FEMALE PROPHETS IN THE BIBLE AND RABBINICAL TRADITION: CHANGING PERSPECTIVES

Rachel Elior

For Shulamit Aloni
A woman of far-reaching vision

There are four female prophets mentioned in the Biblical tradition: Miriam, Deborah, Hulda and Noadia:

And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the Lord for He is highly exalted, horse and rider He has thrown into the sea" (Exodus 15:20-21 and passim).

Now Deborah, a woman prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time: and she sat under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hills of Ephraim and the children of Israel came to her for judgment (Judges 4:4-5 and passim).

So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam and Ahbor, and Shaphan and Asaiah, went to Hulda the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the clothes and she dwelled in Jerusalem in the second quarter and they spoke with her: And she said to them: “Thus says the Lord God of Israel…” (Second Kings, 22:14-15 and passim).

Remember Oh my God, Tobiah and Sanballat according to these their deeds and also Noadiah the prophetess and the rest of the prophets that would have made me afraid (Nehemiah 6:14).

The Bible describes Miriam as a prophetess and a poet who leads “the community of women” in the desert and raises her voice in song to express thanks on behalf of the public. Deborah is described as a prophetess and a judge who leads the people of Israel and initiates decisive political steps in the period of the Judges. Hulda is described as delivering the word of God to the Temple and palace leadership in Jerusalem and prophesying the fate of King Yoshiyahu and the people in Judah at the end of the period of the Kings. Noadiah is described as prophesying in the period of the return to Zion along with other prophets.

In Biblical tradition, female prophets are depicted as a natural phenomenon that is not the object of surprise, doubt or difficulty. The spirit of prophesy can inspire both women and men in various periods and under various circumstances that require “divine knowledge,” inspired leadership, far-reaching vision, initiative, educated criticism of prevailing perceptions, responsibility for public affairs, and the ability to express the insight of the public’s experience, to gladden or pain it with words and song. The ability to delve into reality and express its implications, to point out the disparity between what is and what should be, to formulate theoretical and practical needs in unique language and with divine inspiration, is attributed in the Bible to both men and women.

The rabbinical tradition, to which gender equality is alien, relates to the Biblical tradition of female prophets from a completely different viewpoint. According to the sages, women have neither place in leadership, public activism, positions of authority, nor in the world of study and creativity, or spiritual, legal or ritual leadership. This position (the significance of which I discussed in my article: “Nochechut Nifkadut -Presence And Absence: On The Question Of The Presence And Absence Of Women In The Holy Tongue, The Jewish Religion And Israeli Reality,” Alpayim 20, Am Oved 2000, pp.214-270) blatantly contradicts Biblical tradition, and necessitated a fundamentally different attitude to the women prophets that the Bible portrays as gifted with leadership, prophetic inspiration, the capacity to judge, as well as being blessed with wisdom, poetry and knowledge, a publicly significant voice or extraordinary creative talent.

The sages, who upheld a non-egalitarian ideology in the public realm and distanced the entire female community from the world of authority and knowledge, sought to minimize and diminish the image of extraordinary women who had been known for generations as prophets, judges and poets. They accomplished this by means of interpretations that obfuscated the uniqueness of these women, underplayed the significance of their prophesies, replaced the beauty of their spirits with the beauty of their bodies, and often even cast aspersions on their behavior and morals, portraying them in a humiliating and hostile light.

The rabbinical tradition grouped women who were known for their beauty and sexuality or for an extraordinary event connected with their bodies to the four female prophets who are mentioned explicitly in the Bible as having public status by virtue of inspiration. The sages added Sarah, Abigail and Esther to the gallery of female prophets, the common denominator between them, according to the Gemara, being their beauty: “There were four women of great beauty in the world: Sarah, Abigail, Rahab and Esther,” (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 15a). Not surprisingly, the discussion that follows this quotation is on the subject of prostitution, lewdness and seduction rather than prophecy or inspiration. The seven prophetesses that the sages mention are Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Hulda and Esther (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah, 14a). This list obscures the uniqueness of those women to whom the spirit of prophesy is explicitly attributed in the Bible (Miriam, Deborah and Hulda) and equates them with characters associated with exceptional physical prowess (Sarah, Abigail, and Esther for their beauty, Hannah and Sarah for being delivered from barrenness) but to whom no prophetic capacity is attributed. It is however, precisely the manner in which the sages describe the three who are explicitly part of the Biblical tradition that highlights the problematic nature of the disparity between the Biblical position and the new rabbinical position. The latter stripped women of spiritual status and creative power, forbade them a public voice, diminished their characters and prohibited them from occupying positions of influence, inspiration, authority and leadership.

