Moabite women,Transjordanian women,and incest and exogamy: The gendered dimensions of boundaries in the Hebrew Bible

1. Introduction

Moabite women are double trouble in the Hebrew Bible: they are both foreigner and female. Foreigners pose a problem of identity, even as they are the means by which identity is created. That is, the concept of ‘foreigner’ requires invented categories of Self and Other. As the texts of the Hebrew Bible work out what an ‘Israelite’ is, they seek to distinguish this identity from Israel’s neighbors. This is especially the case with close neighbors in the Transjordan, the Moabites foremost among them. Moab thus establishes geographical boundaries—with the important division along the lines of the Jordan River—as well as ethnic ones. David Jobling, in his seminal essay on the Jordan as a boundary, adds another layer to this division, suggesting that there is a deep structure to the west–east split of the Jordan in which the Cisjordan is structurally coded as male, while the Transjordan is structurally coded as female. ¹ In her book River Jordan, Rachel Havrelock builds on Jobling’s observations, displaying how Moab functions as a gender-deviant site and thus how the terms ‘Moab’ and ‘Moabite’ can reveal the gendered dimensions of geographical borders. ²

In this article, I explore how these issues of geographical, ethnic, and gender identity relate to each other. That is, I am interested in how the construction of masculinity or maleness in the Hebrew Bible relates to the construction of Israelite identity and, conversely, how femininity or femaleness relates to the construction of Transjordanian and Moabite identity. In analyzing these constructions, my focus is on Moabite (and other Transjordanian) women, for their stories are full of gender-bending ideology in which patriarchal gender roles are reversed. I examine, moreover, how the twin tropes of incest and exogamy relate to this ideology and how they reveal not just gender deviancy but also sexual deviancy and a pattern of anxiety over lost lineage and identity in the Transjordan. I begin with the story of Lot’s daughters, who serve as archetypal and paradigmatic Moabite women. From there, I move to an analysis of Moab as a site of exogamous anxiety and how this relates to the problematic status of the Transjordan territory overall, reading the stories of Zelophehad’s daughters and Jephthah’s daughter as examples of this. Finally, I will discuss the book of Ruth, which combines incest and exogamy through marriage of a Moabite and Israelite.

2. Lot’s daughters: incestuous origins

Regina Schwartz compares the ancient Israelites to Goldilocks, commenting on how they find ‘incest too hot, exogamy too cold, and something in between . . . just right’. ³ What is ‘just right’ is endogamy. To be sure, the terms incest, exogamy, and endogamy always call for further specification in any given context. It is, however, the logic by which these categories are established that is my focus here, and so I use the terms broadly. The incest taboo and the prohibition against exogamy reflect fears of lost identity from opposite sides of the spectrum. ⁴ The incest taboo reflects fear of losing identity in the Same. It provides rules concerning with whom it is too close to mix, copulate, and procreate (however ‘closeness’ is defined). The prohibition against exogamy, on the other hand, reflects the fear of losing identity in the Other. It provides rules concerning with whom it is too distant to mix, copulate, and procreate (however ‘distance’ is defined). Israel seeks to navigate between these two extremes in the Hebrew Bible, as Schwartz suggests, but the concern of this article is the flip side of that observation—namely, how Moab is associated with both incest and exogamy.

