67. 23 Ibid., 62. 24 On the feminization of witchcraft as a way of constructing “men”, see Kimberly B. Stratton, Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, & Stereotype in the Ancient World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 24–25. 25 Specifically, the ritual impurity of non-Israelites. See Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 119; Morton Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 137; Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, 97. 26 Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 26. 27 Klawans, Impurity and Sin, 44. 28 Christine Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 7. 29 Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 28–29. 30 Eve Levavi Feinstein, Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 154. Saul Olyan and Hannah Harrington argue that Ezra and Nehemiah combine and adapt diverse purity traditions to render all foreigners impure. See Saul M. Olyan, “Purity Ideology in Ezra-Nehemiah as a Tool to Reconstitute the Community,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 35, no. 1 (2004): 16; Hannah Harrington, “Holiness and Purity in Ezra-Nehemiah,” in Unity and Disunity in Ezra-Nehemiah: Redaction, Rhetoric, and Reader, ed. Mark J. Boda and Paul L. Redditt (Sheffield: Sheffield ­Phoenix Press, 2008), 98–116. 31 See Thomas Kazen, “Levels of Explanation for Ideas of Impurity: Why Structuralist and Symbolic Models Often Fail While Evolutionary and Cognitive Models Succeed,” in Impurity and Purification in Early Judaism and the Jesus Tradition (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2021), 51–70; T.M. Lemos, “Where There Is Dirt, Is There System? Revisiting Biblical Purity Constructions,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37, no. 3 (2013): 265–94; Christian Frevel and Christophe Nihan, “Introduction,” in Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012), 1–9. 32 Lemos, “Where There Is Dirt, Is There System?” 280. 33 Washington, for example, highlights the gendered vocabulary of impurity in Ezra 9:2 and 9:11 but attaches impurity solely to the women. Harold C. Washington, “Israel’s Holy Seed and the Foreign Women of Ezra-Nehemiah: A Kristevan Reading,” Biblical Interpretation 11, no. 3/4 (2003): 427–37. 34 See Juha Pakkala, “The Quotations and References of the Pentateuchal Laws in EzraNehemiah,” in Changes in Scripture: Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the Second Temple Period, ed. Hanne von Weissenberg, Juha Pakkala, and Marko Marttila (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 193–221. 35 Ezra 9:11: it is a land impure (‫ )ארץ נדה‬due to the impurities (‫ )נדה‬of the peoples-of-thelands, with their abominations (‫ ;)בתועבת‬they have filled it from end to end with their impurity (‫ ;)טמאה‬Lev 18:24–25: ‘do not defile yourselves (‫ )תטמאו‬with all these [‫תועבת‬, v.26], for by all these the nations that I am sending away defiled themselves (‫)נטמאו‬. . . the land was defiled (‫’)תטמא הארץ‬. 36 The women’s role is even more explicit in Exod 34:16: ‘you will take wives from their daughters for your sons and their daughters will play the harlot with their gods and cause your sons to play the harlot with their gods’.

Introduction  15 37 See Israel Finkelstein, “Persian Period Jerusalem and Yehud: A Rejoinder,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9, no. 24 (2009); Oded Lipschits, “Persian Period Finds from Jerusalem: Facts and Interpretations,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9, no. 20 (2009); Charles E. Carter, The Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). 38 See Grabbe, “Elephantine and Ezra-Nehemiah,” 55–66. 39 See Maier, “The ‘Foreign’ Women in Ezra-Nehemiah,” 79–97; Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis; John Kessler, “Persia’s Loyal Yahwists: Power, Identity, and Ethnicity in Achaemenid Yehud,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, ed. Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 91–122; Daniel Smith-Christopher, “The Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10 and Nehemiah 13: A Study of the Sociology of Post-Exilic Judaean Community,” in Second Temple Studies. 2, Temple and Community in the Persian Period, ed. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Kent Harold Richards (Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Press, 1994), 243–65. 40 See Adele Berlin, “The Exile: Biblical Ideology and Its Postmodern Ideological Inter�pretation,” in Literary Construction of Identity in the Ancient World, ed. Hanna Liss and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 341–56; Ehud Ben Zvi, “Total Exile, Empty Land and the General Intellectual Discourse in Yehud,” in The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical Contexts, ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and Christoph Levin (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), 155–68; Philip R. Davies, “Exile? What Exile? Whose Exile?,” in Leading Captivity Captive: “The Exile” as History and Ideology, ed. Lester L. Grabbe (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 128–38. 41 See, however, Lester L. Grabbe, “The Reality of Return: The Biblical Picture Versus Historical Reconstruction,” in Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context, ed. Jonathan Stökl and Caroline Waerzeggers (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 292–307. 42 Tamara C. Eskenazi, “Out from the Shadows: Biblical Women in the Postexilic Era,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 17, no. 54 (1992): 25–43; Christiane KarrerGrube, “Ezra and Nehemiah: The Return of the Others,” in Feminist Biblical Interpretation: A Compendium of Critical Commentary on the Books of the Bible and Related Literature, ed. Luise Schottroff, Marie-Theres Wacker, and Martin Rumscheidt (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), 192–206. 43 Eskenazi, “Out from the Shadows,” 25–43. 44 Ibid., 43. 45 Karrer-Grube, “Ezra and Nehemiah,” 192–206. 46 Annalisa Azzoni, “Women of Elephantine and Women in the Land of Israel,” in In the Shadow of Bezalel: Aramaic, Biblical, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Bezalel Porten, ed. Alejandro F. Botta (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013), 3–12. See also the critique in Roland Boer, “No Road: On the Absence of Feminist Criticism of Ezra-Nehemiah,” in Her Master’s Tools? Feminist and Postcolonial Engagements of ­Historical-Critical Discourse, ed. Caroline Vander Stichele and Todd C. Penner (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2005), 236–37. 47 Boer, “No Road,” 234. 48 Julie Kelso, “Reading Silence: The Books of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, and the Relative Absence of a Feminist Interpretative History,” in Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect: I. Biblical Books, ed. Susanne Scholz (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013), 269. Emphasis in the original. 49 Kessler, “Persia’s Loyal Yahwists,” 211; Kenneth G. Hoglund, “The Achaemenid Context,” in Second Temple Studies 1. The Persian Period, ed. Philip R. Davies (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 65–68; Harold C. Washington, “The Strange Woman of Proverbs 1–9 and Post-Exilic Judaean Society,” in Second Temple Studies.

16  Introduction

50

51 52

53

54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61

62

2, Temple and Community in the Persian Period, ed. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Kent Harold Richards (Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Press, 1994), 231–38. See Sara Japhet, “The Expulsion of the Foreign Women (Ezra 9–10): The Legal Basis, Precedents, and Consequences for the Definition of Jewish Identity,” in “Sieben Augen auf einem Stein” (Sach 3,9): Studien zur Literatur des Zweiten Tempels, vol. 65, ed. Friedhelm Hartenstein and Michael Pietsch (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2007), 144–50; Washington, “The Strange Woman of Proverbs 1–9 and Post-Exilic Judaean Society”; Eskenazi, “Out from the Shadows.” See Smith-Christopher, “The Mixed Marriage Crisis,” 260–61. Also Johnson, The Holy Seed Has Been Defiled, 37–55. See Johnson, The Holy Seed Has Been Defiled, 18; Cheryl B. Anderson, “Reflections in an Interethnic/Racial Era on Interethnic/Racial Marriage,” in They Were All Together in One Place: Toward Minority Biblical Criticism, ed. Randall C. Bailey, Tat-Siong Benny Liew, and Fernando F. Segovia (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009), 49; Hoglund, “The Achaemenid Context,” 65–68. So Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis, 181; Richard J. Bautch, Glory and Power, Ritual and Relationship: The Sinai Covenant in the Postexilic Period, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (New York: T&T Clark, 2009), 99–103; Japhet, “The Expulsion of the Foreign Women,” 141–61. For example Gerald A. Klingbeil, “ ‘Not So Happily Ever After . . .’: Cross-Cultural Marriages in the Time of Ezra-Nehemiah,” Maarav 14, no. 1 (2007): 39–75. Becking, “On the Identity of the Foreign Women,” 58–73. Hensel, “Ethnic Fiction and Identity-Formation: A New Explanation for the Background of the Question of Intermarriage in Ezra-Nehemiah,” 133–48. See, Lester L. Grabbe, A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Library of Second Temple Studies, vol. 1 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 285– 88, 313–16; Smith-Christopher, “The Mixed Marriage Crisis,” 243–65. See Maier, “The ‘Foreign’ Women in Ezra-Nehemiah,” 79–97; Eskenazi, “Imagining the Other in the Construction of Judahite Identity in Ezra-Nehemiah,” 230–56; Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis; Johnson, The Holy Seed Has Been Defiled; Armin Siedlecki, Negotiating Identity: The Portrayal of Foreigners in EzraNehemiah (Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Publishing, 2010); Daniel Smith-Christopher, “Between Ezra and Isaiah: Exclusion, Transformation and Inclusion of the ‘Foreigner’ in Post-Exilic Biblical Theology,” in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett (Leiden; New York: E.J. Brill, 1996), 117–42. Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis, 140–45. Ibid., 210. Katherine E. Southwood, “An Ethnic Affair? Ezra’s Intermarriage Crisis against a Con�text of ‘Self-Ascription’ and ‘Ascription of Others’,” in Mixed Marriages: Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period, ed. Christian Frevel (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 56–57. See Dalit Rom-Shiloni, “From Ezekiel to Ezra-Nehemiah: Shifts of Group Identities within Babylonian Exilic Ideology,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context, ed. Oded Lipschitz, Gary N. Knoppers, and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 128–30; Juha Pakkala, “The Exile and the Exiles in the Ezra Tradition,” in The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical Contexts, ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and Christoph Levin (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), 91–102; Ehud Ben Zvi, “Inclusion in and Exclusion from Israel as Conveyed by the Use of the Term ‘Israel’ in Post-Monarchic Biblical Texts,” in The Pitcher Is Broken. Memorial Essays for Gösta W. Ahlström, ed. Steven W. Holloway and Lowell K. Handy (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 95–149.

Introduction 17 63 Maier and Johnson address gender as an aspect of ethnic identity construction. See Maier, “The ‘Foreign’ Women in Ezra-Nehemiah,” 79–97; Johnson, The Holy Seed Has Been Defiled. 64 Camp, “Feminist- and Gender-Critical Perspectives,” 306. Emphasis in the original. 65 Camp, “Feminist- and Gender-Critical Perspectives,” 307. 66 For source and redaction critical issues in Ezra-Nehemiah, see Gary N. Knoppers, “Revisiting the Composition of Ezra-Nehemiah: In Conversation with Jacob Wright’s Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and Its Earliest Readers,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 7, no. 12 (2007). 67 Raik Heckl, “The Composition of Ezra-Nehemiah as a Testimony for the Competition between the Temples in Jerusalem and on Mt. Gerizim in the Early Years of Seleucid Rule over Judah,” in The Bible, Qumran, and the Samaritans, ed. Magnar Kartveit and Gary Knoppers (Boston: De Gruyter, 2018), 115–32; Becking, “Ezra on the Move,” 1–23; Philip R. Davies, “Scenes from the Early History of Judaism,” in The Triumph of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms, ed. Diana Vikander Edelman (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 160–63; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library, 1st ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988), 41–47; Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, xxxv–xxxvi. 68 See essays in Mark J. Boda and Paul L. Redditt, Unity and Disunity in Ezra-Nehemiah: Redaction, Rhetoric, and Reader (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008). 69 See Yonina Dor, “The Composition of the Episode of the Foreign Women in Ezra IX–X,” Vetus Testamentum 53, no. 1 (2003): 26–47. 70 See Moffatt, Ezra’s Social Drama, 59–66. 71 Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 145–49. 72 Jehu Pakkala identifies at least three editorial hands in Ezra 9–10, which reflect particular interests: a Deuteronomistic/nomistic perspective (Ezra 10:2–3,14a,16b–17) and expansion (Ezra 9:1,3,6–9,15–16); a golah perspective (10:3,6–9,15a,16) and a priestly perspective (9:1; 10:5,15b,18,20–44). Juha Pakkala, Ezra the Scribe: The Development of Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 132–35. 73 Dor identifies three separate reports of intermarriage in Ezra 9–10 (9:1–15; 10:2–6; 10:7–44); Dor, “The Composition of the Episode of the Foreign Women in Ezra IX–X,” 26–47. Wright argues that Ezra 10 was composed much later than Ezra 9 and that both are later than the book of Nehemiah; Jacob Wright, Rebuilding Identity: The NehemiahMemoir and Its Earliest Readers, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 251–57. 74 See Ben Zvi, “Re-Negotiating a Putative Utopia,” 105–28; Wright, Rebuilding Identity, 256. 75 Ben Zvi, “Re-Negotiating a Putative Utopia,” 110. 76 In the MT, Ezra 10:44 reads: ‫כל־אלה נׂשאו נׁשים נכריות ויׁש מהם נׁשים ויׂשימו בנים‬ 77 Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, 200. 78 The verb ‫ ׂשים‬is not used elsewhere for the act of giving birth. 79 πάντες οὗτοι συνῴκισαν γυναῖκας ἀλλογενεῖς καὶ ἀπέλυσαν αὐτὰς σὺν τέκνοις (1 Esd 9:36). 80 Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 145. 81 Ibid., 143. Japhet translates 10:44b: “and there were among them women who had provided children”. 82 Dor argues that Ezra 9–10 describes ‘symbolic ceremonies or rituals’ that are not meant to actually expel the women, but to ‘enable(s) the acceptance of outsiders as part of the community’; Yonina Dor, “The Rite of Separation of the Foreign Wives in Ezra-Nehemiah,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context, ed. Oded Lipschitz, Gary N. Knoppers, and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 173–88. See also, Arnaud Sérandour, “Les femmes étrangères dans les livres grec et hébraïques d’Esdras: Répudiation ou exclusion du culte?” Transeuphratène 36 (2008): 155–63.

18  Introduction References Anderson, Cheryl B. “Reflections in an Interethnic/Racial Era on Interethnic/Racial Marriage.” In They Were All Together in One Place: Toward Minority Biblical Criticism, edited by Randall C. Bailey, Tat-Siong Benny Liew, and Fernando F. Segovia, 47–64. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009. Azzoni, Annalisa. “Women of Elephantine and Women in the Land of Israel.” In In the Shadow of Bezalel: Aramaic, Biblical, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Bezalel Porten, edited by Alejandro F. Botta, 3–12. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013. Bautch, Richard J. Glory and Power, Ritual and Relationship: The Sinai Covenant in the Postexilic Period. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies. New York: T&T Clark, 2009. Becking, Bob. Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Construction of Early Jewish Identity. Forschungen zum Alten Testament. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011a. ———. “Ezra on the Move: Trends and Perspectives on the Character and His Book.” In Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Construction of Early Jewish Identity, edited by Bob Becking, 1–23. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011b. ———. “On the Identity of the Foreign Women.” In Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Construction of Early Jewish Identity, 58–73. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011c. ———. “Was Ezra a Persian or a Yehudite Leader?” In Transforming Authority: Concepts of Leadership in Prophetic and Chronistic Literature, edited by Katharina Pyschny and Sarah Schulz, 171–84. Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. Ben Zvi, Ehud. “Inclusion in and Exclusion from Israel as Conveyed by the Use of the Term ‘Israel’ in Post-Monarchic Biblical Texts.” In The Pitcher Is Broken. Memorial Essays for Gösta W. Ahlström, edited by Steven W. Holloway and Lowell K. Handy, 95–149. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995. ———. “Total Exile, Empty Land and the General Intellectual Discourse in Yehud.” In The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical Contexts, edited by Ehud Ben Zvi and Christoph Levin, 155–68. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010. ———. “Re-Negotiating a Putative Utopia and the Stories of the Rejection of the Foreign Wives in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Worlds That Could Not Be: Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, edited by Steven James Schweitzer, 105–28. New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016. Ben Zvi, Ehud, and Diana Vikander Edelman, eds. Imagining the Other and Constructing Israelite Identity in the Early Second Temple Period. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, vol. 456. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2014. Berlin, Adele. “The Exile: Biblical Ideology and Its Postmodern Ideological Interpretation.” In Literary Construction of Identity in the Ancient World, edited by Hanna Liss and Manfred Oeming, 341–56. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010. Blenkinsopp, Joseph. Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary. The Old Testament Library, 1st ed. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988. Boda, Mark J., and Paul L. Redditt. Unity and Disunity in Ezra-Nehemiah: Redaction, Rhetoric, and Reader. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008. Boer, Roland. “No Road: On the Absence of Feminist Criticism of Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Her Master’s Tools? Feminist and Postcolonial Engagements of Historical-Critical Discourse, edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Todd C. Penner, 233–52. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2005. Brown II, A. Philip. “The Problem of Mixed Marriages in Ezra 9–10.” Bibliotheca Sacra 162 (2005): 437–58.

Introduction  19 Camp, Claudia V. “Feminist- and Gender-Critical Perspectives on the Biblical Ideology of Intermarriage.” In Mixed Marriages: Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period, edited by Christian Frevel, 303–15. New York: T&T Clark, 2011. Carter, Charles E. The Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. Clines, David J.A. Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther. New Century Bible Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984. Davies, Philip R. “Scenes from the Early History of Judaism.” In The Triumph of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms, edited by Diana Vikander Edelman, 145–84. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996. ———. “Exile? What Exile? Whose Exile?” In Leading Captivity Captive: “The Exile” as History and Ideology, edited by Lester L. Grabbe, 128–38. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. Dor, Yonina. “The Composition of the Episode of the Foreign Women in Ezra IX–X.” Vetus Testamentum 53, no. 1 (2003): 26–47. ———. “The Rite of Separation of the Foreign Wives in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context, edited by Oded Lipschitz, Gary N. Knoppers, and Manfred Oeming, 173–88. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011. Douglas, Mary. Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology. 2nd ed. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1973. Eskenazi, Tamara C. “Out from the Shadows: Biblical Women in the Postexilic Era.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 17, no. 54 (1992): 25–43. ———. “The Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, edited by Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming, 509–29. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006. ———. “Imagining the Other in the Construction of Judahite Identity in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Imagining the Other and Constructing Israelite Identity in the Early Second Temple Period, edited by Ehud Ben Zvi and Diana Vikander Edelman, 230–56. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2014. Feinstein, Eve Levavi. Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Fenn, Richard K. The End of Time: Religion, Ritual, and the Forging of the Soul. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1997. Fensham, F. Charles. The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. Finkelstein, Israel. “Persian Period Jerusalem and Yehud: A Rejoinder.” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9, no. 24 (2009). Fishbane, Michael A. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Frevel, Christian, and Christophe Nihan. “Introduction.” In Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012. Grabbe, Lester L. A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period. Library of Second Temple Studies, vol. 1. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004. ———. “The Reality of Return: The Biblical Picture Versus Historical Reconstruction.” In Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context, edited by Jonathan Stökl and Caroline Waerzeggers, 292–307. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015.

20  Introduction ———. “Elephantine and Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Elephantine Revisited: New Insights into the Judean Community and Its Neighbors, edited by M.L. Folmer, 55–66. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2022. Harrington, Hannah. “Holiness and Purity in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Unity and Disunity in Ezra-Nehemiah: Redaction, Rhetoric, and Reader, edited by Mark J. Boda and Paul L. Redditt, 98–116. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008. Hayes, Christine. Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Heckl, Raik. “The Composition of Ezra-Nehemiah as a Testimony for the Competition between the Temples in Jerusalem and on Mt. Gerizim in the Early Years of Seleucid Rule over Judah.” In The Bible, Qumran, and the Samaritans, edited by Magnar Kartveit and Gary Knoppers, 115–32. Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. Hensel, Benedikt. “Ethnic Fiction and Identity-Formation: A New Explanation for the Background of the Question of Intermarriage in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In The Bible, Qumran, and the Samaritans, edited by Magnar Kartveit, 133–48. Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. Hoglund, Kenneth G. “The Achaemenid Context.” In Second Temple Studies 1. The Persian Period, edited by Philip R. Davies, 54–72. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991. Janzen, David. Witch-Hunts, Purity and Social Boundaries: The Expulsion of the Foreign Women in Ezra 9–10. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. ———. “Scholars, Witches, Ideologues, and What the Text Said: Ezra 9–10 and Its Interpretation.” In Approaching Yehud: New Approaches to the Study of the Persian Period, edited by Jon L. Berquist, 49–69. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008. ———. The End of History and the Last King: Achaemenid Ideology and Community Identity in Ezra-Nehemiah. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Japhet, Sara. “The Expulsion of the Foreign Women (Ezra 9–10): The Legal Basis, Precedents, and Consequences for the Definition of Jewish Identity.” In “Sieben Augen auf einem Stein” (Sach 3,9): Studien zur Literatur des Zweiten Tempels. vol. 65, edited by Friedhelm Hartenstein and Michael Pietsch, 141–61. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2007. Johnson, Willa Mathis. The Holy Seed Has Been Defiled: The Interethnic Marriage Dilemma in Ezra 9–10. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011. Karrer-Grube, Christiane. “Ezra and Nehemiah: The Return of the Others.” In Feminist Biblical Interpretation: A Compendium of Critical Commentary on the Books of the Bible and Related Literature, edited by Luise Schottroff, Marie-Theres Wacker, and Martin Rumscheidt, 192–206. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2012. Kazen, Thomas. “Levels of Explanation for Ideas of Impurity: Why Structuralist and Symbolic Models Often Fail While Evolutionary and Cognitive Models Succeed.” In Impurity and Purification in Early Judaism and the Jesus Tradition, 51–78. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2021. Kelso, Julie. “Reading Silence: The Books of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, and the Relative Absence of a Feminist Interpretative History.” In Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect: I. Biblical Books, edited by Susanne Scholz, 268–89. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013. Kessler, John. “Persia’s Loyal Yahwists: Power, Identity, and Ethnicity in Achaemenid Yehud.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, edited by Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming, 91–122. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006. Klawans, Jonathan. Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Introduction  21 Klingbeil, Gerald A. “ ‘Not So Happily Ever After .  .  .’: Cross-Cultural Marriages in the Time of Ezra-Nehemiah.” Maarav 14, no. 1 (2007): 39–75. Knoppers, Gary N. “Revisiting the Composition of Ezra-Nehemiah: In Conversation with Jacob Wright’s Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and Its Earliest Readers.” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 7, no. 12 (2007): 1–36. Laird, Donna. Negotiating Power in Ezra-Nehemiah. Ancient Israel and Its Literature. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2016. Lemos, T.M. “Where There Is Dirt, Is There System? Revisiting Biblical Purity Constructions.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37, no. 3 (2013): 265–94. Lipschits, Oded. “Persian Period Finds from Jerusalem: Facts and Interpretations.” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9, no. 20 (2009). Maier, Christl M. “The ‘Foreign’ Women in Ezra-Nehemiah: Intersectional Perspectives on Ethnicity.” In Feminist Frameworks and the Bible: Power, Ambiguity, and Intersectionality, edited by L. Juliana M. Claassens and Carolyn J. Sharp, 79–97. New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017. Moffatt, Donald P. Ezra’s Social Drama: Identity Formation, Marriage and Social Conflict in Ezra 9–10. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013. Myers, Jacob Martin. Ezra, Nehemiah. The Anchor Bible, 1st ed. Garden City: Doubleday, 1965. Olyan, Saul M. “Purity Ideology in Ezra-Nehemiah as a Tool to Reconstitute the Community.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 35, no. 1 (2004): 1–16. Ortner, Sherry B. Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. Pakkala, Juha. Ezra the Scribe: The Development of Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004. ———. “The Exile and the Exiles in the Ezra Tradition.” In The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical Contexts, edited by Ehud Ben Zvi and Christoph Levin, 91–102. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010. ———. “The Quotations and References of the Pentateuchal Laws in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Changes in Scripture: Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the Second Temple Period, edited by Hanne von Weissenberg, Juha Pakkala, and Marko Marttila, 193–221. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2011. Rom-Shiloni, Dalit. “From Ezekiel to Ezra-Nehemiah: Shifts of Group Identities within Babylonian Exilic Ideology.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context, edited by Oded Lipschitz, Gary N. Knoppers, and Manfred Oeming, 127–51. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011. Schweitzer, Steven James. Worlds That Could Not Be: Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016. Sérandour, Arnaud. “Les femmes étrangères dans les livres grec et hébraïques d’Esdras: Répudiation ou exclusion du culte?” Transeuphratène 36 (2008): 155–63. Siedlecki, Armin. Negotiating Identity: The Portrayal of Foreigners in Ezra-Nehemiah. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Publishing, 2010. Smith, Morton. Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971. Smith-Christopher, Daniel. “The Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10 and Nehemiah 13: A Study of the Sociology of Post-Exilic Judaean Community.” In Second Temple Studies. 2, Temple and Community in the Persian Period, edited by Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Kent Harold Richards, 243–65. Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Press, 1994.

22  Introduction ———. “Between Ezra and Isaiah: Exclusion, Transformation and Inclusion of the ‘Foreigner’ in Post-Exilic Biblical Theology.” In Ethnicity and the Bible, edited by Mark G. Brett, 117–42. Leiden; New York: E.J. Brill, 1996. Southwood, Katherine E. “An Ethnic Affair? Ezra’s Intermarriage Crisis against a Context of ‘Self-Ascription’ and ‘Ascription of Others’.” In Mixed Marriages: Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period, edited by Christian Frevel, 46–59. New York: T&T Clark, 2011. ———. Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10: An Anthropological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Stratton, Kimberly B. Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, & Stereotype in the Ancient World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Washington, Harold C. “The Strange Woman of Proverbs 1–9 and Post-Exilic Judaean Society.” In Second Temple Studies. 2, Temple and Community in the Persian Period, edited by Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Kent Harold Richards, 217–42. Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Press, 1994. ———. “Israel’s Holy Seed and the Foreign Women of Ezra-Nehemiah: A Kristevan Reading.” Biblical Interpretation 11, no. 3/4 (2003): 427–37. Williamson, H.G.M. Ezra, Nehemiah. Word Biblical Commentary. Edited by David Hubbard and Glenn Barker. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985. Wright, Jacob. Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah-Memoir and Its Earliest Readers. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004.

2 What masculinities do to help

Introduction To unveil and problematize the gendering of male characters in biblical texts is an important complement to the feminist scholarly agenda that identifies and deconstructs the strategies by which the subordination of women and femininity is naturalized. While feminist and gender-critical approaches have long been an essential part of biblical studies, they have not sufficiently addressed the gendered identities of men and the differences and relations between men. The lack of such considerations runs the risk of taking men’s gendered identities for granted, assuming these as natural, normative, even neutral and homogenous. Neither have many gendercritical and feminist studies of biblical texts accounted for the differences between men and the political, ethnic and institutional configurations of masculinity, ‘manliness’ and male performance. As Jorunn Økland aptly observes, despite the overwhelming presence and variety of male-gendered characters in biblical texts, ‘[i]t has taken us longer to read them as males, and not just as generic representations of the human norm and condition ‒ and women as particularities and deviations’.1 Masculinities do not inherently attach to male bodies, but as the narrative world of Ezra 9–10 is dominated by men, these male-gendered characters, figures and groups will be the focus of analysis in this book. The objective is not, however, to bring any ‘real men of Yehud’ out of the shadows; rather, this book explores the ways in which men and masculinities are constituted, represented and deployed in the narrative world of Ezra 9–10. It considers, furthermore, what masculinities as a category of analysis can contribute to discussions of the intermarriage debate and the expulsion of the foreign women and children called for in the text. By deconstructing the gendered binaries that structure the text ‒ and scholarly readings thereof ‒ this analysis seeks to reveal fractures through which the plurality, situatedness, slippage and instability of these categories may be explored. Primary dialogue partners for this approach can be found in the growing field of critical studies of men and masculinities, especially as it has influenced recent developments in biblical scholarship.

DOI: 10.4324/b23091-2

24  What masculinities do to help Gender matters Until recently, gendered readings of biblical texts have been concerned with women, their social roles, status, participation and performance in the text and in the social world reflected in the text. Many feminist scholars have argued that the biblical text misrepresents women’s actual roles and significance in ancient Israelite society. Others have challenged readings of biblical texts that render women and violence against women invisible and denounced the complicity of biblical texts (as well as their interpreters) with women’s marginalization and exclusion, both in the past and in the present. In most of these studies, however, gender continues to be equated with women, and gendered analysis is restricted to women’s roles and participation in biblical texts. Gender, as Joan C. Scott highlighted in her seminal essay on gender as a category for historical analysis, is not merely a descriptive category but a ‘primary way of signifying relationships of power’.2 Therefore, it requires a critical deconstruction of assumptions concerning sexual and gender difference and the ways in which they serve to legitimize the social order.3 Reflecting on this essay, more than 20 years after its publication, Judith Butler highlights the continued importance of locating gender within the power systems and structures by which it is produced and in which it is deployed: [W]e cannot understand gender as a useful category unless we can understand the purposes for which it is deployed, the broader politics it supports and helps to produce, and the geopolitical repercussions of its circulation.4 Despite scholarly interest in the foreign women and their expulsion in Ezra 9–10, there is, as Roland Boer and Julia Kelso have noted, a ‘relative’ absence of feminist criticism of this biblical text.5 Existing studies continue to be limited to those analysed by Boer and Kelso: Tamara Eskenazi’s 1998 essay and Christianne KarrerGrubbe’s essay on the book of Ezra for the 2012 Feminist Biblical Interpretation compendium.6 As noted in the previous chapter, the primary focus of these studies is the recovery and reconstruction of women’s roles and participation in the text and its assumed historical referents.7 Tamara Eskenazi draws on Elephantine documents to highlight the important social roles Jewish women enjoyed in the postexilic period, thereby bringing to light ‘interesting Jewish women of the postexilic period’ that are ‘hidden in the shadows’ in the book of Ezra.8 Karrer-Grube offers a more critical analysis of the marginalization of women in the book of Ezra but is likewise concerned with re-discovering and recovering the presence and roles of women in this text.9 Rather than focus on recovering the presence and social roles of women, Esther Fuchs argues that feminist scholarship should question ‘the very notion and definition of women’ in biblical texts and ‘delineate the hierarchical power relations in the most basic representation of this subject’.10 For Julia Kelso, this involves addressing not only the presence of women but also ‘the complexities of the absence and silence of women’ in texts that paint ‘a picture of a society functioning disconcertingly well enough without women’ ‒ as appears to be the case in the book of Ezra.11

What masculinities do to help  25 These critical approaches seek to deconstruct both the representation of women and the assumed ‘naturalness’ of masculine domination and female subordination in biblical texts and in current contexts in which these texts are awarded, if not ­normative and prescriptive status, then significant cultural influence. Critical studies of men and masculinities and biblical scholarship’s engagement with these approaches contribute to this task by broadening the scope of gendercritical analysis from the women, who have long been the object of analysis, problematization and recuperation, to the men, whose gender has gone ‘unmarked’ and therefore unproblematized.12 Gender-critical and feminist inquiry should therefore address not only the ‘notion and definition of women’, as Fuchs advocates, but also that of men. ‘Woman’ and ‘man’, femininity and masculinity, should be explored as diverse and relationally constituted and constructed categories. The agenda underlying this approach is an important matter for clarification, not least because masculinity studies have sometimes been critiqued for abandoning women as the focus of gendered analysis in favour of men. Critical studies of men and masculinities have important implications for feminist agendas as they allow for exploring the complexity of gendered issues and identities present in the text. By de-naturalizing the male ‘default position’, the study of masculinities not only defies the assumed normativity and ‘neutrality of the masculine’ but also challenges the subordinate status of the feminine.13 This is a feminist act, as Rhiannon Graybill argues, that is both political and critical.14 The focus on the men in Ezra 9–10 throughout this book does not imply that the women, their silencing and expulsion, as well as the representations, structures, systems and ideologies that perpetuate and naturalize their subordinated status are not important. The question, rather, is why the silence and expulsion of the women ‘seem necessary to this particular version of the past’.15 This approach seeks to broaden the horizon of gender criticism to consider the ways in which the male/ female binary is employed to construct and sustain the ‘othering’ and ‘feminizing’ of the ‘non-masculine’ while mapping the ‘less-than-masculine’ onto female bodies. It explores, therefore, not only the ways in which gender is implicated in the naturalization of the power of men over women but also how women and femininities are appropriated to position some men above others on a spectrum of diverse, culturally and socially situated and relationally produced masculinities.16 Arising out of feminist inquiries, queer theories and gay liberation movements, critical studies of men and masculinities have developed into a multi- and interdisciplinary exploration of the representations, discourses, performances and embodiments of that which is culturally identified as ‘being a man’ in diverse times, places and institutional contexts. These studies explore the ways in which masculinities are both productive of and constructed within systems of gendered hierarchies and are therefore implicated in the legitimation and perpetuation of gendered power relations.17 The model of hegemonic masculinity developed by Tim Carrigan, R.W. Connell and Robert Lee has become a widely influential paradigm for theorizing the socially constructed nature of masculinities, the ways in which masculinities are implicated in power relations and their diverse and relational nature.18 For these

26  What masculinities do to help scholars, hegemonic masculinity ‘embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy’, understood as the dominance of men and the subordination of women.19 As theorized by Antonio Gramsci, on whom Connell draws, hegemony indexes an ongoing struggle for power in the face of oppositional forces.20 This struggle for domination employs force but relies significantly on incorporating and managing dissenting positions.21 In the words of Roland Boer, hegemony functions by ‘articulating and spreading a specific set of cultural assumptions, beliefs, ways of living’ to the extent that they are assumed as ‘normal’.22 Hegemony does not reference a static dominant position but is rather vulnerable, unstable and contested as it requires the continual negotiation and incorporation of diverging and dissenting positions. Perhaps the most important contribution of the concept of hegemonic masculinity is the recognition that not only are there diverse masculinities but that these are constructed in relation to one another. As Connell notes: [T]o recognize diversity in masculinities is not enough. We must also recognize the relations between the different kinds of masculinity: relations of alliance, domination, and subordination. These relationships are constructed through practices that exclude and include, that intimidate, exploit, and so on. There is gender politics within masculinity.23 Hegemonic masculinity, therefore, involves the dominance of masculinity and men over not only femininity and women but also relations of dominance, subordination, resistance, exclusion and alliance between men.24 While this model helpfully highlights differences between men and the relations between them, ‘man’ is still envisioned as a ‘stable and unified subject’.25 Intersectional approaches to masculinities complicate and nuance the stability of the masculine subject by highlighting the ways in which identity markers and social locations, such as ethnicity, class, sexuality and gender, configure fluid and diverse relations of power that challenge essentialized binary constructs of masculinity and femininity.26 A helpful notion for envisioning such a dynamic in the ancient West Asian and Greco-Roman context is that of a spectrum of masculinities mapped out on a complex continuum involving social location, ethnicity and sexuality, among other identity formations.27 This spectrum of masculinities, Marti Nissinen notes, made it important to ‘signify and identify acceptable ways of masculine performance’ since masculinity was constantly threatened and needed to be ‘demonstrated, done, and accomplished by means of proper male performance’.28 However, since the notion of proper male performance is contextual, situational and relationally constituted, men whose bodies and performances were rendered ‘un-manly’ (or non-hegemonic) in one social configuration might enjoy a status of relative dominance in another. Men and masculinities in the Hebrew Bible With his now-classic essay, ‘David the Man’,29 David Clines gave impetus to scholarly engagement with masculinities in the Hebrew Bible that now encompasses

What masculinities do to help  27 numerous essays, monographs and edited volumes.30 The traits identified by Clines in his early work on biblical masculinities have been widely employed as a catalogue of attributes that characterize what it means to ‘be a man’ in the Hebrew Bible. The list, which gradually increased as Clines added more texts to his repertoire, includes strength (primarily associated with skilfulness in battle), violence, persuasive speech, physical beauty, honour, male bonding, detachment from women and contact with the deity.31 What began as an attempt to identify the attributes of men in the Hebrew Bible developed into an exploration of diverse configurations of masculinities in biblical texts. The notion of hegemonic masculinity employed in many of these studies has proven to be most helpful where it allows for exploring masculinities as relational, contingent and performatively constituted rather than as fixed categories to be mapped onto biblical characters.32 The instability and deconstruction of hegemonic ideals in biblical texts have also led to discussions concerning the performances, traits, relationships and bodies that challenge, subvert or re-signify culturally hegemonic images of masculinity. Thus, masculinities in the Hebrew Bible are increasingly being addressed as multifaceted constructions that resist fixed categorization, as evidenced in Ovidiu Creangă’s study of Joshua.33 While Joshua is portrayed as a warrior, a persuasive speaker and a scribe, he is also unmarried and childless, with traits that are not in keeping with culturally prevalent notions of ‘manliness’. These contradictions are evocative of the characterization of Ezra, who never quite seems to fulfil his calling either as a priest, scribe or Persian emissary, much less as a virile producer of progeny. Ezra and Joshua perform their roles at the behest of Yhwh and in the face of opposition. Nevertheless, both these men occupy positions of power over other men in the narrative world of the text. Similar nuances and ambiguities may be identified in many biblical characters. While hegemonic masculinity in the Hebrew Bible is often identified with physical strength, military prowess and virility, alternative performances of masculinity are considered by scholars as they arise in distinct social and literary contexts.34 In his study of the court tales in the book of Daniel, Brian DiPalma notes that Daniel’s scribal masculinity saves him from the vicissitudes of life in the courts of foreign kings. It furthermore offers Yhwh, the deity who has failed to protect his people, the opportunity to ‘address his initially inadequate performance’.35 The narrative context of the texts DiPalma analyses bears similarity to that of Ezra 9–10. In both, Israelites (and Yhwh) negotiate life under foreign domination and, unable to compete with dominant performances of masculinity, must reconfigure their masculine bodies and performances. The body is an important site for the production and negotiation of masculinities in the Hebrew Bible and its ancient West Asian context. Dominant masculinities are often associated with bodies that are upright, whole, strong and virile; the head, buttocks and genitals are rigidly monitored.36 But not all biblical bodies fulfil such expectations, as in the case of bodies that are disabled, forcibly or voluntarily marked or modified.37 However, as T.M. Lemos argues in her study of the figure of the eunuch, a man’s status is not determined by these traits alone but is relationally and situationally constituted and negotiated.38 While the

28  What masculinities do to help eunuch’s less-than-masculine body and performance may render them marginalized in some texts, Marti Nissinen notes, in others, they occupy important military, social and political positions and ‘form an integral part of the male-dominated imperial hegemony’.39 Queer approaches to biblical masculinities further deconstruct the notion of a stable subject by highlighting the slippage and instability of masculinities. Biblical prophetic texts provide ample opportunity for exploring these instabilities, especially where biblical men are placed in relation to Yhwh. Rhiannon Graybill explores this dynamic, arguing that the queer bodies of the prophets ‒ open, fluid, leaky, disabled, soft, penetrated, suffering and submissive ‒ present a challenge to hegemonic masculinities.40 The ‘feminization’ of Israelite men in texts such as Ezekiel 16 and Hosea 1–2 not only subverts the masculine status of these men, but also likewise challenges Yhwh’s performance as the husband of Israel.41 Various scholars note a concern in biblical texts for ensuring the dominant masculine status of Yhwh in relation to all other male figures in the Hebrew Bible.42 Thus, Yhwh’s masculinity, body and performance are important considerations for gender-critical studies of biblical texts. As evidenced in this discussion, studies of biblical masculinities explore the gendering of biblical men and the traits and performances associated with diverse expressions of ‘manhood’ in biblical texts. The production and representation of biblical masculinities, including that of Yhwh, are intricately tied to the ideological interests and rhetorical intent of biblical texts. The agenda of biblical masculinities involves not only interrogating ‘the social and sexual biases (elitist and heterosexual), the ideological foundations and asymmetry of Hebrew Bible’s portraiture of men’, as highlighted by Creangă.43 These studies must also address how biblical masculinities are implicated in claims concerning Israelite identity and how women and ‘inferior’ men are appropriated for the production of these claims. Gendering otherness Biblical and ancient West Asian texts and iconography provide insight into the dominant discourses and related gender imaginaries prevalent in the cultural milieu in which Ezra 9–10 arose and was read. Of particular interest for this study are the ways in which traits and performances associated with dominant masculinities sustain claims to diverse realms of power and status over other men who are portrayed as socially inferior, sexually humiliated, weak and fearful, thereby ‘feminized’ and ‘un-manned’.44 These gendered representations often intersect with notions of ethnic identity, ‘foreignness’ and social location. In various prophetic texts, enemy nations and their warriors are ascribed ‘feminine’ traits or described as women. Isaiah 19:16 announces that the ‘Egyptians will be like women (‫)כנׁשים‬, and tremble (‫ )חרד‬with fear before the hand that Yhwh Zebaoth raises against them’. Jeremiah likewise uses gendered imagery to ridicule the mighty Babylonians: ‘their strength is exhausted; they turn into women’ (‫ ;היו לנׁשים‬Jer 51:30).45 The images in these texts assume the inferior status of women and employ references to feminine bodies,

What masculinities do to help  29 female cowardice and female sexual vulnerability to rhetorically humiliate male warriors and conquered peoples in the face of the might of Yhwh, the god of Israel. Julia Assante describes a similar dynamic on neo-Assyrian palatial reliefs and royal inscriptions depicting enemies as women, thereby rendering them inferior and conquerable.46 The foreign ‘other’ is thereby depicted as a ‘ “right” conquerable body’,47 since conquest ‘is what the super masculine does to the comparatively feminine’.48 Ascriptions of inferior social class and foreignness compound these feminizing strategies. The enemy warrior is not only a ‘woman’, he is also a prostitute, a ‘lowly harimtu, a female with no standing whatsoever in the patriarchal system’.49 Assante observes that the humiliation of this ‘enemy’ and ‘foreigner’, or nakru, ‘acquires its greatest dimension . . . when imbricated with women’s sexuality’.50 This rhetoric of gendered otherness is turned against Israel in prophetic depictions of apostate Jerusalem and Samaria, where the leaders of these cities are feminized and addressed as prostitutes and adulterous women.51 Ezekiel 23:25–26 depicts the city of Jerusalem as a woman deprived of her sons and daughters and stripped of her clothing. Thus, the men of Jerusalem are characterized not only as ‘women’ but more pointedly as failed and sexually vulnerable women. Cynthia Chapman notes the gendered political implications of this scene: ‘Ezekiel’s femalegendered sacred city resembles the feminized conquered male soldiers of the [Assyrian palace] reliefs who are likewise dismembered, stripped, and shamed before their families’.52 Other feminizing strategies include physical mutilations that modify normative markers of masculinity, defeat at the hands of a woman and the association of men with feminine artefacts such as the spindle.53 The fluidity of gendered identities and their susceptibility to ritual manipulation are evidenced in Ancient West Asian curses that threaten enemies and disobedient vassals with becoming women or prostitutes and losing their masculinity. The treaty between Assur-nerari V and Mati-ilu, King of Arpad, is a case in point: If Matiˋ-ilu sins against this treaty with Aššur-nerari, king of Assyria, may Matiˋ-ilu become a prostitute, his soldiers, women, may they receive (a gift) in the square of their cities like any prostitute . . . may Matiˋ-ilu’s (sex) life be that of a mule . . . may Ištar, the goddess of men, the lady of women, take away their bow, bring them to shame and make them bitterly weep.54 Any breach of the political treaty that commits Matiˋ-ilu to fidelity to the king of Assyria is punished in this curse by the complete feminization and humiliation of the vassal king and his soldiers. They will become women and prostitutes as they sit in the open square, vulnerable to the advances and sexual abuse of other men. Most threatening is the removal of the bow, the quintessential symbol of masculinity, suggesting that they are made impotent.55 In contrast, as Chapman notes, idealized royal masculinity is characterized by unrivalled power over other kings, the ability to protect and provide for subjects, virility and divine chosenness.56 Thus, the dominant masculinity of the king is constructed in relation to other men whose bodies and performances are rendered

30

What masculinities do to help

inferior. The Assyrian king’s physical strength, courage and skilled use of the implements of war contrast with the ‘feminizing’ portrayals of naked, beheaded, impaled enemy warriors and fleeing kings who abandon their subjects.57 In a similar fashion, Darius the Great of Persia, bow in hand, stands tall and strong on the Bisitun relief as he towers over chained rebel leaders, foot placed firmly upon the body of the fallen usurper Gaumata.58 While women are absent in these texts and representations, their subordinate status and inferior bodies are premises that inform representations of ‘un-manly’ men and configurations of gendered power relations between men. As Claudia Bergmann aptly notes, ‘woman becomes the lens through which to see man’.59 These gendered representations and performances may employ stereotypical images of low-status women and socially unacceptable femininities, but they are not directed at women; rather, they construct gendered power relations between men. The ‘right’ conquerable bodies are not those of women, but women and representations of femininity are appropriated to control and dominate other men. This gendered dynamic is an important lens through which to explore the ‘intermarriage crisis’ in Ezra 9–10, the playing field on which golah masculinities, those of the peoples-of-the-lands and that of Yhwh are relationally constructed and deployed. Notes 1 Jorunn Økland, “Requiring Explanation: Hegemonic Masculinities in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Traditions,” Biblical Interpretation 23 (2015): 481. 2 Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1064. 3 Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” 1056–57, 1064. 4 Judith Butler and Elizabeth Weed, “Introduction,” in The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott’s Critical Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 3. 5 Julie Kelso, “Reading Silence: The Books of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, and the Relative Absence of a Feminist Interpretative History,” in Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect: I. Biblical Books, ed. Susanne Scholz (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013), 268–89; Roland Boer, “No Road: On the Absence of Feminist Criticism of Ezra-Nehemiah,” in Her Master’s Tools? Feminist and Postcolonial Engagements of Historical-Critical Discourse, ed. Caroline Vander Stichele and Todd C. Penner (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2005), 233–54. This absence is also noted by Christiane Karrer-Grube, “Ezra and Nehemiah: The Return of the Others,” in Feminist Biblical Interpretation: A Compendium of Critical Commentary on the Books of the Bible and Related Literature, ed. Luise Schottroff, Marie-Theres Wacker, and Martin Rumscheidt (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), 192. 6 Studies that mention feminist concerns but do not specifically apply feminist and gender-critical methodologies to Ezra 9–10 include Christl M. Maier, “The ‘Foreign’ Women in Ezra-Nehemiah: Intersectional Perspectives on Ethnicity,” in Feminist Frameworks and the Bible: Power, Ambiguity, and Intersectionality, ed. L. Juliana M. Claassens and Carolyn J. Sharp (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017); Willa Mathis Johnson, The Holy Seed Has Been Defiled: The Interethnic Marriage Dilemma in Ezra 9–10 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011); H. Zlotnick-Zivan, “The Silent Women of Yehud: Notes on Ezra 9–10,” The Journal of Jewish Studies 51, no. 1 (2000): 3–18; and Harold C. Washington, “Israel’s Holy Seed and the Foreign Women of EzraNehemiah: A Kristevan Reading,” Biblical Interpretation 11, no. 3/4 (2003): 427–37.