The sages say, about Miriam Bat Amram and Yocheved: Miriam the prophetess was the sister of Aharon. Was she only the sister of Aaron and not the sister of Moses? R. Nahman said in the name of Rab - She was called this because she prophesied when she was the sister of Aharon alone saying: “My mother will give birth to a child who will redeem Israel.” When he was born the whole house was filled with his light. Her father arose and kissed her head and said: “Your prophecy has been fulfilled my daughter.” But when they threw him into the Nile her father tapped (struck) her on the head and said: “Where is your prophesy my daughter?” So it is written, and his sister stood far off to know, what would be the outcome of her prophecy. (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah, 14a)

In this tradition the speakers ignore the circumstances under which Miriam prophesies in the Bible (Exodus 28,29), which are related to public status, prophetic and poetic inspiration, leadership of the female community in the desert, singing, dancing, and playing in public in order to give thanks to God for the deliverance from slavery to freedom (Exodus 15,20-21, Michah 3-5). They convert her story from a highly significant public-religious occasion to a family event, a secondary story subordinated to the main story of Moses. The tellers transfer the story of her prophesy to her childhood and return her to the familial realm, to the authority of her father who praises her for the message and upbraids her for her apparent falsification, striking her on the head in anger. Miriam the Biblical prophet and poet, who lifts up her voice in song in the public realm, becomes, in rabbinical tradition, a wife and midwife (Sotah, 11) who is described as the wife of Hur or the wife of Caleb (Sotah, 11) and the mother of Bezalel (Shemot Raba, Chapter 45). In other words she is described as a child, a wife, a mother and someone who engages in a female profession, in a manner that seeks to deny her prophetic uniqueness and its extraordinary public mien.

Deborah is described in Biblical tradition as a prophetess, judge, and poet active during the period of the Judges after the death of Ehud Ben Gera and Shamgar Ben Anat (Judges 4:4-24, 5:1-31). This is the woman who instigates a war in the name of God, escorts the commander in the battle against the Canaanites, and interprets the essence of the changes taking place during this war in poetry of rare lyrical force. The sages however, are deprecating: “Deborah, as it is written (Judges 4) and the prophetess Deborah the wife of Lapidoth. Why eshet lapidoth? Because she would make wicks for the Temple. And she sat beneath a palm tree….because she was avoiding privacy,” (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah, ibid.). Deborah the prophet, a leader of vision, a judge who is the object of pilgrimage, an independent woman of vast wisdom, with far-reaching discretion touching on redemption and the initiation of war, prophesy and interpretation of the word of God, and poetry in praise of God becomes in rabbinical interpretation a woman who spins wicks to be lit in the Temple and takes to sitting beneath a palm in public lest she be suspected of consorting with those who seek her advice and judgment. The sages interpret the expression Eshet Lapidoth / woman of great light, which like Eshet Hayil / woman of valor, is an expression of power and strength, as referring to the flame (lapid) of a candle with a wick woven by Deborah. The diminishment of her character in the rabbinical tradition is reinforced by the interpretation of her “sitting beneath a palm tree between Ramah and Bethel in the hills of Ephraim,” which in the Bible is the background of the verse “and they came to her for judgment” (Judges 4:5) - as concern for her modesty. The rabbinical tradition transforms her important public status - which transpires widely from the literal-pshat reading of the Bible as a place of authority, judgment, leadership, initiative, public responsibility, inspiration and creativity that are not connected to sexual identity but rather to spiritual and intellectual eminence and wisdom, power of expression and far-sightedness - into a position associated with the weaving of candle wicks, reverence and modesty.

Hulda, the Jerusalem prophetess of noble lineage, who prophesies to the palace and Temple leadership in the second book of Kings, becomes - in rabbinical tradition - the descendent of the prostitute Rahab: “Eight prophets that were priests came forth from Rahab the harlot…R. Yehudah says even Hulda the prophetess was among the descendents of Rahab the harlot,” (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah, 14b). Hulda is not described as a prophet in her own right, but as a relative of the prophet Jeremiah who substitutes for him under duress. According to the sages, the high priest and palace leadership who in the Bible turn to Hulda because of her prophetic rank, only did so for lack of an alternative, because they needed Jeremiah the prophet, when he was out of the city, having gone to return the ten tribes (Megillah, 14b). Another tradition offered in the same text explains the application to Hulda rather than her contemporary Jeremiah because women are merciful and ameliorate the confrontation with reality because of their weakness. This however is not corroborated by the severe prophecies ascribed to her as detailed in the Bible. Another tradition that tries to diminish the significance of the public application to Hulda says that Jeremiah would prophesy in the markets and Hulda among the women (Pesikta Rabbati), and yet another sheds doubt on her prophesy itself “Is Hulda indeed a prophet?” (Pesahim, 9).

The discussion of Deborah and Hulda in Tractate Megillah does not content itself with diminishing their images, obfuscating the uniqueness of their prophecy, assimilating their marginality and exchanging primary for subordinate, but condemns them for their arrogance and disparages their honor:

The sages say that arrogance is not becoming of women and say that there were two arrogant women whose names are abominations, ziburta and karkashta. Ziburta (badland) is Deborah, who is called this because she sent for Barak instead of going to him, and karkashta (a Rat) is Hulda, who in prophesying the king’s fate said, “tell the man” instead of “tell the king” (ibid.).

Deborah is accused of arrogance not only in Tractate Megillah, but also in Tractate Pesahim 66, where it says that her prophesy was taken from her because of her arrogance.