The story of Lot’s daughters (Genesis 19, especially vv.30-38) provides an origin story for the Moabites (and Ammonites). It is a perfect example of how the breaking of the incest taboo can result in a confusion of kinship boundaries, as the daughters’ incest with Lot creates a circularity of identity problems (instead of a linear progression from one generation to the next). That is, when Lot’s progeny goes back to their father in order to procreate (19.31-35), the family lineage encircles itself instead of moving outward. Robert Alter thus writes that one theme of the Sodom story is its implication that the Moabites and Ammonites ‘will be somehow trapped in their own inward circuit, a curse and not a blessing to the nations of the earth, in consonance with their first begetting’. ⁵ Indeed, this circularity is reflected in the many wordplays and puns within the text itself. The names of both the daughters’ sons (19.36-38), for instance, refer back to the incestuous act that produced them, thereby emphasizing their unusual origin: Moab (מואב‎) is glossed as ‘from the father’, and Ammon derives from Ben-ammi (בן־עמי‎), ‘son of my people’ or ‘son of my own kin’. The name ‘Moab’ takes pre-eminence in this literary play, as it is further punned upon in v.36 in the statement that daughters of Lot were with child ‘from their father’ (מאביהן‎). And v.37 plays with this yet again in the explanation that Moab is ‘the father of Moab (אבי־מואב‎) unto this day’. One could translate the verse more literally as, ‘and she called his name from-the-father and he is the father of from-the-father unto this day’.

Thus, by the end of the story, there is an absolute confusion and mixing up of kinship relations. Lot’s daughters are both mothers and (half-)sisters to their own sons. These sons are both the sons and grandsons of Lot, as well as (half-)brothers to their own mothers. Lot is both father and grandfather to his sons, and husband to his own daughters in the sense that he is father to their sons. The repeated designation of Lot as ‘father’ (אב‎) in the final cave scene (vv.30-38) furthers this irony (it is used ten times in these verses and five times within vv.31-33 alone). On one level, this again plays with Moab’s name (אב‎ and מואב‎), as if Moab is stuck in the circular movement from father to father, instead of the normal progression of father to son; however, it also plays with Lot’s own masculinity issues, for it is ultimately Lot’s daughters, not Lot, who preserve the father’s seed/offspring—even the desire to preserve seed/offspring is given to the daughters, as this acts as their motivation to commit incest (19.32, 34). ⁶ It is as if Lot, despite the multiple designations as a father, is deprived of his own fatherhood.

In terms of the gender ideology of the Hebrew Bible, therefore, Lot is feminized, while his daughters are masculinized. Lot is used by his daughters as a mere vessel for procreation, and in the sexual act itself he is an entirely passive character. This theme is also highlighted by the textual wordplay, particularly the well-known play upon the verb ידע‎ (‘to know’). When the Sodomites surround Lot’s house in 19.11-14 and demand ‘to know’ (ידע‎) the divine messengers, Lot responds by offering up his daughters who have not ‘known’ (ידע‎) a man as replacements. In this instance, Lot holds the position of power over his daughters; he is the father who knows whether or not his daughters have known another man. In the cave scene, however, this knowledge is reversed, for in each incestuous and intoxicated instance, it is noted that Lot does not ‘know’ (ידע‎) that he lay with his daughters (19.33, 35). In other words, Lot ‘knows’ his daughters without ‘knowing’ it. He is, as Zvi Jagendorf says, deprived of the ‘conventionally male qualities, both purpose and knowledge, [which] are given to his daughters who turn their father into a passive creature to be possessed and exploited for his seed’. ⁷ The Hebrew text never outright says that Lot’s daughters ‘know’ their father, but the reversal is obvious nonetheless—Lot becomes the feminine ‘known’ object and the daughters become the masculine ‘knowing’ subjects.

3. Exogamy, Moab, and the Transjordan

The implied site of the cave scene between Lot and his daughters is east of the Jordan, for this is where the Moabites and Ammonites are found in the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Lot becomes associated with this area in the very first split with Abra(ha)m in Genesis 13, and as Havrelock notes, this division ‘will be reenacted in every act by which the descendants of Abraham define themselves . . . [for] the Jordan . . . comes to distinguish the founder of Israel from his closest relation’. ⁸ Moab is the more significant line of Lot’s descendants (especially when Moab and Ammon are paired together), just as Moab is the elder child, the more significant thematic term, and the child of the elder daughter (the one who concocts the entire incestuous plan and schemes to have the younger follow suit) in Genesis 19. Accordingly, when Israel is seeking to enter Canaan during their journey from Egypt—or, more specifically, when they are looking to cross over the Jordan—Moab has an important role to play.