What masculinities do to help 31 7 Kelso, “Reading Silence,” 269–70. 8 Tamara C. Eskenazi, “Out from the Shadows: Biblical Women in the Postexilic Era,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 17, no. 54 (1992): 25–43. 9 Karrer-Grube, “Ezra and Nehemiah,” 192–206. 10 Esther Fuchs, “Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible for Women: The Neoliberal Turn in Contemporary Feminist Scholarship,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24, no. 2 (2008): 64. 11 Kelso, “Reading Silence,” 269. 12 See Økland, “Requiring Explanation,” 481; Benjamin Alberti, “Archaeology, Men and Masculinities,” in Identity and Subsistence: Gender Strategies for Archaeology, ed. Sarah M. Nelson (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 69. 13 Rhiannon Graybill, Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 482. 14 Graybill, Are We Not Men? 23. 15 See Kelso, “Reading Silence,” 288. 16 See Martti Nissinen, “Relative Masculinities in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament,” in Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, ed. Ilona Zsolnay (New York: Routledge, 2016), 221–47. 17 See Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne, “Dislocating Masculinity: Gender, Power and Anthropology,” in Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (London; New York: Routledge, 1994), 11–47. 18 Tim Carrigan, Bob Connell, and John Lee, “Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity,” Theory and Society 14, no. 5 (1985): 551–604. Between 2006 and 2010 alone, Messerschmidt notes, ‘hegemonic masculinity’ was cited 540 times in scholarly refereed journal articles. James W. Messerschmidt, “Engendering Gendered Knowledge: Assessing the Academic Appropriation of Hegemonic Masculinity,” Men and Masculinities 15, no. 1 (2012): 57. 19 R.W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender & Society 19, no. 6 (2005): 832. 20 Benedetto Fontana, Hegemony and Power: On the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 141. 21 Yuchen Yang, “What’s Hegemonic About Hegemonic Masculinity? Legitimation and Beyond,” Sociological Theory 38, no. 4 (2020): 318–33. 22 Roland Boer, “Marx, Postcolonialism, and the Bible,” in Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections, ed. Stephen D. Moore and Fernando F. Segovia (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2007), 168. 23 R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 37. Emphasis in the original. 24 James W. Messerschmidt and Michael A. Messner, “Hegemonic, Nonhegemonic, and ‘New’ Masculinities,” in Gender Reckonings: New Social Theory and Research, ed. James W. Messerschmidt, Patricia Yancey Martin, and Michael A. Messner (New York: New York University Press, 2018), 37. 25 Alberti, “Archaeology, Men and Masculinities,” 83. 26 Ann-Dorte Christensen and Sune Qvotrup Jensen, “Combining Hegemonic Masculinity and Intersectionality,” NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies 9, no. 1 (2014): 67. 27 Virginia Burrus, “Mapping as Metamorphosis: Initial Reflections on Gender and Ancient Religious Discourses,” in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, ed. Todd C. Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007), 1–10. 28 Nissinen, “Relative Masculinities in the Hebrew Bible,” 224. 29 David J.A. Clines, “David the Man: The Construction of Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible,” in Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 212–41.

32

What masculinities do to help

30 For surveys of research, see Susan E. Haddox, “Masculinity Studies of the Hebrew Bible: The First Two Decades,” Currents in Biblical Research 14, no. 2 (2016): 176– 206; and Peter-Ben Smit, Masculinity and the Bible: Survey, Models, and Perspectives, Biblical Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 28–35. Recent monographs and edited volumes include Kelly J. Murphy, Rewriting Masculinity: Gideon, Men, and Might (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019); Ovidiu Creangă, Hebrew Masculinities Anew (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2019); Milena Kirova, Performing Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2020). 31 David J.A. Clines, “He-Prophets: Masculinity as a Problem for the Hebrew Prophets and Their Interpreters,” in Sense and Sensitivity: Essays on Reading the Bible in Memory of Robert Carroll, ed. Alastair G. Hunter and Philip R. Davies, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (Sheffield; New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 311–28; David J.A. Clines, “Being a Man in the Book of the Covenant,” in Reading the Law: Studies in Honour of Gordon J. Wenham, ed. Gordon Wenham, J.G. McConville, and Karl Möller (New York; London: T&T Clark, 2007), 3–9; David J.A. Clines, “Dancing and Shining at Sinai: Playing the Man in Exodus 32–34,” in Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible & Beyond, ed. Ovidiu Creangă (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010), 54–63. 32 As emphasized by Nissinen, “Relative Masculinities in the Hebrew Bible,” 221–47. 33 Ovidiu Creangă, “Variations on the Theme of Masculinity: Joshua’s Gender in/Stability in the Conquest Narrative,” in Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible & Beyond, ed. Ovidiu Creangă (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010), 83–109. 34 See Cynthia R. Chapman, The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter, Harvard Semitic Monographs (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 20–59. 35 Brian Charles DiPalma, Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel: Advancing Gender Studies in the Hebrew Bible, Routledge Studies in the Biblical World (London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018), 133. 36 Hilary Lipka, “Shaved Beards and Bared Buttocks: Shame and the Undermining of Masculine Performance in Biblical Texts,” in Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, ed. Ilona Zsolnay (New York: Routledge, 2016), 177–79; Susan Niditch, “Blood and Hair: Body Management and Practice,” in Life and Death: Social Perspectives on Biblical Bodies, ed. Francesca Stavrakopoulou (London; New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2021), 33–36; Brian R. Doak, Heroic Bodies in Ancient Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019); Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare, 22–33; Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, “ ‘That My Body Is Strong’: The Physique and Appearance of Achaemenid Monarchy,” in Bodies in Transition: Dissolving the Boundaries of Embodied Knowledge, ed. Dietrich Boschung, H.A. Shapiro, and Frank Wascheck (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015), 211–48. 37 See Francesca Stavrakopoulou, “Making Bodies: On Body Modification and Religious Materiality in the Hebrew Bible,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 2, no. 4 (2013): 532–53; Thomas Hentrich, “Masculinity and Disability in the Bible,” in This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies, ed. Hector Avalos, Sarah J. Melcher, and Jeremy Schipper (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 73–87; T.M. Lemos, “Shame and the Mutilation of Enemies in the Hebrew Bible,” Journal of Biblical Literature 125, no. 2 (2006): 225–41; Saul M. Olyan, “What Do Shaving Rites Accomplish?” Journal of Biblical Literature 117, no. 4 (1998): 611–22. 38 T.M. Lemos, “ ‘Like the Eunuch Who Does Not Beget’: Gender, Mutilation and Negotiated Status in the Ancient Near East,” in Disability Studies and Biblical Literature, ed. Candida R. Moss and Jeremy Schipper (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 54. 39 Nissinen, “Relative Masculinities in the Hebrew Bible,” 238. 40 Graybill, Are We Not Men? 41 See Ken Stone, “Lovers and Raisin Cakes: Food, Sex, and Manhood in Hosea,” in Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 111–28; T.M. Lemos, “The Emasculation of Exile: Hypermasculinity and

What masculinities do to help 33

42

43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59

Feminization in the Book of Ezekiel,” in Interpreting Exile: Displacement and Deportation in Biblical and Modern Contexts, ed. Brad E. Kelle, Frank Ritchel Ames, and Jacob L. Wright (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012), 377–93; Ilona Zsolnay, “The Inadequacies of Yahweh: A Re-Examination of Jerusalem’s Portrayal in Ezekiel 16,” in Bodies, Embodiment, and Theology of the Hebrew Bible, ed. S. Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 57–74. See, for example Amy Kalmanofsky, Gender-Play in the Hebrew Bible: The Ways the Bible Challenges Its Gender Norms (New York: Routledge, 2017), 9–11; Deborah F. Sawyer, “Biblical Gender Strategies: The Case of Abraham’s Masculinity,” in Gender, Religion, and Diversity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Ursula King and Tina Beattie (London; New York: Continuum, 2004), 162–74; Richard Anthony Purcell, “Yhwh, Moses, and Pharaoh: Masculine Competition as Rhetoric in the Exodus Narrative,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44, no. 4 (2020): 532–50. Creangă, “Variations on the Theme of Masculinity,” 47. See Claudia Bergmann, “We Have Seen the Enemy, and He Is Only a ‘She’: The Portrayal of Warriors as Women,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 69 (2007): 651–72; Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare, 48–58; Julia Assante, “Men Looking at Men: The Homoerotics of Power in the State Arts of Assyria,” in Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, ed. Ilona Zsolnay (New York: Routledge, 2016), 42–82. Likewise, Nahum 3:13 describes the troops of Nineveh as women whose ‘gates’ are open wide to the incursion of enemies. Assante, “Men Looking at Men,” 45–46. Ibid., 45. Julia Assante, “The Lead Inlays of Tukulti-Ninurta I: Pornography as Imperial Strategy,” in Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter, ed. Irene Winter, Jack Cheng, and Marian H. Feldman (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007), 385. Assante, “Men Looking at Men,” 45. Assante, “The Lead Inlays of Tukulti-Ninurta I,” 384–85. Also Hos 1–3, Jer 2–3, Ezek 16 and 23. Lemos, “The Emasculation of Exile,” 377–93. Cynthia R. Chapman, “Sculpted Warriors: Sexuality and the Sacred in the Depiction of Warfare in the Assyrian Palace Reliefs and in Ezekiel 23:14–17,” Lectio Difficilior 1 (2007). See Lemos, “Shame and the Mutilation of Enemies,” 225–41; Sophus Helle, “Weapons and Weaving Instruments as Symbols of Gender in the Ancient Near East,” in Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity, ed. Megan Cifarelli (Philadelphia: Oxbow, 2019), 105–15. Simo Parpola and Kazuko Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths, State Archives of Assyria (Helsinki, Finland: Helsinki University Press, 1988), 12, Ins. 18–15; cited in Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare, 49. See Harry A. Jr. Hoffner, “Symbols for Masculinity and Femininity. Their Use in Ancient Near Eastern Sympathetic Magic Rituals,” Journal of Biblical Literature 85, no. 3 (1966): 326–34. Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare, 27–33. Ibid., 20–59. Llewellyn-Jones, “That My Body Is Strong,” 228–35. Bergmann, “We Have Seen the Enemy,” 654.

References Alberti, Benjamin. “Archaeology, Men and Masculinities.” In Identity and Subsistence: Gender Strategies for Archaeology, edited by Sarah M. Nelson, 69–102. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007.

34  What masculinities do to help Assante, Julia. “The Lead Inlays of Tukulti-Ninurta I: Pornography as Imperial Strategy.” In Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter, edited by Irene Winter, Jack Cheng, and Marian H. Feldman, 370–407. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007. ———. “Men Looking at Men: The Homoerotics of Power in the State Arts of Assyria.” In Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, edited by Ilona Zsolnay, 42–82. New York: Routledge, 2016. Bergmann, Claudia. “We Have Seen the Enemy, and He Is Only a ‘She’: The Portrayal of Warriors as Women.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 69 (2007): 651–72. Boer, Roland. “No Road: On the Absence of Feminist Criticism of Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Her Master’s Tools? Feminist and Postcolonial Engagements of Historical-Critical Discourse, edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Todd C. Penner, 233–52. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2005. ———. “Marx, Postcolonialism, and the Bible.” In Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections, edited by Stephen D. Moore and Fernando F. Segovia, 166–83. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2007. Burrus, Virginia. “Mapping as Metamorphosis: Initial Reflections on Gender and Ancient Religious Discourses.” In Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, edited by Todd C. Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele, 1–10. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007. Butler, Judith, and Elizabeth Weed. “Introduction.” In The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott’s Critical Feminism, 1–8. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Carrigan, Tim, Bob Connell, and John Lee. “Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity.” Theory and Society 14, no. 5 (1985): 551–604. Chapman, Cynthia R. The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter. Harvard Semitic Monographs. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004. ———. “Sculpted Warriors: Sexuality and the Sacred in the Depiction of Warfare in the Assyrian Palace Reliefs and in Ezekiel 23:14–17.” Lectio Difficilior: European Electronic Journal for Feminist Exegesis 1 (2007). Christensen, Ann-Dorte, and Sune Qvotrup Jensen. “Combining Hegemonic Masculinity and Intersectionality.” Norma 9, no. 1 (2014): 60–75. Clines, David J.A. “David the Man: The Construction of Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible.” In Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible, 212–41. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995. ———. “He-Prophets: Masculinity as a Problem for the Hebrew Prophets and Their Interpreters.” In Sense and Sensitivity: Essays on Reading the Bible in Memory of Robert Carroll. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, edited by Alastair G. Hunter and Philip R. Davies, 311–28. Sheffield; New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. ———. “Being a Man in the Book of the Covenant.” In Reading the Law: Studies in Honour of Gordon J. Wenham, edited by Gordon Wenham, J.G. McConville, and Karl Möller, 3–9. New York; London: T&T Clark, 2007. ———. “Dancing and Shining at Sinai: Playing the Man in Exodus 32–34.” In Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible & Beyond, edited by Ovidiu Creangă, 54–63. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010. Connell, R.W. Masculinities. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005. Connell, R.W., and James W. Messerschmidt. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.” Gender & Society 19, no. 6 (2005): 829–59. Cornwall, Andrea, and Nancy Lindisfarne. “Dislocating Masculinity: Gender, Power and Anthropology.” In Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies, 11–47. London; New York: Routledge, 1994.

What masculinities do to help  35 Creangă, Ovidiu. “Variations on the Theme of Masculinity: Joshua’s Gender in/Stability in the Conquest Narrative.” In Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible & Beyond, edited by Ovidiu Creangă, 83–109. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010. ———. Hebrew Masculinities Anew. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2019. DiPalma, Brian Charles. Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel: Advancing Gender Studies in the Hebrew Bible. Routledge Studies in the Biblical World. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018. Doak, Brian R. Heroic Bodies in Ancient Israel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Eskenazi, Tamara C. “Out from the Shadows: Biblical Women in the Postexilic Era.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 17, no. 54 (1992): 25–43. Fontana, Benedetto. Hegemony and Power: On the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Fuchs, Esther. “Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible for Women: The Neoliberal Turn in Contemporary Feminist Scholarship.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24, no. 2 (2008): 45–65. Graybill, Rhiannon. Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Haddox, Susan E. “Masculinity Studies of the Hebrew Bible: The First Two Decades.” Currents in Biblical Research 14, no. 2 (2016): 176–206. Helle, Sophus. “Weapons and Weaving Instruments as Symbols of Gender in the Ancient Near East.” In Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity, edited by Megan Cifarelli, 105–15. Philadelphia: Oxbow, 2019. Hentrich, Thomas. “Masculinity and Disability in the Bible.” In This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies, edited by Hector Avalos, Sarah J. Melcher, and Jeremy Schipper, 73–87. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007. Hoffner, Harry A. Jr. “Symbols for Masculinity and Femininity. Their Use in Ancient Near Eastern Sympathetic Magic Rituals.” Journal of Biblical Literature 85, no. 3 (1966): 326–34. Johnson, Willa Mathis. The Holy Seed Has Been Defiled: The Interethnic Marriage Dilemma in Ezra 9–10. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011. Kalmanofsky, Amy. Gender-Play in the Hebrew Bible: The Ways the Bible Challenges Its Gender Norms. New York: Routledge, 2017. Karrer-Grube, Christiane. “Ezra and Nehemiah: The Return of the Others.” In Feminist Biblical Interpretation: A Compendium of Critical Commentary on the Books of the Bible and Related Literature, edited by Luise Schottroff, Marie-Theres Wacker, and Martin Rumscheidt, 192–206. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2012. Kelso, Julie. “Reading Silence: The Books of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, and the Relative Absence of a Feminist Interpretative History.” In Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect: I. Biblical Books, edited by Susanne Scholz, 268–89. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013. Kirova, Milena. Performing Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2020. Lemos, T.M. “Shame and the Mutilation of Enemies in the Hebrew Bible.” Journal of Biblical Literature 125, no. 2 (2006): 225–41. ———. “ ‘Like the Eunuch Who Does Not Beget’: Gender, Mutilation and Negotiated Status in the Ancient Near East.” In Disability Studies and Biblical Literature, edited by Candida R. Moss and Jeremy Schipper, 47–66. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. ———. “The Emasculation of Exile: Hypermasculinity and Feminization in the Book of Ezekiel.” In Interpreting Exile: Displacement and Deportation in Biblical and Modern

36  What masculinities do to help Contexts, edited by Brad E. Kelle, Frank Ritchel Ames, and Jacob L. Wright, 377–93. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012. Lipka, Hilary. “Shaved Beards and Bared Buttocks: Shame and the Undermining of Masculine Performance in Biblical Texts.” In Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, edited by Ilona Zsolnay, 176–97. New York: Routledge, 2016. Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. “ ‘That My Body Is Strong’: The Physique and Appearance of Achaemenid Monarchy.” In Bodies in Transition: Dissolving the Boundaries of Embodied Knowledge, edited by Dietrich Boschung, H.A. Shapiro, and Frank Wascheck, 211–48. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015. Maier, Christl M. “The ‘Foreign’ Women in Ezra-Nehemiah: Intersectional Perspectives on Ethnicity.” In Feminist Frameworks and the Bible: Power, Ambiguity, and Intersectionality, edited by L. Juliana M. Claassens and Carolyn J. Sharp, 79–97. New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017. Messerschmidt, James W. “Engendering Gendered Knowledge: Assessing the Academic Appropriation of Hegemonic Masculinity.” Men and Masculinities 15, no. 1 (2012): 56–76. Messerschmidt, James W., and Michael A. Messner. “Hegemonic, Nonhegemonic, and ‘New’ Masculinities.” In Gender Reckonings: New Social Theory and Research, edited by James W. Messerschmidt, Patricia Yancey Martin, and Michael A. Messner, 35–56. New York: New York University Press, 2018. Murphy, Kelly J. Rewriting Masculinity: Gideon, Men, and Might. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Niditch, Susan. “Blood and Hair: Body Management and Practice.” In Life and Death: Social Perspectives on Biblical Bodies, edited by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, 27–41. London; New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2021. Nissinen, Martti. “Relative Masculinities in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.” In Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, edited by Ilona Zsolnay, 221–47. New York: Routledge, 2016. Økland, Jorunn. “Requiring Explanation: Hegemonic Masculinities in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Traditions.” Biblical Interpretation 23 (2015): 479–88. Olyan, Saul M. “What Do Shaving Rites Accomplish?” Journal of Biblical Literature 117, no. 4 (1998): 611–22. Parpola, Simo, and Kazuko Watanabe. Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths. State Archives of Assyria. Helsinki, Finland: Helsinki University Press, 1988. Purcell, Richard Anthony. “Yhwh, Moses, and Pharaoh: Masculine Competition as Rhetoric in the Exodus Narrative.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44, no. 4 (2020): 532–50. Sawyer, Deborah F. “Biblical Gender Strategies: The Case of Abraham’s Masculinity.” In Gender, Religion, and Diversity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, edited by Ursula King and Tina Beattie, 162–74. London; New York: Continuum, 2004. Scott, Joan Wallach. “Gender: A  Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–75. Smit, Peter-Ben. Masculinity and the Bible: Survey, Models, and Perspectives. Biblical Interpretation. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Stavrakopoulou, Francesca. “Making Bodies: On Body Modification and Religious Materiality in the Hebrew Bible.” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 2, no. 4 (2013): 532–53. Stone, Ken. “Lovers and Raisin Cakes: Food, Sex, and Manhood in Hosea.” In Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective, 111–28. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2005.

What masculinities do to help  37 Washington, Harold C. “Israel’s Holy Seed and the Foreign Women of Ezra-Nehemiah: A Kristevan Reading.” Biblical Interpretation 11, no. 3/4 (2003): 427–37. Yang, Yuchen. “What’s Hegemonic About Hegemonic Masculinity? Legitimation and Beyond.” Sociological Theory 38, no. 4 (2020): 318–33. Zlotnick-Zivan, H. “The Silent Women of Yehud: Notes on Ezra 9–10.” Journal of Jewish Studies 51, no. 1 (2000): 3–18. Zsolnay, Ilona. “The Inadequacies of Yahweh: A Re-Examination of Jerusalem’s Portrayal in Ezekiel 16.” In Bodies, Embodiment, and Theology of the Hebrew Bible, edited by S. Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim, 57–74. New York: T&T Clark, 2010.

3 Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10

Introduction Ezra 9:1 announces that the boundaries between two peoples have been breached: ‘They have not separated themselves (‫)לא־נבדלו‬, the people of Israel (‫)העם ישֹרעל‬, the priests and the Levites from the peoples-of-the-lands (‫( ’)עמי הארצות‬9:1b). This complaint arises because some of the men of the golah have taken daughters from among the peoples-of-the-lands for themselves and their sons (9:2). The taking of daughters is the immediate action denounced in the text; however, the primary issue at stake is the relationship between these two arguably male social groups: the golah and the peoples-of-the-lands. This chapter addresses the gendering of these male social groups – specifically, the attributes, roles and performances culturally associated with ‘femininity’ and inferior masculinities ascribed to the peoples-of-the-lands. Intersecting social, ­ethnic and gendered locations construct the gendered otherness of the peoples-ofthe-lands and presents them as illegitimate inhabitants of the land. It is in relation to these ‘abominable’ peoples and the feminized traits ascribed to them that golah masculinity and associated claims to the land are affirmed (Ezra 9:11a). This reading of Ezra 9–10 explores the discourses that sustain the gendering of the ‘other’, their embodied and performative effects in the world of the narrative, as well as their inherent instability. The men of the golah The first verse of the book of Ezra introduces readers and hearers to a world populated by male-gendered characters. Among the activities attributed to the men of the golah in the book of Ezra are travel and migration, land settlement and temple building (Ezra 1:1–5). These men are granted imperial and divine authorization to populate a territory, build and staff a temple and engage in cultic worship (Ezra 1–6). Furthermore, they successfully uphold their claims to imperial authorization and divine favour over other men in Yehud (Ezra 4–5) and are awarded authority – in the person of Ezra – to enforce the law of Yhwh and that of the king in the province of Abar-Nahar (Ezra 7:26). DOI: 10.4324/b23091-3

Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10  39 The group is designated, variously, as ‘the people of Israel’ (‫ ;העם יׂשראל‬2:2; 9:1), ‘the sons of Israel’ (‫ ;בני יׂשראל‬6:21; 7:7), ‘Israel’ (‫)יׂשראל‬, ‘Judah and Benjamin’ (‫ ;יהודה ובנימין‬4:1; 10:9), the ‘holy seed’ (‫ ;זרע הקדׁש‬9:2) and ‘the assembly’ (‫ ;הקהל‬2.64; 10:1,8,12,14). Alongside the name Israel, the term ‫ בני הגולה‬most frequently describes this group whose Israelite lineage is tied to the experience of exile,1 rendering the men of the golah the only rightful heirs to this identity.2 Exilic lineage is likewise emphasized by the lists of names that identify those who return from captivity in Babylon (Ezra 2:2b-67; 8:1–14).3 Women are notably absent in these lists and throughout the book of Ezra, with few exceptions.4 The community it portrays is one of men (‫)אנׁשים‬, ‘males’ (‫)זכרים‬,5 who are, above all, ‘sons of’ (‫)בן־‬. The term ‘son’ is the most frequently used designation for men in the book of Ezra; it is found 147 times in the lists of men’s names in 2:1–67, 8:1–20 and 10:18–43 and is elsewhere used 57 times to designate both individual men and collective entities. The sons of the golah belong to patriarchal houses (‫ )בית אבות‬that must prove their exilic lineage,6 as emphasized in 2:59–60 where the list singles out several families, a total of 652 sons, who are unable to verify their ‫ בית אבות‬and their ‫זרע‬. Three priestly groups (‫ )בני הכהנים‬that are not enrolled (‫ )מתיחׂשים‬in the registry of the priests must wait until consultation can be made with the Urim and Thummin (2:61–63).7 The list and those potentially excluded from it or marginalized within it evidence the fundamental significance of ‘seed’ in the book of Ezra: only the right seed, one that is registered in the right father’s house (lay or priestly, accordingly), can be a member of the true Israel.8 Ezra 9–10 takes this criterion one step further: not only is descent from the right seed important, so also is the procreation of the right seed with the right women. When the officials approach Ezra and accuse golah men of taking daughters from the peoples-of-the-lands as wives, they express particular concern with the intermingling (‫ )התערבו‬of the ‘holy seed’ (‫זרע הקדׁש‬, 9:2). It is this holy seed of the golah, as Ezra announces in his penitential prayer (9:12), which is to possess the land and give it as a possession to its own sons. In Ezra 9, therefore, golah masculinity is marked by the right seed, marriage to the right daughters and a claim to rightful possession of the land. The men of the golah occupy various social and cultic roles throughout the book. The father’s houses are led by the ‫ ראׁשי האבות‬who appear as key leaders at crucial moments of the story of return and temple building in Ezra 1–6 (1:5; 2:68– 69; 3:12; 4:2–3). They are among the men accompanying Ezra to Jerusalem (8:1– 14), and it is they that Ezra chooses to take charge of the investigation into the matter of intermarriage (10:16). Throughout the book, these men exercise leadership and authority over other men within the kinship-based social structure.9 Men occupy an almost dizzying number of other social roles in the book: they are elders (‫ׂשב‬, ‫)זקן‬,10 officials (‫)ׂשרים‬,11 leaders (‫)סגנים‬,12 judges (‫ )ׁשפטים‬and prophets (‫)נביא‬.13 Williamson suggests that this varied terminology is not precise but interchangeable.14 In the narrative world of the text, however, it represents the golah as a complex social group and highlights the many different officials involved

40  Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10 in addressing the issue of intermarriage (9:1; 10:8;14,16). The most prevalent roles in the book are those of the priests and Levites who take charge of sacrificial service (3:2,8,10,12), participate in temple building and staff the temple upon its completion (6:20) and travel with Ezra to Jerusalem (8:24–33).15 Notably, neither the priests nor the Levites are involved in seeking a resolution to the intermarriage issue; instead, they are implicated among the guilty (9:1–2; 10:18–19). The active and varied participation of golah men and their diverse social, cultic and kinship roles contrast markedly with that of the peoples-of-the-lands, whose characterization in Ezra 9–10 is ambiguous at best. Notably absent is any reference to a social or cultic structure or the men who might occupy such roles. These peoples have no assembly, priests or other temple personnel and no elders, chiefs, judges or heads of families. Unlike the golah, the peoples-of-the-lands have no male representatives, and no one speaks for them in the text. They are evidently ‘not Israel’, but their specific identities, social and cultic roles are ambiguous. This ambiguity is highlighted by the two forms of the designation ‘people-of-the-land’ that Ezra 9–10 employs.16 While the terms have different uses elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible,17 in Ezra 9–10, they refer to the same group, one that is placed in opposition to the ‘people of Israel’ and from which the golah must remain separate. The absence of a precise reference to ethnic identities and social and gendered roles suggests that the primary concern of the received text is not who these peoples are but how they are represented and how they are acted upon by golah men. The enemy is a ‘she’ Ezra 9–10 attributes only two kinship roles to the peoples-of-the-lands: they are daughters (‫ ;בנות‬9:2) and wives (‫)נׁשים‬.18 While it might well be assumed that these daughters and wives have fathers and brothers, these male members of the peoples-of-the-lands are not explicitly referenced, and any actions they might carry out are invisible in the text. Thus, the sole representatives of these people are women who are, in turn, daughters and wives. The allocation of these roles not only genders the peoples-of-the-lands as ‘feminine’ but also places them in positions of social inferiority and dependence. As daughters, they are subject to the authority and protection of their (invisible) fathers and brothers19; as wives, they are subject to the authority of their husbands, the men of the golah. These daughters and wives, furthermore, are acted upon throughout the text: golah men take (‫ )נׂשא‬them as wives, ‘settle’ them (‫הוׁשיב‬, ‘cause them to dwell’) in the land and decree their expulsion (‫)הוציא‬.20 The verbs employed emphasize the passivity of the peoples-of-the-lands and contrast with the active and arguably more masculine role granted to the golah men. The accusation brought against the golah men concerns their actions towards these daughters. The officials charge them with having taken ‘daughters-of-them’ for themselves and their sons (‫ ;כי־נׂשאו מבנתיהם להם ולבניהם‬9:2). The taking (and giving) of daughters is an eminently masculine performance in the Hebrew Bible.21 It involves men: men who take the daughters of other men as wives (for themselves,

Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10  41 for their sons) and men who give their own daughters in marriage to other men.22 This act, which establishes ties between men and male kinship groups, is absent in Ezra 9–10. Golah fathers seek out daughters for themselves and their sons, but the fathers of these daughters do not ‘give’ them to golah men, nor do they ‘take’ the daughters of the golah.23 Intermarriage in Ezra 9 is a one-way process in which the peoples-of-the-lands have no active participation. Significantly, rather than employ the verb ‫‘( לקח‬take’) that is commonly used to describe the taking of the daughters, Ezra 9:2 and 12 use the hiphil of ‫‘( נׂשא‬lift’). When used for marriage, this form is often associated with strength, power or political status and emphasizes the woman’s seizure by the man.24 A case in point is found in Judges 21:21–23 where Benjaminite men forcibly ‘lift’ (‫ )נׂשא‬wives from among the women of Shiloh without the involvement or consent of their fathers and brothers. As used in Ezra 9, the term suggests not only that the men of the peoples-of-the-lands are absent from any marriage negotiations but also that they are acted upon by golah men: in their guise as daughters, they are (forcibly?) ‘lifted’ by the men of the golah. In Ezra 10, golah men once again act upon women from the peoples-of-thelands, who are now described as ‘foreign’ women (‫ ;נׁשים נכריות‬10:2,10,14,17,18,44) by ‘settling’ them or ‘causing them to dwell’ (‫)הוׁשיב‬. The hiphil of ‫ יׁשב‬is used for marriage only in Ezra 10 and Nehemiah 13,25 leading some scholars to suggest that the unusual terminology is intended to discredit the unions between the golah men and the foreign women, rendering them illegitimate.26 This conclusion overlooks the important spatial resonances of the term: it is frequently used in the Hebrew Bible to describe the act of ‘settling’ another, often a subject or conquered people, in a place or territory.27 As such, its use for marriage in Ezra 10 has important implications for the gendering of power relations in the world of the narrative. It highlights the active role of the golah men and the correspondingly passive stance of the women/peoples-of-the-lands. It further suggests that these peoples have been ‘settled’ by the golah in the very land they already inhabit. Thus, the verb ‫ הוׁשיב‬subtly serves to transform the indigenous inhabitants into outsiders, even ‘conquered’ enemies. By ‘lifting’ and then ‘settling’ the peoples-of-the-lands, the golah men humiliate and de-masculinize them: they are not only passive men but also women taken by the victors. Ezra and those gathered around him reject the dominant masculine performance of the golah men who have ‘lifted’ and ‘settled’ foreign wives. They insist that the marriages are acts of infidelity to Yhwh (Ezra 9:2,4; 10:2,6,10) that threaten the golah with the wrath of this god (Ezra 9:6–15; 10:10,14). The response required from the men of the golah is to expel (‫ )הוציא‬the women and ‘those born of them’ (‫( )הנולד מהם‬Ezra 10:3). This is not a symbolic ritual of separation, as Yonina Dor and David Janzen posit.28 It is not merely the breaking up of these unions (be they legitimate or illegitimate). Rather, it describes the forced removal of these women and their children. The same verb is used to describe the peoples of Jerusalem being ‘brought out’ (‫ )הוציא‬by their Babylonian conquerors (Jer 38:23), the Israelites being ‘brought out’ from Egypt by Yhwh (Exod 12:51; 16:6) and the removal of ‘foreign’ cult icons from the temple during Josiah’s cultic purge (2 Kgs 23:4).

42  Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10 Common to these situations is the movement of peoples or objects from one space to another under the aegis of a more powerful social actor. The call to expel the women and children in Ezra 10:3 also strikingly evokes Assyrian depictions of captive foreign women and children led away by the victorious Assyrian armies.29 Their presence in Assyrian battle iconography is emblematic, Cynthia Chapman explains, of the failed masculinity of the conquered who are unable to protect their families. The juxtaposition of masculine failure with the exposure of women to harm is played out with devastating clarity in the siege scenes of the Assyrian palace reliefs. . . . Assyrian soldiers storm the city with drawn bows and battering rams. The women of Lachish are depicted neatly filing out of their city gate . . . and their children accompany them. . . . Their own king and husbands failed the masculine contest of battle.30 Likewise, the expulsion of the women and children called for in Ezra 10 feminizes the peoples-of-the-lands who are portrayed as both defeated enemies and conquered and deported women and children. In sum, the masculinity of the peoples-of-the-lands in Ezra 9–10, as explored thus far, is undermined by representations of feminized passivity and submission. These peoples are daughters taken in marriage, seemingly without culturally appropriate male/male negotiation; they are wives settled by others in a land that presumably belongs to their fathers and brothers and they are women and children who are to be expelled from the land. Daughters of the Canaanites The peoples-of-the-lands are not only ‘women’ but also ‘foreign’. While their ethnicity is ambiguous, their ‘foreignness’ is constituted by the terminology, attributes and practices assigned to them. In Ezra 9:1, they are contrasted with the ‘people of Israel’ and identified with the abominations of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites; in Ezra 10, the phrase ‫נׁשים נכריות‬ defines their ‘outsider’ status.31 The designation ‘daughters-of-them’ (‫)בנתיהם‬, found in Ezra 9:2, is used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible to describe daughters of the inhabitants of Canaan who dispute land possession with Israel.32 In Exodus, Deuteronomy and Judges, the ‘daughters-of-them’ are accused of leading Israel after other gods.33 Marriage to these daughters is likewise a concern as it establishes political ties with their peoples of origin.34 Calls for the golah to separate (‫ )בדל‬from this group further contribute to this representation of otherness (Ezra 9:1; 10:11). The peoples-of-the-lands are thereby strategically rendered in Ezra 9–10 a homogenous, undifferentiated and feminized group distinct from the golah. Ezra 9:1 employs a list of eight nations in its characterization of the peoples-of-the-lands: the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites.35 The syntax of the verse, however, does not assign these particular ethnic identities to the peoples-of-the-lands but instead

Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10  43 ascribes to them the abominations of the listed nations: ‘the peoples-of-the-lands, whose abominations are like (‫כתועבתיהם ל־‬, 9:1b) those of the Canaanites’. All other uses of this formulation – the preposition -‫ כ‬attached to the term ‫– תועבתיהם‬ refer to the practices of the indigenous inhabitants of Canaan that Israel is to avoid.36 Ezra 9:1 does not warn Israel to avoid such practices but instead employs this characterization to enjoin Israel to separate from the peoples-of-the-lands.37 Four of the nations in the list, the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites and Jebusites, are found in most stereotypical lists of the enemies of Israel who inhabited the land of Canaan before Israel’s purported ‘conquest’ of the land (cf. Deut 7:1; Neh 9:6–9).38 Their presence in Ezra 9 is an artistic anachronism referencing the cultural memory of conquest as a framework for the rejection of and separation from these peoples. While the rest of the nations in the list – Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites – are contemporary to the historical context of the early Persian period,39 it is not evident that they were included for that reason. Michael Fishbane argues that Ezra 9:1 references the nations forbidden from the assembly of Yhwh in Deuteronomy 23:4–8.40 They are also represented by Solomon’s forbidden foreign wives whose influence led him astray to worship their gods (1 Kgs 11:1–8).41 Common to the biblical representation of these nations is their conflictive relationship with Israel and the repeated biblical warning against imitating their practices and following their gods.42 Most fundamentally, therefore, the list in Ezra 9:2 serves to pejoratively assimilate the practices of the peoples-of-the-lands to those of foreign, non-Yhwh worshipping enemies of Israel. The term ‘Canaanites’ is not by chance at the head of the list of nations, as it plays an important ideological role in the construction of Israelite identity in the Hebrew Bible. As Niels Peter Lemche notes, [t]he Canaan of the Old Testament, the archetypal enemy of ancient Israel, is . . . not an enigmatic old nation that once upon a time occupied Palestine. It is more of a literary device created in order to make a distinction between the heroes of the narrative, the biblical Israelites, and the villains, the Canaanites.43 In the Hebrew Bible, ‘Canaanites’ often represent the quintessential enemies of Israel whose defeat, conquest and expulsion seek to ensure Israelite fidelity to Yhwh and the possession of the land promised to Israel. The Canaanites, along with other indigenous inhabitants of Canaan, are characterized by their ‫תועבות‬, often described as sexually, cultically and ethically deviant practices that Israel is to avoid. This stereotypical characterization of Canaanites as ‘other’ in the Hebrew Bible functions to establish the identity of Israel and the behaviour appropriate for Israelites (especially Israelite men).44 Ezra 9 accuses the peoples-of-the-lands of such practices and of contaminating the land with the impurity these abominations generate (‫ ;תועבתיהם‬9:11). Similar terminology is employed in Leviticus 18:24–25 where the abominations of the inhabitants of the land contaminate that land which in turn vomits them out.45 However, while Leviticus enjoins Israel to avoid the practices of the inhabitants

44  Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10 of the land, in Ezra 9, the characterization serves to render the peoples-of-the-lands unacceptable co-inhabitants of the land with the golah. Eve Feinstein aptly highlights this distinction, noting that: Whereas Leviticus 18 invoked foreign peoples in order to stigmatize particular behaviours, Ezra 9 invokes a general category of rejected behaviours in order to stigmatize particular people.46 The practices of the peoples-of-the-lands are assimilated with those of Canaan’s indigenous inhabitants, justifying their legitimate removal and destruction. Unlike other instances of intermarriage in the Hebrew Bible, there is no indication in Ezra 9 that peoples-of-the-lands sway the men of the golah to practice similar abominations. Rather, the characterization of the practices of the peoples-of-the-lands renders these peoples subordinate and justifiably ­‘conquerable’ by the golah men. It locates the golah in the realm of land conquest, where the peoples-of-the-lands (daughters and wives) are enemies to be defeated, ­dispossessed and expelled.47 The daughters of Ezra 9 become the foreign wives (‫ )נׁשים הנכריות‬in Ezra 10.48 As discussed in Chapter 1, this designation is used in the Hebrew Bible for various foreign women who provoke religious, cultural or sexual deviance.49 Ezra 10, however, makes no accusations to this effect and appears less concerned with what the women have done than what the men have done or should do to them. People of menstrual impurity The reference to the impurity (‫ )נדה‬of the peoples-of-the-lands in Ezra 9:11 contributes to the feminizing representation of this group. In Ezra’s prayer, intermarriage with the peoples-of-the-lands is rejected on the basis of the ‘commandments given to the prophets’ by Yhwh (Ezra 9:10b-12). In these verses, Ezra draws on Deuteronomy 7:1–4 and Leviticus 18:24–30 but adapts their rationale and intent in his argumentation against intermarriage.50 Deuteronomy 7:3–4 prohibits intermarriage with the indigenous inhabitants on the grounds that it will inevitably lead Israel to abandon Yhwh and follow other gods (also, Josh 23:11–13; Judg 3:5–6; 1 Kgs 11:1–2). Ezra uses the first part of the prohibition (Deut 7:3) but omits the rationale provided by Deut 7:4. Rather, drawing on Lev 18:24–25, Ezra 9:11–12 forbids intermarriage because the land’s indigenous inhabitants are impure. Furthermore, as impure contaminators of the land, they are rendered unfit for ‘intermingling’ (‫ )ערב‬with the ‘holy seed’ (‫זרע הקדׁש‬, 9:2) of the golah. While echoing Leviticus 18:24–25, Ezra 9:11 uses a term for impurity not found in the Levitical text: it uses ‫ נדה‬rather than ‫ טמא‬to characterize the impurity of the land and its inhabitants: [I]t is a land impure (‫ )נדה‬due to the impurities (‫ )נדה‬of the peoples-of-thelands, with their abominations (‫ ;)תועבת‬they have filled it from end to end with their impurity (‫)טמאה‬. (Ezra 9:11)

Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10  45 Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, especially in Levitical rulings, ‫ נדה‬describes impurity generated by female bodily emissions, specifically menstruation, but also childbirth.51 Thus, Ezra 9:11 uses a term specifically associated with femininity and female biological processes to describe the impurity of the peoples-of-the-lands. Claudia Camp observes that ‘Ezra’s exegesis of Leviticus . . . specifies the land’s uncleanness as female uncleanness in a way his source does not’.52 In ritual contexts, ‫ נדה‬impurity is reparable and does not permanently exclude a woman from the cult or morally degrade her.53 In Ezra 9:11, however, the peoples-of-the-lands are characterized as being in a permanent state of ‫ נדה‬impurity, as it is produced by their abominations and not by bodily functions. Significantly, it is not the foreign daughters that Ezra 9:11 characterizes but rather the peoples-of-the-lands, a male social group that is feminized by reference to its ‘menstrual impurity’. At stake here is precisely the ‘gender-bending image of “menstrual men” ’ that Eve Feinstein rejects in her comments on this text.54 These are not, however, ‘menstrual men’ but a male social group feminized as akin to menstrual women. The degradation and threat of the female menstruating body are assumed and appropriated as the basis for the degradation of ‘othered’ men and male bodies. While some scholars dismiss the gendered connotations of ‫ נדה‬in Ezra 9:11,55 these are more readily in evidence when considered alongside other ‘feminizing’ strategies in the text. The term ‫ נדה‬contrasts markedly with the masculinizing designation ‘holy seed’ (‫זרע הקדׁש‬, 9:2) of the golah.56 For Bob Becking, the latter term indicates a reformulation of ‘the idea of divine election . . . in biological categories’57; expressly, in male biological categories. The designation’s gendered and embodied dimensions are suggested by the word ‘seed’ (‫ )זרע‬used in the Hebrew Bible for agricultural seeds, male semen, offspring, lineage and descent.58 Common to these meanings is the notion of a ‘seed’ planted to produce ‘fruit’ in the ground or in a woman’s womb. At a corporeal level, therefore, the phrase ‘holy seed’ (or ‘holy semen’) in Ezra 9:2 references male descent and, more specifically, the male role in procreation.59 Thus, ‫ זרע הקדׁש‬and ‫ נדה‬reference bodily processes that generate temporary impurity in Levitical rulings, the flow of male semen and female menstruation.60 The ‫ זרע הקדׁש‬of the golah does not generate impurity, however, but inhabits the realm of the holy. It is a realm that requires separation and one that is reserved for men in the Hebrew Bible.61 Therefore, the problem with the peoples-of-the-lands is not that they produce contaminating bodily emissions; it is that they produce female bodily emissions rather than male seed. In a cultural context where the task of female wombs is to bear male seed and bring it to fruition, these feminized menstrual peoples are passive receptacles for male seed.62 In short, the gendered characterization of the impurity of the peoples-of-the-lands constructs an image of a people replete with wombs awaiting male seed. They lack male reproductive members and the seed that flows from these members. The feminized representation of the peoples-of-the-lands as female, foreign and impure undermines these peoples’ masculinity and relative status. It likewise constructs an opposing image of golah dominance, holiness and male procreative power. However, the attributes called upon to sustain golah masculinity are

46  Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10 revealed to be unstable and plagued by ‘discontents’. Golah masculinity bears the ‘seeds’ of its undoing. Golah masculinity and its discontents Amid the lifting, settling and un-settling to which the golah subjects the peoples-of-the-lands, one act attributed to them in the text significantly complicates the assumptions concerning their subordinate passivity: the foreign women give birth. Ezra 10 twice uses terminology that indicates that the women have given birth (10:3;44b). The most explicit reference is found in 10:3, where Shecaniah calls for the expulsion of the women along with ‘the ones born from them’ (‫)הנולד מהם‬. In the Hebrew Bible, the verb ‫ ילד‬is the one most frequently used to describe the act of giving birth, and ‫ בת( בנים‬,‫ )בן‬commonly designates those who are born.63 Furthermore, the Hebrew Bible often describes women giving birth ‘for’ a man.64 The participle of ‫ ילד‬in Ezra 10:3 describes the children exclusively in relation to, and as a product of, their mothers: they are ‘born from them (the women)’ (‫)הנולד מהם‬.65 It thereby obscures patrilineal descent and male participation in procreation. As Sarah Japhet notes, ‘these offspring are not identified by what they are, neither in relation to their fathers nor even as human beings. They are the product of their mothers’.66 The women in Ezra 10 not only give birth but also ‘place’ (‫ )ׂשים‬their sons (10:44). The verb is not used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible for childbirth. However, in various texts, it describes fathers who ‘place’ their sons in positions of authority (1 Sam 8:1; 2 Kgs 10:3). In Ezra 10, it highlights the agency of the foreign women/peoples-of-the-lands and defies their sole characterization as objects of manipulation at the hands of the golah. The description of the land as one that is ‘filled from end to end with impurity’ (‫ ;מלאוה מפה אל־פה בטמאתם‬9:11) likewise evokes the reproductive capacity of the peoplesof-the-lands/foreign women. The term ‫ נדה‬is used in Leviticus not only for menstruation, which is itself indicative of reproductive capacity, but it also describes the impurity of a woman after giving birth, where she becomes ‫טמא‬, ‘as at the time of her ‫( ’נדה‬Lev 12.2). The feminized imagery assigned to the ­peoples-of-the-lands thus constitutes them as possessors of the female capacity not only to give birth to sons and ‘place’ them in the land but also to fill (‫ )מלא‬the land. The ‘filling of the land’ described in Ezra 9:11b evokes the divine command to humankind to ‘be fruitful and multiply, and fill (‫ )מלא‬the earth and subdue it’ (Gen 1:28; cf. Gen 9:1). It likewise suggestively references the threatening reproductive capacity of the enslaved Israelites who ‘filled the land’ of Egypt (‫תמלא הארץ אתם‬, Exod 1:7). These references to childbirth and reproduction call into question golah participation in the very masculine performance of engendering descendants: women reproduce, it would seem, without the men. They raise doubts concerning the golah’s ability to ‘place’ sons in the land. The ascription ‘holy seed’ that characterizes the group in Ezra 9:2 likewise ­complicates the golah’s performance of masculinity. The term references, scholars have argued, the democratization of holiness to all the golah, as evidenced in the extension of priestly marriage restrictions to all golah men.67 Thus, the category

Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10  47 of holiness ascribes not only superior social, cultic and gendered status but also heightened vulnerability. As Jacob Milgrom explains, the holy status of the priests renders them ‘most vulnerable of all’ as their ‘sensitivity to impurity is greater than the layman’s’.68 Holiness, however, is a significant problem for golah performance of masculinity in the world of the narrative since it makes it susceptible to impurity, something it must avoid at all costs. This vulnerability makes entry into (‫ )בוא‬and possession (‫ירׁש‬, Ezra 9:11a) of the land – a land filled with ‘menstrual’ impurity (Ezra 9:11b) – a risky endeavour for the golah, one akin to the offence of sexual relations with a menstruating woman.69 The contaminated land is an inhospitable dwelling place for the holy seed, whose elevated cultic status hampers the masculine performance of land settlement. The precarious nature of golah masculinity qua ‘holy seed’ is also evoked by the ease with which the seed is prone to ‘spoilage’. Since its holiness is to be maintained through separation (‫)הבדיל‬, it is threatened by the intermingling (‫;התערבו‬ 9:2b) that takes place when golah men perform the very quotidian masculine act of taking daughters as wives (9:2a).70 Golah masculinity is threatened by its very essence: in order to reproduce, the seed must intermingle, but this intermingling threatens the holiness of the seed. To propagate the ‘holy seed’ is to risk the very quality of separation that renders it holy. On the other hand, the call to separate from the peoples-of-the-lands, a measure designed to restore the required distinction between these peoples, is an affront to the masculinity of the married golah men. They are required to expel their wives and sons as an act of fidelity to Yhwh. In Ezra 9–10, golah masculinity is hampered not only by the reproductive capacity of the peoples-of-the-lands and its own vulnerable status as ‘holy seed’ but also by the very identity this group claims for itself as ‫בני הגולה‬. This designation not only affirms an identity defined by the experience of exile but also highlights this group’s liminal location in the text’s narrative world. They claim rightful possession of a land inhabited by others while continuing to identify themselves with exile, displacement and life outside the land.71 This state of ‘dislocation’, as Gary Knoppers observes, is a ‘cardinal feature in shaping the group’s self-definition’.72 The sons of the golah are a remnant rescued by Yhwh (9:8–9;14) from captivity, sword and pestilence (9:6). They are servants of the empire, beholden to the Persian king (9:8b-9) and to Yhwh, whose impending wrath threatens their very existence (9:14b; 10:2b; 10:14b). They are reproductively challenged, and the land they seek to possess threatens them with impurity. Such images of political and military decimation, subordinate political status and vulnerability are not readily associated with dominant social performances of masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and ancient West Asian representations. While the feminized representation of the peoples-of-the-lands seeks to affirm the superior masculinity of the golah, that masculinity is subverted by the very attributes and performances by which it is constructed. In this precarious position, the priestscribe Ezra introduces a distinct performance of masculinity – one that is enacted through mourning, lament and penitence. Ezra’s penitential masculinity materially modifies golah bodies and appropriates liminality as a place of power.