In Talmudic language ziburit is lean and barren land, and hence a term used for something degraded, rejected, and undesirable, the opposite of what is respected, desired and valuable. The noble prophetess Deborah received this derogatory name because she sent for a man to come to her instead of going to him (an example of the expressions of the desirable power relations between the sexes in rabbinical thought, according to which a woman is always inferior to a man in public and subordinate to him in the private realm). Karkashta in Aramaic is a disease-bearing Rat. There is no need to expand on the derogatory implications of this name that refers to a rodent mammal that is harmful to man and endangers his health because it is a carrier of pestilence. The attribution of this derogatory name to Hulda the prophet is because she failed to use the proper respectful term in addressing the king. This testifies to the move made by the rabbinical tradition in overturning the image that transpires from the literal-pshat of the Biblical text. The sages set out to refute traditions in which spiritual power, divine inspiration, status, authority and leadership are attributed to women by creating alternative traditions in which they are associated with abasement, marginality and diminished value.

The sages are liberal with details that stress the physicality of the prophetesses who were added in the Talmudic tradition: Sarah, Abigail and Esther are connected with beauty, desire and seduction, and the significance of their intellect or daring and their spiritual weight are obviously diminished. The significance of their prophecy is clarified in an explicitly physical context: “R. Yitzhak said Yiscah is Sarah and why is she called , because she saw (sachta) in the Holy Spirit, as it is said, heed everything Sarah tells you. Another explanation is because all gazed (sochin) upon her beauty.” (Babylonian Talmud 14a). Abigail, a “woman of good understanding and a beautiful form” (First Samuel 25:3), whose wisdom, humanity and courage saved David from “shedding blood without cause” (ibid. 25:31) is, in the rabbinical tradition, associated with menstrual blood and exposing her dazzlingly beautiful body to assuage the darkness of David’s wrath. She is associated with prophecy because of the words she utters in her nighttime encounter “May my lord’s soul be bound in the bond of life,” (Megillah, ibid.). Of Esther, King Ahasuerus’s beloved, who lived in a harem and whose story is conveyed in a book that succinctly expresses the elements of patriarchal world-view: “and all the wives will honor their husbands, both great and small….that every man should rule in his own house” (Esther 1:2,22) - the rabbinical tradition says “And Esther wore royalty…only the holy spirit clothed her,” (Tractate Megillah, ibid.)

The common denominator that the sages added to the prophetesses is that their actions were connected to their physical beauty, the realm of personal modesty, or the visible and desired physicality, and not to the public, the audible spiritual, read or written. This is contrary to the Biblical portrayal of the prophetesses, who are active in the public realm by virtue of their wisdom and inspiration and not their beauty.

Assimilation of the venal aspect of the characters of Biblical prophetesses and their association - explicitly or implicitly - with lewdness, clarifies how women whose voices were heard in the Biblical period are connected with “kol baisha erva – the indecency of hearing a woman’s voice” in the Mishnaic-Talmudic period.

The generations of Jewish literature, which after the Biblical period were written solely by men, contain diverse traditions that redescribe Biblical women from different points of view, formulated in the light of new values and changing needs. Attention should, however, be drawn to the fact that what the Biblical tradition regards as natural – prophesy, cultural status, public authority, leadership, judgment, intellect, wisdom and far-sightedness, all of which derive from a genderless creative spirit and can be the domain of both women and men – the rabbinical tradition, which removes women from positions of leadership and authority in the public realm and distances them entirely from the spheres of knowledge, spirit, creativity and law, posits as the object of criticism. This often contains a crude nuance of rejection, scorn, diminution and humiliation, effected by means of deliberate exegesis and systematic interpretations that posit a new story of marginalization.

The causes of the change in attitude toward the public and cultural status of Jewish women, which occurred during the transition from the ancient period to the Mishnaic-Talmudic period, are not clear enough. They may be related to patterns consolidated after the destruction of the Temple in times of distress and struggle for the continued physical existence of the nation, which necessitated recruiting women for exclusively reproductive purposes and led to their being banished from the public realm. It should be remembered however, that the claim for the male world’s exclusive intellectual authority is nothing more than one of a variety of positions offered by the generations of Jewish culture. It is rooted in rabbinical tradition and the prohibitive and discriminatory position that tradition takes in relation to women. This position had a decisive influence on the history of men and women in the Jewish world at a time when women were restricted to function solely within the family, body, sex and reproduction, condemned to being rejected from the public stage and had ignorance and silence imposed on them in spiritual areas and in the public realm – an influence that is in evidence right up to the end of the modern period.

* Citations from the Bible are loosely based on the translation issued by the Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1958. Citations from Tractate Megillah are loosely based on the Soncino English translation.

Rachel Elior is Professor of Jewish Philosophy at Hebrew University, Jerusalem and visiting professor at colleges and universities throughout the world. Her research includes the history of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, Messianism, Hasidism and Jewish women.

This article first appeared in issue no. 25 of Free Judaism, the quarterly journal of the Israeli Secular movement for Humanistic Judaism. It is reprinted here with permission of the publisher. It also appeared in Contemplate, Issue Two/2003, published by the Center for Cultural Judaism.

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