Abstract
This book examines marriage and sexual relations as they pertain to women in the Hebrew Bible. The first chapter focuses on sexual hospitality, broadly defined as “the customs that oblige a host to provide sexual gratification to strangers and outsiders as part of a boundless hospitality” (6). The second chapter is primarily concerned with non-marital relations, such as prenuptial defloration and the offer of a daughter or wife to a king or landlord.
The bulk of the book is found in the following three chapters, respectively dealing with baal marriages, metronymic marriages, and the intersection of these conjugal systems. Patronymic baal marriages are identified with male dominion, in which a woman leaves her family and tribe and lives with her husband and his kin. The husband assumes exclusive recourse to his wife’s sexuality and claims her offspring to his line. This contrasts with certain metronymic marriages that allow a woman to remain with her kin. One endogamous version of these marriages entails a woman marrying one of her own kin; both partners thus remain in their natal land and offspring are considered to be of joint descent. In other metronymic models a woman may remain in her natal land among her kin, while the husband moves to his wife’s clan. The offspring of such unions perpetuates the lineage of the mother’s kin. In beena marriages the husband resides with his wife and her kin on a permanent basis. Finally, in saddica or motá marriages conjugal relations occur on a temporary basis and are of varying durations. In examining specific texts, Gur-Klein notes that biblical stories often represent more than one conjugal pattern, an intersection which may lead to contradictions and conflicting imperatives. The best example of this is found in the Jacob story. Initially, Jacob moves in with Laban, his father-in-law, and functions as a beena husband. When Jacob leaves Haran, he attempts to transition to being a baal husband, or at least appears to regard his labour as bridal purchases. Laban, on the other hand, claims his daughters, their offspring, and Jacob’s labour as part of his communal household.
The final chapter examines the book of Ruth, focusing on widow marriage, and land and kin surrogacy. In her analysis, Gur-Klein draws attention to the fact that women’s sexuality and marriage relations are left to the mercy of the paternal network. She also notes, however, that characters like Ruth and Naomi display how women might work within this system and manipulate its laws and customs in their favour. This leads to one of the major points of the book, which is also the focus of the epilogue: the sexual and marriage life of women in the Hebrew Bible primarily reveals restriction and submission to male dominion but simultaneously depicts female agency and resistance.
Overall, Gur-Klein has provided an interesting and compelling read. Certain arguments, however, seem to stretch the evidence. Sexual hospitality, for instance, is never explicitly present in the Hebrew Bible, at least in its most typological form. To be sure, Gur-Klein only argues that certain biblical stories, like Genesis 19 and Judges 19, contain traces and residual components of this custom. The question is, however, how distorted a version of sexual hospitality must the text present before it lacks all traces of the custom? In the Sodom story, for example, Lot does not offer his daughters to the messengers, but to the Sodomites. In order to work around this, Gur-Klein argues that the role of outsider/guest is fulfilled by both the divine messengers and the Sodomites. Lot’s offering his daughters to the mob, therefore, is a distorted form of offering his daughters to the messengers. The reason for this distortion, for Gur-Klein, is that the thought of sexuality offered to the messengers is “inconceivable to the Hebrew text” (11). This does not seem to be a compelling reason for the distortion (cf. Gen. 6:1–4). Nor does it adequately deal with why the townsmen are also insiders (vilified precisely because they fail to offer hospitality); and Lot, the typological insider in Gur-Klein’s reading, is presented as an outsider as well, accused by the Sodomite mob as lacking authority over them because he came to them as a sojourner. The lines between insider and outsider in the story become so blurry that one wonders if they are useful designations at all.
This leads to another shortcoming in the book, namely a lack of deep readings of many of the discussed pericopae with a close attention to the details of language. Granted, the book is largely a topical one, and it would be outside the author’s stated purpose to provide a thorough analysis of all the features of any given text. When certain features directly relate to the author’s subject matter, however, they should at least be commented upon and examined in some detail. At the same time, it should be noted that some passages are wonderfully explored, such as the analysis in chapter 5 of the intersection of conjugal patterns in the Jacob story and in Judges 19–21.