48  Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10 Notes 1 See Ezra 4:1; 6:19,20; 8:35; 10:7; 10:16; also, ‫ קהל הגולה‬in Ezra 10:8). 2 See Ehud Ben Zvi, “Inclusion in and Exclusion from Israel as Conveyed by the Use of the Term ‘Israel’ in Post-Monarchic Biblical Texts,” in The Pitcher Is Broken. Memorial Essays for Gösta W. Ahlström, ed. Steven W. Holloway and Lowell K. Handy (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 95–141. 3 On the significance of these lists, see Hayyim Angel, “The Literary Significance of the Name Lists in Ezra-Nehemiah,” Jewish Bible Quarterly 35, no. 3 (2007): 143–52; Jonathan E. Dyck, The Theocratic Ideology of the Chronicler (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 1998), 189–98; K. Galling, “The ‘Gola-List’ According to Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7,” Journal of Biblical Literature 70 (1951): 149–58. 4 Ezra 2:60 includes female servants and singers among those who accompany the exiles, and Ezra 2:61 mentions the daughter of Barzillai, whose husband takes her father’s name. Elsewhere, women are mentioned only in Ezra 9–10. 5 ‫אנׁשי‬: Ezra 2:22–23,27–28; ‫זכרים‬: 8:3–14. 6 On the post-exilic ‫בית אבות‬, see H.G.M. Williamson, “The Family in Persian Period Judah: Some Textual Reflections,” in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina, ed. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 472–78; Daniel L. Smith, The Religion of the Landless: The Social Context of the Babylonian Exile (Bloomington: Meyer-Stone Books, 1989), 99; Joel Weinberg, The Citizen-Temple Community, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992). 7 Cf. 2 Chronicles 31:17–18. 8 Jonathan E. Dyck, “Ezra 2 in Ideological Critical Perspective,” in Rethinking Contexts, Rereading Texts: Contributions from the Social Sciences to Biblical Interpretation, ed. M. Daniel Carroll (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 139. 9 As noted by Dyck, “Ezra 2 in Ideological Critical Perspective,” 144. 10 Aramaic (‫)ׂשב‬: 5:5,9;6:7,9,14; Heb (‫)זקן‬: 10:8,16. 11 The term ‫ ׂשר‬is used in Ezra to designate heads of the priests (Ezra 8:24,29; 10:5), and leaders of the people, as in elders and/or heads of families (Ezra 10:8,14). 12 In Ezra, the term ‫ סגן‬references a leader of the Jewish community (9:2). In prophetic texts, it designates a Babylonian state official (Isa 41:25; Jer 51:23,28,57; Ezek 23:6,12,23). See Ludwig Köhler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. I (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2001), 742. 13 Ezra 5:1–2. 14 Williamson, “The Family in Persian Period Judah,” 475. 15 ‫ כהן‬is used 33 times in the book, and ‫ לוי‬29 times. Other than ‘sons’, it is the most prevalent role men occupy in the book of Ezra. Other cultic personnel are listed in Ezra 2 along with the priests and Levites (2:36–40), namely the singers and gatekeepers (2:41–42), the temple servants (‫נתינים‬, 2:43–54) and the descendants of Solomon’s servants (2:55–58). 16 Peoples-of-the-lands (‫עמי הארצות‬, 9:1,2,11) and peoples-of-the-land (‫עמי הארץ‬, 10:2,11). 17 See discussions in John Tracy Thames, “A New Discussion of the Meaning of the Phrase ‘am hā’āreṣ in the Hebrew Bible,” Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 1 (2011): 109–25; Lisbeth Fried, “The ‘am hā’āreṣ in Ezra 4:4 and Persian Administration,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, ed. Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 123–45; Lisbeth Fried, “Because of the Dread Upon Them,” in The World of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East, ed. John Curtis and St John Simpson (New York; London: I.B. ­Tauris, 2010), 457–69; A.H.J. Gunneweg, “ ‘Am hā’āreṣ—a Semantic Revolution,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 95 (1983): 437–40. 18 See Ezra 10:2,10,11,14,17,18,44.

Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10

49

19 On these roles, see Johanna Stiebert, Fathers and Daughters in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 50–64. 20 ‫הוׁשיב‬: 10:2,10,14,17,18; ‫הוציא‬:10:3. 21 Stephan M. Wilson, Making Men: The Male Coming-of-Age Theme in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 40–41; also Stiebert, Fathers and Daughters in the Hebrew Bible, 38–50. 22 Allen Guenther, “A Typology of Israelite Marriage: Kinship, Socio-Economic, and Religious Factors,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 29, no. 4 (2005): 388–90. 23 Contrary to Deut 7:3–4, Judg 3:6, Neh 10:31 and Jer 29:6, where taking of daughters from other peoples or kinship groups is described as the “taking” (‫ )לקח‬and “giving” (‫ )נתן‬of daughters. 24 Katherine E. Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10: An Anthropological Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 165; Guenther, “A Typology of Israelite Marriage: Kinship, Socio-Economic, and Religious Factors”. See Gen 29:28; 34:8,9; 41:45; Deut 22:16; Josh 15:16; Judg 21:1. 25 Ezra 10:2,10,14,17,18 and Neh 13:23,27. 26 See Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis, 163–90; Sara Japhet, “The Expulsion of the Foreign Women (Ezra 9–10): The Legal Basis, Precedents, and Consequences for the Definition of Jewish Identity,” in “Sieben Augen auf einem Stein” (Sach 3,9): Studien zur Literatur des Zweiten Tempels, vol. 65, ed. Friedhelm Hartenstein and Michael Pietsch (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2007), 153. 27 Gen 47:6,11; 1 Sam 12:8; 2 Kgs 17:6,24; 2 Chr 8:2; Jer 32:37. This meaning is highlighted by Tamara C. Eskenazi, “The Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, ed. Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 520–22. 28 See Yonina Dor, “The Rite of Separation of the Foreign Wives in Ezra-Nehemiah,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context, ed. Oded Lipschitz, Gary N. Knoppers, and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 173–88; David Janzen, “Scholars, Witches, Ideologues, and What the Text Said: Ezra 9–10 and Its Interpretation,” in Approaching Yehud: New Approaches to the Study of the Persian Period, ed. Jon L. Berquist (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008), 49–69. 29 See Michelle I. Marcus, “Geography as Visual Ideology: Landscape, Knowledge, and Power in Neo-Assyrian Art,” in Neo-Assyrian Geography, ed. Mario Liverani (Rome: Universita di Roma, 1995), 193–202; Pauline Albenda, “Woman, Child, and Family, Their Imagery in Assyrian Art,” in Internationaler Assyriologischer Kongress: La Femme dans Le Proche-Orient, vol. 33, ed. Jean-Marie Durand (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations 1986), 17–21. 30 Cynthia R. Chapman, The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter, Harvard Semitic Monographs (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 47. 31 Ezra 10:2,10,14,17,18,44. Likewise, in 1 Kgs 11:1,8 and Neh 13:27. 32 Gen 34:9,21; Exod 34:16; Deut 7:3; Judg 3:6. 33 Deut 7:3; Exod 34:16; and Judg 3:6. 34 Deut 7:2b-3 and Exod 34:15–16. On intermarriage as a form of covenant making, see Cynthia Edenburg, “From Covenant to Connubium: Persian Period Developments in the Perception of Covenant in the Deuteronomistic History,” in Covenant in the Persian Period: From Genesis to Chronicles, ed. Richard J. Bautch and Gary N. Knoppers (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 131–49. 35 Blenkinsopp substitutes Edomites for Amorites, in keeping with 1 Esd 8:69; cf. Deut 23:4–7 and 1 Kgs 11:1; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library, 1st ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988), 174. Contra Tomoo Ishida, “The Structure and Historical Implications of the Lists of Pre-Israelite Nations,” Biblica 60 (1979): 488.

50  Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10 36 Deut 18:9; 2 Kgs 16:3; 21:2; 2 Chr 28:3; 33:2. 37 Pakkala argues that the list was awkwardly inserted after “abominations” as a gloss and that the intent of the earlier text was to accuse the golah of participating in the abominations of the peoples-of-the-lands. As it stands, the phrase does not characterize the practices of the golah but rather those of the peoples-of-the-lands; Juha Pakkala, Ezra the Scribe: The Development of Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 90–91. 38 Ishida finds 27 similar lists in the Hebrew Bible; Ishida, “The Structure and Historical Implications,” 461–90. 39 Ammonites, Moabites and Amorites figure among the enemies of Nehemiah throughout much of the book (Ammonites: Neh 2:10,19; 3:35; 4:1; 13:1,23; Moabites: Neh 13:1,23; Amorites: Neh 3:2; 9:8). 40 Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 116. Pakkala indicates that, contrary to Deut 23:4–8, Ezra 9:1 includes the Egyptians and Edomites on the same level as the Ammonites and Moabites; Juha Pakkala, “The Quotations and References of the Pentateuchal Laws in Ezra-Nehemiah,” in Changes in Scripture: Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the Second Temple Period, ed. Hanne von Weissenberg, Juha Pakkala, and Marko Marttila (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 207. 41 If “Amorites” is amended to “Edomites”, so Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, 175. 42 See Exod 34:11–16; Lev 18:1–3; Num 25:1–2; Deut 7:1–4; 20:17–18; Josh 24:14–15; Judg 3:5–6; 1 Kgs 11:1–11. 43 Niels Peter Lemche, The Israelites in History and Tradition (London; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 128–29. 44 Robert L. Cohn, “Before Israel: The Canaanites as Other in Biblical Tradition,” in The Other in Jewish Thought and History: Constructions of Jewish Culture and Identity, ed. Laurence J. Silberstein and Robert L. Cohn (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 76–77. 45 Lev 18:25. 46 Eve Levavi Feinstein, Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 132. 47 In the Hebrew Bible, Francesca Stavrakopoulou notes, ‘the indigenous populations are othered as “Canaanites” or other “foreign” peoples, to be out-bred, marginalized, displaced or eradicated from the landscape’; Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Land of our Fathers: The Roles of Ancestor Veneration in Biblical Land Claims, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 26. 48 Ezra 10. 2,10,11,14,17,18,44. 49 1 Kgs 11:1–11; Neh 13:23–25; Prov 2:16–19; 5:20; 6:24–25; 7:5,20; 23:27. 50 On Pentateuchal texts in Ezra and Nehemiah, see Bob Becking, “The Idea of Thora in Ezra 7–10: A Functional Analysis,” in Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Construction of Early Jewish Identity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 42–57; Pakkala, “The Quotations and References of the Pentateuchal Laws,” 193–221; Sara Japhet, “Law and ‘the Law’ in Ezra-Nehemiah,” in From the Rivers of Babylon to the Highlands of Judah: Collected Studies on the Restoration Period (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 137–52; Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, 176–76; Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 117–19. 51 Lev 12:2,5; 15:19,20,33; also, Ezek 18:6; 22:10; 36:17. See Dorothea Erbele-Küster, “Gender and Cult: ‘Pure’ and ‘Impure’ as Gender-Relevant Categories,” in Torah, ed. Irmtraud Fischer, Mercedes Navarro Puerto, and Andrea Taschl-Erber, The Bible and Women (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 379–407. 52 Claudia V. Camp, Wise, Strange, and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the Bible, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 33–34, n.14. See also Elizabeth W. Goldstein, Impurity and Gender in the Hebrew Bible (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015), 83.

Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10

51

53 See Tarja Philip, “Gender Matters: Priestly Writing on Impurity,” in Embroidered Garments: Priests and Gender in Biblical Israel, ed. Deborah W. Rooke (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009), 40–49. 54 Feinstein, Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible, 182. 55 See Ibid; Hannah Harrington, “The Use of Leviticus in Ezra-Nehemiah,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 13.a3 (2013); Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis, 137. 56 See Harold C. Washington, “Israel’s Holy Seed and the Foreign Women of Ezra-Nehemiah: A Kristevan Reading,” Biblical Interpretation 11, no. 3/4 (2003): 427–37. 57 Bob Becking, “Continuity and Community: The Belief System of the Book of Ezra,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic & PostExilic Texts, ed. Bob Becking (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 270–71. See also Katherine E. Southwood, “The Holy Seed: The Significance of Endogamous Boundaries and Their Transgression in Ezra 9–10,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context, ed. Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 189–224; Saul M. Olyan, “Purity Ideology in Ezra-Nehemiah as a Tool to Reconstitute the Community,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 35, no. 1 (2004): 3–4; Christine Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 26–27. 58 Agricultural seeds: Gen 1:11; Deut 22:9; male semen: Gen 1:11; Deut 22:9; offspring/ descendants: Gen 16:10; 17:8; Deut 1:8; Neh 9:8; Ezra 2:59. See Hans Dietrich Preuss, “zāraʿ,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. IV, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 146–62. 59 The term ‫ זרע‬is associated primarily with men, male offspring, male groups and male bodily functions. Women may produce ‫ זרע‬but are never designated as ‫ זרע‬themselves (Gen 3:15; 4:25; 16:10; 24:60; Lev 12:2; 22:13; 1 Sam 1:11). 60 ‫זוב דם‬: Lev 15:19,25; ‫ׁשכבת־זרע‬: Lev. 15:16,17,18,32. 61 Milgrom notes that separation is the essence of holiness in the priestly worldview. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible, 1st ed. (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 1371. 62 Stephanie Budin, “Fertility and Gender in the Ancient Near East,” in Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World, ed. Mark Masterson, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, and James Robson (London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015), 34–37; Baruch Levine, “ ‘Seed’ Versus ‘Womb’: Expressions of Male Dominance in Biblical Israel,” in Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2–6, 2001, ed. Simon Parpola and Robert M. Whiting (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2002), 341. 63 Gen 16:11,15,16; 22:20; 29:32; Judg 11:2. 64 -‫ילדה ל‬, Gen 16:1; 21:3; 24:47; 41:50; 46:20; Judg 8:31; 2 Sam 11:27; 1 Chro 2:4. 65 The participle is also used in Gen 21:3; 48:5; 1 Kgs 13:2; 1 Chr 7:21; 22:9 and Ps 22:32. See Ronald S. Hendel, “ ‘Begetting’ and ‘Being Born’ in the Pentateuch: Notes on Historical Linguistics and Source Criticism,” Vetus Testamentum 50, no. 1 (2000): 41–45. In Late Biblical Hebrew, the feminine third-person suffix frequently merges into the masculine. See Robert Polzin, Late Biblical Hebrew: Toward an Historical Typology of Biblical Hebrew Prose, Hebrew Semitic Monographs (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976), 51–54. 66 Japhet, “The Expulsion of the Foreign Women,” 152. 67 See Christian Frevel and Benedikt J. Conczorowski, “Deepening the Water: First Steps to a Diachronic Approach on Intermarriage in the Hebrew Bible,” in Mixed Marriages: Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period, ed. Christian Frevel (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 43–44; Hannah Harrington, “Holiness and Purity in Ezra-Nehemiah,” in Unity and Disunity in Ezra-Nehemiah: Redaction, Rhetoric, and

52  Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10

68 69 70 71

72

Reader, ed. Mark J. Boda and Paul L. Redditt (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008), 101–2; Hayes, Gentile Impurities, 13. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 979. In Lev 15:24, it generates impurity that may be cleansed, while in Lev 20:18 and Ezek 18:6; 22:10, it is a serious offence akin to incest, adultery, oppression and robbery. 9:2: ‘the holy seed has intermingled with the peoples of the lands’ (‫זרע הקדׁש בעמי הארצות‬ ‫)התערבו‬. See Gary N. Knoppers, “Ethnicity, Genealogy, Geography and Change: The Judean Communities of Babylon and Jerusalem in the Story of Ezra,” in Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Kenneth A. Ristau (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 168. Knoppers, “Ethnicity, Genealogy, Geography and Change,” 163.

References Albenda, Pauline. “Woman, Child, and Family, Their Imagery in Assyrian Art.” In Internationaler Assyriologischer Kongress: La Femme dans Le Proche-Orient. vol. 33, edited by Jean-Marie Durand, 17–21. Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1986. Angel, Hayyim. “The Literary Significance of the Name Lists in Ezra-Nehemiah.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 35, no. 3 (2007): 143–52. Becking, Bob. “Continuity and Community: The Belief System of the Book of Ezra.” In The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic & Post-Exilic Texts, edited by Bob Becking, 256–75. Leiden: Brill, 1999. ———. “The Idea of Thora in Ezra 7–10: A Functional Analysis.” In Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Construction of Early Jewish Identity, 42–57. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011. Ben Zvi, Ehud. “Inclusion in and Exclusion from Israel as Conveyed by the Use of the Term ‘Israel’ in Post-Monarchic Biblical Texts.” In The Pitcher Is Broken. Memorial Essays for Gösta W. Ahlström, edited by Steven W. Holloway and Lowell K. Handy, 95–149. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995. Blenkinsopp, Joseph. Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary. The Old Testament Library, 1st ed. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988. Budin, Stephanie. “Fertility and Gender in the Ancient Near East.” In Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World, edited by Mark Masterson, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, and James Robson, 30–49. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. Camp, Claudia V. Wise, Strange, and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the Bible. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Chapman, Cynthia R. The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter. Harvard Semitic Monographs. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004. Cohn, Robert L. “Before Israel: The Canaanites as Other in Biblical Tradition.” In The Other in Jewish Thought and History: Constructions of Jewish Culture and Identity, edited by Laurence J. Silberstein and Robert L. Cohn, 74–90. New York: New York University Press, 1994. Dor, Yonina. “The Rite of Separation of the Foreign Wives in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context, edited by Oded Lipschitz, Gary N. Knoppers, and Manfred Oeming, 173–88. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011. Dyck, Jonathan E. The Theocratic Ideology of the Chronicler. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 1998. ———. “Ezra 2 in Ideological Critical Perspective.” In Rethinking Contexts, Rereading Texts: Contributions from the Social Sciences to Biblical Interpretation, edited by M. Daniel Carroll, 129–45. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000.

Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10  53 Edenburg, Cynthia. “From Covenant to Connubium: Persian Period Developments in the Perception of Covenant in the Deuteronomistic History.” In Covenant in the Persian Period: From Genesis to Chronicles, edited by Richard J. Bautch and Gary N. Knoppers, 131–49. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015. Erbele-Küster, Dorothea. “Gender and Cult: ‘Pure’ and ‘Impure’ as Gender-Relevant Categories.” In Torah. The Bible and Women, edited by Irmtraud Fischer, Mercedes Navarro Puerto, and Andrea Taschl-Erber, 375–406. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. Eskenazi, Tamara C. “The Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, edited by Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming, 509–29. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006. Feinstein, Eve Levavi. Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Fishbane, Michael A. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Frevel, Christian, and Benedikt J. Conczorowski. “Deepening the Water: First Steps to a Diachronic Approach on Intermarriage in the Hebrew Bible.” In Mixed Marriages: Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period, edited by Christian Frevel, 15–45. New York: T&T Clark, 2011. Fried, Lisbeth. “The ‘am hā’āreṣ in Ezra 4:4 and Persian Administration.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, edited by Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming, 123–45. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006. ———. “Because of the Dread Upon Them.” In The World of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East, edited by John Curtis and St  John Simpson, 457–69. New York; London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Galling, K. “The ‘Gola-List’ According to Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7.” Journal of Biblical Literature 70 (1951): 149–58. Goldstein, Elizabeth W. Impurity and Gender in the Hebrew Bible. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015. Guenther, Allen. “A Typology of Israelite Marriage: Kinship, Socio-Economic, and Religious Factors.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 29, no. 4 (2005): 387–407. Gunneweg, A.H.J. “Am hā’āreṣ—a Semantic Revolution.” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 95 (1983): 437–40. Harrington, Hannah. “Holiness and Purity in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Unity and Disunity in Ezra-Nehemiah: Redaction, Rhetoric, and Reader, edited by Mark J. Boda and Paul L. Redditt, 98–116. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008. ———. “The Use of Leviticus in Ezra-Nehemiah.” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 13.a3 (2013): 1–20. Hayes, Christine. Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Hendel, Ronald S. “ ‘Begetting’ and ‘Being Born’ in the Pentateuch: Notes on Historical Linguistics and Source Criticism.” Vetus Testamentum 50, no. 1 (2000): 38–46. Ishida, Tomoo. “The Structure and Historical Implications of the Lists of Pre-Israelite Nations.” Biblica 60 (1979): 461–90. Janzen, David. “Scholars, Witches, Ideologues, and What the Text Said: Ezra 9–10 and Its Interpretation.” In Approaching Yehud: New Approaches to the Study of the Persian Period, edited by Jon L. Berquist, 49–69. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008. Japhet, Sara. “Law and ‘the Law’ in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In From the Rivers of Babylon to the Highlands of Judah: Collected Studies on the Restoration Period, 137–51. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006.

54  Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10 ———. “The Expulsion of the Foreign Women (Ezra 9–10): The Legal Basis, Precedents, and Consequences for the Definition of Jewish Identity.” In “Sieben Augen auf einem Stein” (Sach 3,9): Studien zur Literatur des Zweiten Tempels. vol. 65, edited by Friedhelm Hartenstein and Michael Pietsch, 141–61. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2007. Knoppers, Gary N. “Ethnicity, Genealogy, Geography and Change: The Judean Communities of Babylon and Jerusalem in the Story of Ezra.” In Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives, edited by Gary N. Knoppers and Kenneth A. Ristau, 147–71. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009. Köhler, Ludwig, and Walter Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. vol. I. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2001. Lemche, Niels Peter. The Israelites in History and Tradition. London; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998. Levine, Baruch. “ ‘Seed’ Versus ‘Womb’: Expressions of Male Dominance in Biblical Israel.” In Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2–6, 2001, edited by Simon Parpola and Robert M. Whiting, 337–44. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2002. Marcus, Michelle I. “Geography as Visual Ideology: Landscape, Knowledge, and Power in Neo-Assyrian Art.” In Neo-Assyrian Geography, edited by Mario Liverani, 193–202. Rome: Universita di Roma, 1995. Milgrom, Jacob. Leviticus 1–16. The Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1991. ———. Leviticus 17–22: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. The Anchor Bible, 1st ed. New York: Doubleday, 2000. Olyan, Saul M. “Purity Ideology in Ezra-Nehemiah as a Tool to Reconstitute the Community.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 35, no. 1 (2004): 1–16. Pakkala, Juha. Ezra the Scribe: The Development of Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004. ———. “The Quotations and References of the Pentateuchal Laws in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Changes in Scripture: Rewriting and Interpreting Authoritative Traditions in the Second Temple Period, edited by Hanne von Weissenberg, Juha Pakkala, and Marko Marttila, 193–221. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2011. Philip, Tarja. “Gender Matters: Priestly Writing on Impurity.” In Embroidered Garments: Priests and Gender in Biblical Israel, edited by Deborah W. Rooke, 40–59. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009. Polzin, Robert. Late Biblical Hebrew: Toward an Historical Typology of Biblical Hebrew Prose. Hebrew Semitic Monographs. Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976. Preuss, Hans Dietrich. “zāraʿ.” In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. vol. IV, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 143–62. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974. Smith, Daniel L. The Religion of the Landless: The Social Context of the Babylonian Exile. Bloomington: Meyer-Stone Books, 1989. Southwood, Katherine E. “The Holy Seed: The Significance of Endogamous Boundaries and Their Transgression in Ezra 9–10.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context, edited by Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Manfred Oeming, 189–224. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011. ———. Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10: An Anthropological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Gendering otherness in Ezra 9–10  55 Stavrakopoulou, Francesca. Land of our Fathers: The Roles of Ancestor Veneration in Biblical Land Claims. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies. New York: T&T Clark, 2010. Stiebert, Johanna. Fathers and Daughters in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Thames, John Tracy. “A New Discussion of the Meaning of the Phrase ‘am hā’āreṣ in the Hebrew Bible.” Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 1 (2011): 109–25. Washington, Harold C. “Israel’s Holy Seed and the Foreign Women of Ezra-Nehemiah: A Kristevan Reading.” Biblical Interpretation 11, no. 3/4 (2003): 427–37. Weinberg, Joel. The Citizen-Temple Community. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992. Williamson, H.G.M. “The Family in Persian Period Judah: Some Textual Reflections.” In Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina, edited by William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin, 469–85. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003. Wilson, Stephan M. Making Men: The Male Coming-of-Age Theme in the Hebrew Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

4 Mourning and masculinity

This chapter is based on the following contribution: ‘Modifying Manly Bodies: Mourning and Masculinities in Ezra 9–10’, in the volume Life and Death: Social Perspectives on Biblical Bodies, edited by Francesca Stavrakopoulou (2021), T&T Clark, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Introduction Ezra’s response upon hearing that golah men have taken wives from the peoples-of-the-lands is to engage in a series of rituals of mourning, lament and penitence (Ezra 9.3–5; 10.1): he tears his garments, pulls his hair and beard, falls to the ground, prays, confesses, weeps, throws himself down repeatedly and fasts. It is a performance that some scholars and readers have perceived as problematically emotional and unseemly for a man of Ezra’s status. This ‘un-masculine’ performance must be analysed in terms of the state of ‘dislocation’ the golah inhabits as a group subject to Yhwh and the Persian king – a people not in exile but also not fully in possession of the land.1 In this state of dislocation, Ezra’s performance of mourning and lament introduces an alternative model of masculinity; it is not the masculine performance of warriors or kings or even the masculinity of virile producers of progeny. Instead, Ezra’s masculinity is constituted by self-debasement and subordination to Yhwh. As it gathers around Ezra, the golah likewise incorporates and embodies mourning and penitence as a performance of masculinity, thereby reconfiguring power ­relations and the gendered, social and cultic roles of golah men in the text. Ezra the man The book of Ezra introduces its eponymous hero with a series of notable roles, attributes and responsibilities (Ezra 7). He is a priest of the highest pedigree (7:1– 5) who is tied to the foundation of the cult (Aaron) and the monarchy (Zadok), as well as the last priest before the exile (Seraiah) (7:1–7).2 He is an expert scribe,3 a scholar of the ‘law of Moses’ (7:6,10),4 charged by the Persian king to inspect the region concerning obedience to the law (7:14).5 In this emissarial role, he is granted authority over the legal administration of the province of Abar-Nahar and ordered DOI: 10.4324/b23091-4

Mourning and masculinity  57 to ‘appoint magistrates and judges’ (7:25) and to punish those who disobey (7:26).6 In this capacity, the king charges him with transporting prized vessels to the Jerusalem temple and authorizes him to draw from local treasuries for the needs of the temple (7:16–19, 21–23). Ezra also enjoys favour before Yhwh as indicated by the phrase ‘for the hand of Yhwh/God was upon him/me/us’ repeated throughout the text (7:6,9,28; 8:18,31). The various roles attributed to Ezra and the mission Artaxerxes gives him may draw a somewhat disparate and even hyperbolic image of this man.7 They serve, however, to establish him as a man who exercises authority over other men in matters of the cult, as well as civil and judicial management and administration over Jerusalem and local political elites. The authority that Yhwh and the Persian king Artaxerxes grant Ezra, along with that derived from his lineage, scribal skill and devoted study of the Torah, speak about a way of being a man, performing masculinity and embodying ‘manliness’ in this narrative world. However, when confronted with a problem in Ezra 9:1–2, rather than seek out and reprimand the guilty, Ezra engages in a series of mourning rites that radically transform his body.8 His first-person account describes an intense sequence of purposeful actions, which ends with a man lowered in desolation (‫אׁשבה מׁשומם‬, 9:3b,4b),9 dishevelled, plucked or shaven, bareheaded and at least partially unclothed. Problematically, these ritual acts and those that follow do not appear to directly address, much less remedy, the transgression (‫ )מעל‬committed by the golah men who have married women from the peoples-of-the-lands (9:2,4; 10:6,10). Given the characterization of Ezra in chapter 7, readers might expect him to read or teach the Torah, offer sacrifices, initiate judicial proceedings or employ the authority of his position to punish the guilty men; instead, he weeps before the temple (10:1). His performance appears especially inadequate compared to Nehemiah’s response to a similar situation. Upon discovering that Yehudite men had married Ashdodite, Moabite and Ammonite women, Nehemiah reprimands the guilty men and bares their heads (Neh 13:23–25). He exerts power over them and humiliates them by forcing them into a ‘ritual stance of penitential mourning’.10 Ezra, on the other hand, directs his speech to Yhwh in a confession of guilt (Ezra 9:5–15) and acts upon his own body, baring his own head, rending his garment and debasing himself before Yhwh (Ezra 9:3–4). Lester Grabbe highlights these contrasting responses in his evaluation of Ezra’s performance: He has been given the power and authority to teach and enforce the law over the entire satrapy. . . . Yet when confronted with an actual situation, there is only stupefaction instead of decisive action. Ezra tears his garment and hair and sits on the ground in the square (Nehemiah on the contrary, tears the hair of his opponents [Neh 13:25]). . . . Perhaps mourning and prayer might be what we expect of a pious priest, but we should also expect action. . . . Yet with all that religious and imperial authority behind him, he has trouble dealing with a relatively minor problem in Jerusalem. He can only pray and sit in the street; others make the decisions and give the orders.11

58  Mourning and masculinity While Ezra’s response makes him seem weak and ineffective, Nehemiah exercises overt power over other men – a performance that is more in keeping with both ancient and modern expectations for a man of status.12 To salvage Ezra’s reputation, some scholars argue that Ezra’s actions are not, in fact, a sign of weakness but a deliberate strategy that seeks to move the community to act. In Donald Moffatt’s analysis, for example Ezra ‘utilizes the power of ritual to compel the community to act on these marriages’.13 Along similar lines, Tamara Eskenazi and Dale Launderville posit that Ezra’s behaviour corresponds to a deliberate and innovative leadership strategy, one that is ‘nonautocratic’ and ‘antiheroic’.14 Confronted with Ezra’s emotional display, Hugh Williamson argues that it is not an ‘expression of personal grief’ but ‘an attempt to act representatively on behalf of all the people’.15 Thus, in the view of these scholars, Ezra’s actions constitute a rational and strategic, albeit unconventional, means for managing the crisis. These attempts to salvage Ezra’s performance reflect common scholarly assumptions concerning normative masculine performance and male bodies. They also highlight the underlying prevalent dualism that locates ritual in the realm of the body, rendering it inferior to the realm of the mind and belief. Ritual scholar Catherine Bell notes that Western ritual theories have perpetuated this view of the body that distinguishes and subordinates ritual to the ‘conceptual aspects of religion, such as beliefs, symbols and myths’.16 Frank Gorman observes that this perspective, also present in religious discourse and biblical studies, can be traced to Hellenistic philosophies, Cartesian theory and, more recently, to Reformation theologies where ‘ritual represented entanglement with the body and so merited suspicion and mistrust’.17 Furthermore, as Elizabeth Grosz has noted, the homologous dichotomies that derive from this mind/body dualism subordinate femininity and non-hegemonic models of masculinity to those models which are culturally dominant.18 Catherine Bell argues, however, that ritual is neither solely nor simply a symbolic act but a social process by which power relations, social ties and bodies are restructured ‘in the very doing of the act itself’.19 As David Morgan notes, the study of religious phenomena should consider their ‘embodied, physical and felt forms’, including the ‘images, emotions, sensations, spaces, food, dress or the material practices of putting the body to work’.20 This calls for scholarly studies of ritual acts in biblical texts to go beyond the world of ideas and belief, and focus on the performative, embodied, material, sensory and social dimensions of these acts. Thus, the role scholars assign to ritual as a ‘symbolic’ act that points to meanings external to the body and embodied performance problematically renders Ezra’s body an empty ‘acting object’ that serves merely to communicate, transmit, impose or represent externally constituted meanings.21 Not considered in these readings are the performative effects of Ezra’s bodily actions and emotive expressions and how these embodied acts constitute material, gendered and social identities and relations. Ezra’s ritual performance has performative effects within the world of the narrative: it shapes bodies, identities, social relations and cultic and gender roles.22

Mourning and masculinity  59 This approach to Ezra’s mourning rituals envisions a body that participates in its own construction; it is a body that Francesca Stavrakopoulou describes as a ‘recursively engaged social project’ brought into being through ‘practices, social relations, and cultural performances’.23 Masculinities, male bodies and embodied performance are not examined solely as discursive constructs, but more broadly as socially engaged, practised, embodied, culturally and historically situated productions constituted within the constraints and possibilities of their material, cultural and social contexts. The referential contexts in which this chapter locates the gendered effects of Ezra’s ritual acts of mourning are the idealized constructs and performances of politically dominant masculinity in biblical, ancient West Asian and Achaemenid representations. Its primary aspects include dominance over women and inferior men; physical strength; forceful speech; clothed, upright bodies and full beards and heads of hair.24 Shaving, garment rending, donning sackcloth, weeping, fasting and prostration alter these cultural markers of dominant masculinity so that their ritual performance within petitionary contexts renders men self-debased and physically diminished before a superior figure (whether divine or mortal). In essence, male mourners compromise their masculinity in the performance of mourning as their bodies are rendered prone, exposed and vulnerable, not unlike those who are punitively humiliated.25 This is how Ezra enacts his masculinity in Ezra 9–10: he modifies his body in ways that evoke the less-than-masculine, even feminized, images of enemies, foreigners, subject peoples and fallen soldiers in political and military contexts. Ezra’s body modifications and his manipulation of postures and gestures – all practices common to mourning and petitionary contexts in the Hebrew Bible – deconstruct normative performances of masculinity and, in doing so, reconfigure socio-religious power within the golah and in relation to Yhwh. Ezra the mourner In both ancient and modern cultures, body modification practices materially and physically produce, configure and mark embodied identities.26 Biblical mourning rites include easily reversible body modifications such as removing or tearing clothes, placing ashes on the head, wearing sackcloth and altering body postures, as well as modifications of the head and beard that are temporary but not immediately reversible.27 Saul Olyan observes that such mourning rites are not only expressions of grief, loss or penitence; rather, they produce a ‘distinct ritual state’ that separates the mourner from non-mourners.28 These rituals constitute and enact status, identity or affiliation as mourners negotiate and re-negotiate social bonds.29 They produce a particular configuration of the body – a mourning body.30 Ezra begins his mourning rites by tearing his garment and mantle (‫ )קרעתי את־בגדי ומעילי‬and baring his head and chin (‫ – )ואמרטה מׂשער ראׁשי וזקני‬acts that materially and physically transform his body in very evident and visible ways (Ezra 9:3).31 In the Hebrew Bible, these ritual acts are performed by numerous characters in contexts of lament and distress.32 Commentators often describe them

60  Mourning and masculinity as ‘symbolic’ expressions of grief or loss,33 but they are so much more. They modify the mourner’s body and social status in relation to others and to Yhwh by diminishing and transforming culturally privileged markers of masculinity.34 The social and gendered effects of these self-inflicted rites are more clearly evidenced when they are imposed on unwilling others to punish, subordinate or humiliate them.35 This is the case when Hanun, the King of Ammon, humiliates David’s envoys by shaving their beards and cutting their garments to the buttocks (2 Sam 10:4; 1 Chr 19:4).36 The significance of these acts is not limited to the humiliation they signal or symbolize – they have gendered effects. They alter culturally coded physical and material markers of masculinity and produce ‘less-thanmasculine’ bodies.37 The sexual and gender nuances are inescapable as David’s envoys are forced into a feminizing position of submission. As Susan Niditch observes: To have the beard or half the beard removed against one’s wishes by foreign enemies, together with the symbolic ripping of the clothes up to an erogenous zone, betokens exposure, vulnerability, and being turned into a womanlike figure who is sexually used by male enemies.38 This gendered offence against David’s envoys is a challenge to his own masculinity as it humiliates his representatives and casts doubt upon his ability to protect those under him. David addresses this offence by going to war, where the Israelites display appropriately masculine bravery and might in battle and reclaim their masculinity while the Ammonites flee in defeat and submit to David (2 Sam 10:12–19).39 This text offers a potent example of how body modification practices, with their associated gendered effects, are involved in the negotiation of power relations.40 A similar power dynamic is produced in contexts of mourning when the mourner modifies his body in subordination to the deity and reconfigures social ties within the group. The manipulation of clothing likewise has performative effects, as it is a significant material marker of social, cultic and gender status in the Hebrew Bible and ancient West Asian representations.41 The forced removal of clothing is a serious offence as it renders men not only shamed but also sexually vulnerable to being viewed, acted upon and penetrated.42 The gendered effects of garment manipulation are evident in prophetic texts that depict Jerusalem as a woman who is punished for her infidelity to Yhwh: ‘It is for the greatness of your iniquity that your skirts are lifted up and you are violated’ (Jer 13:22; also Ezek 16:39). Hennie Marsman graphically describes this motif: ‘objects of military attack (cities and land) are depicted as feminine, the attack itself is figured as sexual assault, and the soldiers . . . (in some cases along with God . . .) are portrayed as rapists’.43 Similar threats are levelled against Nineveh, Babylon and male Egyptian captives who are depicted as sexually exposed, and abused, women (Nah 3:5; Isa 20:4; 47:3). Cynthia Chapman identifies this motif in ­Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs that depict the ‘sexual exposure, penetration and bodily mutilation of enemy men’ in battle.44 Defeat in battle is not only a military or

Mourning and masculinity  61 political issue in these representations; it is also a matter of gendered power relations and sexuality. The tearing of garments in contexts of mourning generally involves partial or full nakedness in the face of death or a tragic circumstance.45 While garment rending is not imposed by others in such contexts, it has similar gendered effects on the body of the mourner. While it is expected that male genitalia be covered and protected, especially in the case of priests and in ritual contexts.46 Ezra the priest rends his garments and denutes himself of a prominant element tied to masculine performance. This material modification of his body and appearance has gendered and social effects: he makes himself vulnerable to Yhwh and exposes himself to those around him. Ezra not only modifies his body by altering his garments, but he also bares his head and beard, privileged sites for the negotiation and contestation of masculinity that also index identity and social status.47 Beards, in particular, distinguish men from women, non-dominant men and boys.48 Ornate beards distinguish kings from inferior men, vassals and subordinate peoples in neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid iconography, signalling their physical strength and status.49 Long hair, Niditch observes, is likewise associated with ‘charisma, warrior status and virility’.50 Like garment rending and nakedness, hair and beard-cutting are punitive acts when imposed upon others, as illustrated by the already mentioned distinction between Ezra’s self-imposed head and chin-baring (‫ )אמרטה‬and that which Nehemiah inflicts upon the men guilty of intermarriage (‫אמרטם‬, Neh. 13:25). In the Hebrew Bible, the punitive removal of the beard is a frequent motif for punishment, humiliation and destruction (2 Sam 10:4; Isa 3:24; 15:2; 48:37; Ezek 5:1). With the vivid image of depilation, Isaiah describes Israel’s destruction at the hands of Assyria: ‘Yhwh will shave with a razor hired beyond the river – with the king of Assyria – the head and the hair of the feet [genitals], and it will take off the beard as well’ (Isa 7:20). Niditch notes that the removal of facial hair ‘marks a loss of status in biblical worlds and the wider Levant, the diminishing of military or political power’51 – traits associated with dominant masculinity. Since beards are only grown and cultivated by men, their removal, she explains, is a ‘special affront with gendered connotations’.52 In the Hebrew Bible, male hair mutilation is a body modification that both ‘unmanes’ and ‘unmans’. Ezra is not, however, ‘unmanned’ by others who act upon him, nor does he punitively shave the hair and beards of other men. Rather, he voluntarily tears his own garment and cloak, pulls his hair and shaves his face (9:3–4). Contrary to expectations that Ezra, as a priest, scribe and Persian emissary, should be appropriately clothed and bearded (cf. Exod 28:42; Lev 19:27), he denudes himself of these prominent material markers of dominant masculinity. His acts effect a change in both his body and the gendered and social configurations of the social body that gathers around him as it manifests, indeed embodies, obeisance to Yhwh. Ezra’s fasting is a more private and subtle form of body modification. In 10:6, he withdraws from before the house of Yhwh into one of the temple chambers where he ‘does not eat bread and does not drink water’ (‫)לחם לא־אכל ומים לא־ׁשתה‬.53

62  Mourning and masculinity Like others who variously fast to mourn the dead, seek divine intervention, enact penitence or lament in the face of calamity, Ezra withdraws from these critical physical, social and cultural activities of daily life: eating and drinking.54 In the Hebrew Bible, the sensations of hunger and thirst that result from the lack of food and drink are often provoked by external circumstances, including famine, drought and military siege.55 In such cases, hunger and thirst are the felt effects of disasters and suffering imposed on the body. Fasting, however, draws them deliberately into the body, as Psalm 109:24 describes: ‘my knees are weak through fasting; my body has become gaunt’.56 Whether involuntary or self-inflicted, refraining from food and drink is a form of body modification provoking sensory and physical changes: it renders the person weak and diminished and has socially restrictive and restricting effects.57 Significantly, Ezra’s move into the precincts of the Jerusalem temple locates him directly in the realm of priestly and Levitical functions.58 The priest’s chambers, Olyan explains, are ‘sanctified places where the priests store, process and eat the most holy offerings’ and where they are to wear holy garments.59 However, Ezra’s body is not the bearded, clothed body of a priest, nor does he enter the chamber to prepare the evening sacrifice or participate in it. His fasting and penitential diminished masculinity contrast with priestly ‘feasting’ and the normative masculinity of the priests who officiate and share in the sacred feasts. Thus, Ezra’s modified body and his performance of masculinity have social effects: they are disruptive of the temple’s economy, its ritual sociality and the status of the priests who serve in it. The manipulation of postures, gestures and bodily positions is another way Ezra’s ritual performance configures his body and status relative to Yhwh and those around him. With his garment torn and head and chin bare (9:3a), he sits appalled (‫ ;מׁשומם‬9:3b; 4a), ‘reduced to shuddering’, in Bob Becking’s words.60 His stunned silence and inactivity in the proximity of the temple offer a marked contrast to the activities within it,61 including daily invocations and petitions, burnt offerings and the noisy slaughter of sacrificial animals.62 Even as he prostrates himself in subordination to the deity of the temple, Ezra’s ritual performance distances him from temple ritual and functionaries. The third-person narration in 10:1 even more vividly describes Ezra’s continued postures and gestures of diminishment: as he prays and confesses, Ezra is weeping (‫ )בכה‬and throwing himself to the ground (‫)מתנפל‬. The term ‫ בכה‬that describes Ezra’s weeping suggests that he has moved from stunned silence (9:3) to the vocalized weeping often found in contexts of mourning in the Hebrew Bible.63 The intensely physical and emotive description of Ezra’s mourning is highlighted by the hithpael participle of the verb ‫ נפל‬in 10:1, which suggests Ezra repeatedly threw himself down as he prayed and confessed. The root ‫ נפל‬is often used for biblical mourners and the prostration of inferior parties before their superiors.64 It also denotes men who fall in battle, rendered inferior in status before the might and manliness of their victors.65 Assante describes this gendered dynamic in neo-Assyrian battle iconography where the victorious Assyrian king stands over the defeated enemy who lies helpless at his feet, ‘literally fallen . . . stripped of his weapons and often his clothing’.66 The fallen bodies in these examples are rendered