This begins with the story of Balak, king of Moab, and the prophet Balaam in Numbers 22-24. In these chapters, Moab functions as a barrier that seeks to prevent Israel from crossing the Jordan, as Balak hires Balaam to curse the Israelites. Thus, the descendants of Lot and the descendants of Abraham are now at war with each other. This division between the two peoples is reinforced by texts like Deut. 23.4-7 in which Moabites (along with Ammonites) are barred from entrance into the Israelite community for 10 generations. This passage recalls Balak’s antagonistic acts toward Israel and also accuses Moab of not meeting the Israelites with food and water during their journey out of Egypt—and so Israel is to establish, in turn, a pattern of hostility because of this lack of hospitality. ⁹

The tension between Moab and Israel in Numbers 22-24 leads to the episode at Shittim in which Israelite men begin ‘whoring’ (זנה‎) themselves with daughters of Moab (Num. 25.1). This is followed by Israelite idolatry, thereby echoing the strong warning in Exod. 34.12-16 against whoring after the gods of the inhabitants of the land and marrying their daughters. In seeming contrast to their incestuous origins, therefore, the Moabites now pose an exogamous threat. What stays the same, however, is the underlying depiction of Moab as a place of sexual deviancy. Like their foremothers, Lot’s daughters, moreover, it is implied that it is the daughters of Moab who do the seducing, for it is they who ‘invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods’ (Num. 25.2). So, while the gender reversal in this case is not as extended as it is in Genesis 19, it is still present, with the Moabite daughters acting as active enticers who lure the passive Israelite men into idolatry.

Indeed, the prohibition against exogamy in the Hebrew Bible, despite its varied presentations, contains a common patriarchal ideology in which it is women, and not men, who are the problem. That is, it depends on the construction of the foreign woman as a dangerous, deviant, and potentially active subject who can problematize Israelite male identity. The prohibition against exogamy, therefore, is an expression of men’s fear of being unable to control the sexuality of women, and thus, relatedly, the fear of being unmanly. In noting how the subject of exogamy for group identity rests on the issue of masculine identity, Claudia Camp further observes,

Insofar as men create and understand their masculine identity over against women as Other, this gender opposition becomes the basis for all other identity-creating oppositions. The intermarriage issue is inseparable—and gains its symbolic identity-creating force—from this deep-structural, androcentric dynamic. ¹⁰

Camp’s statement calls attention to the deep connection in the Hebrew Bible between the construction of ‘male-ness’ and ‘Israelite-ness’, and the latter’s dependency on the former. And given this, it comes as no surprise that we see this mixture of gender, ethnic, and territorial anxiety combined in the biblical figuration of Moab. It also helps explain the structural coding of Cisjordan and Transjordan as male and female, respectively (and, more generally, the gendered dimensions of territorial boundaries), as well as the gender-deviant status of Moabite women. For just as woman is not completely separate from man, given their shared status as human, Moab is not completely Other from Israel. ¹¹

This is displayed not only by the shared ancestry of Moab and Israel but also by their shared territory. That is, the geographical divide between Moab and Israel is not always completely clear, something that is perhaps best evidenced by the Transjordanian tribes of Israel: Gad, Reuben, and Half-Manasseh. For one, these tribes reveal that Israel is not confined solely to the Cisjordan; it is itself a nation divided into two areas. In both Numbers 32 and Joshua 22, there is resistance to their very existence. ¹² They pose a threat to the geographical and social integrity of Israel, and their request to settle in east bank territory is only begrudgingly accepted. ¹³ In fact, their separation from the rest of Israelite ‘proper’ alludes to Lot’s separation from Abraham. Both Lot (Gen. 13.5) and the Transjordanian tribes (Num. 32.1) are seductively drawn by their ‘seeing’ (ראה‎) of the land. And as their story unfolds in the Hebrew Bible, the Transjordanian tribes are consistently tainted with foreignness. They thus stand as a potent reminder that the divide between Israel and its non-Israelite Transjordan neighbors, like Moab, is not entirely definite and permanent. The tribe of Manasseh symbolizes this tension between unity and division, given that it is divided into Cisjordan and Transjordan halves. Jobling thus observes,