Mourning and masculinity  63 inferior in relation to the superior masculinity of those who are physically and socially upright.67 Ezra does not fall, however, due to the power of earthly others over him, nor does he throw himself down before a superior mortal to whom he is beholden, not even before the Persian king. Rather, he falls before Yhwh, and it is before Yhwh that his masculinity is relationally constituted. Ezra bows to his knees (‫ )ואכרעה על־ברכי‬and extends his hands (‫ )ואפרׂשה כפי אל־יהוה אלהי‬as he prepares to address Yhwh in prayer (Ezra 9:5). His bodily postures of submission and entreaty are identical to those of Solomon at the momentous occasion of the temple dedication ceremony (1 Kgs 8:54). On their knees,68 hands spread out before the temple,69 Ezra and Solomon embody and enact submission to the deity as they direct prayers of penitence to Yhwh.70 This parallel, which early readers of the text may have well recognized, highlights Ezra’s cultic and social role as the mediator not only of the words of Yhwh for Israel but also of penitent Israel’s petitions to Yhwh. With these postures and gestures, Ezra removes himself from the referential political context of Persian imperialism, sets aside his role as an emissary of the king and positions himself in the socio-cultic realm of Yhwh. It is before this god that he announces that the marriages of golah men to local women are a breach of the relationship to Yhwh (9:6–15). It is the commands of this god, and not the edicts of the Persian kings, that he upholds as the basis for community practice (9:10–12). Ezra’s mourning constitutes a masculinity of penitence, one which positions him as a privileged servant of Yhwh, the deity who moves the Persian kings to accomplish his own purposes (Ezra 1:1–2; 6:22; 7:27–28; 9:9).71 The power of mourning Far from rendering him ineffective as a leader, Ezra’s body modification and selfdebasement parallel in many respects those of other high-profile and authoritative male figures in the Hebrew Bible, including Moses (Deut 9:9, 18), Hezekiah (2 Kgs 19:1) and Josiah (2 Kgs 22:11, 19; 2 Chr 34:19, 27). In the face of transgression and its consequences, these men weep, fast, tear their garments and fall to the ground, physically diminishing their bodies and masculinity in subordination to Yhwh. The nuanced gendered and socio-religious effects of their mourning rituals are evidenced by how they configure social power in these narrative worlds. Ezra, like Moses, is a court official who leads the Israelites out of captivity to the land of promise (Ezra 8). Like Moses, Ezra is charged to appoint judges, is affiliated with priestly lineage and presents the Torah of Yhwh to Israel (Ezra 7). While scholars have noted these connections,72 they have not sufficiently emphasized the similar rituals of mourning and lament these men enact in the face of the transgression of Israel. Ezra and Moses both prostrate themselves before Yhwh (‫אתנפל‬, Deut 9:18; ‫מתנפל‬, Ezra 10:1) and refrain from food and drink (‫לא־אכל ומים לא־ׁשתה‬, Exod 34:28; Deut 9:18; Ezra 10:6).73 Not insignificantly, Ezra’s mourning rituals tie him to this authoritative figure to whom the biblical texts attribute the Exodus from Egypt, the giving of the Torah and the establishment of the Tabernacle. Like Moses, Ezra is the chosen mediator of Yhwh’s will

64  Mourning and masculinity and words. However, their authority over others derives not from strong, upright bodies but from their embodied subordination to Yhwh.74 The Judahite king Hezekiah also engages in rituals of mourning and selfdebasement. When faced with the imminent destruction of Jerusalem by Sennacherib, Hezekiah tears his clothes, covers himself in sackcloth and goes to the house of Yhwh (2 Kgs 19:1; Isa 37:1). In response to the king’s self-imposed humbling, Isaiah announces that Yhwh will save Jerusalem (2 Kgs 6–7; Isa 37:5–6). Hezekiah’s authority and ability to protect and provide for his subjects – key markers of royal masculinity – are made possible by this voluntary deconstruction of his masculinity and subjection to Yhwh’s superior might.75 Josiah likewise tears his garments and weeps when he hears the words of the newly discovered scroll of the Torah, which spell out the transgression of Judah and Yhwh’s imminent punishment (2 Kgs 22:11,18–19; 2 Chr 34:19). His physical debasement lowers his status before Yhwh, as announced by the prophetess Huldah: ‘because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before Yhwh . . . because you have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, says Yhwh’ (2 Kgs 22:18–19).76 Josiah’s ‘less-than-masculine’ performance locates him in a privileged relationship before and with the deity. It also configures his power over others, as evidenced in his ambitious cultic purge (2 Kgs 23).77 Self-­abasement before Yhwh, the recognition of Yhwh’s superior might, empowers him over other men. Similar gendered nuances and social complexities are present in Ezra 9–10. Ezra’s embodiment of inferior social and gendered types before Yhwh positions him as the mediator of the deity’s words and commands, specifically, those that forbid marriages which blend Yhwh’s people with the so-called foreign peoples of the land (Ezra 9:10–12; 10:3). Ezra’s mourning rituals also reconfigure golah identity, power relations and male bodies, as the golah is drawn to Ezra and become mourners with him. The first to gather around Ezra are those who ‘tremble (‫ )חרד‬at the words of the God of Israel’ (9:4; 10:3).78 They sit with Ezra in mourning until he addresses Yhwh in prayer (9:5). In 10:1, a second group, a ‘very great assembly of men, women, and children’ (‫ )קהל רב־מאד אנׁשים ונׁשים וילדים‬from ‘out of Israel’, gathers around Ezra as he prostrates himself, weeps and confesses.79 A third gathering is convened in 10.6 while Ezra fasts inside the temple chambers. Finally, having been summoned to Jerusalem, ‘all the men (‫ )כל־אנׁשי‬of Judah and Benjamin’ gather in the square before the temple where they stand trembling (‫‘ )רעד‬because of this matter and because of the heavy rain’ (10:9).80 Thus, the gathering of the golah around Ezra that begins in 9:4 with a few ‘tremblers’ continues until all the men (‫ )כל־אנׁשי‬of the golah are gathered in fearful trembling before the house of Yhwh. Saul Olyan describes this dynamic as one of group affiliation: Their acts of entering Ezra’s physical proximity and embracing his ritual stance realize and signal an affiliation between Ezra and his supporters and between the individual members of the newly formed group. The group itself is created in the context of penitential petition by the very behaviour of the

Mourning and masculinity  65 individuals who choose to rally to Ezra and embrace mourning rites, thereby declaring their affiliation with him and his cause. The mourning and petition of Ezra and his followers separate them ritually from all others who are worshipping in the sanctuary and communicate to others their distinct political stance.81 Even more significantly, this dynamic suggests the ritualization of this community, a process that, in Catherine Bell’s words, ‘restructures bodies in the very doing of the acts themselves’.82 The gendered, social and cultic identities of the golah are performatively constituted as a growing number of bowed, weeping, trembling men gather towards Ezra and stand before Yhwh. Each group that gathers around Ezra is characterized by bodily and emotive expressions, beginning with ‘those who tremble’ in Ezra 9:4. The term ‫ חרד‬denotes the physical embodiment of fear, terror, anxiety, panic or foreboding in the face of conflict, threat or danger.83 Its gendered nuances are evidenced in Judges 7:3, where trembling men are not allowed to participate in the manly performance of battle and Isaiah 21:3– 4, where a man who is bowed down in anguish and trembles (‫ )חרדה‬is compared to ‘a woman in labour’. Isaiah 19:16 furthermore announces that the defeated Egyptians will be like women who are amazed and ‘tremble’ (‫)חרד‬ before Yhwh. Trembling accompanies mourning in Isaiah 32:11 and Ezekiel’s lament over the destruction of Tyre (Ezek 26:16). The princes who witness the devastation tremble, strip off their clothes and sit on the ground appalled, their bodies lower progressively to the point of abasement: Then all the princes of the sea shall step down from their thrones; they shall remove their robes (‫ )מעיל‬and strip off their embroidered garments (‫)בגד‬. They shall clothe themselves with trembling (‫)חרדה‬, and shall sit (‫ )יׁשב‬on the ground; they shall tremble (‫ )חרד‬every moment, and be appalled (‫ )ׁשמם‬at you. (Ezek 26:16)84 Thus, the trembling bodies of the men who gather around Ezra may be likened to the bodily response of those who tremble with fear and anguish; they are shaky, disarmed and weak – traits that are seldom associated with dominant masculinity in the world of the Hebrew Bible. The second group that gathers around Ezra responds to his weeping (‫בכה‬, 10:1a) with its own ‘bitter weeping’ (‫ כי־בכו העם הרבה־בכה‬10:1b). In the Hebrew Bible, the term ‫ בכה‬primarily describes the weeping of men and, as noted before, references the vocalized expression of grief or lament.85 Ezra’s weeping is an emotive expression with a social effect: those who weep with him separate themselves from the rest of the golah – the ‘worshipping community’86 – and align themselves with Ezra, with his reconfigured masculinity and with his embodied response to the transgression of the golah.87 The group that gathers in Ezra 10:9 is explicitly described as male (‫)אנׁשים‬: ‘and all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered (‫’)ויקבצו כל־אנׁשי־יהודה ובנימן‬. In a scene evocative of the ‘tremblers’ in Ezra (9:4), the men of the golah tremble

66  Mourning and masculinity (‫ )מרעידים‬as they sit in the square where they have been convened by the elders and officials under penalty of separation from the community and expropriation of property (10:7–8). The term ‫רעד‬, which portrays these men who physically tremble in dread and fear, also describes those who tremble in the face of military defeat (Ex 15:15), those who tremble before Yhwh (Ps 2:11; Isa 33:14) and the pangs of women in labour (Ps 48:6). Not only has the physical state of ‘trembling’ spread to a larger group, a group of men who are bowed down in fear, but it has also grown in intensity. The twice-mentioned rain under which they sit in the open square adds an even more sombre note to the gathering and further evokes their vulnerability, exposure and liminality (10:9,13). It is here that Ezra addresses the men of the golah for the first time, exhorting, ‘you have been unfaithful . . . now . . . do his [Yhwh’s] will and separate yourselves from the peoples-of-the-lands and the foreign women’ (Ezra 10:10–11). It is here that the trembling men express collective assent to Ezra’s demand: ‘it is so, we must do as you have said’ (10:12). Ezra’s mourning and that of those who gather around him constitute an example of what Catherine Bell has described as ritualization, the strategic distinction of specific social acts from quotidian activities.88 It is not merely a symbolic or communicative act, she argues, but a ‘specific embodiment and exercise of power’, a power which may be attributed to a higher, even divine, order such that it is rendered ‘natural’ or ‘appropriate’.89 Power relations are reconfigured in the doing of ritual, and distinctions are enacted and deployed within the group. In Ezra 9–10, mourners separate themselves from the quotidian activities of non-mourners, the guilty are set apart from the rest and a male social group is constituted that will determine the fate of the wives and children of the men among them who have transgressed. While some scholars argue that Ezra’s ritual performance seeks to compel the community to act,90 the strategic ritualization of golah men is not a form of social control but, rather, the ‘production and negotiation of power relations’.91 Following the resounding response Ezra receives from ‘all the assembly’ (10:12), a distinction is made between those of the assembly who have transgressed and those who have not. Not all the men are guilty, but only the ‘many of us’ that have transgressed (‫הרבינו לפׁשעה‬, 10:13). This distinction explains the procedure proposed in 10:14 to identify the guilty men. The matter at stake is not who is foreign and who is Israelite, but which of the golah men have transgressed the required separation between the ‘people of Israel’ and the ‘peoples-of-the-lands’ (Ezra 9:1), thereby threatening the community with Yhwh’s wrath. Let our officials (‫ )ׂשרים‬represent the who assembly and let all in our towns who have taken foreign women come at appointed times, and with them the elders (‫ )זקנים‬and judges (‫ )ׁשפטים‬of every town, until the fierce wrath of our God (‫ )חרון אף־אלהינו‬due to this matter is turned away. (Ezra 10:14) Significantly, there are no priests among the men who are to carry out this process; neither does Ezra choose priests or Levites for the investigation, but rather the ‘heads’ of the father’s houses (‫ראׁשי האבות‬, Ezra 10:16).92

Mourning and masculinity  67 Problematizing priestly performance Throughout Ezra 9–10, Ezra and the members of the golah who join in his mourning rites are spatially located in relation to the temple but never as participants in cultic activities. The reference to the time of the evening sacrifice (‫מנחה הערב‬, 9:4–5) locates regular temple activity as the backdrop to Ezra’s mourning and that of the community that gathers towards him (9:4–5). The temple is itself the primary spatial marker for Ezra’s performance (9:4,5;10:1,17). He prays and confesses ‘before the house of God’ (‫ )לפני בית האלהים‬in 10:1, he withdraws from ‘before the house of God’ (‫ )מלפני בית האלהים‬to mourn and fast in the priestly chamber (‫ )לׁשכת יהוחנן‬in 10:6 and, in 10:17, he stands before the golah that has gathered in the ‘square of the house of God’ (‫)ברחוב בית האלהים‬. Ezra does not, however, participate in temple service; instead, he mourns. Mourning, as Olyan notes, is incompatible with regular temple service: ‘one does not fast or wail when one rejoices in the sanctuary . . . one does not anoint oneself or sing joyous songs praising the deity when one sits on the ground to mourn’.93 The staging of Ezra’s mourning in the context of daily regular sacrificial activities and his movement into the temple chamber establish a distinct contrast and separation between Ezra’s ritual performance and that of the priests. Furthermore, the transgression he mourns evokes a ‘very present danger’ to the divine presence enacted in the daily sacrificial ritual since, as Jonathan Klawans explains, grave transgression ‘undoes what the daily sacrifice produces’.94 The displacement of sacrifice in favour of mourning is even more explicit in 10:6 when Ezra moves into the priestly chamber – a sacred place – and fills it with mourning. In distinct contrast with the privileged participation granted to priests in sacrificial meals, Ezra refrains from food and drink as he mourns. While priests are to carry the iniquity of the people away from the temple,95 Ezra carries the infidelity of the golah into the temple precincts (10:6). He does not address this guilt by offering sacrifices of reparation (as do the priestly families in 10:19) or atonement, but by acts of self-affliction and mourning. In this privileged space reserved for priests and temple servants, Ezra displaces fully clothed, bearded, ‘whole’, priestly masculine bodies with his own razed head, bare chin and exposed and weakened body.96 Ezra’s body and performance problematize priestly bodies and performance: it is not the priestly masculinity protected by breeches, well-groomed beards, hair and garments, nor is it the masculinity of the holy officiants of the cult who enter the sanctuary for celebration and commensality. There is no specific indication, furthermore, that priests and Levites are included in the groups that gather towards Ezra in 9:4 and 10:1.97 They are expressly included, however, among those guilty of taking daughters from the peoples-of-the-lands (9:1–2), and they head the list of the men found guilty of intermarriage (10:18–22). The guilt sacrifice offered by the descendants of Joshua (10:19), viewed by some as a sign of their repentance, highlights the severity of their transgression.98 Intermarriage and the ‘intermingling’ of the holy seed that results from these marriages is a particularly grievous fault for priests, who are to ensure not only the integrity of their lineage but also the holiness of their bodies, by avoiding marriage to nonIsraelite women (Lev 21:14–15). Ezekiel 44:22 broadens the restriction imposed

68  Mourning and masculinity upon the high priests in Leviticus 21:14–15 to all the descendants of Zadok (Ezek 44:15). This marriage restriction is tied directly to the function of the priests as those who enter the sanctuary and approach Yhwh (44:16). It is a ritual status that bears with it the duty to ‘teach my people the difference between the holy and the common . . . the unclean and the clean’ (44:23) and is closely tied to their social status.99 In this light, the participation of the priests in the marriages stands out as a particularly grievous fault. Not only have they transgressed the Torah commands that prohibit intermarriage with local nations, but they have also blurred the boundaries between holy and common, pure and impure, that they are charged to maintain and that are indispensable for ensuring the presence of Yhwh in the temple and amid the people (Ezek 22:26).100 In a move evocative of the prophetic critique of cultic ritual, Ezra 9–10 calls for a new way of being (male) Israel – one that begins to displace the temple cult as the sole locus of fidelity to Yhwh by privileging obedience to commandments concerning the group’s social and kinship ties (9:11). Thus, the call to expel the women and children as part of the covenant with Yhwh in 10:3 is based on the counsel – and authority – of Ezra and of those who ‘tremble at the commandments of God’, rather than that of the priests and Levites; it is furthermore to be carried out ‘according to the Torah’ (‫)כתורה‬.101 The centrality of the priesthood is called into question, therefore, not only because they participate in intermarriage but also because of the fact that they were unwilling or unable to identify and deal with the problem by which impurity had entered the realm of the holy (Ezra 9:3). Their competence in matters of Torah cultic prescriptions, evident in Ezra 3, does not appear to extend to other issues. While the temple is the locus of ritual performance in Ezra 1–6, chapters which focus on the restoration of the altar and sacrificial service (3:1–11), the building of the temple (5–6) and the establishment of priests and Levites in their appropriate positions (6:18b), in Ezra 9–10 ritual performance takes place outside the temple. In this narrative world, the temple and temple rituals are in the background rather than the foreground, while the scribe Ezra and the interpretation of Torah come to the fore. Ezra is made powerful in this ‘inverse world of mourning’ by his transfer of absolute fealty to the god Yhwh and to his commands. The ‘unmanly’ markers and postures of Ezra’s body position him in subjection to Yhwh, thereby authorizing him as the mediator of Yhwh’s words and will for the golah. Submission to Yhwh sets Ezra above all other men, even, as explored in the next chapter, the kings of Persia. Ezra embodies and models a distinct configuration of masculinity for the golah that inhabits the liminal status of foreign domination by claiming a privileged position before Yhwh – one that requires subordination and self-humiliation to this god, even to the extent that men agree to expel their wives and children. However, in the aftermath of exile and the destruction of the temple, the masculinity of Yhwh – his ability to provide for and protect his people – is a matter that must be addressed.

Mourning and masculinity 69 Notes 1 Gary N. Knoppers, “Ethnicity, Genealogy, Geography and Change: The Judean Communities of Babylon and Jerusalem in the Story of Ezra,” in Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Kenneth A. Ristau (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 163. 2 See Mark Leuchter, “Coming to Terms with Ezra’s Many Identities in Ezra-Nehemiah,” in Historiography and Identity (Re)Formulation in Second Temple Historiographical Literature, ed. Louis C. Jonker (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 44–47. 3 The designation ‫ – ספר מהיר‬ready or skilled scribe – is also used in connection with skilled scribal activity in Ps 45:1 and in the ‘The Parables of Ahiqar’. See Lisbeth Fried, Ezra and the Law in History and Tradition (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014), 35–36. 4 Ezra 9:9b: ‘For Ezra had set his heart to seek the Torah of Yhwh (‫ )הכין לבבו דרוׁשאת־תורת יהוה‬and to do it (‫)ולעׂשת‬, and to teach the statutes and ordinances in Israel’ (‫)וללמד ביׂשראל חק ומׁשפט‬. 5 In 7:14, the phrase ‫ לבקרא אל‬may reference the task of investigating, researching or inquiring; Richard C. Steiner, “The Mbqr at Qumran, the Episkopos in the Athenian Empire, and the Meaning of Lbqr’ in Ezra 7:14 on the Relation of Ezra’s Mission to the Persian Legal Project,” Journal of Biblical Literature 120 (2001): 623–46; H.G.M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, ed. David Hubbard and Glenn Barker, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985), 101. 6 On the nature and intent of the decree, see Lester L. Grabbe, “The ‘Persian Documents’ in the Book of Ezra,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, ed. Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 531–70; Lisbeth Fried, “ ‘You Shall Appoint Judges’: Ezra’s Mission and the Rescript of Artaxerxes,” in Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch, ed. James W. Watts (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 64–89. 7 Leuchter describes Ezra as an ‘elusive shapeshifter who alternately seems to champion disparate agendas and typologies’; Leuchter, “Coming to Terms,” 43. See also Bob Becking, “Was Ezra a Persian or a Yehudite Leader?” in Transforming Authority: Concepts of Leadership in Prophetic and Chronistic Literature, ed. Katharina Pyschny and Sarah Schulz (Boston: De Gruyter, 2021), 171–84; Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The Mission of Udjahorresnet and Those of Ezra and Nehemiah,” Journal of Biblical Literature 106 (1987): 409–21. 8 The vocabulary and practices for mourning the dead are employed indistinctly, Olyan notes, by ‘penitents, humiliated individuals, and persons seeking a divine revelation, among others’; Saul M. Olyan, Biblical Mourning: Ritual and Social Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 19. 9 The participle of ‫ׁשמם‬, translated as ‘desolation’ in Ezra 9:3–4, elsewhere describes places and persons affected by military defeat and other forms of destruction (Amos 9:14; Isa 49:8,19; 61:4; Jer 33:10; Ezek 29:12), and the response of dismay and hopelessness in such conditions (Lam 1:13,16; Jer 4:9; Ezek 3:15; 2 Sam 13:20). 10 Saul M. Olyan, Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019), 102; Saul M. Olyan, “Theorizing Violence in Biblical Ritual Contexts: The Case of Mourning Rites,” in Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion: Essays in Retrospect and Prospect (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012), 177. 11 Lester L. Grabbe, A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Library of Second Temple Studies, vol. 1 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 330. See also Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library, 1st ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988); F. Charles Fensham, The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 124.

70  Mourning and masculinity 12 Mesopotamian images of men, Assante notes, ‘consistently share one rule of difference: there are men who dominate and men who submit’; Julia Assante, “Men Looking at Men: The Homoerotics of Power in the State Arts of Assyria,” in Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, ed. Ilona Zsolnay (New York: Routledge, 2016), 43. See also Irene Madreiter and Kordula Schnegg, “Gender and Sex,” in A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, vol. 2, ed. B Jacob and R. Rollinger, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2021), 1121–37. 13 Donald P. Moffatt, Ezra’s Social Drama: Identity Formation, Marriage and Social Conflict in Ezra 9–10 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 156–57. 14 They do not render him inept, Eskenazi posits, but rather evidence a positive ‘shift from the image of a fearless hero . . . to a guide who places responsibility in the hands of others’; Tamara C. Eskenazi, In an Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to EzraNehemiah, Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 141; Dale Launderville, Celibacy in the Ancient World: Its Ideal and Practice in Pre-Hellenistic Israel, Mesopotamia, and Greece (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2010), 77. 15 Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 132. 16 Catherine M. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 19. 17 Frank Gorman, “Ritual Studies and Biblical Studies: Assessment of the Past, Prospects for the Future,” Semeia 67 (1994): 13–37, 18. Manuel Vázquez observes that many Reformation theologies catalogued ritual as superstitious, magical, irrational behaviour; Manuel A. Vásquez, More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 31–32. A classic example is Julius Wellhausen’s negative evaluation of Judaic religion after the Exile as an ‘exercise in religiosity’ focused on ritualistic obedience of the law. Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, trans. W. Robertson Smith (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 424. 18 E.A. Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism, Theories of Representation and Difference (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 3–4. 19 Bell, Ritual Theory, 100, 169–84. 20 David Morgan, “Material Analysis and the Study of Religion,” in Materiality and the Study of Religion: The Stuff of the Sacred, ed. Tim Hutchings and Joanne McKenzie (London; New York: Routledge, 2017), 33–34. See also T.M. Lemos, “Where There Is Dirt, Is There System? Revisiting Biblical Purity Constructions,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37, no. 3 (2013): 264–94. 21 The terminology used by numerous scholars to describe Ezra’s ritual acts reflects this focus on its symbolic and communicative function: “Ezra’s reaction dramatizes on a symbolic level the ethnic and religious tensions which those responsible for the text perceive”; Katherine E. Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10: An Anthropological Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 149. “Ezra’s public and private mourning testify to the seriousness of the problem in his eyes”, Mark A. Throntveit, Ezra-Nehemiah, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1992), 49. Ezra’s acts ‘give expression’ to the repentance that is verbally communicated elsewhere, Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 133. “His gestures successfully convey to the public the full enormity of the transgression”, H. Zlotnick-Zivan, “The Silent Women of Yehud: Notes on Ezra 9–10,” The Journal of Jewish Studies 51, no. 1 (2000): 6. Ezra’s ritual acts, are ‘symbols of mourning’, David Janzen, Witch-Hunts, Purity and Social Boundaries: The Expulsion of the Foreign Women in Ezra 9–10, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 38. Emphasis added throughout. 22 As Carol Meyers notes, ‘religion was what people did rather than what they believed’. Carol L. Meyers, “Women’s Religious Life in Ancient Israel,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 354.

Mourning and masculinity 71 23 Francesca Stavrakopoulou, “Making Bodies: On Body Modification and Religious Materiality in the Hebrew Bible,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 2, no. 4 (2013): 532, 535. 24 See Megan Cifarelli, “Gesture and Alterity in the Art of Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria,” The Art Bulletin 80, no. 2 (1998): 210–28; Cynthia R. Chapman, The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter, Harvard Semitic Monographs (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 210–28; Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, “ ‘That My Body Is Strong’: The Physique and Appearance of Achaemenid Monarchy,” in Bodies in Transition: Dissolving the Boundaries of Embodied Knowledge, ed. Dietrich Boschung, H.A. Shapiro, and Frank Wascheck (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015), 211–48; Assante, “Men Looking at Men,” 42–82; Hilary Lipka, “Shaved Beards and Bared Buttocks: Shame and the Undermining of Masculine Performance in Biblical Texts,” in Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, ed. Ilona Zsolnay (New York: Routledge, 2016), 176–97; Claudia E. Suter, “The Royal Body and Masculinity in Early Mesopotamia,” in Menschenbilder und Körperkonzepte im Alten Israel, in Ägypten und im Alten Orient, ed. Angelika Berlejung, Jan Dietrich, and Joachim Friedrich Quack (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 433–58. 25 These are often ‘foreign enemies, domestic offenders, or political rivals’, Olyan notes. Olyan, Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible, 75. 26 As noted by Stavrakopoulou, ‘Making Bodies’, 532–33; and Saul M. Olyan, “What Do Shaving Rites Accomplish?” Journal of Biblical Literature 117, no. 4 (1998): 611–22. 27 Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 114–16. 28 Ibid., 59, 114. 29 See Alexander Gramsch, “Treating Bodies: Transformative and Communicative Practices,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, ed. Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stutz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 459–61; Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 4; Stavrakopoulou, “Making Bodies,” 538. 30 Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 33. 31 The verb ‫ מרט‬describes the act of making something smooth, bare or bald (Ezek 21:14; 29:18). It refers to the head and beard in Ezra 9:3; Neh 13:25; Isa 50:6; Lev 13:40; 41:6. 32 Prominent examples include Job who, at the news of the death of his children, shaves his head and tears his robe before falling on the ground (1:20) and the pilgrims from Shechem, Shiloh and Samaria who travel towards Jerusalem after the destruction of the temple ‘with their beards shaved and their clothes torn, and their bodies gashed’ (Jer 41:5); Reuben (Gen 37:29); Jephthah (Judg 11:35); David (2 Sam 13:31); Ahab (1 Kgs 21:27); Hezekiah (2 Kgs 18:27) and Mordecai (Esth 3:15). 33 So Janzen, Witch-Hunts, 62; Lipka, “Shaved Beards and Bared Buttocks,” 192n151. 34 See Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 34. 35 See Susan Niditch, My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 96–99; Olyan, Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible, 71–78. 36 Reading with 1 Chr 19:4. In 2 Sam 10:4, half the beard is shaved as well as half the robe. 37 Lipka notes that an ‘effective means of undermining masculine performance in biblical texts was by destroying, altering, or otherwise tampering with biological markers that served as attributes of masculine identity’; Lipka, “Shaved Beards and Bared Buttocks,” 182. 38 Niditch, My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man, 96. 39 On the motif of the feminized fleeing king, see Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare, 33–39. 40 See cf. T.M. Lemos, Violence and Personhood in Ancient Israel and Comparative Contexts (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), 28–60. 41 See Alicia J. Batten, “Clothing and Adornment,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 40, no. 3 (2010): 148–59; Bethany Wagstaff, “Redressing Clothing in the Hebrew Bible:

72

42

43

44 45 46

47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58

Mourning and masculinity Material-Cultural Approaches” (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Exeter, 2017), 17–23. See Martti Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 52–53; S. Tamar Kamionkowski, Gender Reversal and Cosmic Chaos: A Study on the Book of Ezekiel, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (London; New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 76. Hennie J. Marsman, Women in Ugarit and Israel: Their Social and Religious Position in the Context of the Ancient Near East (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 198. See also Brad Kelle, “Wartime Rhetoric: Prophetic Metaphorization of Cities as Female,” in Writing and Reading War: Rhetoric, Gender, and Ethics in Biblical and Modern Contexts, ed. Brad E. Kelle and Frank Ritchel Ames (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 98–99. Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare, 160. See also, T.M. Lemos, “Shame and the Mutilation of Enemies in the Hebrew Bible,” Journal of Biblical Literature 125, no. 2 (2006): 233–34. Examples include Gen 37:29; Judg 11:35; 2 Sam 13:31; 1 Kgs 21:27; 2 Kgs 18:37; Mic 1:8; Isa 20:2–4; 37:1; Esth 3:15. Priests are prescribed special linen undergarments ‘to cover their naked flesh’ (Exod 28:42). See Deborah W. Rooke, “Breeches of the Covenant: Gender, Garments and the Priesthood,” in Embroidered Garments: Priests and Gender in Biblical Israel (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009), 19–37. Lipka, “Shaved Beards and Bared Buttocks,” 176–97; Stavrakopoulou, “Making Bodies,” 539; Niditch, My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man; Olyan, “What Do Shaving Rites Accomplish?” 611–22. Stephan M. Wilson, Making Men: The Male Coming-of-Age Theme in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 38. Llewellyn-Jones, “That My Body Is Strong,” 221–24; Irene Winter, “Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology,” in On Art in the Ancient Near East Vol I: Of the First Millenium B.C.E., 2 vols. (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010), 86; Irene Winter, “Sex, Rhetoric and the Public Monument: The Alluring Body of the Male Ruler in Mesopotamia,” in Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, ed. Natalie Kampen and Bettina Ann Bergmann (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 13. Susan Niditch, “Blood and Hair: Body Management and Practice,” in Life and Death: Social Perspectives on Biblical Bodies, ed. Francesca Stavrakopoulou (London; New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2021), 33–34. Niditch, “Blood and Hair,” 35. Niditch, My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man, 86. The writer chooses to describe Ezra’s mourning with a phrase used elsewhere only for Moses (Deut 18:9,25). See also, 1 Sam 21:13; 2 Sam 1:12; 12:21; 1 Kgs 21:27; Ezra 8:21; Neh 1:4; Isa 58:3; Jer 14:12; Esth 4:16; Joel 2:12; Jonah 3:5. See Gen 12:10; 26:1; 41:44; Deut 28:48; Ruth 1:12; 2 Sam 21:1, 2 Kgs 4:38; 6:25; 7:4,12; 25:3; 2 Chr 32:11; Isa 65:13; Ps 107:5 and Peter Altmann, “Too Little Food and Drink: Hunger and Fasting,” in T&T Clark Handbook of Food in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, ed. Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Janling Fu, and Carol L. Meyers (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2021), 379–93. Fasting, Lambert suggests, ‘constitutes the adoption of the persona of the afflicted’. David Lambert, “Fasting as a Penitential Rite: A Biblical Phenomenon?” The Harvard Theological Review 96, no. 4 (2003): 485. See Michael Dietler, “Feasting and Fasting,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, ed. Timothy Insoll (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 181. See Ezra 8:29; Neh 10:37–39; 1 Chr 9:26; Ezek 40:38,45–46; 42:13.

Mourning and masculinity 73 59 Saul M. Olyan, Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 22. See Ezek 40:44–46; 42:13–14; 46:19–20. 60 Bob Becking, “Temple Vessels Speaking for a Silent God: Notes on the Divine Presence in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah,” in Reflections on the Silence of God: A Discussion with Marjo Korpel and Johannes de Moor (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013), 14. 61 On silence as a mourning rite, see Xuan Huong Thi Pham, Mourning in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 29–30. 62 The evening offering (‫ )מנחה הערב‬is the backdrop to Ezra’s mourning and prayer (9:3–5). 63 The term ‫ בכה‬references a public and vocal expression of emotion, rather than specifically the shedding of tears. It is frequently accompanied by the ‘lifting the voice’ (‫)קול‬, suggesting that the vocal expression is a primary component of ritual weeping (cf. Gen 45:2; Num 11:10; Deut 1:45; 2 Kgs 22:19; 2 Chr 34:27; Ezra 3:13; Ps 6:8; Isa 65:19; Jer 3:21; 31:15). See Vinzenz Hamp, “Bākhāh,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. II, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Heinz-Josef Fabry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 116–20; Mayer I. Gruber, Aspects of Nonverbal Communication in the Ancient Near East, Studia Pohl, 2 vols. (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980), 402–32. 64 For fallen mourners, see Deut 9:25; Josh 7:6–7; Job 1:20; Ps 44:25; Lam 2:10; Ezek 9:8; 26:15–17; Jonah 3:6 and 1 Mac. 4:36–40, for falling before superiors Ruth 2:10; Gen 44:14; 2 Sam 1:2; 19:18. 65 See Judg 8:10; 2 Sam 1:19; 2 Chr 14:13; Isa 21:92 and the prophetic depiction of feminized cities bowed to the ground by Yhwh’s judgement (Amos 5:12; Isa 3:26; 47:1). 66 Assante, “Men Looking at Men,” 44. See also Cifarelli, who describes the depiction of the erect Assyrian as contrasted to the physical abasement of the ‘crouching’ foreign tributary; Cifarelli, “Gesture and Alterity,” 216. 67 See also the Bisitun monument in which rebel leaders fall before Darius’ tall, upright body. Llewellyn-Jones, “That My Body Is Strong,” 229. 68 Kneeling is an act of submission and entreaty performed before Yhwh (Ps 94:6; Isa 45:23; Gen 24:48 and Neh 8:6) or kings and men of status (2 Kgs 1:13; Gen 27:29; 48:12; and 2 Sam 14:22; 18:28). 69 The act of spreading of the palms of the hands (‫ )פרׂש כף‬is reserved for prayer directed to a deity. (Exod 9:33; 1 Kgs 8:22,38; 2 Chr 6:12,13,29; Isa 1:15; Jer 4:31; Ps 44:1). The only exception is Pro 31:20 where the capable wife ‘extends her hands (‫)כפה פרׂשה‬ to the needy’. 70 Meagan Cifarelli describes similar postures of obeisance in neo-Assyrian iconography, where surrendering combatants kneel and stretch out their hands in supplication. Cifarelli, “Gesture and Alterity,” 217. 71 Contra Becking, who argues that Ezra is loyal to both Yhwh and the Persian King. The text, however, gives precedence to Ezra’s role as the subject of Yhwh (Ezra 7:27–38). Becking, “Was Ezra a Persian or a Yehudite Leader?” 180. 72 Klaus Koch, “Ezra and the Origins of Judaism,” Journal of Semitic Studies 19, no. 2 (1974): 173–97; Moffatt, Ezra’s Social Drama, 140–41; Fried, Ezra and the Law, 45–53. 73 The hithpael of ‫ נפל‬in a context of mourning is used only for Moses and Ezra (Deut 9:18,25; Ezra 10:1), while the phrase ‫( לא־אכל ומים לא־ׁשתה‬Exod 34:28; Deut 9:9,18; Ezra 10:6) is particular to these two men. 74 On Moses’s masculinity, see Richard Anthony Purcell, “Yhwh, Moses, and Pharaoh: Masculine Competition as Rhetoric in the Exodus Narrative,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44, no. 4 (2020): 532–50; Rhiannon Graybill, “Masculinity, Materiality, and the Body of Moses,” Biblical Interpretation 23 (2015): 1–23. See also Rhiannon Graybill, Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 25–47. 75 Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare, 29–33, 83–84.

74  Mourning and masculinity 76 On Josiah’s body and ritual acts, see Francesca Stavrakopoulou, “The Prophet Huldah and the Stuff of State,” in Enemies and Friends of the State: Ancient Prophecy in Context, ed. Chris A. Rollston (University Park, Pennslyvania: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 277–96. 77 In contrast, when King Jehoiakim refuses to tear his clothes (Jer 36:24), Jeremiah announces the king’s death: ‘his dead body shall be cast out . . . I will punish him and his offspring’ (Jer 36:30–31). 78 ‫כל חרד בדברי אלהי־יׂשראל‬. The substantive form of ‫ הרד‬is found only in Ezra 9:3; 10:3 and Isa 66:2,5. 79 Ezra 10:1b seems to indicate that the noise of those who weep with Ezra draws the men, women and children to gather around Ezra (so Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, 149; David J.A. Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, New Century Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 126. Olyan, however, reads with the Vulgate that identifies the group that gathers and the one that weeps as one and the same, Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 68. In either case, the effect of Ezra’s mourning is the incorporation of mourners into his rituals of lament and self-debasement. 80 Also, 10:13. The term is used in the Hebrew Bible for both rains of blessing (Ezek 34:26) and destruction (Ezek 13:11). The more immediate function of rain in this text is to produce physical discomfort that delays the proceedings (10:13–14). 81 Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 90. 82 Bell, Ritual Theory, 100. 83 In the Hebrew Bible, nations tremble upon seeing the destruction wrought by Yhwh (Isa 19:16; Ezek 30:9; 32:10); warriors tremble at the prospect of defeat in battle (Exod 19:18) and the earth (Isa 41:5) trembles at the presence of Yhwh (Isa 41:5). The absence of trembling is a sign of well-being associated with rest, safety and a lack of threat (Lev 26:6; Job 11:19; Jer 30:10; 46:27; Ezek 34:28; 39:26; Mic 4:4; Zeph 3:13). 84 Ezra likewise removes his robes (‫ )מעיל‬and garments (‫ )בגד‬and sits (‫ )יׁשב‬on the ground appalled (‫ )ׁשמם‬where he is surrounded by tremblers (‫)חרד‬. 85 Ritual weeping is often performed in the context of lamenting the dead (2 Sam 1:11; 3:32–34; Jer 22:10). Men are the subject of the verb ‫ בכה‬in all but 16 of its 114 uses (Jer 9:17). 86 See Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 68. 87 On the social effects of ritual weeping, see Gary L. Ebersole, “The Function of Ritual Weeping Revisited: Affective Expression and Moral Discourse,” History of Religions 39, no. 3 (2000): 211–46. 88 Bell, Ritual Theory, 570. 89 Ibid., 182, 110. For Bell, ‘Ritualization is the way to construct power relations when the power is claimed to be from God. . . . It is also the way for people to experience a vision of a community order that is personally empowering’ (116). 90 So Moffatt, Ezra’s Social Drama, 156; Janzen, Witch-Hunts, 34–35. 91 Bell, Ritual Theory, 196. 92 The officials, elders and heads of families may include priests, but, suggestively, they are not mentioned. 93 Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 14. 94 Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 71. 95 Lev 10:17; Exod 28:38. 96 These bodily modifications are forbidden for priests (see Ezek 44:18,20; Lev 21: 5,16–23). 97 Although the reference to ‘all the men of Benjamin and Judah’ in 10:9 would seem to include them, they are not singled out. 98 Moffatt argues that all the men offered similar sacrifices, but the text only mentions the ‫ אׁשם‬in the case of the high priestly family of Joshua (10:18–19); Cf. Moffatt, Ezra’s Social Drama, 130.

Mourning and masculinity 75 99 See Olyan, Rites and Rank, 27–35. 100 Ezekiel also accuses the priests of violating the Torah, profaning Yhwh’s ‘holy things’ and ignoring his sabbaths (22:26). On the relationship between Ezra and Ezekiel, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Judaism, the First Phase: The Place of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Origins of Judaism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2009), 125–28. 101 The phrase alludes to Ezra 3:2, where Joshua and Zerubbabel set up the altar to sacrifice on it ‘as written in the Torah (‫ )ככתוב בתורה‬of Moses, the man of God’.

References Altmann, Peter. “Too Little Food and Drink: Hunger and Fasting.” In T&T Clark Handbook of Food in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, edited by Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Janling Fu, and Carol L. Meyers, 379–93. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2021. Assante, Julia. “Men Looking at Men: The Homoerotics of Power in the State Arts of Assyria.” In Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, edited by Ilona Zsolnay, 42–82. New York: Routledge, 2016. Batten, Alicia J. “Clothing and Adornment.” Biblical Theology Bulletin 40, no. 3 (2010): 148–59. Becking, Bob. “Temple Vessels Speaking for a Silent God: Notes on the Divine Presence in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah.” In Reflections on the Silence of God: A Discussion with Marjo Korpel and Johannes de Moor, 14–28. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013. ———. “Was Ezra a Persian or a Yehudite Leader?” In Transforming Authority: Concepts of Leadership in Prophetic and Chronistic Literature, edited by Katharina Pyschny and Sarah Schulz, 171–84. Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. Bell, Catherine M. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Blenkinsopp, Joseph. “The Mission of Udjahorresnet and Those of Ezra and Nehemiah.” Journal of Biblical Literature 106 (1987): 409–21. ———. Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary. The Old Testament Library, 1st ed. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988. ———. Judaism, the First Phase: The Place of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Origins of Judaism. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2009. Chapman, Cynthia R. The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter. Harvard Semitic Monographs. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004. Cifarelli, Megan. “Gesture and Alterity in the Art of Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria.” The Art Bulletin 80, no. 2 (1998): 210–28. Clines, David J.A. Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther. New Century Bible Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984. Dietler, Michael. “Feasting and Fasting.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, edited by Timothy Insoll, 179–94. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Ebersole, Gary L. “The Function of Ritual Weeping Revisited: Affective Expression and Moral Discourse.” History of Religions 39, no. 3 (2000): 211–46. Eskenazi, Tamara C. In an Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to Ezra-Nehemiah. Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988. Fensham, F. Charles. The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. Fried, Lisbeth. “ ‘You Shall Appoint Judges’: Ezra’s Mission and the Rescript of Artaxerxes.” In Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch, edited by James W. Watts, 63–89. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001.

76  Mourning and masculinity ———. Ezra and the Law in History and Tradition. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014. Gorman, Frank. “Ritual Studies and Biblical Studies: Assessment of the Past, Prospects for the Future.” Semeia 67 (1994): 13–37. Grabbe, Lester L. A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period. Library of Second Temple Studies, vol. 1. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004. ———. “The ‘Persian Documents’ in the Book of Ezra.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, edited by Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming, 531–70. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006. Gramsch, Alexander. “Treating Bodies: Transformative and Communicative Practices.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, edited by Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stutz, 459–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Graybill, Rhiannon. “Masculinity, Materiality, and the Body of Moses.” Biblical Interpretation 23 (2015): 1–23. ———. Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Grosz, E.A. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Theories of Representation and Difference. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Gruber, Mayer I. Aspects of Nonverbal Communication in the Ancient Near East. Studia Pohl, 2 vols. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980. Hamp, Vinzenz. “Bākhāh.” In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. vol. II, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Heinz-Josef Fabry, 116–20. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Janzen, David. Witch-Hunts, Purity and Social Boundaries: The Expulsion of the Foreign Women in Ezra 9–10. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Kamionkowski, S. Tamar. Gender Reversal and Cosmic Chaos: A Study on the Book of Ezekiel. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. London; New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003. Kelle, Brad. “Wartime Rhetoric: Prophetic Metaphorization of Cities as Female.” In Writing and Reading War: Rhetoric, Gender, and Ethics in Biblical and Modern Contexts, edited by Brad E. Kelle and Frank Ritchel Ames, 95–112. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008. Klawans, Jonathan. Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Knoppers, Gary N. “Ethnicity, Genealogy, Geography and Change: The Judean Communities of Babylon and Jerusalem in the Story of Ezra.” In Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives, edited by Gary N. Knoppers and Kenneth A. Ristau, 147–71. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009. Koch, Klaus. “Ezra and the Origins of Judaism.” Journal of Semitic Studies 19, no. 2 (1974): 173–97. Lambert, David. “Fasting as a Penitential Rite: A Biblical Phenomenon?” The Harvard Theological Review 96, no. 4 (2003): 477–512. Launderville, Dale. Celibacy in the Ancient World: Its Ideal and Practice in Pre-Hellenistic Israel, Mesopotamia, and Greece. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2010. Lemos, T.M. “Shame and the Mutilation of Enemies in the Hebrew Bible.” Journal of Biblical Literature 125, no. 2 (2006): 225–41. ———. “Where There Is Dirt, Is There System? Revisiting Biblical Purity Constructions.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37, no. 3 (2013): 265–94.

Mourning and masculinity  77 ———. Violence and Personhood in Ancient Israel and Comparative Contexts. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017. Leuchter, Mark. “Coming to Terms with Ezra’s Many Identities in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Historiography and Identity (Re)Formulation in Second Temple Historiographical Literature, edited by Louis C. Jonker, 41–64. New York: T&T Clark, 2010. Lipka, Hilary. “Shaved Beards and Bared Buttocks: Shame and the Undermining of Masculine Performance in Biblical Texts.” In Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, edited by Ilona Zsolnay, 176–97. New York: Routledge, 2016. Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. “ ‘That My Body Is Strong’: The Physique and Appearance of Achaemenid Monarchy.” In Bodies in Transition: Dissolving the Boundaries of Embodied Knowledge, edited by Dietrich Boschung, H.A. Shapiro, and Frank Wascheck, 211–48. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015. Madreiter, Irene, and Kordula Schnegg. “Gender and Sex.” In A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World, vol. 2, edited by B Jacob and R. Rollinger, 1121–37. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2021. Marsman, Hennie J. Women in Ugarit and Israel: Their Social and Religious Position in the Context of the Ancient Near East. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009. Meyers, Carol L. “Women’s Religious Life in Ancient Israel.” In Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley, 354–64. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012. Moffatt, Donald P. Ezra’s Social Drama: Identity Formation, Marriage and Social Conflict in Ezra 9–10. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013. Morgan, David. “Material Analysis and the Study of Religion.” In Materiality and the Study of Religion: The Stuff of the Sacred, edited by Tim Hutchings and Joanne McKenzie, 14–32. London; New York: Routledge, 2017. Niditch, Susan. My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. ———. “Blood and Hair: Body Management and Practice.” In Life and Death: Social Perspectives on Biblical Bodies, edited by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, 27–41. London; New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2021. Nissinen, Martti. Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998. Olyan, Saul M. “What Do Shaving Rites Accomplish?” Journal of Biblical Literature 117, no. 4 (1998): 611–22. ———. Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. ———. Biblical Mourning: Ritual and Social Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ———. “Theorizing Violence in Biblical Ritual Contexts: The Case of Mourning Rites.” In Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion: Essays in Retrospect and Prospect, 169–80. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012. ———. Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pham, Xuan Huong Thi. Mourning in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. Purcell, Richard Anthony. “Yhwh, Moses, and Pharaoh: Masculine Competition as Rhetoric in the Exodus Narrative.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44, no. 4 (2020): 532–50.

78  Mourning and masculinity Rooke, Deborah W. “Breeches of the Covenant: Gender, Garments and the Priesthood.” In Embroidered Garments: Priests and Gender in Biblical Israel, 19–37. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2009. Southwood, Katherine E. Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10: An Anthropological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Stavrakopoulou, Francesca. “Making Bodies: On Body Modification and Religious Materiality in the Hebrew Bible.” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 2, no. 4 (2013): 532–53. ———. “The Prophet Huldah and the Stuff of State.” In Enemies and Friends of the State: Ancient Prophecy in Context, edited by Chris A. Rollston, 277–96. University Park, Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns, 2018. Steiner, Richard C. “The Mbqr at Qumran, the Episkopos in the Athenian Empire, and the Meaning of Lbqr’ in Ezra 7:14 on the Relation of Ezra’s Mission to the Persian Legal Project.” Journal of Biblical Literature 120 (2001): 623–46. Suter, Claudia E. “The Royal Body and Masculinity in Early Mesopotamia.” In Menschenbilder und Körperkonzepte im Alten Israel, in Ägypten und im Alten Orient, edited by Angelika Berlejung, Jan Dietrich, and Joachim Friedrich Quack, 433–58. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012. Throntveit, Mark A. Ezra-Nehemiah. Interpretation. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1992. Vásquez, Manuel A. More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Wagstaff, Bethany. “Redressing Clothing in the Hebrew Bible: Material-Cultural Approaches.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Exeter, 2017. Wellhausen, Julius. Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Translated by W. Robertson Smith. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994/1885. Williamson, H.G.M. Ezra, Nehemiah. Word Biblical Commentary. Edited by David Hubbard and Glenn Barker. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985. Wilson, Stephan M. Making Men: The Male Coming-of-Age Theme in the Hebrew Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Winter, Irene. “Sex, Rhetoric and the Public Monument: The Alluring Body of the Male Ruler in Mesopotamia.” In Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, edited by Natalie Kampen and Bettina Ann Bergmann, 11–26. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. “Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology.” In On Art in the Ancient Near East Vol. I: Of the First Millennium B.C.E. 2 vols., 71–108. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010. Zlotnick-Zivan, H. “The Silent Women of Yehud: Notes on Ezra 9–10.” Journal of Jewish Studies 51, no. 1 (2000): 3–18.

5 The masculinization of Yhwh

Introduction In the book of Ezra, golah claims to the temple, the land and the legacy of Israel are based on the superior status of Yhwh and his dominant masculine performance. Problematically, however, Yhwh’s dominant masculinity is challenged by the backstory of exile that runs throughout the book and by the context of imperial domination in which the group resides. While Yhwh’s superior status might be assumed by most current readers of the biblical text, dominant masculinity, as discussed throughout this book, is not an accomplished or absolute state. It is, rather, a location on a gender spectrum that is continually negotiated, contested and at risk of being undermined.1 Thus, Yhwh’s failure to perform in accordance with the expectations of dominant masculinity might result in a loss of power and status before his people, other gods and kings. As Ilona Zsolnay explains, ‘a patriarch, as any ruler, can only maintain his authority if he has convinced his family as well as his society that he is worthy/able to embody, maintain and sustain that power’.2 A deity unable to protect and provide for the golah and ensure its possession of the land, or one not strong enough to prevail over the kings of the nations, would render the golah vulnerable and insignificant. Thus, Yhwh must be proven to be good at ‘being a male god’.3 Problematically, Yhwh’s performance is not evident in Ezra 9–10; he does not speak, nor does he intervene in the affairs of the golah. There are no battlefields – either mythic or worldly – in which Yhwh may display warrior skills and no sponsored dynasty through which to order the world, execute justice and provide for his people. A distinct performance of masculinity is required, one that secures the position of this god and assures his subject people of his presence and ability to provide for and protect them. The silent god of Ezra 9–10 In the book of Ezra, the narrator attributes no speech to Yhwh directly and reports few actions and no direct interventions by this deity. While past speech from Yhwh is referred to in the book (1:1; 9:10b-11), direct speech from Yhwh is sorely lacking.4 He is never the subject of the verbs ‫ אמר‬or ‫דבר‬, as Becking observes, and he is DOI: 10.4324/b23091-5

80  The masculinization of Yhwh seldom the subject of a verbal clause.5 Yhwh’s actions in the book of Ezra are indirect and limited to the realm of temple building: he ‘rouses the spirit’ (‫את־רוח‬ ‫ )העיר‬of Cyrus to build his temple (1:1) and ‘rouses the spirit’ (‫ )העיר את־רוח‬of the golah to go up to Jerusalem to participate in this task (1:5). In 6:22, the narrator reports that Yhwh has gladdened (‫ )ׂשמחם‬the golah by turning the heart (‫ )הסב לב‬of the king of Assyria. But Yhwh’s involvement throughout most of the book is instrumental; he works through others – Persian kings, prophets, the scribe Ezra – to carry out that which is his intent.6 While Yhwh is the (alleged) aggrieved party in Ezra 9–10, there is no indication that he is aware of, much less affected by, the marriages that have taken place. The first-person point of view in Ezra 9, where Ezra himself takes over the narrator’s voice, contributes to the elusiveness of the deity. Yhwh is present only as Ezra presents and represents him. Narratorial silence concerning Yhwh’s actions and speech continues in chapter 10, where it is up to the characters in the text to ascertain what the deity expects from them. Yhwh’s lack of response to Ezra’s prayer and ritual performance makes his silence even more noticeable. Ezra prays at the ‘time of the evening sacrifice (‫( ’)ערב מנחה‬9:5) and before the temple – privileged temporal and spatial markers of divine presence.7 He kneels with hands outstretched, gestures that are consistent with a direct address to the deity.8 His repeated use of the intimate vocative (‘My God’ and ‘Our God’)9 further indicates to readers and hearers that Ezra intends that Yhwh hear and respond to the prayer.10 With these very gestures, Solomon’s temple dedication prayer requests Yhwh’s response to the penitential prayers and self-affliction of his people in times of distress: ‘hear (‫ )ׁשמע‬the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place; may you hear (‫ )ׁשמע‬from heaven your dwelling place; hear (‫ )ׁשמע‬and forgive (‫( ’)סלח‬2 Chr 6:21; 1 Kgs 8:52). Clearly, a response is expected when prayers of penitence are directed to Yhwh. Scholars have observed that Ezra’s prayer is more akin to a sermon directed at the community, since, unlike penitential prayers in Nehemiah 9 and Daniel 9, it makes no explicit request of Yhwh.11 The prayer is directed to Yhwh, but it is clearly intended to be heard by those around Ezra. As he prays, the community ‘overhears’ what is said to the deity, and the deity ‘overhears’ what is said to the community.12 The social dimensions of Ezra’s prayer and ritual performance are tied to the fact that it is before Yhwh that he abases himself and that it is from Yhwh that a response is expected. Thus, a response is expected not only from the community but also from Yhwh.13 As Olyan observes, the instrumental purpose of rites of self-affliction is ‘to get noticed and elicit a positive, active response from Yhwh or human authority’.14 Numerous biblical texts offer examples of just such an expectation.15 In Joel 2:12, Yhwh encourages his people to ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping and mourning’ so that he might ‘relent from sending calamity’ (2:14). Ahab’s mourning and fasting, tearing of garments and laying in sackcloth (1 Kgs 21:27), as well as Josiah’s penitence, humiliation, weeping and tearing of garments (2 Kgs 22:19–20), are noticed by Yhwh, who offers a reprieve from disaster. Ezra

The masculinization of Yhwh  81 himself recounts Yhwh’s response to fasting and prayer for protection during the journey from Babylon to Jerusalem: ‘we fasted and petitioned our God about this, and he answered our prayer’ (Ezra 8:23).16 Once in Jerusalem, however, despite being confronted with a crisis, Ezra receives no similar response to his prayer and fasting. The self-afflicted, humiliated and deconstructed bodies of Ezra and the golah do not appear to merit Yhwh’s attention.17 Such unresponsiveness stands in stark contrast to the divine spectacle of fire from heaven prompted by Solomon’s prayer in 2 Chronicles 7:1 and is all the more in evidence when Shecaniah, a member of the golah, responds to Ezra’s prayer, rather than Yhwh (Ezra 10:2). It is Shecaniah who calls for a ‘covenant with our God to expel the women and those born from them’ (10:3) and urges Ezra to ‘take action’ (10:4). A renewed attempt at evoking a response from the deity is suggested by Ezra’s movement into the relative privacy of a priestly chamber (‫ )לׁשכה‬where he mourns and fasts throughout the night (10:6).18 This sojourn in the temple chamber includes many of the elements characteristic of incubation rituals – rites that are performed in a sacred place where the person spends the night awaiting a divine response.19 Although Ezra moves into the temple chamber, fasts and mourns for an extended period of time, perhaps all night, there is no report of a response from the deity. Unlike other ‘incubation-like’ events in the Hebrew Bible, all of which seek, and many of which receive, a message from the deity,20 there is no dream, no revelation for Ezra as he mourns in the temple. Rather, the response to Ezra’s mourning in the temple chamber comes from community leaders. The officials and elders take matters into their own hands and order all the ‘sons of the golah’ to gather in Jerusalem within three days (Ezra 10:7–8). In 10:9, Yhwh’s silence continues as the ‘men of Judah and Benjamin’ gather in the square before the temple, mourning and trembling in the rain. While this silence does not necessarily mean Yhwh is absent, it may raise doubts concerning his interest, involvement and commitment to the golah or even, perhaps, his ability to respond to the cries of this community. The silence and absence of Yhwh is a particularly prominent motif in exilic and post-exilic literature, where it triggers grave concern. The psalmist cries to Yhwh, ‘Why do you sleep . . . why do you hide your face’ (Ps 44:24–5). Zion cries out, ‘Why have you forgotten us completely? Why have you forsaken us these many days?’ (Lam 5:20); ‘Yhwh has forsaken me, my lord has forgotten me’ (Isa 49:14). The deity’s lack of response to rites of self-affliction and entreaty generates anguish, ‘Why do we fast, when you do not see? Afflict ourselves, when you do not hear?’ (Isa 58:3). Accusers suggest that Yhwh is ‘deliberately absent or voluntarily uninvolved’, Dalit Rom-Shiloni comments, and that he is intentionally ‘ignoring our affliction and distress’ (Ps 44:25).21 Yhwh’s admission in Isaiah 54:8 that he had abandoned Israel, hiding his face ‘for a moment’, leaves open the problematic notion that Yhwh may have intentionally abandoned his people. Or might he have been forced to do so? While it might be assumed that Yhwh had taken up residence in the temple built for him in Ezra 1–6, there is no indication that Yhwh inhabited his house. Biblical and ancient West Asian temple building accounts, with which Ezra 1–6 has been compared,22 usually conclude with the indwelling of the deity.23 It is an occasion

82  The masculinization of Yhwh vividly described in the Hebrew Bible by the arrival of Yhwh’s ‫כבוד‬.24 However, as Hurovitz observes, the book of Ezra mentions no such entrance of the deity into the temple.25 The absence of such an indication cannot but generate uncertainty concerning the place of Yhwh’s dwelling, especially in light of the allusions in the book to other Yahwistic cult centres.26 The problem of the exile for the masculinity of Yhwh Lisbeth Fried addresses the return of Yhwh to the temple – or lack thereof – by noting that the return of the temple vessels in Ezra 1 is the signal that Yhwh is willing to ‘take up housekeeping’ in the temple being built for him.27 The vessels, she argues, are ‘visible proof that God himself is returning to his temple in Jerusalem’ (Isa 52:8,11–12).28 Bob Becking also looks to the temple vessels to resolve the issue of Yhwh’s absence in the book of Ezra. They are, he suggests, a ‘symbolic Presence’ and an ‘aniconic representation of the divine and . . . silent witness to the inscrutable presence of God’.29 While he notes the political realities behind the manipulation of cultic icons and statues, he veers away from the material and political to the realm of the symbolic when he posits that the vessels indicate how Yhwh disappeared in exile and the way He returned from exile as an inconceivable mystery that can be represented by an image, an icon, his Glory or by the cult vessels . . . Cultic vessels are mute, they do not speak for themselves, they communicate the silent God and people are invited to hear the subtext.30 As posited by Becking, the vessels function as a signifier – a sign that communicates a reality external to itself. Such a distinction, however, is alien to the ancient West Asian context in which ‘an image is not a copy of something in reality, it is itself a real thing’.31 The notion that an image is a symbolic presence, Nathaniel Levtow observes, ‘bases its view of deity, the world and all of reality on the priority and veracity of the non-physical over the physical, of thought over action and of belief over practice’.32 Furthermore, this understanding of the temple vessels avoids dealing with the political and material implications of exile, conquest and temple destruction for the status and masculinity of a national god of Israel. Yhwh’s disappearance and return are not ‘inconceivable mysteries’; on the contrary, icon abduction and destruction are frequently referenced in ancient West Asian texts and iconography, are attested in the Levant and are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.33 These practices of military conquest, city destruction and captivity are often explained in terms of the superior might of the conquering kings and their gods, the deity’s submission to those gods or even divine abandonment.34 In this light, Yhwh’s absence and silence have implications for the masculinity of the deity that must be considered. Calls for the spoliation of cultic icons in the Hebrew Bible evidence the prevalence of this motif among biblical writers. In the book of Deuteronomy, Israel’s conquest of Canaan is to be accompanied by the destruction of the cultic statues

The masculinization of Yhwh  83 and icons of the gods of the indigenous inhabitants (Deut 7:5).35 Political reform in the books of Kings and Chronicles often involves removing, burning or destroying ‘non-Yahwistic’ cultic objects from Yhwh’s temple.36 The prophetic oracles that announce the exile of Chemosh of Moab (Jer 48:7) and Milcom of Amnon (Jer 49:3) affirm Yhwh’s supremacy over these tutelary deities of neighbouring peoples.37 Countering the possibility that Yhwh was overcome and perhaps even taken into exile along with Judah, Isaiah announces that it is, in fact, the gods of Babylon that are led away into exile: Bel bows down, Nebo stoops low; their idols are on beasts and cattle. . . . They stoop, they bow down together; they cannot save the burden, but themselves go into captivity. (Isa 46:1–2)38 Their worthless icons are borne and carried away, while Yhwh, on the contrary, bears, carries and saves ‘the remnant of the house of Israel’ (46:3–4).39 The scenario described in the book of Ezra is, in fact, one of conquest and temple spoliation. The vessels Cyrus returns to Jerusalem are those that ‘Nebuchadnezzar had carried away (‫ )הוציא‬from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods’ (1:7; cf. 2 Kgs 24:13). The men who ‘came up from the captivity of the exile (‫ ’)מׁשבי הגולה‬are those that ‘Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon led into exile (‫)הגלה‬ to Babylon’ (Ezra 2:1). The story of the temple vessels is the story of the exile of Judah and its deity. It is reiterated in Ezra 5:12 by the elders of the Jews who describe the temple they are building as the one destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, the king who also ‘deported the people to Babylon’, along with the gold and silver vessels from the house of Yhwh that he transferred to the ‘the temple in Babylon’. It is this scenario of conquest that Ezra describes in his prayer: ‘we, our kings and our priests have been handed over to the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering and to shame, as is now the case’ (9:7b). Captivity, plundering and sword – the signs of the absence of the deity –40 are not only a thing of the past but Ezra makes it clear that they continue into the present as well – a present in which the golah resides in slavery to an imperial overlord (9:8b-9a). A common explanation for the wilful departure of the deity from his or her temple and people in ancient West Asian texts is the anger of the god, frequently due to the misdeeds of his or her people.41 This is the reason offered in Ezra 5:12 for Yhwh’s abandonment during the exile: ‘because our ancestors angered the God of heaven, he gave them into the hand (‫הרגזו אבהתנא לאלה ׁשמיא יהב המו ביד‬, Ar.) of King Nebuchadnezzar’. Ezra’s prayer similarly affirms that the sword, captivity, plundering and shame that Israel has suffered are not due to Yhwh’s incapacity to protect but rather due to the guilt of the golah past and present (9:7a). Likewise, in various other biblical texts, the ills that befall Israel and Judah are attributed to the transgressions and infidelity of Israel, the consequent wrath of the deity and his eventual abandonment of the city and land.42

84  The masculinization of Yhwh However, as David Block explains, while it may appear that the gods leave their temples voluntarily, conquest and temple spoliation lie behind such accounts in both biblical and ancient West Asian texts.43 Divine abandonment, therefore, may raise doubts concerning the ability of the nation’s tutelary god to protect his or her subjects in the face of a military challenge. Alternatively, it might suggest that the deity has willingly surrendered to the conqueror’s god.44 This uncertainty concerning Yhwh lies behind the biblical insistence on human responsibility for divine abandonment.45 Since the deity is the supreme patriarch responsible for the provision and protection of his people, divine abandonment raises questions concerning the masculine performance of this god.46 The return of the temple vessels is just as problematic, however, as was their removal by Nebuchadnezzar. For it is not a Judean king who restores the vessels to their proper place, but the king of another imperial power, Cyrus of Persia.47 Thus, the temple vessels continue to be manipulated by the kings of the empires. John Kutsko observes that this very dynamic is evidenced in Mesopotamian texts where the return of captured cult icons and statues and even the refurbishment of their temples were a ‘benevolently persuasive feature of imperial policy’ that served to attract the favour of gods, priests and local inhabitants, especially upon the accession of a new king.48 The manipulation of the temple vessels, along with the exile and return of Yhwh’s people at the hands of foreign kings – rather than a king of the lineage of David – might problematically suggest to critics of this god that he required help from a foreign king, no less, to return to his city, build his temple and gather his people. The images of Persian imperial benevolence and favour towards the golah in Ezra 9:8–9, along with the emphasis in these same verses on the continued state of slavery to Persia, further contribute to the uncertainty concerning Yhwh’s masculine performance as provider and protector of his people, unrivalled before other kings and gods and worthy of their fidelity. Far from the ‘inconceivable mystery’ that Becking describes, both the removal and the return of the temple vessels raise concrete and problematic issues concerning Yhwh’s masculinity. Is this a god who is victorious in battle, able to protect and sustain his people in their land? Or is Yhwh a local, conquered god incorporated into the vast holdings of the empire and its tutelar deities? Has Yhwh’s own experience during the period of exile ‘unmanned’ him? It is in this context of both exile and return that the ‘masculinization’ of Yhwh becomes a pressing matter. The people identified as Israel in the book of Ezra need a god who can control the empires precisely because they exist at the mercy of these empires. Yhwh must be ‘rehabilitated’ and proven to be good at ‘being a male god’.49 In his study of the book of Jeremiah, Peter Diamond uses the phrase ‘the rehabilitation of Yhwh’ to refer to a ‘complex of operations designed to prevent at any price the failure of Israel’s patron deity and the cultural oblivion of Israel’.50 Yhwh’s failure is the failure of those within ‘Israel’ whose identity, status, legitimacy and even collective existence hinge on the superior status of their god. Faced with the suggestion that the deity of Israel has failed, Diamond argues, the ‘colonial elite’ rehabilitates Yhwh and prevents ‘divine instability’ to ensure their own survival.51

The masculinization of Yhwh  85 They transform national disaster into a narrative of Israelite sin and divine acts of divine righteousness, benevolence and restoration. The book of Ezra evidences a similar pursuit, where Yhwh’s masculinization and divine refurbishment are achieved by attributing to this god the traits and performances of the Persian kings in the book. Yhwh is dominant over the kings of the empires, communicates through authorized representatives and emits authoritative texts, commands and edicts whose disobedience risks destruction and through which he manages the bodies of his subject peoples. The supreme monarch The book of Ezra begins by announcing that Cyrus, king of Persia, is to be the restorer of the temple (Ezra 1:1–2). However, while the Persian kings of the empire are key authority figures in the book and are present in almost every chapter, they are never portrayed as being physically present in Yehud. Their control is exercised through an administrative network of representatives, scribes, designated officials, local governors, servants and official communications. It is Mithredath, the treasurer, who turns over the temple vessels to Sheshbazzar to take them to Jerusalem (1:8–11). Disputes concerning temple building are dealt with by intermediaries (Rehum the royal deputy, Shimshai the scribe) through texts and those who write, copy, translate, transport and read them (4:17–22; 5:3–17; 6:6–12). In Ezra 4, Artaxerxes appears to be unaware of what is going on in Jerusalem and must be reminded of past issues with the city that are recorded in the royal annals (4:12–16), and in 6:1–5, Darius must have the archives searched to verify Cyrus’ authorization of temple building. Ezra himself is an intermediary who is charged to act for the king (Ezra 7:12–26). Thus, in the book of Ezra, distance and absence are a measure of imperial power and of the vast territorial extent of the empire that is governed by these kings. Imperial presence is mediated by officially designated personnel, and imperial speech is communicated through official written documents. Yhwh is similarly known to the golah and readers of the book of Ezra solely through his representatives, intermediaries and authoritative words. Jeremiah, through whom Yhwh had announced the events that are reported in Ezra 1, is among these representatives (1:1). So also are Haggai and Zechariah, who ‘prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel who was over them’ (5:1) and the elders of the Jews who describe themselves as the ‘servants of the God of heaven and earth’ and speak of Yhwh’s anger as the motive for exile and temple destruction (5:11–12). Ezra 7 introduces the eponymous priest-scribe of the book, who is directly charged with implementing the Torah of Yhwh. Ezra’s prayer in 9:5–16 offers the most considered and sustained intermediation of Yhwh’s actions (9:7–9), emotions (9:14) and speech, specifically his commandments for Israel (9:10b-12). This carefully mediated representation of Yhwh ascribes to this god the attributes and performances of Persian imperial masculinity as represented in the book of Ezra. While in other biblical texts, Yhwh enters the temple, sends down fire from heaven or speaks directly to his servants, in the book of Ezra, Yhwh does not

86  The masculinization of Yhwh involve himself directly. He cannot, perhaps, be contained by the temple as he is now the ‘god of heaven’ (1:1). Thus, though Yhwh is said to be over the prophets Haggai and Zechariah (‫ ;עליהון‬Ar., 5:1b) and support them (‫ ;מסעדין‬Ar., 5:2b), the content of Yhwh’s prophetic word goes wholly unreported. Neither does Ezra, the Torah scholar, receive direct communication from Yhwh. Yhwh’s hand may be upon him,52 but his mission, authority and resources are provided by Artaxerxes (7:13–26). Neither does the priest-scribe transmit direct speech from Yhwh in the face of the infidelity of the golah in Ezra 9; rather, he calls upon words given previously by Yhwh to the prophets (9:10b-11a). The Persian kings are themselves incorporated into Yhwh’s retinue of servants and nominated agents. Any direct characterization of Yhwh is pointedly limited to this deity’s instrumentalization of Cyrus and his royal successors. The templebuilding account is framed by such references: Yhwh charges Cyrus to build him a temple (Ezra 1:2) and is credited with turning ‘the heart of the king of Assyria’ to favour temple building (6:22). Ezra’s first-person response to Artaxerxes’ rescript similarly identifies Ezra’s mission with Yhwh’s purposes and action: Blessed be Yhwh, the God of our ancestors, who put such a thing as this in the heart of the king (‫ )נתן כזאת בלב המלך‬to glorify the house of Yhwh in Jerusalem, and who extended to me steadfast love before the king (‫לפני המלך‬ ‫ )עלי הטה־חסד‬and his counsellors and before all the king’s mighty officers. (7:27–28) Yhwh, therefore, the book of Ezra argues, is behind Artaxerxes’s edict that provides for the support and patronage of the temple and elevates an exiled Judean to a position of power, even over Persian officials in the province (7:21–26). Ezra’s penitential prayer makes a similar claim, attributing the benefits provided by Persia to Yhwh, who ‘extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia’ (‫ ;יטה־עלינו חסד לפני המלכי פרס‬9:9). Yhwh’s instrumental use of foreign empires and their kings to carry out his purposes is not unique to the book of Ezra. In 2 Kings, Isaiah and Jeremiah, the onslaught of Assyrian and Babylonian armies is attributed to the design and purposes of Yhwh. In 2 Kings 17:23, it is by deploying Assyrian invaders that Yhwh removes the Kingdom of Israel from his sight, while in 2 Kings 24:2, he sends ‘bands of the Chaldeans, bands of the Moabites and bands of the Arameans’ against Jerusalem. Isaiah describes Assyria as the rod of Yhwh’s wrath to execute his purposes (Isa 10:5–6),53 and Jeremiah announces that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar is Yhwh’s servant, called to destroy Judah and the surrounding nations (Jer 25:8–14).54 Thus, the biblical writers claim that Yhwh is neither defeated nor unmanned by the destruction of his cities and the exile of his people; to the contrary, the empires and their kings are merely instruments in his mighty hands. Conquering armies are not the only threat to the masculinity of Yhwh. Also problematic are Cyrus’ ‘beneficent’ acts in favour of the golah, as represented in the book of Ezra, since they call into question Yhwh’s power, presence and ability to provide. In the face of such ambiguity, the biblical representation of Yhwh as the

The masculinization of Yhwh  87 god who moves Cyrus and other Persian kings to carry out his purposes serves to salvage or ‘rehabilitate’ the masculinity of this deity whose king is in exile, whose people are dispersed and whose house is in shambles. Affirmations in the book of Ezra that the kings of Persia are roused, turned and moved by Yhwh should be considered in all their radicality (1:2; 6:22; 7:27–28). The Persian Empire encompassed a vast territory for over 200 years, and the loyalty of its subjects was ensured, historians explain, through a vast military and administrative network.55 The might of the Persian empire and the hyper-masculinity of its kings are on display in monumental reliefs and inscriptions that evidence ‘a royal ideology based on manliness’.56 The Bisitun relief is a prime example of this royal ideology: Darius sports an elaborate beard and robe as he towers over bound prisoners; his foot is firmly placed on the fallen usurper to the throne while officers bear his bow and spear.57 The manliness and physical traits of Darius’ body displayed on the relief, Llewellyn-Jones notes, ‘guarantee his right to rule’,58 while his chosenness and legitimacy are evidenced by the ring of authoritative power Ahura Mazda extends to him. Outside the metanarrative of the biblical text, the suggestion that the local god of this small stretch of land and a people dispersed among the nations makes use of the hyper-masculine kings of the Persian empire for his own purposes might appear to be nothing short of ludicrous. More importantly, it points to the perceived need to elevate Yhwh and secure his position as ‘most masculine’ over and above the Persian kings. A similar, even more explicit evocation of this masculinizing trope is evidenced in the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah in which, echoing the Cyrus Cylinder, Yhwh calls forth Cyrus as his anointed (‫)מׁשיח‬, virtually grafting him into the lineage of David in order to restore his people, city and temple.59 Isaiah masculinizes Yhwh by turning Cyrus into his designated servant chosen by Yhwh to carry out his purposes. Thus, Cyrus is instrumentalized by Yhwh just as the kings of Babylon and Assyria kings are instrumentalized in other biblical texts.60 In this way, Erich Gruen observes, Yhwh usurps the accomplishments of the Persian King as his own: Cyrus serves as the instrument of God. The author ascribes no sterling qualities or lofty aims to the ruler of Persia. It is God who summons Cyrus to his service, delivers up nations to him, and subjects kings to his power (Isa 41:2,25). . . . God calls his agent to carry out predetermined duties and to fulfil the word of the Lord (Isa 46:11). In short, Cyrus’s success against Babylon amounts to the discharge of divine commands (Isa 48:14–15). DeuteroIsaiah has, in effect, claimed for Yahweh the imperial accomplishments of the Persian King. The work constitutes not so much celebration or admiration as usurpation.61 Yhwh’s performance in Deutero-Isaiah and in the book of Ezra maps onto a model of masculinity that performs patriarchal dominance by controlling and using, rather than defeating, the major contenders for universal power. In this light, it is of great import that when confronted with a problem in Jerusalem, Ezra, a Persian emissary

88  The masculinization of Yhwh sent to ‘inspect’ the region and exercise judicial and economic oversight (Ezra 7:14,21–26), abases himself before Yhwh, not Artaxerxes. Persia has been used to favour the golah, but it is not to be the sovereign of the golah. The benevolent provider The beneficence of the Persian kings is extolled by inscriptions, monuments and reliefs of the kings themselves, as do historians and biblical scholars. While historical realities were more complex and nuanced, as Amélie Kuhrt notes,62 the book of Ezra presents a largely positive view of the Persian kings, specifically of their acts of favour towards the golah. This favour is highlighted in Ezra’s prayer, which begins with the ‘story’ of Israel’s transgression and Yhwh’s punishment (9:6) and continues with a description of Yhwh’s acts of favour and beneficence (vv.8–9). The transition between punishment and favour is signalled in 9:8 by the temporal reference ‘and now’ (‫)ועתה‬, indicating that the past of ‘sword, plundering, captivity and shame’ suffered at the hands of the kings of the lands (9:7) has given way to a present of favour (‫ )תחנה‬granted by Yhwh (9:8). In the Hebrew Bible, the term ‫תחנה‬ often describes the favour bestowed by a powerful figure in response to the plea of an inferior party.63 It is what Solomon requests when he repeatedly asks Yhwh to hear the plea (‫ )ׁשמעת אל־תחנה‬of those who direct their prayers towards his dwelling place.64 Thus, Ezra’s prayer signals that Yhwh is the superior party to whom the golah should credit punishment as well as current favour. The nature of Yhwh’s favour is specified by four infinitive construct verbs, each of which describes a benefit Yhwh has granted the golah, the ‘us’ (‫נו‬-) in Ezra’s prayer: But now, for a brief moment, there has been favour (‫ )תחנה‬from Yhwh our God: to leave for us a remnant (‫)להׁשאיר לנו פליטה‬ and to give to us (‫ )ולתת־לנו‬a stake in his holy place, to brighten our eyes (‫)לחאיר עיניני‬ and to grant us (‫ )לתתנו‬a little sustenance in our slavery (‫( )בעבדתנו‬9:8). Each of these expressions describes an act of life-giving or life-preserving sustenance. The remnant (‫ )פליטה‬are those of Israel who have been delivered by Yhwh; they ‘remain’ because of Yhwh’s intervention (9:8b).65 The ‘stake’ (‫ )יתד‬that Yhwh gives the golah ‘in his holy place’ is a term used for a tent peg,66 referencing security and stability (9:8c). This is highlighted by its use in Isaiah 33:20 to describe the stability of the city of Jerusalem to which Israel returns, a city where Yhwh rules, protects and saves: ‘Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation, an immovable tent, whose stakes (‫ )יתד‬will never be pulled up, and none of whose ropes will be broken’ (Isa 33:20–22). The implication is that the golah has been granted a secure hold in the temple and in Jerusalem.

The masculinization of Yhwh  89 The final acts of favour – the brightening of the eyes and the giving of sustenance (9:8cd) – describe forms of provision that ensure the vitality and continuance of life.67 These benefits that Yhwh provides for his people are consistent with royal performances of masculinity in ancient West Asian representations: a people are rescued from destruction, given a dwelling place, life and sustenance.68 Yhwh is the subject of these verbs, not Cyrus, Darius or Artaxerxes. The second part of Ezra’s recital of Yhwh’s actions more precisely explains how this favour has been carried out: For we are slaves, yet in our slavery our god has not forsaken us (‫)לא עזבנו‬, but has extended to us steadfast love before the kings of Persia (‫)יטה־עלינו חסד לפני המלי פרס‬, to give us new life (‫ )לתת־לנו מחיה‬to set up the house of our god (‫ )לרומם את־בית אלהינו‬and to repair its ruins (‫)להעמיד את־חרבתיו‬ and to give us a wall (‫ )לתת־לנו גדר‬in Judea and Jerusalem. (9:9) The series of actions described, involving life and sustenance, the temple and a wall in Jerusalem are evidence that Yhwh has not forsaken his people. These acts carried out by the Persian kings are the consequence of Yhwh’s ‘steadfast love extended to us before the kings of Persia’ (‫ יטה־עלינו חסד לפני המלכי פרס‬cf. Ezra 7:28). Thus, the kings of Persia benefit the golah, but it is Yhwh who has moved them to do so. The benefits provided by Yhwh’s emissary-king correspond to those attributed directly to Yhwh in verse 8: they involve sustenance (‫)מחיה‬, a place in the house of Yhwh and safety and security in Judah and Jerusalem. The twice repeated term ‫ מחיה‬emphasizes a key component of Yhwh’s favour towards the golah, the provision, nourishment and protection necessary for the preservation and renewal of life.69 Yhwh’s sovereignty and ability to provide for his people is evidenced by these elements that ensure survival and security: a remnant, a tent peg, sustenance, repaired ruins and a wall.70 The well-being experienced by the golah is attributable solely to Yhwh’s masculine performance, that is his ability and willingness to provide and protect. The Persian kings carry out this task as agents of this divine overlord. However, these claims to Yhwh’s masculine performance and dominant status in relation to the Persian kings are nuanced by caveats that raise questions concerning the extent of Yhwh’s power. Ezra 9:8 is bracketed by phrases that allude to the limited scope of Yhwh’s favour and sustenance: his favour is for a ‘brief moment’ (‫ ;כמעט־רגע‬9:8a)71; the sustenance is but a ‘little’ (‫)מעט‬. The question is whether Yhwh is himself limiting favour and sustenance or whether they are restricted by circumstances beyond the deity’s control. The thrice-mentioned condition of slavery in which the community resides under Persian domination likewise represents a challenge to Yhwh’s masculine performance. Yhwh provides sustenance, Ezra notes in 9:8, even amid ‘our slavery’ (‫)בעבדתנו‬. Verse 9 begins with a double reference to slavery under Persia: ‘We are slaves, but in our slavery’ (‫)כי עבדים אנחנו ובעבדתנו‬. Yhwh’s acts of favour do not

90  The masculinization of Yhwh reverse the condition of slavery – he has not broken the hold that the Persian Empire has on the golah – although he does provide relief ‘in our slavery’.72 Penitential prayer in Nehemiah 9 concludes with a similar reference to conditions in Yehud, evidencing the material and social effects of this slavery: ‘[the land’s] rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us for our sins; they have power also over our bodies and over our livestock at their pleasure’ (Neh 9:37). The benefits provided by Yhwh are nuanced by the golah’s tenuous circumstances. The stability and fixedness claimed by the very term ‘stake’ (9:8) are complicated by the fact that tent stakes, while strong, are movable and removable.73 Likewise, the designation ‘remnant’ encompasses not only salvation but also past destruction. These references may raise questions concerning Yhwh’s masculine performance and even his ability to dominate the Persian kings and their gods. Similar ambiguity concerning Yhwh’s masculinity can be found in Hosea chapter 2, where Yhwh accuses his wife Israel of wanton abandonment. Israel claims that the Baals she follows provide for her – not Yhwh: ‘I will go after my lovers; they give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink’ (Hos 2:5).74 More humiliating for Yhwh than being cuckolded by his wife is the insinuation that he has failed at the masculine task of providing for her while other gods appear to be better able to do so. Yhwh responds emphatically that Israel is mistaken and that it is he who provides ‘the grain, the wine and the oil, and who lavished upon her silver and gold’ (2:8–9).75 Ken Stone explains the implications of this argument for Yhwh’s masculinity: By characterizing Yhwh in terms of such recurring demonstrations of manliness as the vehement insistence that one is an adequate food provider, or the harsh punishment of women suspected of sexual infidelity, Hosea ironically leaves the Yhwh he constructs open to the charge of revealing through anxious assertion a sort of divine insecurity about Yhwh’s ability to be . . . ‘good at being a male god’.76 Challenges to Yhwh’s masculinity are also evidenced in prophetic texts where Jerusalem is depicted as Yhwh’s unfaithful wife. Ilona Zsolnay notes that in Ezekiel 16, Jerusalem goes after other gods who provide protection and aid because Yhwh is ‘an ineffectual and inadequate protector’.77 Furthermore, T.M. Lemos argues that Yhwh seems unable to compete with the ‘hypermasculinity’ of the physically desirable Assyrians, Babylonians and well-endowed Egyptians (Ez 23:12–21).78 Not only is he the aggrieved ‘raging and jealous husband’ in an episode of domestic violence,79 but he is also challenged in terms of his ability to satisfy the needs of his wife. In Isaiah 36–37, Yhwh’s masculinity is more concretely challenged by King Sennacherib as his army advances to Jerusalem (cf. 2 Kgs 18:17–19:37).80 Rabshakeh, the king’s emissary, claims that Sennacherib is better able to provide and protect the Judeans than Yhwh who will be unable to prevent Judah from being ‘given in to the hand of the king of Assyria’ (36:15–20). Yhwh is likened to the

The masculinization of Yhwh  91 ineffectual gods of the neighbouring peoples, while Sennacherib offers the Judeans a better life: Make your peace with me and come out to me; then every one of you will eat from your own vine and your own fig tree and drink water from your own cistern until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. (Isa 36:17) Yhwh addresses this challenge to his ability to provide for his people by rhetorically transforming Sennacherib, the military victor, into a rejected suitor of Daughter Zion: ‘She despises you, she scorns you – virgin daughter Zion –; she tosses her head behind your back, daughter Jerusalem’ (37:22). His defeat is announced, and Yhwh’s dominant masculinity is finally affirmed (37:22–35). These cases of contested divine masculinity do not involve the feminization of either party; rather, these disputes concern a location on a gendered spectrum: who is more masculine, more powerful, unrivalled among the gods and kings? The ambiguous characterization of Yhwh’s performance in Ezra 9 renders this a delicate dance. Who is using whom to further whose purposes? Ezra asserts that Yhwh is in control of the fate of the golah, its continued life in the land, its provision, protection and security. Nevertheless, this control is limited – brief, a little, amid continued slavery. Ezra’s prayer explains this unstable situation by affirming that full restoration is not in effect due to the sins of the golah and Yhwh’s rightful punishment for its transgression. The stark contrasts drawn between Yhwh and the golah in the prayer serve this agenda of divine masculinization: Yhwh has not forsaken us (‫ ;לא עזבנו אלהינו‬9:9), but we have forsaken his commandments (‫מצותיך‬ ‫ ;עזבנו‬9:10), Yhwh is just (‫ ;צדיק אתה‬9:15), but we are guilty before him (‫באׁשמתינו‬ ‫ ;לפניך‬9:15). Ezra affirms that the ‘sword, plundering and captivity’ to which Israel had been given over by Yhwh in the past continue into the present because the guilt of Israel has not ceased ‘from the days of our fathers to this day’ (9:7a). The shame experienced by the golah in the face of past captivity and exile also continues, ‘as is now the case’ (9:7b). Yhwh’s ability to act in favour of the golah, to effect complete restoration, is limited by the fact that guilt continues. The favour granted by Yhwh is an undeserved act of beneficence. Ezra’s prayer claims that the current state of imperial domination does not indicate that Yhwh is unable to save. It is due to the deity’s deliberate restraint, rather than his inability to provide, that sustenance and the survival of a remnant are made possible even amid slavery, as he has punished ‘much less than our iniquities deserved’ (‫חׂשכת למטה מעוננו‬, 9:13).81 This continuous tension between foreign domination, divine provision/salvation and divine wrath is constitutive of the very identity of the golah and its claimed forebearers. The book of Ezra thus affirms that Yhwh is a powerful god: he punishes but is capable of self-control; he is a land-giver (9:11–12), provider, nourisher and mover of foreign kings. The golah, therefore, should not doubt Yhwh’s power but rather attribute its very existence to Yhwh’s beneficence and his ability to control the

92  The masculinization of Yhwh forces that threatened and continue to threaten Israel with decimation. Yhwh is neither the conquered deity that some might suppose nor an inferior god on the map of Persian imperialism. He is, in fact, the divine overlord of all. Make no mistake, the book of Ezra affirms, it is Yhwh who has ordained temple building; the return of the exiles; their privileged position in the region and the measure of security, provision and stability they enjoy. The imperial lawgiver References to official imperial documents populate more than half the chapters of the book of Ezra: the Cyrus Edict (1:2–4); correspondence to and from King Artaxerxes (4:8–16; 17–33) and King Darius (5:7–17; 6:6–12) and the Artaxerxes rescript (7:11–26). The importance of texts in the book of Ezra is evidenced in the numerous references to letters (‫ ;נׁשתון‬4:7; 7:11, Ar and ‫ ;אגרה‬4:8,11; 5:6, Ar), scrolls (4:15; 6:1, Ar), decrees (‫טעם‬, 16 x)82 and records of different kinds,83 which are written (‫ מכתב‬1:1; ‫ככתב‬, 3:2,4; ‫כתב‬, 4:6–8; 5:7,10; 6:2 8:34), copied (‫פרׁשגן‬, 4:11,23;5:6), translated (‫תרגם‬, 4:7,18) and sent (‫ׁשלח‬, 4:11,14,17,18;5:6,7;6:13). Decrees in the book of Ezra are archived, searched for, retrieved and consulted (4:19; 5:17–6:2). Scribes figure prominently: Shimshai participates in the writing and transmission of letters and the implementation of royal decrees (4:9,17,23), and Ezra, the Persian emissary and ‘scribe of the law of the God of heaven’ (7:12,7:21), studies, applies and teaches the Torah (7:6,10) and is charged by the king to enforce obedience to the ‘law of your god and the law of the king’ (7:26). While discussions concerning the authenticity of the royal edicts and correspondence in the book and their value for historical reconstructions are ongoing,84 of interest here is their role as texts that participate in the configuration of power and the negotiation of masculinities in the book of Ezra.85 Royal edicts and imperial correspondence are the primary means by which the Persian kings exercise power and control over political, economic and religious matters in the province of Abar-Nahar throughout the book (Ezra 1:2–4; 4:17–21; 6:3–12; 7:12–26). This ‘textualized’ exercise of Persian power that Cameron Howard describes as ‘hypertextuality’ is also evidenced in Esther and Daniel, where Persia is depicted as ‘an empire so invested in textual authority that the king’s word, once written down, takes on power that surpasses that of the king himself’ and thus cannot be reversed.86 The lasting relevance and authority of Persian decrees in these biblical texts rest not only on their immutability but also on their storage for later consultation. Imperial edicts are preserved as material objects that continue to enact power, even when their existence has been forgotten. In Ezra 6:5–12, Darius confirms the golah’s authorization for temple building only after the Cyrus Edict is brought out from the archives as an authoritative reference for his own command (5:1–4).87 Darius proclaims the immutability of his own edict: ‘anyone who alters this edict, a beam shall be pulled out of the house of the perpetrator, who then shall be impaled on it’ (6:11). While inscriptions, records and archives are part of ancient imperial administration more generally, the Persian Empire’s ‘hypertextuality’ as an exercise of power

The masculinization of Yhwh  93 is evidenced not only by the testimony offered by biblical texts and Greek historians but also by archives and material remains.88 Royal inscriptions and administrative texts project, Cameron observes, ‘an obsessive interest with the written word, with the power inherent in written texts and with the ability of written texts to undergird the power centres of the empire’.89 The Bisitun inscription, which served to legitimize Darius’ accession to the throne,90 and the Cyrus Cylinder, which impacted biblical writers’ perspectives on the Persian Empire,91 point to the effective deployment of Achaemenid imperial propaganda in the form of texts and monumental inscriptions. This key dimension of imperial masculinity is employed in the book of Ezra to strategically masculinize Yhwh. The deity’s superior masculinity is asserted, first of all, by his appropriation of the texts of the Persian kings, whose edicts serve to carry out the deity’s own purposes. The Cyrus Edict announces that Yhwh has raised this king to build his house and authorizes the ‘return’ of the exiles who are to participate in this task (Ezra 1:1–4). Darius’ decree confirms the golah’s authorization for temple building and announces the royal patronage of Yhwh’s house (6:6–12). Notably, the completion of the temple is attributed in Ezra 6:14 to both the ‘decree (‫ )טעם‬of the God of Israel’ and the ‘decree (‫ )טעם‬of Cyrus, Darius and King Artaxerxes of Persia’. Artaxerxes’s rescript, which positions Ezra in authority over judicial, administrative and religious matters in the Persian satrapy of AbarNahar and makes provisions for the Temple of Yhwh (7:11–26), is likewise attributed to Yhwh (7:27–28). Yhwh’s power is asserted, however, not only by his appropriation of the texts of the Persian kings but also by his emission of a text of his own – a text that is copied, studied, taught, transmitted, interpreted and upheld as authoritative for the golah – namely, the Torah.92 In keeping with the imperial performance of masculinity in the book of Ezra, Yhwh is not directly involved in matters concerning the golah in Ezra 9–10. Instead, his representatives mediate, transmit and interpret his authorized words, commandments and statutes. Yhwh’s texts are not only transmitted by representatives, but they are also temporally distant from the context of the golah in the book of Ezra: Yhwh had given his words in the past to Jeremiah (Ezra 1:1), to Moses (3:2;7:6) and to his ‘servants the prophets’ (9:11a). Like archived royal edicts consulted by Persian kings, Yhwh’s words are sought out and cited by Ezra as authoritative for the matter of intermarriage (9:10–12; 10:3). The role of the Torah in Ezra 9–10 evokes the model of textualized masculine power ascribed to Persian monarchs in the book of Ezra. But the power of Torah, imperial edicts and inscriptions lies not only in their content but also in their production, manipulation and display – that is, in their very materiality. Those, like Ezra, who ‘literally and literarily hold the Torah’, Stavrakopoulou affirms, are granted ‘socio-religious and economic power’ over those who are passive viewers and receptors.93 Ezra is mediator and ‘manipulator’ of this Torah: he is a skilled scribe (‫ )ספר מהיר‬of the Torah (7:6), who set his heart to seek (‫ )לדרוׁש‬the Torah, to ‘do it (‫ )לעׂשת‬and to teach (‫ )ללמד‬its statutes and ordinances in Israel’ (7:10). Ezra acts as the authorized intermediary of Yhwh’s words, commands and Torah and thereby plays a key role in the masculinization of Yhwh: he

94  The masculinization of Yhwh bears and transmits Yhwh’s commands and statutes and implements them as authoritative for Yehud (7:14). Interestingly, while Persian texts, decrees or records make frequent appearances in the previous chapters of the book, in Ezra 9–10, none are mentioned. The only authoritative texts in these chapters are the commandments of Yhwh, given through his ‘servants the prophets’ (9:10b) and the Torah referenced by Shecaniah in his call for covenant-making (10:3b). Most notably, the only divine ‘decree’ communicated by Ezra pertains not to the realm of the temple or cultic practice, a concern evidenced earlier in the book, but marriage. Ezra brings into the present the commandments of Yhwh that were given, ‘registered’ and transmitted by his servants in the past: And now, our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments (‫)כי עזבנו מצותיך‬, which you commanded by your servants the prophets (‫)אׁשר צוית ביד עבדיך הנביאים‬, saying. (9:10b-11a) Ezra does not receive a prophetic word from Yhwh concerning intermarriage; he is not a prophet but a scribe, a scholar of the text given by Yhwh to Moses. Even as Darius consults the archives for Cyrus’ temple-building edict, Ezra consults the ‘archive’ of Yhwh’s commandments. The continuity and stability evoked by the authority of past Persian decrees are similarly evoked by Yhwh’s commands: both were issued in a different context but rendered applicable to the current situation. By reference to these commands, the choice of spouses that some golah men have made is judged to be a transgression: ‘for we have forsaken your commandments (‫ ;כי עזבנו מצותיך‬9:10)’ . . . ‘shall we again break your commandments (‫ )הנׁשוב להפר מצותיך‬and intermarry?’ (9:14a). Ezra’s prayer reveals that the real problem faced by the golah in the present is not past captivity under Babylon or even continued slavery under Persian domination, as these have taken place under divine aegis – the crisis they face is their disobedience to the command of their true imperial overlord, Yhwh. Ezra’s prayer does not offer a solution to the matter, nor does it make a request of Yhwh. Rather, as indicated by the repeated terminology of guilt employed,94 the prayer emphasizes the golah’s transgression and points to its consequences: ‘Would you not be angry with us until you destroy without remnant or survivor?’ (‫ ;הלוא תאנף־בנו עד כלה לאין ׁשארית ופליטה‬9:14b). Ezra thereby affirms Yhwh’s power to control life and death as he had in the past (9:6,13). The threat is no longer exile, however, but complete destruction; it is feared that enraged, Yhwh may turn political and military powers against the golah, this time without ‘holding back’ (‫חׂשך‬, cf. 9:13). The generational implications of this destruction are emphasized: there will be no remnant, no survivors and therefore no sons to possess the land, enjoy its benefits and bear the name Israel. The assembly that gathers in 10:14 is likewise concerned with averting Yhwh’s wrath when it commits to a procedure for identifying the guilty men ‘until the fierce wrath of our God is averted from us (‫’)להׁשיב חרון אף־אלהינו‬. The expression ‘turn away from his/your fierce wrath’ (‫ )להׁשיב חרוןאף־אלהינו‬is used elsewhere in

The masculinization of Yhwh  95 several biblical texts in which Yhwh is portrayed as having the power to destroy.95 The threat of Israel’s destruction at the hands of its own deity, or due to his abandonment, is a fear that pervades the biblical corpus that affirms Yhwh’s power over the life and death of his people. So too, the threat of Yhwh’s wrath in Ezra 9–10 indicates an awareness that while the golah may be subject to Persian domination, its continued existence as a people is not dependent on the Persian king but on Yhwh. It is Yhwh who is elevated as overlord of the golah, and it is with Yhwh that the golah is called to covenant-making, to render its ‘masculinity’ to the deity: ‘let us make a covenant with our God to expel the women and those born from them’ (10:3a). With this call, a shift is made from the domain of Persian rule to Yhwh’s domain as ruler of the empires, suzerain and patron of his people. Ezra’s mourning rituals and body modification constitute the golah as the subject people of Yhwh to whom the obeisance and obedience of the community are due – not to Persia or to local governing elites, but to the deity. They re-signify the silence and apparent absence of Yhwh, casting the god of a small territory as an imperial overlord who is dominant over the Persian kings. Yhwh’s distance and silence are thereby appropriated as the traits of imperial masculinity. Quite simply and quite radically, it is affirmed that it is Yhwh and not Cyrus who is the ruler of the kingdoms of the earth; it is Yhwh who builds the temple and brings the exiles ‘home’ and it is Yhwh who provides for them. Furthermore, their ‘story’ is not determined by the movements of the great empires but by their obedience to the commandments of this god. Yhwh’s masculinity is performed through the skilful administration of the resources of the empire – even of the kings themselves. However, the issue to be addressed is whether this masculine deity can control his own people and exact their fidelity. Notes 1 Martti Nissinen, “Relative Masculinities in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament,” in Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, ed. Ilona Zsolnay (New York: Routledge, 2016), 221–47. 2 Ilona Zsolnay, “Introduction,” in Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 2016), 2. 3 So, Ken Stone, “Lovers and Raisin Cakes: Food, Sex, and Manhood in Hosea,” in Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 125. 4 Ezra 1:1 announces that the temple will be built in fulfilment of ‘the word of Yhwh by the mouth of Jeremiah’, and Ezra 9:10b-11 refers to ‘your commandments which you commanded by your servants the prophets’. 5 Bob Becking, “Temple Vessels Speaking for a Silent God: Notes on the Divine Presence in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah,” in Reflections on the Silence of God: A Discussion with Marjo Korpel and Johannes de Moor (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013), 15. 6 Yhwh is ‘over’ Haggai and Zechariah as they prophesy in 5:1–2 and his ‘eye is over’ the elders of the Jews when regional authorities question them in 5:5. Likewise, the text attributes Ezra’s favour before the king (7:6) and his successful journey to Jerusalem (7:9) to the ‘gracious hand of Yhwh’ that was upon him. Yhwh is considered to be present, but there is no report of direct involvement, speech or instruction concerning the matters at hand.

96

The masculinization of Yhwh

7 The ‫ מנחה‬is an efficacious time for prayer (1 Kgs 18:36–38; Dan 9:21; Jdt 9:1). See Jeremy Penner, Patterns of Daily Prayer in Second Temple Period Judaism, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012), 35–70. 8 See David Calabro, “Gestures of Praise: Lifting and Spreading the Hands in Biblical Prayer,” in Ascending the Mountain of the Lord: Temple, Praise, and Worship in the Old Testament, ed. Jeffrey R. Chadwick, Matthew J. Grey, and David Rolph Seely (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2013), 106–16. 9 See 9:6a,b: ‫ אלהי‬9:10,13: ‫ ;אלהינו‬9:13: ‫יהוה אלהי יׁשראל‬ 10 See Richard J. Bautch, Developments in Genre between Post-Exilic Penitential Prayers and the Psalms of Communal Lament, AcBib (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 75. 11 See Bautch, Developments in Genre, 84; Harm van Grol, “ ‘Indeed, Servants We Are’: Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9 and 2 Chronicles 12 Compared,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times, ed. Bob Becking and Marjo C.A. Korpel (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 1999), 210; Mark J. Boda, Praying the Tradition: The Origin and Use of Tradition in Nehemiah 9, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 37; Harm van Grol, “Exegesis of Exile—Exegesis of Scripture? Ezra 9:6–9,” in Intertextuality in Ugarit and Israel, ed. Johannes C. de Moor (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 1998), 33–36. 12 See W. Derek Suderman, “Prayers Heard and Overheard: Shifting Address and Methodological Matrices in Psalms Scholarship” (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of St. Michael’s College, 2007), 209–10. 13 Saul M. Olyan, Biblical Mourning: Ritual and Social Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 73. See also Grol, “Exegesis of Exile,” 32–33. 14 Olyan, Biblical Mourning, 75. 15 See also 2 Chr 20:1–19 and Jonah 3:7–8. 16 ‫ויעתר לנו‬, cf. Gen 25:21; 1 Chr 5:20; Isa 19:22. 17 Yhwh’s lack of response to mourning and self-affliction is also noted in other texts, including 1 Sam 28:6–7; 2 Sam 12:22–23 and Isa 58:3. 18 Cf. 1 Chr 23:28; 31:12; Neh 10:37; Ezek 40:45–46. The phrase ‘spent the night’ is not in the MT but is taken from 1 Esdras 9:2 (αὐλίζομαι). 19 Juliette Harrisson, “The Development of the Practice of Incubation in the Ancient World,” in Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean World, ed. Dēmētrēs Michaēlidēs (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014), 286. See also Koowon Kim, Incubation as a Type-Scene in the Aqhatu, Kirta, and Hannah Stories: A Form-Critical and Narratological Study of Ktu 1.14 I–1.15 III, 1.17 I–II, and 1 Samuel 1:1–2:11, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum (Boston; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 27–60. 20 Examples include Gen 46:1–4; Num. 22:20; 1 Sam 1:9–18; 2 Chr 1:1–13; Shaul Bar, “Incubation and Traces of Incubation in the Biblical Narrative,” Old Testament Essays 28, no. 2 (2015): 244–56. Ackerman adds Gen 28:10–22; 1 Sam 28:6 and 2 Sam 12:15–23; Susan Ackerman, “The Deception of Isaac, Jacob’s Dream at Bethel, and Incubation on an Animal Skin,” in Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel, ed. Gary A. Anderson and Saul M. Olyan (Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Press, 1991), 108–20. 21 Dalit Rom-Shiloni, “Socio-Ideological Setting or Settings for Penitential Prayers?” in Seeking the Favor of God Vol. 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism, ed. Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney Alan Werline (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 59. 22 See Diana Vikander Edelman, The Origins of the “Second” Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem, Bibleworld, 1st ed. (London; Oakville: Equinox Publishing, 2005), 159–62; Lisbeth Fried, “The Land Lay Desolate: Conquest and Restoration in the Ancient Near East,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, ed. Oded Lipschitz and Joseph Blenkinsopp (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 33–52; Victor Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 113–18.

The masculinization of Yhwh  97 23 Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House, 44–45, 272, 298. 24 Exod 40:34, 1 Kgs 8:11; 2 Chr 5:14; 7:1–3; Ezek 43:1–7. 25 It ‘contains no reference to the crucial event of God’s entry into the temple, nor to the installation in the temple of any symbol of divine presence’. Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House, 268. 26 On other cult centres in the region, see Benedikt Hensel, “Yahwistic Diversity and the Hebrew Bible: State of the Field, Desiderata, and Research Perspectives in a Necessary Debate on the Formative Period of Judaism(S),” in Yahwistic Diversity and the Hebrew Bible: Tracing Perspectives of Group Identity from Judah, Samaria, and the Diaspora in Biblical Traditions, ed. Benedikt Hensel, Dany Nocquet, and Bartosz Adamczewski (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 4–7; Melody D. Knowles, Centrality Practiced: Jerusalem in the Religious Practice of Yehud and the Diaspora in the Persian Period, Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and Biblical Studies (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 40–52. 27 Fried, “The Land Lay Desolate,” 51. 28 Lisbeth Fried, “Cyrus the Messiah? The Historical Background to Isaiah 45:1,” Harvard Theological Review 95, no. 4 (2002): 377. 29 The designation ‘symbolic presence’, Becking readily admits, has its roots in liberal Protestantism. Becking, “Temple Vessels,” 26. 30 Becking, “Temple Vessels,” 28. 31 So Zainab Bahrani, The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 127. 32 Nathaniel B. Levtow, Images of Others: Iconic Politics in Ancient Israel, Biblical and Judaic Studies (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 14. 33 Levtow, Images of Others, 101; Theodore J. Lewis, “Syro-Palestinian Iconography and Divine Images,” in Cult Image and Divine Representation in the Ancient Near East, ed. Neal H. Walls (Boston: ASOR, 2005), 100; Mordechai Cogan, Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah, and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E, Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series (Missoula: Society of Biblical Literature, 1974). Also Judg 18:24; 1 Sam 5; 2 Sam 5:21; 2 Chr 25:24–26; Jer 48:7. 34 See John F. Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth: Divine Presence and Absence in the Book of Ezekiel, Biblical and Judaic Studies (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 103–23. 35 Also Deut 12:2–4,29–31; 16:21–22; 18:9–14. 36 See 2 Kgs 10:26–27; 15:12–13; 18:4; 21:2–16; 2 Chr 14:3–5; 31:1; 34:4–8. 37 Such claims are directed not to the gods or nations referenced in these texts, Levtow argues, but to Israel: ‘The authors of Israelite icon parodies attacked the cult images of Babylon but their true target was Israel and the cult of Yahweh’; Levtow, Images of Others, 16. 38 See also Jer 48:7–8; 49:3. 39 Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth, 144–45. 40 Cf. Jer 14:2; 21:9; 44:13; Ezek 12:16. 41 See Daniel Block, By the River Chebar: Historical, Literary, and Theological Studies in the Book of Ezekiel (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013), 76–77; Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth, 104–9; Daniel Bodi, The Book of Ezekiel and the Poem of Erra, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis (Freiburg, Schweiz Göttingen: Universitätsverlag; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 196–97; Cogan, Imperialism and Religion, 11. 42 As vividly described in Ezekiel chapters 8–10. See also Jer 12:7; Amos 9:1; Ps 78:60. 43 Block, By the River Chebar, 95; Cogan, Imperialism and Religion, 22. See also Michael B. Hundley, Gods in Dwellings: Temples and Divine Presence in the Ancient Near East, Writings from the Ancient World Supplements (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), 359; Lewis, “Syro-Palestinian Iconography and Divine Images,” 100–2. 44 Cogan, Imperialism and Religion, 20. 45 Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth, 104–7.

98  The masculinization of Yhwh 46 On provision and protection of subject peoples as a key performance of royal and divine masculinity, see Cynthia R. Chapman, The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter, Harvard Semitic Monographs (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 43–44, 70, 82–83. 47 It is Cyrus who ‘brings out’ (‫ )הוציא‬the vessels and hands them over to Sheshbazzar to be taken to Jerusalem (Ezra 1:7) 48 Kutsko, Between Heaven and Earth, 115. Miller and Roberts note that the ‘act of returning the captured gods could also be used to underline the superiority of their captors’; Patrick D. Miller and J.J.M. Roberts, The Hand of the Lord: A Reassessment of the “Ark Narrative” of 1 Samuel (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 16; also Cogan, Imperialism and Religion, 37–38. 49 See Stone, “Lovers and Raisin Cakes,” 125. 50 A.R. Pete Diamond, “Deceiving Hope,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 17, no. 1 (2003): 38. 51 A.R. Pete Diamond, “Jeremiah,” in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, ed. James D.G. Dunn and J.W. Rogerson (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2003), 593. Diamond concludes that this rehabilitation serves the interests and preservation of those who claim to be the ‘legitimate’ people of Israel (580). 52 Ezra 7:6; 7:9,28; 8:18,22,31. 53 Also Isa 7:17–20; 8:5–8. 54 Also Jer 27:6; 43:10. 55 Amélie Kuhrt, “State Communications in the Persian Empire,” in State Correspondence in the Ancient World: From New Kingdom Egypt to the Roman Empire, ed. Karen Radner (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 112–40; Josef Wiesehöfer, “The Achaemenid Empire,” in The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium, ed. Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 75–77. 56 Irene Madreiter and Kordula Schnegg, “Gender and Sex,” in A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, vol. 2, ed. B. Jacob and R. Rollinger, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2021), 1124. 57 See Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, “ ‘That My Body Is Strong’: The Physique and Appearance of Achaemenid Monarchy,” in Bodies in Transition: Dissolving the Boundaries of Embodied Knowledge, ed. Dietrich Boschung, H.A. Shapiro, and Frank Wascheck (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015), 217–20; Margaret Cool Root, The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art: Essays on the Creation of an Iconography of Empire, Acta Iranica, vol. 19 (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 59–60. 58 Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, King and Court in Ancient Persia 559–331 B.C.E., Debates and Documents in Ancient History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 56. 59 See Isa 45:1,13; 44:28. Fried, “Cyrus the Messiah? The Historical Background to Isaiah 45:1,” 374. The Cyrus Cylinder similarly asserts the control of Marduk, the patron god of Babylon, over the Persian king; Amélie Kuhrt, “The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 25 (1983): 83–97. 60 Cf. Isa 10:5; Jer 25:9. 61 Erich Gruen, “Persia through the Jewish Looking-Glass,” in Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers, ed. Tessa Rajak (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 55. 62 Amélie Kuhrt, “Cyrus the Great of Persia: Images and Realities,” in Representations of Political Power: Case Histories from Times of Change and Dissolving Order in the Ancient Near East, ed. Marlies Heinz and Marian H. Feldman (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 169–98; also Manfred Oeming, “Cyrus, the Great Jew? A Critical Comparison of Cyrus-Images in Judah, Babylon, and Greece,” in Writing and Rewriting History in Ancient Israel and Near Eastern Cultures, ed. Isaac Kalimi (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2020), 189–222. 63 Only here and in Josh 11:20 does it designate something that is granted; all other uses are in the context of a plea or supplication for favour from a superior, usually Yhwh. See

The masculinization of Yhwh 99

64 65

66 67

68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80 81

82

Heinz-Josef Fabry, “ḥānan,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. V, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 25–26. See 1 Kgs 8:30,38,45,49,52; 2 Chr 6:19,29,35,39. The root ‫ פלט‬describes deliverance, escape and survival, often in conjunction with the root ‫( ׁשאר‬to remain or be left over). See Ezra 9:9: ‫ ;להׁשאיר לנו פליטה‬9:13: ‫;ונתתה לנו פליטה כזאת‬ 9:14: ‫ לאין ׁשארית ופליטה‬and 9:15: ‫)כי־נׁשארנו פליטה‬. See Sara Japhet, “The Concept of the ‘Remnant’ in the Restoration Period,” in From the Rivers of Babylon to the Highlands of Judah: Collected Studies on the Restoration Period (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 439–41. See Exod 27:19; 35:18; 38:20,31; 39:40; Num 3:37; 4:32; Isa 22:23,25; 33:20; 54:2 and Zech 10:4. H.G.M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, ed. David Hubbard and Glenn Barker, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985), 135. The expression ‫( אור עין‬brighten the eyes) describes increased vitality, well-being or hope amid a difficult situation – even death (1 Sam 14:27,29; Ezra 9:8; Ps 13:3; 19:9; 38:11; Prov 29:3). The Psalmist calls upon Yhwh to brighten his eyes, ‘or I will sleep the sleep of death’ (Ps 13:3). See Sverre Aelen, “Ôr,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. I, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 158. See Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare, 29–32, 41–44. See Gen 45:5; Lev 13:10,24; Judg 6:4; 17:10; 2 Chr 14:12 and entry in Ludwig Köhler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. I (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2001), 568. Notably, several of these acts of divine favour directly benefit the deity himself: his house is ‘set up’, its ruins repaired and his city secured. Blenkinsopp translates the phrase ‫( כמעט־רגע‬Ezra 9:8) as ‘suddenly’, suggesting that Yhwh’s favour was unexpected. However, the only other use of the phrase ‫כמעט־רגע‬ references a brief period of time (Isa 26:20). Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library, 1st ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988), 181. See also ‫רגע קטן‬, that has a similar meaning (Isa 54:7). Grol, “Indeed, Servants We Are,” 213–18. Num 4:31–32; Isa 22:25. Stone, “Lovers and Raisin Cakes,” 130. He then withdraws these provisions from his wife and punishes her, proving himself to be the source of these benefits (2:9–13), before luring her back with promises of safety and security (2:18–20). Stone, “Lovers and Raisin Cakes,” 125. Ilona Zsolnay, “The Inadequacies of Yahweh: A Re-Examination of Jerusalem’s Portrayal in Ezekiel 16,” in Bodies, Embodiment, and Theology of the Hebrew Bible, ed. S. Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 58. T.M. Lemos, “The Emasculation of Exile: Hypermasculinity and Feminization in the Book of Ezekiel,” in Interpreting Exile: Displacement and Deportation in Biblical and Modern Contexts, ed. Brad E. Kelle, Frank Ritchel Ames, and Jacob L. Wright (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012), 379. Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare, 113. See Chapman’s gendered analysis of Isaiah 36–37, specifically, the “Daughter Zion taunt song” in Is 37:22–29. Chapman, Gendered Language of Warfare, 76–89. On self-control as an attribute of superior masculinity, see Hilary Lipka, “Masculinities in Proverbs: An Alternative to the Hegemonic Ideal,” in Biblical Masculinities Foregrounded, ed. Ovidiu Creangă and Peter-Ben Smit (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), 90–91; Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees,” Journal of Biblical Literature 117, no. 2 (1998): 249–73. See Ezra 4:19,21; 5:3,5,9,13,17; 6:1,3,8,11,12,14; 7:13,21.

100  The masculinization of Yhwh 83 These include inventories (‫מספרם‬, 1:9), genealogical records (‫ ;כתבם המתיחׁשים‬2:62), royal annals (‫ ;ספר דכרניא‬4:15), memorandums (‫ ;דכרון‬6:2) and lists (2:1–68; 8:1:14; 10:1–19). 84 See Lisbeth Fried, “Ezra’s Use of Documents in the Context of Hellenistic Rules of Rhetoric,” in New Perspectives on Ezra-Nehemiah: History and Historiography, Text, Literature, and Interpretation, ed. Isaac Kalimi (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 11–26; H.G.M. Williamson, “The Aramaic Documents in Ezra Revisited,” Journal of Theological Studies 59, no. 1 (2008): 41–62; Lester L. Grabbe, “The ‘Persian Documents’ in the Book of Ezra,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, ed. Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 531–70; Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, 42–44. 85 See Scott B. Noegel, “ ‘Literary’ Craft and Performative Power in the Ancient Near East: The Hebrew Bible in Context,” in Approaches to Literary Readings of Ancient Jewish Writings, ed. K.A.D. Smelik and Karolien Vermeulen (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), 19–38; Francesca Stavrakopoulou, “Materialist Reading: Materialism, Materiality, and Biblical Cults of Writing,” in Biblical Interpretation and Method: Essays in Honour of John Barton, ed. Katharine J. Dell and Paul Joyce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 223–37; James W. Watts, “The Three Dimensions of Scripture,” Postscripts The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds (2008): 2–6. 86 Cf. Esth 1:19; 8:8; Dan 6:8,15; Cameron Howard, “Writing Yehud: Textuality and Power under Persian Rule” (Unpublished PhD Thesis, Emory University, 2010), 74. LeFebvre notes that Greek histories of Persian rule bear testimony to this practice. Michael LeFebvre, Collections, Codes, and Torah: The Re-Characterization of Israel’s Written Law, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 100. 87 Wright argues, however, that the portrayal of Persian kings in Ezra 5–6 as ‘diligent ­students of their archival records’ is more reflective of the ideological agenda of the text than Achaemenid policies; Jacob Wright, “Seeking, Finding and Writing in EzraNehemiah,” in Unity and Disunity in Ezra-Nehemiah: Redaction, Rhetoric, and Reader, ed. Mark J. Boda and Paul L. Redditt (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008), 282. 88 See Charles E. Jones and Matthew W. Stopler, “How Many Persepolis Fortification Tablets Are There?” in L’archive des Fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et perspectives de recherches (Persika 12), ed. Pierre Briant, Wouter Henkelman, and Matthew W. Stolper (Paris: De Boccard, 2008), 27–50. 89 Howard, “Writing Yehud,” 62. See also Kuhrt, “State Communications in the Persian Empire,” 122. 90 Gard Granerød, “ ‘By the Favour of Ahuramazda I Am King’: On the Promulgation of a Persian Propaganda Text among Babylonians and Judeans,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 44, no. 4–5 (2013): 455–80; Donald C. Polaski, “What Mean These Stones? Inscriptions, Textuality and Power in Persia and Yehud,” in Approaching Yehud: New Approaches to the Study of the Persian Period, ed. Jon L. Berquist (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008), 37–40. 91 Kuhrt, “The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy,” 83–97. 92 On the theory of Persian authorization of Torah, see essays in James W. Watts, ed., Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch, Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001); also Kyong-Jin Lee, The Authority and Authorization of Torah in the Persian Period, Biblical Exegesis and Theology (Leuven: Peeters, 2011); Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson, The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007). 93 Stavrakopoulou, “Materialist Reading,” 234. 94 9:6,7,13: ‘our iniquities’ (‫)עונתינו‬, 9:6: ‘our guilt’ (‫ ;)אׁשמתנו‬9:7,13: ‘great guilt’ (‫;)אׁשמה גדלה‬ ‘evil deeds’ (‫)מעׂשינו הרעים‬. 95 See Exod 32:12; Num 25:4; 1 Kgs 23:27; 2 Chr 29:10; 30:8; Jer 4:8.

The masculinization of Yhwh  101 References Ackerman, Susan. “The Deception of Isaac, Jacob’s Dream at Bethel, and Incubation on an Animal Skin.” In Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel, edited by Gary A. Anderson and Saul M. Olyan, 92–120. Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Press, 1991. Aelen, Sverre. “Ôr.” In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. vol. I, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 147–67. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975. Bahrani, Zainab. The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Bar, Shaul. “Incubation and Traces of Incubation in the Biblical Narrative.” Old Testament Essays 28, no. 2 (2015): 243–56. Bautch, Richard J. Developments in Genre between Post-Exilic Penitential Prayers and the Psalms of Communal Lament. Academia Biblica. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003. Becking, Bob. “Temple Vessels Speaking for a Silent God: Notes on the Divine Presence in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah.” In Reflections on the Silence of God: A Discussion with Marjo Korpel and Johannes de Moor, 14–28. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013. Blenkinsopp, Joseph. Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary. The Old Testament Library, 1st ed. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988. Block, Daniel. By the River Chebar: Historical, Literary, and Theological Studies in the Book of Ezekiel. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013. Boda, Mark J. Praying the Tradition: The Origin and Use of Tradition in Nehemiah 9. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999. Bodi, Daniel. The Book of Ezekiel and the Poem of Erra. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. Freiburg, Schweiz Göttingen: Universitätsverlag; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991. Calabro, David. “Gestures of Praise: Lifting and Spreading the Hands in Biblical Prayer.” In Ascending the Mountain of the Lord: Temple, Praise, and Worship in the Old Testament, edited by Jeffrey R. Chadwick, Matthew J. Grey, and David Rolph Seely, 105–21. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2013. Chapman, Cynthia R. The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter. Harvard Semitic Monographs. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004. Cogan, Mordechai. Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah, and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E. Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series. Missoula: Society of Biblical Literature, 1974. Diamond, A.R. Pete. “Deceiving Hope.” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 17, no. 1 (2003a): 34–48. ———. “Jeremiah.” In Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, edited by James D.G. Dunn and J.W. Rogerson, 543–616. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2003b. Edelman, Diana Vikander. The Origins of the “Second” Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem. Bibleworld, 1st ed. London; Oakville: Equinox Publishing, 2005. Fabry, Heinz-Josef. “ḥānan.” In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. vol. V, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 22–36. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975. Fried, Lisbeth. “Cyrus the Messiah? The Historical Background to Isaiah 45:1.” Harvard Theological Review 95, no. 4 (2002): 373–93. ———. “The Land Lay Desolate: Conquest and Restoration in the Ancient Near East.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, edited by Oded Lipschitz and Joseph Blenkinsopp, 21–54. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003.

102  The masculinization of Yhwh ———. “Ezra’s Use of Documents in the Context of Hellenistic Rules of Rhetoric.” In New Perspectives on Ezra-Nehemiah: History and Historiography, Text, Literature, and Interpretation, edited by Isaac Kalimi, 11–26. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012. Grabbe, Lester L. “The ‘Persian Documents’ in the Book of Ezra.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, edited by Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming, 531–70. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006. Granerød, Gard. “ ‘By the Favour of Ahuramazda I Am King’: On the Promulgation of a Persian Propaganda Text among Babylonians and Judeans.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 44, no. 4–5 (2013): 455–80. Gruen, Erich. “Persia through the Jewish Looking-Glass.” In Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers, edited by Tessa Rajak, 53–75. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Harrisson, Juliette. “The Development of the Practice of Incubation in the Ancient World.” In Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean World, edited by Dēmētrēs Michaēlidēs, 284–90. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014. Hensel, Benedikt. “Yahwistic Diversity and the Hebrew Bible: State of the Field, Desiderata, and Research Perspectives in a Necessary Debate on the Formative Period of Judaism(s).” In Yahwistic Diversity and the Hebrew Bible: Tracing Perspectives of Group Identity from Judah, Samaria, and the Diaspora in Biblical Traditions, edited by Benedikt Hensel, Dany Nocquet, and Bartosz Adamczewski, 1–44. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020. Howard, Cameron. “Writing Yehud: Textuality and Power under Persian Rule.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, Emory University, 2010. Hundley, Michael B. Gods in Dwellings: Temples and Divine Presence in the Ancient Near East. Writings from the Ancient World Supplements. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013. Hurowitz, Victor. I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992. Japhet, Sara. “The Concept of the ‘Remnant’ in the Restoration Period.” In From the Rivers of Babylon to the Highlands of Judah: Collected Studies on the Restoration Period, 432–49. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006. Jones, Charles E., and Matthew W. Stopler. “How Many Persepolis Fortification Tablets Are There?” In L’archive des Fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et perspectives de recherches (Persika 12), edited by Pierre Briant, Wouter Henkelman, and Matthew W. Stolper, 27–50. Paris: De Boccard, 2008. Kim, Koowon. Incubation as a Type-Scene in the Aqhatu, Kirta, and Hannah Stories: A Form-Critical and Narratological Study of Ktu 1.14 I–1.15 III, 1.17 I–II, and 1 Samuel 1:1–2:11. Supplements to Vetus Testamentum. Boston; Leiden: Brill, 2011. Knoppers, Gary N., and Bernard M. Levinson. The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007. Knowles, Melody D. Centrality Practiced: Jerusalem in the Religious Practice of Yehud and the Diaspora in the Persian Period. Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and Biblical Studies. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006. Köhler, Ludwig, and Walter Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. vol. I. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2001. Kuhrt, Amélie. “The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 25 (1983): 83–97. ———. “Cyrus the Great of Persia: Images and Realities.” In Representations of Political Power: Case Histories from Times of Change and Dissolving Order in the Ancient Near

The masculinization of Yhwh  103 East, edited by Marlies Heinz and Marian H. Feldman, 169–91. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007. ———. “State Communications in the Persian Empire.” In State Correspondence in the Ancient World: From New Kingdom Egypt to the Roman Empire, edited by Karen Radner, 112–40. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Kutsko, John F. Between Heaven and Earth: Divine Presence and Absence in the Book of Ezekiel. Biblical and Judaic Studies. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2000. Lee, Kyong-Jin. The Authority and Authorization of Torah in the Persian Period. Biblical Exegesis and Theology. Leuven: Peeters, 2011. LeFebvre, Michael. Collections, Codes, and Torah: The Re-Characterization of Israel’s Written Law. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies. New York: T&T Clark, 2006. Lemos, T.M. “The Emasculation of Exile: Hypermasculinity and Feminization in the Book of Ezekiel.” In Interpreting Exile: Displacement and Deportation in Biblical and Modern Contexts, edited by Brad E. Kelle, Frank Ritchel Ames, and Jacob L. Wright, 377–93. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012. Levtow, Nathaniel B. Images of Others: Iconic Politics in Ancient Israel. Biblical and Judaic Studies. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008. Lewis, Theodore J. “Syro-Palestinian Iconography and Divine Images.” In Cult Image and Divine Representation in the Ancient Near East, edited by Neal H. Walls, 69–107. Boston: ASOR, 2005. Lipka, Hilary. “Masculinities in Proverbs: An Alternative to the Hegemonic Ideal.” In Biblical Masculinities Foregrounded, edited by Ovidiu Creangă and Peter-Ben Smit, 86–103. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014. Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. King and Court in Ancient Persia 559–331 B.C.E. Debates and Documents in Ancient History. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. ———. “ ‘That My Body Is Strong’: The Physique and Appearance of Achaemenid Monarchy.” In Bodies in Transition: Dissolving the Boundaries of Embodied Knowledge, edited by Dietrich Boschung, H.A. Shapiro, and Frank Wascheck, 211–48. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015. Madreiter, Irene, and Kordula Schnegg. “Gender and Sex.” In A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World, vol. 2, edited by B. Jacob and R. Rollinger, 1121–37. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2021. Miller, Patrick D., and J.J.M. Roberts. The Hand of the Lord: A Reassessment of the “Ark Narrative” of 1 Samuel. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008. Moore, Stephen D., and Janice Capel Anderson. “Taking It Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees.” Journal of Biblical Literature 117, no. 2 (1998): 249–79. Nissinen, Martti. “Relative Masculinities in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.” In Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, edited by Ilona Zsolnay, 221–47. New York: Routledge, 2016. Noegel, Scott B. “ ‘Literary’ Craft and Performative Power in the Ancient Near East: The Hebrew Bible in Context.” In Approaches to Literary Readings of Ancient Jewish Writings, edited by K.A.D. Smelik and Karolien Vermeulen, 19–38. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2014. Oeming, Manfred. “Cyrus, the Great Jew? A Critical Comparison of Cyrus-Images in Judah, Babylon, and Greece.” In Writing and Rewriting History in Ancient Israel and Near Eastern Cultures, edited by Isaac Kalimi, 189–222. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2020. Olyan, Saul M. Biblical Mourning: Ritual and Social Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

104  The masculinization of Yhwh Penner, Jeremy. Patterns of Daily Prayer in Second Temple Period Judaism. Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012. Polaski, Donald C. “What Mean These Stones? Inscriptions, Textuality and Power in Persia and Yehud.” In Approaching Yehud: New Approaches to the Study of the Persian Period, edited by Jon L. Berquist, 37–48. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008. Rom-Shiloni, Dalit. “Socio-Ideological Setting or Settings for Penitential Prayers?” In Seeking the Favor of God Vol. 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism, edited by Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney Alan Werline, 51–68. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006. Root, Margaret Cool. The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art: Essays on the Creation of an Iconography of Empire. Acta Iranica, vol. 19. Leiden: Brill, 1979. Stavrakopoulou, Francesca. “Materialist Reading: Materialism, Materiality, and Biblical Cults of Writing.” In Biblical Interpretation and Method: Essays in Honour of John Barton, edited by Katharine J. Dell and Paul Joyce, 223–37. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Stone, Ken. “Lovers and Raisin Cakes: Food, Sex, and Manhood in Hosea.” In Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective, 111–28. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2005. Suderman, W. Derek. “Prayers Heard and Overheard: Shifting Address and Methodological Matrices in Psalms Scholarship.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of St. Michael’s College, 2007. van Grol, Harm. “Exegesis of Exile—Exegesis of Scripture? Ezra 9:6–9.” In Intertextuality in Ugarit and Israel, edited by Johannes C. de Moor, 31–61. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 1998. ———. “ ‘Indeed, Servants We Are’: Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9 and 2 Chronicles 12 Compared.” In The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic and Post-Exilic Times, edited by Bob Becking and Marjo C.A. Korpel, 209–27. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 1999. Watts, James W., ed. Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series, no. 17. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001. ———. “The Three Dimensions of Scripture.” Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds (2008): 135–59. Wiesehöfer, Josef. “The Achaemenid Empire.” In The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium, edited by Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel, 66–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Williamson, H.G.M. Ezra, Nehemiah. Word Biblical Commentary. Edited by David Hubbard and Glenn Barker. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985. ———. “The Aramaic Documents in Ezra Revisited.” Journal of Theological Studies 59, no. 1 (2008): 41–62. Wright, Jacob. “Seeking, Finding and Writing in Ezra-Nehemiah.” In Unity and Disunity in Ezra-Nehemiah: Redaction, Rhetoric, and Reader, edited by Mark J. Boda and Paul L. Redditt, 277–305. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008. Zsolnay, Ilona. “The Inadequacies of Yahweh: A Re-Examination of Jerusalem’s Portrayal in Ezekiel 16.” In Bodies, Embodiment, and Theology of the Hebrew Bible, edited by S. Tamar Kamionkowski and Wonil Kim, 57–74. New York: T&T Clark, 2010. ———. “Introduction.” In Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, 1–11. New York: Routledge, 2016.

6 Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities

Introduction The preceding chapters of this book have explored the ways in which the masculinities of the peoples-of-the-lands, that of Ezra, the golah and Yhwh are constructed and performed in the narrative world of Ezra 9–10. The analysis has highlighted the relational production of masculinities, as well as the situatedness and instability of such constructions. This chapter considers intermarriage, as addressed in the text, as a locus on which golah masculinities and associated power relations within the group are disputed and reconfigured. The ‘unfaithful’ golah men have sought out marriage, procreation and the land on their own terms. They have performed masculinity in ways that are contrary to the masculinity of penitence and subordination to Yhwh embodied by Ezra as the appropriate masculinity for the golah. The rejection of the marriages and the demand that the foreign wives be expelled address this transgressive masculinity to bring it under ‘management’ of the ‘Ezra-group’ and the Torah it wields. Intermarriage and masculinities In Ezra 9–10, the term ‫ מעל‬characterizes the marriages between golah men and women from the peoples-of-the-lands an act of infidelity to Yhwh (9:2,4; 10:2,6,10) that threatens the entire community with Yhwh’s wrath. In the hope of avoiding this wrath, Shecaniah, a member of the golah, calls for a covenant with Yhwh to expel the wives and the children born from them (10:3): We have been unfaithful to our God and have married foreign women from the peoples-of-the-lands, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. Let us make a covenant with/our God to expel the women and those born from them. (10:3) This call to expel the women does not affect all the men of the golah in the same way, however, since only the ones who have married foreign women are implicated.

DOI: 10.4324/b23091-6

106  Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities This is made clear at the end of chapter 10, where a list identifies those who are guilty of having taken foreign women as wives (10:18–44). It is these ‘guilty’ men who have acted upon the peoples-of-the-lands, via the foreign women; it is they who have ‘lifted’ and ‘settled’ the women and, the text suggests, engendered children with them (10:3b; 10:44). A fundamental difference between golah men comes to the fore: some have engaged in this masculine performance, and some have not. The terminology used for the marriages draws attention to these actions and to the dominant and active role of the golah men who perform them. Not only do they undermine the masculinity of the peoples-of-the-lands, but they also call into question the masculine status of the golah men who have not taken foreign women in marriage. As noted previously, where ‫ נׂשא‬is used for the taking of wives, it is frequently used in a context where the marriages are associated with the superior ­masculinity, virility and military or political status of the men involved. This context is explicit in 2 Chronicles 13:19–21, where, after taking cities away from Jeroboam, Abijah ‘grew strong (‫ )יתחזק‬and took for himself (‫ )נׂשא־לו נׁשים‬fourteen wives and became the father (‫ )יולד‬of twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters’ (13:21). Abijah exhibits various of the attributes of dominant masculinity evidenced in the Hebrew Bible and ancient West Asian representations: he achieves military success, he is strong, he takes wives and engenders many sons and daughters. Another king who ‘lifts’ other men’s daughters is Rehoboam, whose repressive political and military strategies are highlighted in 2 Chronicles 10–11. Not only does he take (‫ )נׂשא‬18 wives and 60 concubines, he also engenders (‫)יולד‬ 28 sons and 60 daughters and places his sons in charge of ‘all the districts of Judah and Benjamin and in all the fortified cities’ (2 Chr 11:22).1 Military might, marriage and the engendering of descendants are intertwined in these performances of dominant masculinity. The verb ‫ הוׁשיב‬used for marriage in Ezra 10 likewise references an act of dominance over others. Numerous texts use it to describe an action performed upon inferior parties, which settles them in a particular place or territory. Joseph, for example, is encouraged by the Pharaoh to settle (‫ )הוׁשיב‬his father and brothers in Egypt (Gen 47:6). Yhwh ‘settles’ (‫ )יׁשבום‬Israel in the land of Canaan and promised to ‘settle’ (‫ )הׁשבתים‬the returned exiles in that very land (1 Sam 12:8; Jer 32:37), while Assyria ‘settles’ (‫ )יׁשב‬those deported from Samaria in ‘Halah . . . and in the cities of the Medes’ (2 Kgs 17:6). Viewed within this broader biblical context, the spatial resonances of the verb ‫ הוׁשיב‬suggest, as Tamara Eskenazi notes, that in the world of the narrative, these marriages involve ‘settling’ the women in a territory, or more narrowly, in the households of the golah.2 The rhetorical move implied by this terminology ‒ discussed earlier in this book ‒ bears further analysis here. In the examples mentioned, the act of ‘settling’ evidenced is one of control and dominance, but not only over those who are ‘settled’. Settling peoples in a territory is also a claim to the land in which they are settled and a means by which to achieve and ensure control of that territory. Thus, Joseph’s right to settle his kin in Egypt references both his superior status in relation to his father and brothers, as well as his authority in the land of Egypt and over the

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities  107 territory to which he is given access (Gen 47:6). The relationship between the ‘settling’ of peoples and claims to a territory is also evidenced in 2 Kings 17:24 where Assyria ‘settled’ (‫יוׁשב‬, hiphil) in Samaria deportees brought from other conquered territories and thereby ‘took possession (‫ )ירׁשו‬of Samaria and dwelled (‫ )יׁשבו‬in its cities’ (2 Kgs 17:24b). Solomon likewise settles Israelites in rebuilt cities given to him by the King of Tyre, thereby laying claim to those cities (2 Chr 8:2). And when Yhwh settles the exiles in the land of promise, he lays claim to that land for himself and for his subject people (Hos 11:11; Isa 54:3; Jer 32:37; Ezek 36:11,33). This is the very claim being made for Yhwh in Ezra 1:2–3 where the ‘return’ of the exiles is announced with the goal that they build a house for Yhwh in Jerusalem. Similar rhetoric is at work in Ezra 9–10. The golah men who ‘settle’ the foreign women by taking them as wives lay claim to the land into which these women are ‘settled’. Not only, however, does this move render the peoples-of-the-lands outsiders in their own land, but it also excludes the golah men who did not marry foreign women from this means of access to the land. The ‘lifting’ and ‘settling’ of women is a performance of masculinity that is problematic for the Ezra-group, the ‘faithful’ who have not intermarried, and it evidences disputes within the golah concerning normative performances of golah masculinity and how these performances are monitored. In the Hebrew Bible, land possession is often mediated by means of women, whether through marriage, conquest or negotiation. Abraham’s first holding in the land of Canaan is a field purchased from the Hittites as a burial plot for Sarah.3 Rahab, the prostitute, opens her doors ‒ and by strong implication, her legs ‒ to the Israelite spies and thereby opens the land for ‘Israelite’ armies to conquer (Josh 2).4 Achsah, Caleb’s daughter, is offered as the incentive for the conquest of KiriathSepher (Judg 1:12). In Genesis 34, Shechem’s desire for Jacob’s daughter Dinah opens the land to settlement by the sons of Jacob, who are invited to intermarry with us (‫)והתחתנו אתנו‬, your daughters give to us (‫ )בנתיכם תתנו־לנו‬and our daughters take for yourselves (‫ ;)ואת־בנתינו תקחו לכם‬and with us you shall live (‫ ;)אתנו תׁשבו‬and the land shall become open to you (‫;)והארץ תהיה לפניכם‬ live and trade in it (‫ )ׁשבו וסחרוה‬and get property in it (‫)והאחזו בה‬. (Gen 34:9–10) The hithpael of the verb ‫ חתן‬describes the kinship ties established through marriage between two non-kinship groups, in this case, the sons of Jacob and the sons of Hamor.5 While the sons of Jacob reject this offer and act to redress their aggrieved masculinity (Gen 34:25–29), the proposed arrangement suggests that the taking of daughters is envisioned as a means by which to settle and secure life in a new territory.6 Marriage is also part of the settlement strategy Jeremiah announces in his letter to the exiles (Jer 29). Staving off claims that the exile would soon be over and countering futile attempts to resist Babylonian domination, Jeremiah calls on the exiles to settle and go on with their lives in Babylon (Jer 29:1–7). The men are exhorted to

108  Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities take wives (‫ )קחו נׁשים‬and have sons and daughters (‫ ;)והולידו בנים ובנות‬and take for your sons, wives (‫)וקחו לבניכם נׁשים‬, and your daughters give to men (‫תנו לאנׁשים‬ ‫)ואת־בנותיכם‬, and may they bear sons and daughters (‫ ;)ותלדנה בנים ובנות‬multiply there, and do not decrease. (Jer 29:6) No restriction is placed on the identity of the women who may be taken in marriage; rather, Jeremiah calls on the exiles to settle in Babylon by establishing ties with other inhabitants and engendering children with them. Getting married, having children, building and planting (Jer 29:5) are ways in which the exiles are to seek the welfare (‫ )ׁשלום‬of Babylon, which in turn ensures their own welfare (Jer 29:7). Jeremiah’s exhortation to exchange daughters and establish marriage ties in a city full of non-Israelite peoples seems contrary to the logic of Ezra 9–10, where such marriages are rejected, the inhabitants are abominable and the land is impure. Contrary to Jeremiah 29:7, in Ezra 9:12b, the golah is not to seek the well-being (‫ )ׁשלום וטובה‬of the peoples-of-the-lands (Ezra 9:12b). Jeremiah’s settlement strategy is appropriate for Babylon, but not for golah settlement of the land of Canaan, the land promised by Yhwh to Israel’s forbearers. It is, however, akin to the strategy employed by the golah men who marry the daughters of the peoples-of-thelands and thereby stake a claim to the territory and garner ‘the good of the land’ (Ezra 9:12b). The Ezra-group, those who have not married foreign women, look to Yhwh, the supreme monarch and provider, to give them the land as their possession. Land possession, however, is not included among beneficent acts with which Yhwh has favoured the golah in Ezra 9:8–9. They have been given a ‘tent peg’ in ‘your holy place’ (9:8), but it is an impermanent status that is a far cry from the possession that is sought. Even more problematically for the Ezra-group, the golah men who ‘lift’ and ‘settle’ the women appear to have engendered children (Ezra 10:3,44b). This should not come as a surprise, as one of the primary reasons for marriage in the Hebrew Bible is to produce descendants, perpetuate the lineage and ensure the transmission of inheritance within that lineage. Marriage and procreation are performances of dominant masculinity and evidence the virility and fertility of the golah men who enact them.7 These men have produced ‘seed’ that dwells in the land. The ‘guilty’ men of the golah have shed their liminal status as ‘exiles’ and have become ‘settled’ via marriage to the foreign women. The narrative world of Ezra 9–10, however, embraces the unproductive, unsettled masculinity of the Ezra-group as the appropriate performance of masculinity for all golah men. The dominant performance of the ‘guilty’ is a transgression of the golah‘s relationship with Yhwh. These men have enhanced their masculinity without divine participation and beyond the bounds of divine control (and the control of the Ezra-group). In keeping with the biblical meta-narrative of divine landownership, the Ezra-group advocates that it is Yhwh, declared in Ezra 1:2 to be the ruler of all the kingdoms of the earth, who gives the land to Israel and who determines the conditions under which it is to be entered and possessed.8 Foremost

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities  109 among these conditions in Ezra 9–10 is the prohibition of intermarriage. Golah men are not to enter the land by ‘entering’ into foreign women. Marriage requires particular oversight in the Hebrew Bible, especially where Israel’s possession of the land of Canaan is at stake. The people of Israel are reminded time and again that the land is given to them by Yhwh and is not to be ‘settled’ by establishing marriage ties with indigenous inhabitants.9 Joshua’s farewell address lays out the consequences of intermarriage for Israelite possession and habitation of the land: For if you turn back and join (‫ )ודבקתם‬the remnant of these nations . . . and you intermarry with them (‫ )והתחנתם בהם‬and you enter into them and they into you (‫)ובאתם בהם והם בכם‬, know with certainty that Yhwh your God will not continue to drive out these nations . . . until you perish from the good land (‫ )אבדכם מעל האדמה הטובה‬that Yhwh your God has given you. (Josh 23:12–13) The term ‫ התחתן‬references alliances between Israelites and non-Israelites established through marriage, described here in sexualized terms: ‘and you enter them and they into you’ (‫)ובאתם בהם והם בכם‬. Joshua does not warn specifically against taking foreign women but rather against the ties that are established through these unions. These ties involve men (husband and father-in-law) and the kinship groups they represent. Since the mutual taking and giving of daughters, as noted in the discussion of Genesis 34 and Jeremiah 29 given earlier, is a settlement strategy that provides access to a specific territory, it is no surprise that intermarriage is forbidden when the land of Canaan is at stake. Accompanying exhortations against the making of covenants with these peoples and against following their gods further highlight the relationship between marriage and land settlement.10 These prohibitions evidence a concern with the means by which the land is acquired and inhabited. The land is to be given by Yhwh, not acquired through intermarriage or covenants with the local inhabitants, much less through adherence to their gods. Furthermore, the land is not earned or even deserved by Israel; rather, as the book of Deuteronomy insists, it is Yhwh’s gift.11 This ideology of land possession secures Yhwh’s dominant status as protector and provider of the golah and renders his subject people beholden to his commandments. Thus, Yhwh’s effective control over his people not only ensures their obedience, but it is also a means by which Yhwh ensures his own permanence in the land.12 Similarly, in the Hebrew Bible, it is Yhwh who opens the womb,13 and it is Yhwh who provides the ‘seed’ that will possess and dwell in the land of Canaan.14 This dynamic in the Hebrew Bible suggests that the ‘productive’ golah marriages not only undermine the masculinity of the golah men who have not taken and settled foreign wives, but they also undermine the masculinity of Yhwh. They render Yhwh expendable for the tasks of providing land and descendants, primary performances of divine masculinity throughout the biblical ‘story’ of Israel. Yhwh’s masculinity is asserted in the Hebrew Bible by affirming his crucial role in the

110  Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities production of the descendants who are to possess the land that he gives Israel. The sons engendered by golah men with foreign women are rejected, as are Abraham’s own attempts in the book of Genesis at producing offspring to inherit the land.15 In Ezra 9–10, the ‘guilty’ men who have entered the land and produced offspring outside these parameters have challenged Yhwh’s role. Various groups and individuals associated with Ezra declare the marriages to be transgressive performances of masculinity, acts of infidelity (‫ )מעל‬that threaten the well-being of the golah (Ezra 9:14–15). These include the officials who introduce the matter to Ezra (9:2b), the ‘tremblers’ who join Ezra’s mourning (9:4), Shecaniah who announces that the marriages are a betrayal of the relationship with Yhwh (10:3) and Ezra himself, who accuses the golah of compounding the already significant guilt of the community with this infidelity (10:10). In the Hebrew Bible, the term ‫ מעל‬designates a sin against the deity, either in the form of trespass against the Sancta or the violation of an oath.16 In other words, Yhwh is the aggrieved party of ‫מעל‬.17 Common to accusations of ‫ מעל‬is that those so accused have transgressed boundaries and norms established by Yhwh and have sought benefits or security through their own efforts.18 The ‫ מעל‬committed by Achan in Joshua 7 is a notable example with ties to Ezra 9–10 in terms of terminology and argumentation.19 Achan takes the ‫חרם‬, the spoils devoted to destruction, for himself and brings upon Israel the wrath of Yhwh (Josh 7:1), resulting in defeat at the battle of Ai (7:10–13). As a soldier, Achan enacts a dominant performance of masculinity. However, it is transgressive of the relationship with Yhwh and the well-being of the social group and must be redressed – he and his household are put to death (Josh 7:25–26). The consequences of ‫ מעל‬are severe in many biblical texts: Yhwh responds to ‫ מעל‬with invasion, conquest and/or exile,20 plague,21 illness or death,22 famine and desolation.23 These acts reassert the appropriate subordination and dependence of Israelite men in relation to Yhwh and ensure Yhwh’s dominant masculinity. Thus, the Ezra-group declares the marriages not only to be unacceptable but, even more so and more grievously, they are a transgression of the relationship with Yhwh and threaten to undermine the masculine status of this god. This ‘transgressively’ dominant masculine performance of the married men, by which some seek to ‘eat the good of the land and give it as a possession to your sons forever’ (9:12b) on their own terms rather than Yhwh’s, must be brought under control and into conformity with the masculinity of mourning, self-abasement and subordination embodied by Ezra. The bodies, practices and alliances of golah men must be ‘managed’ and realigned with the demands of the relationship with Yhwh in order to avoid challenging divine masculinity – that is in order to avoid his wrath. Managing men Feminist critics have highlighted the degree of control men in the Hebrew Bible are awarded over the women of their households and over women more generally. A wife is socially and sexually subordinate to her husband, while a father controls the sexuality, body and the very life and death of his daughter.24 Esther Fuchs explains that, in the Hebrew Bible,

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities  111 female sexuality needs to be controlled, female procreativity is to be used, female political power needs to be contained. . . . When all is said and done, the biblical narrative justifies the domination of women and children – by male heads of households, and male national and religious leaders.25 Not only women, however, but also men are placed under the control of other men (and of Yhwh) in the Hebrew Bible. Political, military and cultic contexts are rife with men who dominate other men and control their bodies, even their sexuality.26 Biblical cultic and social prescriptions exhibit a significant concern with ‘managing’ men, their bodies, relationships and performance of masculinity. The books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers categorize, classify and determine the cultic and ritual status of Israelites ‒ predominantly Israelite men. Men are ranked, among other things, by lineage, degrees of holiness, the degree of access they are granted to cultic space and the cultic activities in which they are allowed participation.27 Deuteronomy, Mark George argues, likewise displays a system of regimentation by means of which ‘classifications and categorizations’ are deployed that ‘shape and control’ the lives of Israelite men.28 The Torah is directed primarily towards men, and its stipulations are concerned with the behaviour of Israelite men: what they eat, whom they marry, which god they worship, where and how they worship, when and how they sacrifice. These texts determine what alliances they establish; how they manage their households, their wives and daughters, their servants and slaves and how they address grievances. They also manage the status of men’s skin and genital emissions, whom they have sexual relations with and how they are to secure their lineage and distribute their inheritance. In short, the Torah determines the appropriate behaviour of Israelite men and ‘manages’ their masculinity, rendering it subordinate to Yhwh and his authorized representatives. This book has discussed various categories and classifications assigned to men in Ezra 9–10 and the implications thereof: the peoples-of-the-lands are cast as women, abominable, foreign and impure; the sons of the golah are men, they are Israel, they are holy seed, albeit vulnerable to the impurity of the peoples-of-thelands. However, since masculinities are in a constant state of ‘flux, negotiation and outright war’, as Ilona Zsolnay observes,29 performances of culturally and socially dominant masculinities must be continually asserted and sustained, even as the inferiority of other masculinities must be emphasized. Where these masculinities may be ‘feminized’, the task is simplified. But when the challenge comes from men who exhibit culturally exalted masculine traits and performances, these must be ‘managed’. This is the strategy by which the transgressive masculinity of the ‘guilty’ golah men is addressed, redressed and brought under control by the Ezra-group. Covenant and community

Ezra’s prayer of penitence and confession in Ezra 9:6–15 concerning the marriages that have taken place extends this transgression and its effects to the entire community. He classifies the golah as a community of guilt; they are carriers of the guilt of the fathers which led to captivity and ‘shame of face’ (9:6–7). Ezra describes

112  Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities both the Israel of the past and the golah of the present as a people of iniquity (‫עון‬: 9:6,7,13), guilt (‫אׁשמה‬: 9:7,13,15, 19) and evil deeds (‫מעׂשה רע‬: 9:13), who have forsaken and transgressed the commandments of this god (‫עזבנו מצותיך‬: 9:10; ‫מצותיך‬ ‫להפר‬: 9:14). Yhwh, on the other hand, Ezra declares, is just (‫צדיק‬, 9:15) and faithful (‫לא עזבנו‬, 9:9); he has extended favour to the golah (‫תחנה‬, ‫חסד‬, 9:8–9) and punished them less than their iniquities deserved (‫חׂשכת למטה מעוננו‬, 9:13). The prayer’s interpretation of present distress is fundamentally Deuteronomistic: it is a consequence of the transgression of the relationship with Yhwh that is predicated on obedience to his commands.30 There are no nuanced qualifications in the prayer: the golah is guilty, Yhwh is just. The affirmation of collective guilt binds this community together and to the ‘fathers’ before them (9:6), making the marriages not only a matter of public interest but also a matter of collective survival. Thus, by rendering intermarriage a transgression of the relationship with Yhwh, mediated by his commandments (9:10b-12), Ezra’s prayer effectively positions the entire golah at the mercy of Yhwh’s wrath. The call to action comes not from Ezra but from a heretofore unmentioned man, Shecaniah, the son of Jehiel and a descendant of Elam (10:3). He not only affirms the collective guilt of the golah but also proposes a way to redress the matter: ‘We have been unfaithful to our God (‫ )אנחנו מעלנו באלהינו‬and have married foreign women from the peoples-of-the-land, but now there is hope for Israel despite this’ (10:2). Shecaniah then calls for the community to repair the relationship by making ‘a covenant with/to our God (‫ )נכרת־ברית לאלהינו‬to expel (‫ )חוציא‬the women and those born from them’ (10:3). In the Hebrew Bible, the phrase ‫ כרת ברית‬with which Shecaniah calls the golah to action designates, variously, agreements or alliances between men, between Yhwh and specific men in the ‘pre-story’ and ‘story’ of Israel, and between Yhwh and Israel.31 The covenant between Yhwh and Israel in Exodus and Deuteronomy places obligations on Yhwh to be the god of Israel and demands fidelity and obedience from Israel, but, most importantly, it defines and effectively ‘manages’ all aspects of the life of the people of Israel, including, and most particularly, Israelite men. The call to ‘make a covenant with our God’ brings the golah together as the people of Yhwh, including those who are guilty of intermarriage. They are not excluded from the community but are rather brought under ‘management’ by calling on them to affirm their ties to the Yhwh (and thereby to the golah) and reject their ties to the peoples-of-the-lands (via the foreign women) and whatever benefits derived thereof (cf. Ezra 6:21). The phrase ‫ כרת ברית‬in Ezra 10:3 calls to mind Deuteronomic covenant-making scenarios, such as Josiah’s covenant renewal (2 Kgs 23:3), albeit with some particularities.32 This interpretation of the phrase is disputed by scholars who argue that in post-exilic texts, the term ‫ ברית‬no longer indexes the ‘conditional covenant’ between Yhwh and Israel but rather the unconditional and permanent relationship between Yhwh and his people.33 Sarah Japhet argues, thus, that Ezra 10:3 describes a commitment ‘between parties to obey Yhwh’ and not a contract between Israel and Yhwh.34 Also problematic is the fact that the form ‫ כרת ברית ל־‬used in Ezra 10:3

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities  113 is usually employed for covenants imposed by a superior party upon an inferior, which could not be the case here.35 The preposition ‫ ל־‬might also suggest that the covenant is sworn before Yhwh, rather than with him, although elsewhere the preposition ‫ לפני‬is employed to describe covenants made ‘before Yhwh’.36 The significance of the phrase ‫ כרת ברית‬in Ezra 10:3, however, may have less to do with the particular type of relationship or covenant it envisions than with the way it references other biblical covenant-making accounts.37 It may well be the case that Ezra 10:3 seeks a commitment to a particular course of action, as Japhet argues,38 but the allusion to other covenant-making occasions has significant implications for the dynamic enacted in the text. In this respect, the literary, structural and lexical ties between Ezra 9–10 and Josiah’s covenant ‘renewal’ (2 Kgs 23 and 2 Chr 34) are notable and should not be overlooked.39 In both Ezra 9–10 and the Josiah covenant, the Torah is the authoritative text that produces the awareness of transgression.40 The Torah is introduced in both these covenant-making scenarios as that which had been lost or forgotten and is now rediscovered or reintroduced. In the Josiah narrative, it is found during temple restoration, while in Ezra 7–10, it is brought to Yehud by Ezra, the scribe-priest.41 Both leaders perform rituals of lament and self-debasement before Yhwh in the face of the announced transgression and seek a response from the deity and relief from his wrath and punishment.42 In both texts, the covenant made to/before Yhwh commits the people to fulfil the commandments of Yhwh and address the transgression (Ezra 10:3; 2 Kgs 23:3–4/2 Chr 34:31–32). Furthermore, these covenants require the expulsion of that which is deemed foreign to Israel: Ezra 10:3 calls for the expulsion (‫ )הוצוא‬of the women and children, while in 2 Kings 23:4, Josiah casts out (‫)הוצוא‬ ‘the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah and for all the host of heaven’ (2 Kgs 23:4).43 Despite these similarities, there are many differences between these texts, as Douglas Nykolaishen points out.44 In the Josiah text, a king calls the people to covenant-making (2 Kgs 23:1; 2 Chr 34:29), while in Ezra 10:3, it is Shecaniah, an unknown man of indeterminate social status, who makes the call. Josiah makes a covenant that commits him and the people to obey the Torah and all the commandments and statutes contained therein (2 Kgs 23:3; 2 Chr 34:32–33), while Ezra 10:2–3 focuses on one stipulation that has been breached. In the Josiah narrative, the response to covenant-making is immediate and unanimous (2 Kgs 23:3b; 2 Chr 34:32b), while the aftermath of Ezra 10:3 includes negotiations, delays and even objections before an agreement is reached.45 Furthermore, in Ezra 9–10 (MT), the expulsion itself is not reported. Nykolaishen rightly argues that similarities between Ezra 9–10 and other ­covenant-making texts may likely be the intentional result of the ‘narrator’s selection and arrangement of events and speeches’.46 Resonances of the Josiah covenant signify the covenant in Ezra 10 as a decisive moment in the story of this community; it places intermarriage, as Helena Zlotnick argues, ‘within a sequence of historical covenants and their violation’.47 Furthermore, these resonances elevate the Torah of Moses, embodied and interpreted by Ezra, as the norm for the relationship with Yhwh and place golah men under the ‘management’ of this Torah that is wielded by the Ezra-group.48

114  Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities The ‫ ברית‬called for by Shecaniah also has gendered implications: it is a contract entered into by men before (with or to) a male deity. As Sabine van den Eynde notes, ‘‫ ברית‬is no neutral term, but an image taken out of a male-dominated world and in the religious discourse applied to the relationship of God and men or his people’.49 Covenants in the Hebrew Bible are a means by which men establish relationships with other men and with the deity, which involve land, trade, goods, political allegiance, military settlements and marriage. These covenants may affirm the superior position of one party over the other (Gen 15:17; Exod 24:1–8), place limits on the dominance of one party (Gen 21:27; 26:28) or even seek to remedy an affront to the masculinity of a man or group (Gen 31:44). Women are never parties in a covenant agreement,50 but they may be implicated and affected by agreements made by men. In Genesis 31, for example, women, property and territory are negotiated in the covenant between Laban and Jacob (Gen 31:43–55). Laban has been cheated by Jacob, and Jacob has been threatened by Laban. The dispute is negotiated and resolved by means of a covenant that grants Jacob the daughters and grandchildren of Laban and, in order to address Laban’s aggrieved masculinity, stipulates his continued authority over his kin (Gen 31:50). Similarly, negotiations between David and Abner to put David on the throne of Israel in 2 Samuel 3 are predicated on the restitution of the affront to David’s masculinity: his wife Michal, who had been taken from him by her father Saul, is to be returned (2 Sam 3:12–14). In Ezra 9–10, the ‘faithful’ men of the golah address their aggrieved masculinity in the face of the ‘transgressively dominant’ masculinity of the ‘guilty’ men by calling for the expulsion of the women and children. While this call goes out to the entire community, it is the guilty men’s wives and children who are the objects of expulsion. Thus, one of the effects of this call is to ‘manage’ the masculine performance of these men. This ‘management’ is presented as an affair that pertains to Yhwh and that addresses the infidelity perpetrated against Yhwh. The decision the men must make is highlighted by the syntax of 10:3: the covenant with Yhwh (‫ )נכרת־ברית לאלהינו‬requires the expulsion of the women and children (‫)להוציא כל־נׁשים והנולד מהם‬. There is no middle ground. The men must choose between voluntary subordination to their male god on the one hand and the ‘manly’ acts of marriage, engendering of children and settling a territory on the other. The women are objects of exchange and negotiation in this masculine dispute. The covenant grants some golah men the authorization to ‘manage’ others by removing their wives and children. The ‘guilty’ men of the golah are to be humiliated, indeed ‘unmanned’, by the removal of the wives, women who are ‒ or should be ‒ under their own ‘management’ and protection, as well as the children who should ensure the continuation of their lineage. Likewise, the divinely sanctioned removal of the women and children addresses the aggrieved masculinity of the Ezra-group, the men who had not ‘lifted’ or ‘settled’ women nor engendered children. The expulsion of the women pointedly renders the guilty men ‒ those whose wives and offspring are to be removed ‒ inferior on the gendered spectrum. It should be noted that while the most grievous effect of this measure is experienced

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities  115 by the women and children whose destiny is expulsion, the text shows no concern for their well-being but focuses on the men. Shecaniah concludes his call to covenant-making by indicating the authority by which the call is made: ‘by the counsel of my lord [Ezra],51 and of those who tremble at the commandments of our God, and according to the Torah (‫( ’)כתורה‬10:3b). The authoritative reference for ‘managing’ the guilty men and bringing the ‘transgressively’ dominant masculinity under control of the Ezra-group is the Torah. Difference within

Ezra 9–10 emphasizes the collective guilt of the golah and calls upon the entire community to make a covenant with/before Yhwh to avoid the potential consequences of his wrath. The effects of the covenant are not equal for all the men, however, since it only requires those accused of intermarriage to expel their wives and children. Significantly, neither the expulsion of the women nor the required separation from the peoples-of-the-lands take place within the confines of the narrative. The separation that takes place is in the form of distinctions within the golah, which have social, cultic and gendered implications. When a call goes out in 10:7 for the ‘sons of the golah’ to gather in Jerusalem within three days to address the issue of intermarriage, it is not an invitation but rather an order given by the leaders (‫ )ׂשרים‬and elders (‫)זקנים‬. Refusal to respond is to be punished with confiscation of property (‫ )יחרם כל־רכוׁשו‬and separation from the assembly (‫יבדל מקהל הגולה‬,10:8). If implemented, the punitive measures announced would render the dissident men socially impotent: their property withdrawn and their ties to the golah severed. Subordination to the hierarchical structures of the assembly is not a matter for discussion and is punitively enforced. Thus, while the call to separate from the peoples-of-the-lands is constitutive of the distinctiveness of the golah, the threat to separate golah men from their own community configures power relations internal to the group. A second, very different act of separation is carried out by Ezra when he sets apart (‫‘ )יבדלו‬men, heads of families’ (‫ )אנׁשים ראׁשי האבות‬for the task of ‘inspecting the matter’ of the men who had married foreign women (10:16–17). The scene recalls Ezra’s separation (‫ )הבדיל‬of leading priests in 8:24 to transport temple treasures to Jerusalem. In 10:16, however, it is not priests but heads of the families who are set apart. This act creates a privileged group that is granted the authority to determine the guilt or innocence of golah men ‒ including priests and Levites ‒ in the matter of the marriages to foreign women. Priests and Levites are not the only men accused of intermarriage, but they are mentioned among the guilty in 9:2 and named at the head of the list of guilty men in Ezra 10:18–22. They are, furthermore, virtually absent when the problem is addressed, and their only participation in the resolution of the matter of intermarriage is the oath Ezra obliges them to make after the golah is called to covenantmaking (10:5).52 In the narrative world of Ezra 9–10, a privileged status before Yhwh is granted not to the priests who sacrifice within the precincts of the temple but to those who wield the Torah, mourn and tremble outside it (9:3–4;10:1,9).

116  Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities It is those who bear, interpret and fear the commands of Yhwh who set in motion the measures designed to ‘separate’ the impure from the realm of the holy, restore the golah‘s relationship with Yhwh and ‘manage’ the transgressive masculinity of the married golah men. Distinctions drawn between golah men also establish ‘difference’ within the households of the golah. The list of the ‘guilty’ sons in Ezra 10:19–43 begins with priests in 10:19, followed by Levites, singers and gatekeepers in 10:23–24 and, finally, lay Israelites (vv.25–43). The formula these verses use to designate the guilty men places them in relation to their immediate male forbearer and their brothers: ‘from among the sons of’ (x‫)מבני‬.53 The partitive mem (‫ )מ־‬not only indicates each son’s relationship with the father’s house but also singles each son out from among his brothers for having taken foreign women.54 This is, in effect, a list of the men who have come under the ‘management’ of the golah, whose wives and children have been earmarked for expulsion. Their wives have been rejected as biological producers of the seed of the golah, and their sons have been ‘dis-elected’ and de-selected as the seed that is to possess the land promised by Yhwh.55 Thus, while golah identity in the book of Ezra is based on male kinship and descent, as Claudia Camp argues,56 not all the sons of golah ‫ בית אבות‬are equal. The masculine performance of the guilty ‒ those who have acted upon the women to settle in the land and engender descendants ‒ is rejected in favour of the divine performance of seed and land-giving. Not only are women written out of the ‘identitycreating ideology of the kinship system’,57 but so also are certain sons of the golah. Foreign women and golah masculinities In her discussion of ancient West Asian art and archaeology, Zainab Bahrani argues that representations of women can be ‘studied for how things were represented in antiquity’ but not for ‘how things were’.58 The same may be said of ancient literary texts. Biblical texts do not offer access to ‘real women’ or their voices but rather to the ways in which women have been portrayed, represented and appropriated in keeping with the heteronormative, masculine/male-centred interests and ideologies of these texts.59 This chapter concludes, therefore, by exploring how the representation and appropriation of the women in Ezra 9–10 are inextricably bound with the production of masculinities in the world of the narrative. The foreign women in Ezra 9–10, more specifically, the dispute concerning golah intermarriage with the peoples-of-the-lands via these women, are a locus for the production of masculinities throughout the text. This dynamic is well represented in the Hebrew Bible, as Ken Stone observes, since women are frequently the means by which dominant masculinity is achieved or challenged.60 This is particularly evident in the Deuteronomistic history, where political power is often disputed as control over women. King David consolidates his power and undermines the status and masculinity of other men by taking their women, be it their daughters or wives, even to the point of killing a soldier to possess his wife.61 The masculinity of the kings is likewise challenged by the use and abuse of their concubines and family members, as

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities  117 this calls into question their ability to protect and control sexual access to the women of their household.62 Saul’s concubine, Rizpah, is taken by Abner (2 Sam 3:6–11) while Absalom sleeps with David’s concubines in his absence (2 Sam 16:20–23), and David’s daughter Tamar is raped by her brother Absalom (2 Sam 13:1–22).63 The violation of these women is a problem for readers of these texts, but even more problematic is the fact that they ‒ as women ‒ are not a concern for the narrator. Their use and abuse, rather, is a site on which debates over masculinities and power are waged. Genesis 34 is one of several biblical texts in which masculinities are disputed on the body of a woman. Shechem’s unauthorized sexual access to Dinah is not addressed through any concern for her well-being; it is a problem for her male kin because it challenges their masculinity and honour. Dinah is returned to her brothers and father, but not until the sons of Jacob trick the Shechemite men into genital self-mutilation, plunder their goods and capture ‘all their little ones and their wives’ (34:29), thereby restoring their masculine status and honour. Tamar’s rape in 2 Samuel 13 is another instance in which disputes between men ‒ here between David’s sons who are vying for his throne ‒ are waged on the very body of a woman. Another case that must be mentioned is the rape and brutal dismemberment of the Levite’s concubine in Judges 19, on whose abused body the Levite rehabilitates his aggrieved masculinity and disputes between the tribes of Israel are waged.64 While these women are not foreign to Israel, their use and abuse by the ‘wrong’ men may indeed render them sexually ‘strange’ and socially ‘othered’ and, in the case of Judges 19, dead and dismembered. Fathers and husbands are rendered vulnerable by the liminal position occupied by these women through whom men’s masculinities are negotiated, challenged and claimed. Daughters are vulnerable to being taken by the wrong man, an act that socially ‘others’ the daughters and humiliates their male kin. A wife may be ‘entered’ by the wrong man, casting doubt on the legitimacy of her husband’s descendants, or she may be unable to bear children at all, thereby casting doubt on her husband’s virility. Especially problematic are foreign women, especially women taken from the peoples who are closest to Israel and who are brought into the Israelite household, potentially exposing it to foreign influences and even to the influence of foreign men. All women, not only those who are foreign, are rendered passive and silent in Ezra 9–10. Golah women are mentioned only in 10:1 as part of the assembly gathered around Ezra and are quickly forgotten as the text focuses on the men who are guilty of marriage to the foreign women. The foreign women are more emphatically deprived of actions, voices and agency in the text. Even where they have given birth to children, the text avoids assigning agency to them: they do not give birth, rather the children are those ‘born from them’ (‫;הגולד מהם‬10:3b). The threat represented by these women in Ezra 9–10 does not derive from what they do or say, but from how they are acted upon by the men and from how these acts configure power within the golah. However, as mentioned previously, the awkward but significant final verse of Ezra 10 reveals that the women have at least one active role: ‘some of the women have “set” (‫ )ׂשים‬sons’.65

118  Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities The female body’s capacity for birth, signalled in Ezra 10 by the twice-mentioned children of the foreign women, points to the indispensable role women play in the production and preservation of male lineage, inheritance and, more broadly, community identity. Female biological reproduction plays no little role in the construction of masculinities and the negotiation of intra-male power and is a matter to be dealt with and contained in many biblical texts. Despite the patrilineal ideology of the Hebrew Bible that, Camp suggests, would ideally allow for male-only reproduction,66 women, who are always foreign in relation to male lineage, must inevitably participate in the production of patrilineal descent.67 This tension is suggestive of the problem that women ‒ as reproducers of biological descendants ‒ represent for male Israelite identity. As Nancy Jay has argued, in patrilineal kinship groups, women’s participation is necessary for social and ‘intergenerational continuity’.68 The biological tie between mother and child is problematic for male paternity, however, and must be socially and ritually overcome or controlled in order to ‘transcend dependence on childbearing women’.69 The perceived need to control women’s participation in the biological and social production and reproduction of male social groups highlights women’s capacity to both configure boundaries between these groups and blur such boundaries. In Ezra 9–10, the foreign women may be silenced and acted upon, but, even in such circumstances, their bodies are productive: they produce sons that they ‘set’ in the land. They are likewise ‘productive’ sites for the negotiation of appropriate performances of golah masculinity and that of Yhwh. Inclusion and exclusion from the golah, as well as status within the golah, are determined by the way golah men act upon these women and their offspring. In the world of the narrative, the women, via their appropriation, rejection and expulsion, are rendered productive for the construction of ‘Israelite’ masculinity and identity. A helpful contribution for exploring the role assigned to the foreign women in Ezra 9–10 comes from the work of late twentieth-century post-colonial feminist scholars who explore how women are ‘managed’ in nation-building projects.70 Irene Gedalof carefully curates the response to Western feminist theories of several Indian feminist scholars who helpfully complicate and nuance the notion of ­women’s exclusion as abjection.71 Gedalof explores the notion posited by these Indian scholars that ‘national or racial/religious community identities are constituted on or through the bodies of women’,72 precisely because the ‘female body’s capacity for birth . . . makes women crucial to the preservation of a particular community’s integrity and purity’.73 Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theorization of power, Gedalof argues that women’s exclusion and subordination do not render them ‘inert or consenting targets’ of power but ‘always also the elements of its articulation’.74 They are not erased but ‘managed’ and made ‘productive’ for constructions of community identity.75 The management of women and women’s bodies, therefore, produces not only models of gender relations but also ‘versions of fixed community identities and nationness’.76 They are the ‘ground upon which groups of men contest norms of nationhood and identity’.77

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities  119 Gedalof’s dialogue with post-colonial feminist theories helps to deconstruct and complicate the flattened portrayal of silenced biblical women. The aim, however, is not to ‘recover’ the voices of these women or to discover their hidden protagonism but to interrogate this silence and the ways in which they are ‘managed’ and rendered ‘productive’ for the interests of the text. The women in Ezra 9–10 are not only ‘managed’, they are also appropriated as a site on which Israelite and masculine identities are produced and on which the relationship with Yhwh is negotiated. They are appropriated, first of all, for the production of the ‘transgressive’ masculinity of the golah men who marry (‘lift’) them and establish themselves by ‘settling’ them in the land. This version of ‘fixedness’ is rejected by the Ezra-group that calls for an alternative version of ‘fixed community identities and nation-ness’ – one that is predicated on dependence and subordination to Yhwh. Thus, as argued in this book, the women’s subordination is not disputed – rather, in this narrative world, it is the premise that renders the women ‘useful’ bodies for the men and for Yhwh.78 The very ‘productiveness’ of these women, however, challenges the boundaries of identity and fixedness for which they are appropriated. The golah masculinity advocated for in the text is predicated on the notion of stability, fixedness and separation, as evidenced by the ascription ‘holy seed’ with which the golah is identified and marked. From a social and gendered perspective, holiness rejects multiplicity and promotes the notion of a unified subject through separation. In cultic contexts, as Olyan argues, the act of separation is fundamental to the social distinctions implicated in access to sacred space.79 Separation in the cultic realm produces distinctions not only between Israelites and non-Israelites, men and women, but also between Israelite men. The high priest, for example, is the most holy/separate, for he enters the holiest place. Priests who enter the sanctuary are separate from Levites, who remain on the boundaries, and from lay Israelites, who remain in the temple courts.80 Impure men and women may not approach at all,81 and access for foreigners is prohibited or carefully monitored.82 This logic of holiness and separation that protects the holy from impurity is at the basis of the notion of the holy seed and its cultic, ethnic and gendered associations.83 This logic, however, is complicated by the very foreign women in rejection of whom it is constituted. Here again, post-colonial feminist scholars can offer helpful insights for interrogating the model of (masculine) identity constituted in Ezra 9–10. María Lugones’ discussion of hybridity and mestizaje calls for resistance to the ‘logic of purity’ that seeks to ‘control the multiplicity of people and things’ and ‘attain satisfaction through exercises in split separation’.84 The designation ‘holy seed’ references just such an urge for control. It claims the unity of the subject ‒ the golah, descendants of the Judean exiles ‒ and sustains its ‘fiction of purity’ through the imposition of norms, discourses and narratives that determine who belongs to/enters/is brought into this unified subject and who is not (Cf. Ezra 2; 4:1–5; 6:21; 9–10). The call to expel the women and to separate from the ‘feminized’ peoples-of-the-lands in Ezra 9–10 seeks to uphold this ‘logic of purity’ and the purported unitary subject it produces and protects.

120  Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities But the impurity (cultic, ethnic and otherwise) of the peoples-of-the-lands embodied by the foreign women complicates and resists the notion of a unified subject – a ‘holy seed’. ‘Woman’ is introduced not as a ‘stable, unchanging and pure ground’ (in Gedalof’s terms) but as complexly constituted by intersecting, shifting and ambiguous identities.85 These women, arguably acted upon and rendered silent in the text, nevertheless interrogate and interrupt the stability of golah masculinity: in their wake, the men become prostrate mourners and weepers, expose their bodies and bare their chins. Authority structures are reconfigured away from the temple and towards the Torah and its interpreters, while the community enters an altogether chaotic process through which it seeks to ward off the threat, not of an invading army, but of a group of women and children. The ‘active management’ of these women powerfully draws out fractures within the golah, which are more threatening than the so-called foreign women themselves or their children. In Ezra 9–10, the foreign women are rendered more productive for identity construction than are golah women, who are not only silent but whose appropriation and ‘management’ are not disputed in the text.86 Golah women are neither active nor visible as the chosen mothers of the sons who are to inherit and inhabit the land. Unlike their counterparts in Genesis, Israelite wives in Ezra 9–10 are withheld active participation in this narrative of ‘Israelite’ origins. While their foreign counterparts may be rejected as mothers of golah seed, they are rendered, if unintentionally, powerful and ‘productive’ objects of dispute and negotiation. The exclusion of women in Ezra 9–10 is not restricted to the foreign women, but it is the foreign women who are more complexly rendered and thereby more ‘productively managed’ for the construction of golah masculinities. Thus, not only are the women and children marked for expulsion, but also the effects of this act on the women and children are not a concern in the text. Rather, disputes concerning intermarriage and the foreign women serve to affirm subordination to Yhwh as the appropriate performance of golah masculinity and secure the masculine status of the ‘Ezra-group’ in relation to the masculine performance of the transgressive golah men. More importantly, it secures for Yhwh the role of exclusive provider of golah land and seed by obliging the ‘transgressive’ men to choose the covenant with Yhwh over their wives and children. The women are appropriated in order to bring the unfaithful men under the ‘management’ of Yhwh and those who wield his Torah. The complex and shifting categories of otherness the women embody, however, evidence the fractures within the golah and the instability and vulnerability of the Israelite male identity that the text seeks to produce. Notes 1 See also 2 Chr 24:3 where, having orchestrated the overthrow of Athaliah in order to place Joash on the throne of Judah, Jehoiada ‘lifted’ two wives and ‘became the father of sons and daughters’. 2 Tamara C. Eskenazi, “The Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, ed. Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 522–23.

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities  121 3 On Genesis 23 as a Persian Period land claim, see Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Land of our Fathers: The Roles of Ancestor Veneration in Biblical Land Claims, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 29–53. 4 Rahab and the land of Canaan, Nāsili Vaka’uta suggests, are portrayed as an ‘open space, broad and readily spread to be penetrated and explored . . .’ Nāsili Vaka’uta, “Border Crossing/Body Whoring: Rereading Rahab of Jericho with Native Women,” in Bible, Borders, Belonging(S): Engaging Readings from Oceania, ed. Jione Havea, David J. Neville, and Elaine M. Wainwright (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 152. 5 The verb, which means ‘to make oneself a son-in-law’, highlights the relationship between the woman’s husband and father established through marriage. It is used primarily in contexts where such unions are polemical such as Deut 7:3; Josh 23:12; 1 Kgs 3:1; 2 Chr 18:1; Ezra 9:14. See E. Kutsch, “ḥtn,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. V, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 270–77; Allen Guenther, “A Typology of Israelite Marriage: Kinship, Socio-Economic, and Religious Factors,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 29, no. 4 (2005): 390–98. 6 See also Ruth 1:4, where Mahlon and Chilion take (‫ )נׂשא‬Moabite wives and live (‫)יׁשב‬ in Moab for ten years. 7 See Harry A. Jr. Hoffner, “Symbols for Masculinity and Femininity. Their Use in Ancient Near Eastern Sympathetic Magic Rituals,” Journal of Biblical Literature 85, no. 3 (1966): 326–34; Mark K. George, “Masculinity and Its Regimentation in Deuteronomy,” in Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible & Beyond, ed. Ovidiu Creangă (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010), 73–77. 8 Ezra 9:11a: ‫באים לרׁשתה‬. By giving the land to his people as a possession, Yhwh affirms his own claim to the land. 9 Exod 34:15–16; Deut 7:3–4; Josh 23:12–13; Judg 3:5. 10 See Deut 7:2; Exod 34:15–16; Judg 2:2. See also Cynthia Edenburg, “From Covenant to Connubium: Persian Period Developments in the Perception of Covenant in the Deuteronomistic History,” in Covenant in the Persian Period: From Genesis to Chronicles, ed. Richard J. Bautch and Gary N. Knoppers (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 131–44. 11 Deut 1:21; 6:10–12; 7:7–8; 9:1–6. 12 That is threatened by their infidelity, cf. Ezek 8–10. 13 Gen 16:2; 20:18; 30:2; 1 Sam 1:5; Hos 9:7. 14 Gen 12:7; 13:15,17; 15:7,18; 17:9. 15 In Genesis, Abraham’s servant and Ishmael are rejected as viable ‘seed’ to inhabit the land. Isaac, the son ‘engendered’ by Yhwh’s intervention, will inherit (Gen 21:1–7; cf. Gen 25:21; 29:31–35; 30:22–24). 16 Helmer Ringgren, “māʿl,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. VIII, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997); Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 345; Jacob Milgrom, “The Concept of Maʿal in the Bible and the Ancient Near East,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 96, no. 2 (1976): 236–38. 17 The exception is Num 5:12,27, where a woman is accused of being unfaithful to her husband. 18 Cf. Lev 5:15; 6:2; 26:40; Num 31:16; Deut 32:51; Josh 7:1; 22:16,20,22,31; 1 Chr 2:7; 5:25; 9:1; 10:13; 2 Chr 12:2; 26:16–18; 29:19; 30:7; 33:19; 36:14; Neh 1:8; 13:27; Ezek 14:13; 15:8; 17:20; 20:27; 39:26; Dan 9:7. 19 See Mark J. Boda, Praying the Tradition: The Origin and Use of Tradition in Nehemiah 9, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 58–59. 20 Lev 26:39; 1 Chr 5:25–26; 9:1; 2 Chr 12:2; 30:7; 36:14–17; Ezek 17:20; 20:27–37. 21 Num 31:16.

122  Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities 22 Josh 7:1–15; 22:20; 1 Chr 10:13; Deut 32:51; 2 Chr 26:16–21. 23 Especially Lev 26:40; Num 31:16; Deut 32:51. 24 Johanna Stiebert, Fathers and Daughters in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 153. 25 Esther Fuchs, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 32. 26 See, for example prohibitions against sexual relations with certain members of the household in Lev 18 and 20, menstruating women (Lev 15:24; 18:19; Ezek 18:6; 22:10), animals (Lev 18:23) and with another man’s wife or betrothed (Ezek 18:6; Deut 22:22–30). 27 See Saul M. Olyan, Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 10–14. 28 George, “Masculinity and Its Regimentation in Deuteronomy,” 64–66. 29 Ilona Zsolnay, “Introduction,” in Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 2016), 2. 30 See Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Socio-Ideological Setting or Settings for Penitential Prayers?” in Seeking the Favor of God Vol. 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism, ed. Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney Alan Werline (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 62–64; Mark J. Boda, “Confession as Theological Expression: Ideological Origins of Penitential Prayer,” in Seeking the Favor of God Vol. 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism, ed. Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney Alan Werline (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 26–50. 31 Between men: Abraham and Abimelech (Gen 21:27); Isaac and Abimelech (Gen 26:28); Jacob and Laban (Gen 31:44); Joshua (Israel) and the Gibeonites (Josh 9:1–10:1); Jonathan and David (1 Sam 18:3; 20:8; 11–17; 23:18); David and Abner (2 Sam 3:12–13); David and the elders of Israel (2 Sam 5:3; 1 Chr 11:3); Solomon and Hiram (1 Kgs 5:26); Asa and Ben-Hadad (1 Kgs 15:19; 2 Chr 16:3); Ahab and Ben-Hadad (1 Kgs 20:34); Jehoiada and the temple guards (2 Kgs 11:4; 2 Chr 23:1); Joash and the people (2 Kgs 11:17; 2 Chr 23:3) and Zedekiah and the people of Jerusalem (Jer 34:8). Between Yhwh and men: Noah (Gen 9:8–17); Abraham (Gen 15:18–21; 17:1–22) and David (2 Sam 23:5; Ps 89:3). Between Yhwh and Israel: Exod 34:10,27; Deut 4:13; 29:1. 32 See Juha Pakkala, Ezra the Scribe: The Development of Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 104, 133, 233; Boda, Praying the Tradition, 36–41; Dennis J. McCarthy, “Covenant and Law in Chronicles-Nehemiah,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44 (1982): 26; Klaus Baltzer, The Covenant Formulary in Old Testament, Jewish, and Early Christian Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 47–8. 33 Bob Becking, “Continuity and Community: The Belief System of the Book of Ezra,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic & PostExilic Texts, ed. Bob Becking (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 262; S. David Sperling, “Rethinking Covenant in Late Biblical Books,” Biblica 70, no. 1 (1989): 59–60. 34 Sara Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought, English ed. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 91. 35 See Gen 15:18; 34:12; Josh 9:15; 24:26; Moshe Weinfeld, “bĕrîth,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. II, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 256–59. 36 See 2 Kgs 23:3 and 2 Chr 34:31. 37 See Douglas J.E. Nykolaishen, “Ezra 9–10: Solemn Oath? Renewed Covenant? New Covenant?” in Covenant in the Persian Period: From Genesis to Chronicles, ed. Richard J. Bautch and Gary N. Knoppers (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 371–89. 38 Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles, 91.

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities  123 39 Baltzer classifies Ezra 9–10 as a covenant renewal ceremony. Baltzer, The Covenant Formulary, 43–38. 40 Ezra 9:10–12; 10:3b; 2 Kgs 23:11–13 (cf. 2 Chr 34:19–28). 41 On the motif book/text finding, see Nadav Na’aman, “The ‘Discovered Book’ and the Legitimation of Josiah’s Reform,” Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 1 (2011): 47–62; Jonathan Ben-Dov, “Writing as Oracle and as Law: New Contexts for the BookFind of King Josiah,” Journal of Biblical Literature 127, no. 2 (2008): 223–39; Katherine M. Stott, “Finding the Lost Book of the Law: Re-Reading the Story of ‘the Book of the Law’ (Deuteronomy—2 Kings) in Light of Classical Literature,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 30 (2005): 153–69; Thomas C. Römer, “Transformations in Deuteronomistic and Biblical Historiography: On ‘Book-Finding’ and Other Literary Strategies,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 109 (1997): 1–11. 42 Ezra 9:3–10:1; 2 Kgs 22:11–19 (2 Chr 34:19–27). 43 See also 2 Chr 29:6 where Hezekiah commits to ‘cast (‫ )יצא‬out the filth (‫ ’)נדה‬from the temple. 44 Nykolaishen, “Ezra 9–10: Solemn Oath?” 378–80. 45 Ezra interrupts the sequence of events with his return to mourning (10:6); the commu�nity is called to gather (again) under duress (10:7) after having gathered in 10:1; the response to Ezra’s exhortation in 10:11 is to call for an inspection process that delays matters (10:13–14), and some men stand up to express opposition to the process or perhaps the expulsion itself (10:15). 46 Nykolaishen, “Ezra 9–10: Solemn Oath?” 377. 47 Helena Zlotnick, Dinah’s Daughters: Gender and Judaism from the Hebrew Bible to Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 64. 48 This ‘management’ requires the negotiation that extends from 10:5 to 10:15. 49 Sabine Van den Eynde, “Between Rainbow and Reform: A Gender Analysis of the Term Berit in the Hebrew Bible,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 116 (2004): 409. 50 The exception is Prov 2:17, where the outsider woman is accused of ‘forgetting the covenant of her God’. 51 The MT reads ‫ בעצת אֲ דֹ נָי‬and most translations render this phrase ‘according to the counsel of my lord’, referring to Ezra. See H.G.M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, ed. David Hubbard and Glenn Barker, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985), 143. 52 The oath is not spontaneous but elicited by Ezra (‫ויׁשבע‬, hiphil: cause to swear), cf. Neh 13:25b. 53 The formula varies only in vv. 23–24. 54 The partitive mem is also used in the list in Ezra 8:2–14 to identify the specific men from each household who travelled with Ezra from Babylon to Jerusalem. This contrasts with the form used in Ezra 2:3–58 where the totality of each household is included (2:64,70). 55 See R. Christopher Heard, Dynamics of Diselection: Ambiguity in Genesis 12–36 and Ethnic Boundaries in Post-Exilic Judah, Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Studies (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001). 56 Claudia V. Camp, “Feminist- and Gender-Critical Perspectives on the Biblical Ideology of Intermarriage,” in Mixed Marriages: Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period, ed. Christian Frevel (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 306–7. 57 Camp, “Feminist- and Gender-Critical Perspectives,” 309. 58 Zainab Bahrani, Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia (London; New York: Routledge, 2001), 31–32. 59 See Esther Fuchs, “Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible for Women: The Neoliberal Turn in Contemporary Feminist Scholarship,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24, no. 2 (2008): 64.

124

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities

60 Ken Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 20. 61 1 Sam 18:20–29; 25:39–42; 2 Sam 11:14–27. 62 Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power, 91. 63 See Ibid., 85–127. 64 Cf. Alice A. Keefe, “Rapes of Women/Wars of Men,” Semeia 61 (1993): 64–94. 65 See Chapter 1. 66 Camp, “Feminist- and Gender-Critical Perspectives,” 309. 67 On the biblical ‘phantasy of mono-sexual, masculine reproduction’, see Julie Kelso, “Reading Silence: The Books of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, and the Relative Absence of a Feminist Interpretative History,” in Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect: I. Biblical Books, ed. Susanne Scholz (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013), 288. 68 Nancy B. Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 35. 69 Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, 37. 70 See Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender & Nation, Politics and Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 26, 45–46; and Deniz Kandiyoti, “Identity and Its Discontents: Women and the Nation,” Millenium 20, no. 3 (1991): 429–43. 71 Irene Gedalof, Against Purity: Rethinking Identity with Indian and Western Feminisms, Gender, Racism, Ethnicity (London; New York: Routledge, 1999). 72 Gedalof, Against Purity, 202. See also Yuval-Davis, Gender & Nation; Maureen Molloy, “Imagining (the) Difference: Gender, Ethnicity and Metaphors of Nation,” Feminist Review 51 (1995): 94–112; Kandiyoti, “Identity and Its Discontents: Women and the Nation,” 429–43. 73 Gedalof, Against Purity, 34. 74 Ibid., 18. See Michel Foucault and Colin Gordon, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, 1st American ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 98. 75 Gedalof, Against Purity, 184. 76 Ibid., 224. 77 Ibid., 36. 78 Amy Kalmanofsky introduces her monograph discussing the impact of god’s masculinity on the biblical gender dynamic and the impact of biblical masculinity on women. Amy Kalmanofsky, Gender-Play in the Hebrew Bible: The Ways the Bible Challenges Its Gender Norms (New York: Routledge, 2017), 9–17. 79 Olyan observes that ‘access to privileged cultic space, privileged rites, or privileged items is a cult-specific way that biblical texts present the realization and communication of social differentiation’; Olyan, Rites and Rank, 8; see also Philip Peter Jenson, Graded Holiness (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 40–55. 80 See Olyan, Rites and Rank, 24–33. 81 Ibid., 38. 82 Ibid., 63–102. 83 Clean and unclean, Olyan notes, distinguishes the ‘admissible from the excluded’; Olyan, Rites and Rank, 17. 84 Maria Lugones, “Purity, Impurity, and Separation,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 19, no. 2 (1994): 458–76, 464. On mestizaje and hybridity, see Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London; New York: Routledge, 1994); Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987). 85 Gedalof, Against Purity, 202–3. 86 On the liminality of Israelite women in the Hebrew Bible and their role in identity construction, see Esther Fuchs, “Intermarriage, Gender, and Nation in the Hebrew Bible,” in The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism, ed. Danya Ruttenberg (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 73–92.

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities  125 References Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 1st ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987. Bahrani, Zainab. Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia. London; New York: Routledge, 2001. Baltzer, Klaus. The Covenant Formulary in Old Testament, Jewish, and Early Christian Writings. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971. Becking, Bob. “Continuity and Community: The Belief System of the Book of Ezra.” In The Crisis of Israelite Religion: Transformation of Religious Tradition in Exilic & Post-Exilic Texts, edited by Bob Becking, 256–75. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Ben-Dov, Jonathan. “Writing as Oracle and as Law: New Contexts for the Book-Find of King Josiah.” Journal of Biblical Literature 127, no. 2 (2008): 223–39. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London; New York: Routledge, 1994. Boda, Mark J. Praying the Tradition: The Origin and Use of Tradition in Nehemiah 9. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999. ———. “Confession as Theological Expression: Ideological Origins of Penitential Prayer.” In Seeking the Favor of God Vol. 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism, edited by Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney Alan Werline, 21–50. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006. Camp, Claudia V. “Feminist- and Gender-Critical Perspectives on the Biblical Ideology of Intermarriage.” In Mixed Marriages: Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period, edited by Christian Frevel, 303–15. New York: T&T Clark, 2011. Edenburg, Cynthia. “From Covenant to Connubium: Persian Period Developments in the Perception of Covenant in the Deuteronomistic History.” In Covenant in the Persian Period: From Genesis to Chronicles, edited by Richard J. Bautch and Gary N. Knoppers, 131–49. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015. Eskenazi, Tamara C. “The Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah.” In Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, edited by Oded Lipschitz and Manfred Oeming, 509–29. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006. Foucault, Michel, and Colin Gordon. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. 1st American ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Fuchs, Esther. Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. ———. “Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible for Women: The Neoliberal Turn in Contemporary Feminist Scholarship.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24, no. 2 (2008): 45–65. ———. “Intermarriage, Gender, and Nation in the Hebrew Bible.” In The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism, edited by Danya Ruttenberg, 73–92. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Gedalof, Irene. Against Purity: Rethinking Identity with Indian and Western Feminisms. Gender, Racism, Ethnicity. London; New York: Routledge, 1999. George, Mark K. “Masculinity and Its Regimentation in Deuteronomy.” In Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible & Beyond, edited by Ovidiu Creangă, 64–82. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010. Guenther, Allen. “A Typology of Israelite Marriage: Kinship, Socio-Economic, and Religious Factors.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 29, no. 4 (2005): 387–407. Heard, R. Christopher. Dynamics of Diselection: Ambiguity in Genesis 12–36 and Ethnic Boundaries in Post-Exilic Judah. Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Studies. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001.

126  Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities Hoffner, Harry A. Jr. “Symbols for Masculinity and Femininity. Their Use in Ancient Near Eastern Sympathetic Magic Rituals.” Journal of Biblical Literature 85, no. 3 (1966): 326–34. Japhet, Sara. The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought. English ed. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009. Jay, Nancy B. Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Jenson, Philip Peter. Graded Holiness. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992. Kalmanofsky, Amy. Gender-Play in the Hebrew Bible: The Ways the Bible Challenges Its Gender Norms. New York: Routledge, 2017. Kandiyoti, Deniz. “Identity and Its Discontents: Women and the Nation.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 20, no. 3 (1991): 429–43. Keefe, Alice A. “Rapes of Women/Wars of Men.” Semeia 61 (1993): 79–97. Kelso, Julie. “Reading Silence: The Books of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, and the Relative Absence of a Feminist Interpretative History.” In Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect: I. Biblical Books, edited by Susanne Scholz, 268–89. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013. Kutsch, E. “ḥtn.” In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. vol. V, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 270–77. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975. Lugones, Maria. “Purity, Impurity, and Separation.” Signs 19, no. 2 (1994): 458–76. McCarthy, Dennis J. “Covenant and Law in Chronicles-Nehemiah.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44 (1982): 25–44. Milgrom, Jacob. “The Concept of Maʿal in the Bible and the Ancient Near East.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 96, no. 2 (1976): 236–47. ———. Leviticus 1–16. The Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Molloy, Maureen. “Imagining (the) Difference: Gender, Ethnicity and Metaphors of Nation.” Feminist Review 51 (1995): 94–112. Na’aman, Nadav. “The ‘Discovered Book’ and the Legitimation of Josiah’s Reform.” Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 1 (2011): 47–62. Nykolaishen, Douglas J.E. “Ezra 9–10: Solemn Oath? Renewed Covenant? New Covenant?” In Covenant in the Persian Period: From Genesis to Chronicles, edited by Richard J. Bautch and Gary N. Knoppers, 371–89. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015. Olyan, Saul M. Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pakkala, Juha. Ezra the Scribe: The Development of Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2004. Ringgren, Helmer. “māʿl.” In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. vol. VIII, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 460–63. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. Römer, Thomas C. “Transformations in Deuteronomistic and Biblical Historiography: On ‘Book-Finding’ and Other Literary Strategies.” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 109 (1997): 1–11. Rom-Shiloni, Dalit. “Socio-Ideological Setting or Settings for Penitential Prayers?” In Seeking the Favor of God Vol. 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism, edited by Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney Alan Werline, 51–68. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006. Sperling, S. David. “Rethinking Covenant in Late Biblical Books.” Biblica 70, no. 1 (1989): 50–73.

Intermarriage, foreign women and masculinities  127 Stavrakopoulou, Francesca. Land of our Fathers: The Roles of Ancestor Veneration in Biblical Land Claims. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies. New York: T&T Clark, 2010. Stiebert, Johanna. Fathers and Daughters in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Stone, Ken. Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996. Stott, Katherine M. “Finding the Lost Book of the Law: Re-Reading the Story of ‘the Book of the Law’ (Deuteronomy—2 Kings) in Light of Classical Literature.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 30 (2005): 153–69. Vaka’uta, Nāsili. “Border Crossing/Body Whoring: Rereading Rahab of Jericho with Native Women.” In Bible, Borders, Belonging(s): Engaging Readings from Oceania, edited by Jione Havea, David J. Neville, and Elaine M. Wainwright, 143–56. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014. Van den Eynde, Sabine. “Between Rainbow and Reform: A Gender Analysis of the Term Berit in the Hebrew Bible.” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 116 (2004): 409–15. Weinfeld, Moshe. “bĕrîth.” In Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. vol. II, edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren, 253–79. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975. Williamson, H.G.M. Ezra, Nehemiah. Word Biblical Commentary. Edited by David Hubbard and Glenn Barker. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985. Yuval-Davis, Nira. Gender & Nation. Politics and Culture. London: Sage Publications, 1997. Zlotnick, Helena. Dinah’s Daughters: Gender and Judaism from the Hebrew Bible to Late Antiquity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Zsolnay, Ilona. “Introduction.” In Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, 1–11. New York: Routledge, 2016.

7 Conclusion Masculinities matter

Introduction All too often, studies of the Hebrew Bible, ancient Israel, its history, institutions and its deity assume a unitary model of manhood that is not explicitly addressed. While gendered analysis has unveiled, problematized and critiqued women’s roles and representation in biblical texts, men are seldom analysed as men, as argued in this study, but as ‘default’ human beings unmarked by gender. As the growing number of studies on biblical masculinities demonstrates, incorporating men and masculinities into the agenda of gender-critical biblical scholarship not only makes visible the gendering of men and Yhwh1; it also brings to the fore the diversity of masculinities and the ways in which women and non-hegemonic men are appropriated for the production of dominant masculinities. As Deborah Sawyer insightfully argues in her essay on Abraham’s masculinity: [T]he gender games apparent in biblical literature apply as much to constructed masculinity as to femininity. However, through focusing primarily on female characters in biblical literature, feminist critique has often overlooked the implications of constructed masculinities.2 Furthermore, consideration of how men, male bodies and masculinities are constructed in biblical texts sheds light on the complexity, nuanced character and indeed richness of the text and its ‘hidden’ agendas. This book participates in this scholarly discussion by exploring the gendered representation and construction of the men of Ezra 9–10. It explores how diverse expressions of masculinities are relationally constructed and by which a normative status is claimed for a particular model of golah masculinity. Since masculinities are predicated not solely on the attributes, embodiment and performances ascribed to persons, their production must be considered in terms of how they are positioned on a gendered spectrum in relation to other gendered bodies and performances and within institutional, social and religious contexts.

DOI: 10.4324/b23091-7

Conclusion  129 On men and masculinities in Ezra 9–10 Contrary to most scholarly assumptions, the primary issue in Ezra 9–10 is not the desired expulsion of the women and children; much more grievously, the dispute is not even about them. It is about men, alliances and power relationships between men; the land to be possessed by men and their sons and the relationship between these men and Yhwh. Furthermore, it is about the status of this male god – a status that is called into question by the memory of exile, the ongoing experience of Persian domination and his silence throughout the text. In the narrative world of the book of Ezra, the golah is caught between the past and the present – a liminal location that demands the articulation of distinct performances of masculinities for the golah and in relation to the deity. The foreign women, and golah marriages to these women, play a key role as the site on which masculinities are disputed and constituted. As studies of biblical masculinities gather increasing momentum, they offer numerous possibilities for addressing issues of power, embodiment, sexualities and gender that are not predicated solely on the problematization of women, women’s sexuality, women’s presence and women’s roles. This book contributes to focused consideration of the gendered dynamic in which constructions of masculinity are predicated on the appropriation of women, their bodies, social locations, practices and reproductive capacity as vehicles by which men’s concerns are articulated and debated. Not only is the expulsion of the women declared to be an act favoured by Yhwh, but also the control over marriage and women is a means by which membership and status within this male social group are constituted. Rather than ’recover’ any ‘real’ women or men in Ezra 9–10, this study has explored how ‘men’ and ‘women’ are constructed and deployed in this narrative world. The traits and performances associated with dominant masculinity in biblical texts and ancient West Asian inscriptions and iconography serve as the broad cultural imaginary for this exploration. The fallen bodies of mourners and penitents are examined in the light of iconographic representations of fearful, defeated warriors, foreign tributaries and kings who flee in the face of the mightier, more masculine victors. The taking of the daughters from the peoples-of-the-lands evokes both neo-Assyrian and modern Western tropes of the sexualized conquest of a land and its peoples. The call to expel women and children similarly recalls captive foreign women and children led away by victorious Assyrian armies and, in modern contexts, the sexual and social abuse perpetrated against victims of war, poverty and forced migration. The attributes ascribed by scholars to the foreign women – abominations, association with Canaanites and impurity – do not characterize the women but a male social group, the peoples-of-the-lands. A gendered reading of this group’s representation offers insights into how women and the traits culturally ascribed to femininity are appropriated in a dispute between male social groups. These peoples are strategically feminized as socially subordinate women – passive, weak, womanlike men and peoples of menstrual impurity. These intersecting feminized social and gendered locations render them illegitimate inhabitants of the land and draw on a memorialized ‘past’ of conquest to affirm golah claims to the land.

130  Conclusion The representations that bolster golah masculinity bear the seeds of their own undoing. The daughters of the peoples-of-the-lands occupy a liminal place that blurs the boundaries between the households of the golah and those of the quasi-­Canaanite peoples-of-the-lands – the wives bear children without male participation in procreation. At the same time, their ‘menstrual’ impurity renders the land inhospitable for the ‘holy seed’. The instability of masculinities, emphasized throughout this study, demands continual negotiation of masculine status in relation to those who are both superior and inferior. Ezra’s ritual performance that materially modifies his body, and the bodies of those who mourn with him, positions the golah as subjects of Yhwh. The gendered dynamic enacted in these mourning rituals evidences the plural and contingent nature of masculinities, embedded as they are in networks of intersecting social locations and identities. Like vassal kings whose local authority is predicated on allegiance and subordination to their suzerain, Ezra draws power from his splayed, weepy, exposed body and his gestures of obeisance and self-abasement to the deity. While his modified body is less-than-masculine by prevalent cultural standards, it locates him as the privileged mediator between the golah and Yhwh. Ezra chooses subordination to Yhwh over his Persian emissarial role and mediates not the commands of the Persian kings for Yehud but those of Yhwh for the golah. No king or priest is elevated to pride of place, but rather the Torah, through Ezra as its authorized interpreter. Mourning similarly modifies the bodies of golah men and constitutes an alternative model of masculinity by which they inhabit the liminality of landlessness, imperial domination and divine silence. In this liminal place, masculinity is performed not through military might or political dominance but by absolute fealty to Yhwh. This fealty is premised on the deity’s supremacy – his dominant masculinity. In the book of Ezra, however, Yhwh is a distant, silent deity whose masculinity is called into question by the destruction of his house, the removal of its vessels and the captivity of his people who, despite their return, continue to live as subjects to an empire – albeit one that is purportedly more benevolent than the Babylonian conquerors of Jerusalem. The masculinity of Yhwh is not self-evident but a performative product of Ezra’s own performance of mourning and his mediation of Yhwh’s presence and commands for the golah. The silence and absence of Yhwh are signified in the light of the masculinity of the Persian kings in the book of Ezra: like those kings, Yhwh’s presence is mediated by servants and scribes; his commands are communicated by the edicts and decrees in his treaty (Torah) – an ‘imperial’ document crafted by Yhwh and executed by his servants – that is the subject of scribal transmission and inquiry. The relative well-being of the golah remnant amid servitude, Ezra’s prayer argues, points not to the limited power of this deity but to his self-restraint and beneficence in the face of golah transgression. Important in this discussion is how Yhwh is constituted not only as the hyper-masculine deity of the golah but also as an imperial suzerain in control of the imperial kings who do his bidding. Yhwh’s performance of masculinity, as envisaged in Ezra 9–10, responds not to the needs of the deity but to those of the golah in the narrative world of the text.

Conclusion  131 In Ezra 9–10, Yhwh is better able to control the Persian kings, however, than his own people. While Yhwh has been faithful in favouring the golah, despite their sin, the community has been unfaithful and has taken local women in marriage. The men who had taken local women as wives have performed a ‘transgressively’ dominant masculinity, acting upon the peoples-of-the-lands, entering the land through the women, a strategy evidenced in various biblical texts. The ‘unfaithful’ golah men have settled the land, established themselves in it, entered into alliances (covenants) with local men and produced progeny. The call to ‘make a covenant with our God and expel the women and those born from them’ (Ezra 10.3) seeks to manage the masculinity of the ‘unfaithful’ men and bring it under control of the Ezragroup that wields the Torah. Managing men Focusing on masculinities in Ezra 9–10 allows for envisioning the men’s social and cultic status and their relationship to Yhwh as gendered matters. The survival of the golah is determined by its appropriate performance of masculinity – one that is ‘managed’ by the Torah through its authorized interpreters. The quasi-sectarian nature of the community in the book of Ezra is a gendered matter,3 one in which the ritual authority of the Torah is broadened to encompass matters of kinship, marriage and even the production of descendants. Intermarriage in Ezra 9–10 pertains to masculinity as it is the site on which the appropriate performance of golah masculinity is disputed, including the relationships and allegiances appropriate for golah men. Silenced in the text are not only the foreign women and their children but also the golah husbands called to expel them. The reading of Ezra 9–10 proposed in this study is not without its limitations, as are all readings of biblical texts. There are risks involved in focusing so intently on the men in a text in which the expulsion of women is discussed and where it is argued that such expulsion is required by the deity. Religious legitimation of gendered violence remains a critical and prevalent issue in modern ­contexts, and biblical images of this legitimation resonate in narratives of ­colonial and imperial domination. It is these biblical models, images and representations – including the silence and marginalization of women and violence against them – that feminist scholars have rightly analysed, problematized, condemned and rejected. Increasingly, feminist and gender-critical scholarship has recognized that gendered identities, performances, constructs and embodiments, and ­associated power relations are nuanced and complex. As such, they are not satisfactorily addressed solely by highlighting – or even deconstructing – binary oppositions. The binaries employed in Ezra 9–10 cloak men’s gendered identities even as they serve to silence the women and ‘manage’ the transgressive men. Studies of masculinities, insights from queer theories and studies of performance, embodiment and materiality not only deconstruct these binaries but also destabilize and undermine them. Therefore, these approaches contribute to critical explorations of the complex gendered dynamics in biblical texts as well as modern social contexts.

132  Conclusion If the landscape of Ezra 9–10 were that of warfare and battle, city- or templebuilding, as elsewhere in Ezra and Nehemiah, the absence of women would perhaps not be noted. Marriage and procreation, however, are often assumed by readers to be ‘women’s issues’. Nevertheless, studies of ancient West Asian and biblical masculinities reveal that marriage pertains to men, relationships between men and male kinship groups. Likewise, the engendering of descendants is a crucial matter for men and masculinity as it evidences virility and ensures the continuation of the lineage and the perpetuation of name and inheritance. Ezra 9–10 appropriates the women, their bodies, social locations, reproductive capacity and silenced voices as vehicles by which men’s concerns are articulated and expressed and their masculinities debated. This book has argued that, while the subordination of the women is not the objective of the text, it is quite disturbingly the premise on which masculinities are debated. Not only is the expulsion of the women declared to be an act favoured by Yhwh, but it is also a means by which allegiance to Yhwh and the social groups is enacted and affirmed. The women are ‘managed’ and appropriated in this narrative world as means by which to manage men. Thus, the text constructs women who are rendered ‘useful’ for the malecentred interests of the text and its authors. However, this does not mean that the women and their expulsion are not a critical matter to address. The foreign women in Ezra 9–10 and their fate require gender-critical scholarly examination, but not solely or even primarily to recover ‘real’ women from behind the narrative world it constructs. To be addressed are the ways in which these and other women subjected to violence in and by the biblical text are rendered ‘useful’ for the interests of dominant configurations of masculinity and their perpetuation, and how these imaginaries exert violence against real women and ‘non-heteronormative’ men. As Barbara Thiede so clearly states in her study of male friendship in the Hebrew Bible: The women of the Hebrew Bible do not merely serve male agendas; they are their manifestation. As such, women are foundational to biblical hegemonic masculinity. They are necessary for its creation and essential to its architecture. Their bodies make the male homosocial order operational and ensure that it thrives.4 However, women are not only foundational to hegemonic or idealized dominant expressions of masculinity. This study of Ezra 9–10 has shown that women and culturally situated constructs of femininities are foundational as well to diverse, contested configurations of masculinities and the continual reassertion of some over others. Beyond the text Lest the narrative world of Ezra 9–10 seems far removed from the world of the biblical scholar and reader, I close this section with a consideration of the ways in which this gendered dynamic pervades Western cultural imaginaries in modern contexts, including much biblical scholarship.5 Western culture is permeated, if not

Conclusion  133 constituted, by European imperial and colonial legacies that map masculinity and femininity onto notions of ‘civilized’ religion, values, practices, economic systems and ways of ‘being’ and ‘knowing’.6 These legacies constitute the colonizers as much as they have constituted the colonized in the ‘post-colonial’ world.7 As scholars, we do well to recognize that the ‘gendering of otherness’, the appropriation of women and femininity, and other bodies and identities assumed ‘non-normative’ in the interests of men, masculinized social groups and institutions, is a dynamic that encompasses both ancient and modern worlds – albeit in historically specific ways. It undergirds the cultural representations that shape us, the organization of the social world around us and the scholarship that informs us.8 The enduring power of this gendered dynamic and its influence on biblical scholarship can be seen in modern discourses of Western colonial and imperial projects. Sixteenth-century accounts of Spanish colonial forays into what is today Latin America and the Caribbean describe the indigenous peoples as weak, cowardly, inferior, religiously unorthodox, cannibals, pagans, sodomizers or otherwise sexually deviant.9 Nakedness, beardless faces, the absence of weapons and sexual ‘laxity’ were proffered as evidence of their feminized character – their sexual and gendered inferiority.10 Sergio Rivera-Ayala notes that the conquered population is repressed by positioning them ‘before the European reader/spectator as an Other, different, and feminine, thus exalting and normalizing the masculine subjectivity of the explorers’.11 At another latitude and in a different century, British imperial discourses employed strategies of ‘effeminization’, Revathi Krishnaswamy argues, that ‘use women/womanhood’ to ‘delegitimize, discredit, and disempower colonized men’.12 The appropriation of women and femininity aims to establish the ‘dominance of white men not over brown women but over brown men’.13 The evaluation of the conquest of the Canaanites in the work of influential biblical scholar and archaeologist W.F. Albright offers a classic example of the persistence of this colonial legacy in biblical scholarship. In his well-known 1957 tome, From the Stone Age to Christianity, Albright commented that [i]t was fortunate for the future of monotheism that the Israelites of the Conquest were a wild folk, endowed with primitive energy and ruthless will to exist, since the resulting decimation of the Canaanites prevented the complete fusion of the two kindred folk which would almost inevitably have depressed Yahwistic standards to a point where recovery was impossible.14 He further described the ‘wild’ Canaanites in terms of their ‘orgiastic natureworship, their cult of fertility in the form of serpent symbols and sensuous nudity, and their gross mythology’.15 These pejoratively characterized, feminized emblems of fleshy, corporeal, magico-religious practices contrast with Israel’s very masculine, rational, controlled simplicity with its ‘purity of life, its lofty monotheism and severe code of ethics’.16 Albright contextualized his observation by comparing the Canaanites’ ‘inevitable’ decimation to the indigenous peoples of Australia at the hands of their British colonizers. ‘It often

134  Conclusion seems necessary’, he noted, ‘that a people of markedly inferior type should vanish before a people of superior potentialities’.17 While Albright’s positions have long since been critiqued, his work remains highly influential, and its colonialized values and assumptions continue to pervade many scholarly works today – much as the same themes continue to shape Western culture more broadly. Scholarly studies of goddesses in the Hebrew Bible, for example, problematically associate these deities not only with women worshippers but also with women’s culture, women’s religion and women’s bodies, thereby rendering the ancient goddess and her religio-cultural role inferior to the purported official ‘masculine’ cult of the patron deity.18 Orientalized feminized and exoticized representations of the ‘other’ are likewise advanced in accounts of colonial and ‘biblical’ encounter, even as the lived religious and cultural experiences of many peoples today are often rendered inferior to ‘authoritative’ biblical teachings and interpretations. In Latin America, indigenous cultures and practices that survived conquest, colonization and genocide have long been rendered ‘pagan’ and ‘inferior’ to the teachings of both Roman Catholic and Protestant missions. These practices, including the veneration of the Pachamama (Mother Earth) in the Andes, ancestor veneration among the Maya-Quiché and the religions practised by the descendants of enslaved Africans, have been rejected, and attempts have been made to suppress them in favour of the ‘superior truth’ and ‘ethics’ of so-called biblical teachings. This perspective likewise permeates readers’ approaches to biblical representations of non-Israelites, whose deviancy and threat are ultimately embodied in the figure of the foreign woman brought into the midst of Israel. As they gain increasing influence in the political and public sphere, these gendered religious discourses undermine the rights of women and those outside heteronormative binary constructs. Under the guise of ‘gender ideology’, efforts in this regard are often condemned in Latin America as contrary to ‘biblical’ models for the family and sexuality.19 Unveiling and interrogating this gendered dynamic present in both ancient and modern contexts through the lens of masculinities, as discussed in this book, offers insights into the biblical text’s appropriation of women and challenges feminist and gender-critical biblical scholarship to address our complicity as readers and scholars of this text. Notes 1 As explicitly addressed by Brian Charles DiPalma, Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel: Advancing Gender Studies in the Hebrew Bible, Routledge Studies in the Biblical World (London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018), 133–40. 2 Deborah F. Sawyer, “Biblical Gender Strategies: The Case of Abraham’s Masculinity,” in Gender, Religion, and Diversity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Ursula King and Tina Beattie (London; New York: Continuum, 2004), 165–66. 3 Cf. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Judaism, the First Phase: The Place of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Origins of Judaism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2009), 196–204; Moshe ­Weinfeld, “The Crystallization of the Congregation of the Exile,” in Normative and Sectarian Judaism in the Second Temple Period (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 232–38.

Conclusion

135

4 Barbara Thiede, Male Friendship, Homosociality, and Women in the Hebrew Bible: Malignant Fraternities, Routledge Studies in the Biblical World (London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022), 158. 5 The term ‘Western’ references a socio-economic and cultural project that locates itself intellectually and philosophically in the Greco-Roman tradition. While the ‘West’ is not a region, but a product of colonialism and imperialism, it is generally associated with Europe, the United Kingdom and North America. 6 See Aníbal Quijano, “Colonialidad del poder, cultura y conocimiento en América Latina,” in La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales, ed. E. Lander (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2005), 201–46; Mabel Moraña, Enrique D. Dussel, and Carlos A. Jáuregui, Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, Latin America Otherwise (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). 7 See Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 39–49; Maria Lugones, “Colonialidad y género,” Tabula Rasa 9 (2008): 73–101. 8 See Willie James Jennings, “Renouncing Completeness: The Rich Ruler and the Possibilities of Biblical Scholarship without White Masculine Self-Sufficiency,” Journal of Biblical Literature 140, no. 4 (2021): 837–42. 9 See Sergio Rivera Ayala, El discurso colonial en textos novohispanos: espacio, cuerpo y poder (Suffolk, UK; Rochester, NY: Tamesis, 2009). 10 See Fernanda Molina, “Crónicas de jombría. La construcción de la masculinidad en la conquista de América,” Lemir, no. 15 (2011): 185–206; Sergio Rivera-Ayala, “Barbas, fierros y masculinidad dentro de la mirada colombina,” The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 87, no. 5 (2010): 603–18. 11 Rivera Ayala, El discurso colonial en textos novohispanos, 55. 12 Revathi Krishnaswamy, Effeminism: The Economy of colonial Desire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 3. 13 Krishnaswamy, Effemenism, 3. 14 William Foxwell Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957), 214. 15 Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, 214. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. See Michael Prior, The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); Keith W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (New York: Routledge, 1996). 18 See Francesca Stavrakopoulou, “The Ancient Goddess, the Biblical Scholar, and the Religious Past,” in The Bible and Feminism: Remapping the Field, ed. Yvonne Sherwood (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), 495–513. 19 On ‘gender ideology’ and its impact in Latin America, see José Manuel Morán Faúndes, “¿De qué hablan cuando hablan de ‘ideología de género’? La construcción del enemigo total,” Astrolabio. Nueva Época 30 (2023): 177–203; Gloria Careaga-Pérez, “Moral Panic and Gender Ideology in Latin America,” Religion and Gender 6, no. 2 (2016): 251–55.

References Albright, William Foxwell. From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957. Blenkinsopp, Joseph. Judaism, the First Phase: The Place of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Origins of Judaism. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2009. Careaga-Pérez, Gloria. “Moral Panic and Gender Ideology in Latin America.” Religion & Gender 6, no. 2 (2016): 251–55.

136  Conclusion DiPalma, Brian Charles. Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel: Advancing Gender Studies in the Hebrew Bible. Routledge Studies in the Biblical World. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018. Jennings, Willie James. “Renouncing Completeness: The Rich Ruler and the Possibilities of Biblical Scholarship without White Masculine Self-Sufficiency.” Journal of Biblical Literature 140, no. 4 (2021): 837–42. Krishnaswamy, Revathi. Effeminism: The Economy of Colonial Desire. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Lugones, Maria. “Colonialidad y género.” Tabula Rasa 9 (2008): 73–101. Mignolo, Walter. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Molina, Fernanda. “Crónicas de hombría. La construcción de la masculinidad en la conquista de América.” Lemir: Revista de Literatura Española Medieval y del Renacimiento, no. 15 (2011): 185–206. Morán Faúndes, José Manuel. “¿De qué hablan cuando hablan de ‘ideología de género’? La construcción del enemigo total.” Astrolabio 30 (enero 2023): 177–203. Moraña, Mabel, Enrique D. Dussel, and Carlos A. Jáuregui. Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate. Latin America Otherwise. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Prior, Michael. The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997. Quijano, Aníbal. “Colonialidad del poder, cultura y conocimiento en América Latina.” In La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales, edited by E. Lander, 201–46. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2005. Rivera-Ayala, Sergio. El discurso colonial en textos novohispanos: espacio, cuerpo y poder. Suffolk, UK; Rochester, NY: Tamesis, 2009. Rivera-Ayala, Sergio. “Barbas, fierros y masculinidad dentro de la mirada colombina.” The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 87, no. 5 (2010): 603–18. Sawyer, Deborah F. “Biblical Gender Strategies: The Case of Abraham’s Masculinity.” In Gender, Religion, and Diversity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, edited by Ursula King and Tina Beattie, 162–74. London; New York: Continuum, 2004. Stavrakopoulou, Francesca. “The Ancient Goddess, the Biblical Scholar, and the Religious Past.” In The Bible and Feminism: Remapping the Field, edited by Yvonne Sherwood, 495–513. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017. Thiede, Barbara. Male Friendship, Homosociality, and Women in the Hebrew Bible: Malignant Fraternities. Routledge Studies in the Biblical World. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022. Weinfeld, Moshe. “The Crystallization of the Congregation of the Exile.” In Normative and Sectarian Judaism in the Second Temple Period, 232–38. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2005. Whitelam, Keith W. The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Index

Aaron 56 Abner 114 abomination 3, 5, 14n35, 42 – 45, 50n37, 129 Abraham 110, 121n15 Absalom 117 Achan 110 Albright, W.F. 133 – 134 ambiguity 9 – 11, 40, 42, 86, 90 – 91, 120 Amos, Book of 73n65 apostasy 3 – 4, 29 Artaxerxes 86, 89, 92 Assante, Julia 29, 62, 70n12 Assur-nerari V 29 Australia 133 – 134 Azzoni, Annalisa 7 Baltzer, Klaus 123n39 beards 56, 59 – 62, 67, 71n32, 71n36, 87 beauty, masculinity and 27 Becking, Bob 2, 7, 45, 62, 73n71, 79 – 82 Bell, Catherine 58, 65 – 66, 74n89 beneficence 88 – 92 ben Zvi, Ehud 9 Bergmann, Claudia 30 birth see childbirth Bisitun 30, 73n67, 87, 93 Blenkinsopp, Joseph 10, 99n71 Block, David 84 bodies, male 23, 27 – 28 body modification 61 – 62, 95, 130 Boer, Roland 24, 26 bonding, masculinity and 27 Butler, Judith 24 Camp, Claudia 1, 8, 45, 118 Canaanites 3, 42 – 44, 82 – 83, 133 – 134 Carrigan, Tim 25 Chapman, Cynthia 29, 42, 60

Chemosh of Moab 83 childbirth 3, 11, 17n78, 45 – 46, 117 – 118 children 1 – 6, 8, 10, 17n81, 23, 41 – 42, 46, 64, 66, 68, 71n32, 74n79, 105 – 106, 108, 111, 113 – 118, 120, 129 – 131; see also daughters; descendants; sons Chronicles, Book of 8, 63, 71n36, 73n69, 80, 106, 113, 120n1, 121n5 Cifarelli, Meagan 73n70 Clines, David 26 – 27 clothing 29, 60 – 62; see also garments Connell, R.W. 25 – 26 contamination see impurity; land contamination control 110 – 116, 131 – 132 covenant 2, 9, 49n34, 68, 81, 94 – 95, 105, 109, 111 – 115, 120, 123n39, 123n50, 131 Creangă, Ovidiu 27 – 28 cultic icons 82 – 83, 133 Cyrus 80, 83 – 87, 89, 92 – 93, 95, 98n47 Daniel, Book of 27, 80 Darius the Great of Persia 30, 73n67, 85, 89, 92 daughters 2 – 3, 6, 9, 14n36, 29, 38 – 45, 47, 48n4, 49n23, 67, 91, 106 – 111, 114, 116 – 117, 120n1, 129 – 130 daughters-of-them 42 David 60, 84, 87, 114, 117 decree 69n6, 92 – 94; see also edict descendants 5, 46, 48n15, 67 – 68, 106, 108 – 110, 112, 116 – 119, 131 – 132, 134; see also children; daughters; sons descent 11, 39, 45, 116, 118 detachment, masculinity and 27

138 Index Deuteronomy, Book of 3, 5 – 6, 17n72, 43 – 44, 50n40, 63, 72n53, 73n63, 82 – 83, 111 – 112, 121n5 deviancy 3 Diamond, Peter 84 – 85, 98n51 Dinah 107, 117 DiPalma, Brian 27 dislocation 56 divorce 7 dominance 59, 95, 106, 108 Dor, Yomina 17n73, 17n82, 41 Douglas, Mary 4 dualism 58 edict 92 – 94; see also decree elders 39 Elephantine Papyri 6, 24 embodiment 10 – 11, 25 – 26, 64 – 66, 128 – 129, 131 emissions: female 45; male 93, 111; see also seed enemies, women as 40 – 42 Esdras, First, Book of 10 Eskenazi, Tamara 2, 6 – 7, 24, 58, 70n14 exile 39, 70n17, 82 – 85 Exodus, Book of 3, 6, 14n36, 41, 73n69, 111, 114 Ezekiel, Book of 61, 67 – 68, 74n80, 74n83, 90, 107, 122n26 Ezra (person) 9, 27, 39, 47, 56 – 63, 123n45 Ezra-group 8, 105, 107 – 108, 110 – 111, 113 – 115, 119 – 120 Ezra narrative 9 fasting 59, 61 – 62, 72n56, 80 – 81 Feinstein, Eve 5, 44 – 45 feminization 28 – 29, 42, 45 – 46, 133 Fenn, Richard 4 foreignness 4, 42 Foucault, Michel 118 From the Stone Age to Christianity (Albright) 133 Fuchs, Esther 24 – 25, 110 – 111 garments 59 – 65, 67, 72n46, 74n84, 80 Gaumata 30 Gedalof, Irene 118 – 119 gender 8, 24 – 26; binary 25; covenant and 114; identity 8, 23, 25, 29, 131 gender-critical inquiry 23 – 25, 28 gendering 23 gendering otherness 28 – 30, 38 – 47

Genesis, Book of 46, 106 – 107, 109 – 110, 114, 117, 121n15 George, Mark 111 Gorman, Frank 58 Grabbe, Lester 57 Gramsci, Antonio 26 Graybill, Rhiannon 25, 28 Grosz, Elizabeth 58 group affiliation 64 – 65 Gruen, Erich 87 Haggai (person) 85 – 86, 95n6 Haggai, Book of 8 hair 56 – 57, 59, 61, 67; see also beards Hanun 60 Harrington, Hannah 14n30 Hayes, Christine 5 hegemony, masculinity and 25 – 27 Hensel, Benedict 7 – 8 Hezekiah 63 – 64 holiness 47, 119 ‘holy seed’ 5, 39, 44 – 47, 52n70, 67, 111, 119 – 120, 130 Hosea, Book of 90, 107 hypertextuality 92 identity: ambiguous 120; community 12, 118 – 119; construction 120; embodied 59; ethnic 28, 40, 42; fluidity of gendered 29; of foreign women 2, 6 – 7, 10, 108; formation 26; gender 8, 23, 25, 29, 131; impurity and 5; Israelite 8; male 8, 71n37, 118 – 119; social 58, 130 impurity 3 – 5, 14n33, 14n35, 43 – 46, 68, 111, 118 – 120, 129 – 130, 133 inheritance 7, 39, 108, 110 intermarriage: in Deuteronomy 44; masculinities and 105 – 110; officials and 40; priests and 115; purity and 44 – 45; see also marriage intermingling 39, 44, 47, 52n70, 67 Isaac 121n15 Isaiah (person) 86 Isaiah, Book of 61, 64 – 66, 71n31, 73n63, 73n65, 73n69, 74n83, 87, 107 Jacob 114 Janzen, David 4 – 5, 41 Jay, Nancy 118 Jeremiah (person) 74n77, 86, 107 Jeremiah, Book of 28, 41, 60, 73n63, 73n69, 74n77, 74n83, 74n85, 83 – 85, 107 – 109

Index  139 Job 71n32 Joel, Book of 80 Johnson, Willa 4 Joshua (person) 27, 67, 109 Joshua, Book of 44, 98n63, 110, 121n5 Josiah 63, 74n76 judges 39 Judges, Book of 41, 44, 65, 107 Kalmanofsky, Amy 124n78 Karrer-Grube, Christianne 6 – 7, 24 Kelso, Julia 7, 24 – 25 Kings, First, Book of 3, 43 – 44, 63, 73n69, 80, 121n5 Kings, Second, Book of 41, 63 – 64, 73n63, 80, 86, 90, 106 – 107, 112 – 113 kinship 5, 8, 11, 39 – 41, 68, 107, 109, 116, 118, 131 – 132 Klawans, Jonathan 5 Knoppers, Gary 47 Krishnaswamy, Revathi 133 Kuhrt, Amélie 88 Kutsko, John 84 Laban 114 Lambert, David 72n56 land contamination 3, 5 – 6, 43 – 44, 47 land possession 7, 42, 107 – 109, 130 land settlement 38, 47, 109 Launderville, Dale 58 law 92 – 95 leaders 39 Lee, Robert 25 Lemche, Niels Peter 43 Lemos, T.M. 5, 27, 90 Leviticus, Book of 5 – 6, 43 – 44, 68, 71n31, 74n83, 111, 122n26 Levtow, Nathaniel B. 97n37 lineage 7, 39, 45, 61, 63, 67, 84, 89, 108, 111, 114, 118, 132 Lipka, Hilary 71n37 Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd 87 marriage: daughters and 41 – 42; dominance and 106; procreation and 108 – 110; seed and 39; settlement and 107; terminology with 41; see also intermarriage masculinity(ies): body modification and 61 – 62; control and 110 – 116, 131 – 132; dominant 106; exile and 82 – 85; in Hebrew Bible 26 – 28; hegemonic 25 – 27; intermarriage and 105 – 110; male bodies and 23,

27 – 28; and men of golah 38 – 40; menstruation and 45; mourning and 56 – 68; performance of 10, 26, 40 – 41, 46 – 47, 62, 79, 93; protection and 42; relationally constituted 25 – 26, 63, 105; ritual and 58 – 59; slavery and 89 – 90; socially-constructed nature of 25 – 26; of Yhwh 79 – 95, 109, 130 masculinization 85 – 87, 93 Masoretic Text 10 materiality 58 – 61, 93, 131 Mati-ilu 29 men see masculinity(ies) menstruation 44 – 47, 122n26, 129 – 130 Meyers, Carol 70n22 Micah, Book of 74n83 Milcom of Amnon 83 Milgrom, Jacob 47, 51n61 Miller, Patrick D. 98n48 Moffatt, Donald 4, 58, 74n98 Morgan, David 58 Moses 63, 72n53, 73n73, 94 mourning 56 – 68, 95, 123n45, 130 nature 4 Nehemiah (person) 9, 58 Nehemiah, Book of 1, 3, 7 – 8, 43, 57, 71n31, 80 Numbers, Book of 73n63, 111, 121n17 Nykolaishen, Douglas 113 Olyan, Saul 14n30, 59, 62, 64 – 65, 67, 74n79, 80, 124n79 Ortner, Sherry 4 otherness 28 – 30, 38 – 47, 134 Pakkala, Jehu 17n72, 50n37, 50n40 patriarchal houses 39 penitence 39, 47, 56 – 57, 59, 62 – 64, 69n8, 80, 86, 90, 105, 111, 129 pollution 5; see also impurity; land contamination power: in Foucault 118; gender and 24; law and 93; liminality and 47; relations 66, 74n89; see also virility prayer 80 – 81, 88, 111 priests 67 – 68, 72n46, 115 – 116 procreation 45 – 46, 106, 108 – 110, 118, 132 prophets 39, 86 prostration 62 – 63, 71n32 protection 42, 88 – 91 Proverbs, Book of 3, 73n69 provision 79, 84, 88 – 92

140 Index Psalms, Book of 62, 66, 73n63, 73n69, 81 purity see impurity queer approaches 28 Rahab 107, 121n4 rape 117 Rehoboam 106 remnant 47, 83, 88 – 91, 94, 109, 130 reparation 67 ritual 4 – 5, 12, 29, 41, 45, 56 – 59, 61 – 68, 70n17, 70n21, 73n63, 74n85, 74n89, 80 – 81, 95, 111, 113, 118, 130 – 131 Rivera-Ayala, Sergio 133 Rizpah 117 Roberts, J.J.M. 98n48 sacrifice 67 Samuel, First, Book of 46 Samuel, Second, Book of 60 – 61, 71n36, 74n85, 114, 117 Saul 117 Sawyer, Deborah 128 Scott, Joan C. 24 seed 39, 45, 109 – 110, 121n15 self-affliction 67 self-control 91 – 92, 99n81 semen 45 Seraiah 56 separation 3, 9 – 10, 42 – 47, 66, 115 – 116, 119 settling 106 – 107 sexual deviancy 3 Shecaniah 81, 112 – 113, 115 Shechem 71n32, 107, 117 Shimshai 85, 92 silence 7, 9, 11 – 12, 24 – 25, 62, 79 – 82, 95, 117, 119, 129 – 132 slavery 89 – 90 Solomon 3, 43, 63, 88 sons 1, 6 – 7, 9 – 11, 14n36, 29, 39 – 41, 46 – 47, 48n15, 81, 94, 106 – 108, 110 – 111, 115 – 118, 120, 120n1, 128 – 129

Southwood, Katherine 8, 13n4, 70n21 speech, masculinity and 27 spoliation 82 – 84 Stavrakopoulou, Francesca 50n47, 59, 93 Stone, Ken 90 strength, masculinity and 27, 106 sustenance 88 – 91 Tamar 117 temple 39 – 40, 62, 67 – 68, 81 – 86 textuality 92 – 93 Thiede, Barbara 132 Torah 5 – 6, 68, 93 – 94, 111, 113, 115 trembling 64 – 66 Vaka’uta, Nāsili 121n4 Vázquez, Manuel 70n17 vessels 57, 82 – 84, 113, 130 virility 29, 56, 108; see also power Washington, Harold C. 14n33 weeping 2, 29, 56 – 57, 59, 62 – 65, 73n63, 74n79, 74n85, 80, 120, 130 Wellhausen, Julius 70n17 Williamson, Hugh 1, 10, 39, 58 women: as daughters 40 – 41, 117; as enemy 40 – 42; expulsion of 1, 4, 10, 41 – 42, 113 – 115, 129; golah and 39; impurity of 4, 17, 45 – 46; inferior status of 28 – 29; notion and definition of 24 – 25; reproduction and 118 – 119; silence and absence of 24 Wright, Jacob 17n73, 100n87 Yehud 6 – 9, 38 Zadok 56, 68 Zechariah (person) 85 – 86,  95n6 Zechariah, Book of 8 Zephaniah, Book of 74n83 Zlotnick, Helena 113 Zsolnay, Ilona 79, 90, 111