The tribe which mediates the problem of all Israel also recapitulates it. Israel is divided into two by the Jordan. But one of the tribes ensures Israel’s singleness by straddling the border. But that tribe is itself divided into two by the Jordan, and its singleness becomes an issue! ¹⁴

Further complications are found in the ambiguous geographical boundaries of Moab and the Transjordanian Israelite tribes, with the two often bleeding into each other. In some texts of the Hebrew Bible, Israel occupies land that once belonged to Moab—the explanation being that Moses conquered territory north of the Arnon river that belonged to Sihon, king of the Amorites, who had himself conquered the land from the Moabites (e.g. Num. 21.21-31; Deut. 2.26-37; Judg. 11.12-28), and this conquered land was then given to Reuben and Gad (Num. 32). In the background of such texts is the command in Deut. 2 (see vv.9, 19, 27, 39), which warns against taking Moabite and Ammonite land because it is the land of the descendants of Lot. Thus, the argument could be made that since Israel did not directly capture land from Moab, it did not break this command. This reasoning is not exactly convincing, though, and the convenience of the Amorites as a buffer between Israel and Moab may betray something else behind the text. ¹⁵ Moreover, many other texts in the Hebrew Bible assume that this region is Moabite. And even after the defeat of Sihon and the Amorites, this location is repeatedly referred to as Moabite territory (Num. 22.1; 26.3, 63; 31.12; 33.48-49; 35.1; 36.13; see also Isa. 15-16 and Jer. 48). ¹⁶ In light of such texts, Jobling suggests that Israel had a ‘mythic knowledge’ that these lands properly belonged to Moab (and Ammon) ¹⁷ —at the very least these texts reveal the great anxiety in the Hebrew Bible over Transjordan territory.

4. Zelophehad’s daughters

Transjordan Israel and Moab are thus sites of both difference and similarity, paralleling the story of Lot’s family and descendants as both outsiders and relatives. Moab is Other, but still geographically close and kin; Transjordan Israel mirrors this by being Self and insider, but still distant, since it is on the ‘other’ side of the Jordan. The affinity between Moab and Transjordan Israel is reflected in the portrayal of Transjordanian women in the Hebrew Bible, who function in similar ways to Moabite women and bring about similar anxieties.

A good example of this is the case of Zelophehad’s daughters, women who come to own land and are associated with the east bank of the Jordan. These daughters go before Moses with a request to receive their father’s inheritance, since their father died without sons (Num. 27.1-4). The characterization of Zelophehad’s daughters as active and forthright women resembles the characterization of Lot’s daughters. Zelophehad, moreover, is like Lot in that he has not produced any sons. Thus, just as there is concern over preserving the father’s seed in Genesis 19, Zelophehad’s daughters are concerned about preserving the name of their father (Num. 27.4). So, while Zelophehad is not exactly feminized in the same way as Lot, he does share the characterization of being a passive figure who needs his daughters to carry on his name and inheritance.

It is implied that the daughters of Zelophehad, moreover, are Transjordanian. For one, their request occurs while the Israelites are still in the Transjordan. ¹⁸ Machir and Gilead, moreover, are listed among their ancestors (Num. 27.1). Machir is consistently presented as a founder of the Transjordanian Manasseh (Num. 32.29, 40; Deut. 3.15; Josh. 13.31) and is often the father of Gilead. Gilead is the heros eponymos of the Gileadites (Num. 26.29) and is a name that can also encompass the Transjordan as a whole (Gen. 37.25; Judg. 5.17; 10.18; 1 Sam. 13.7). ¹⁹ The connection is thus subtly made that the active, conventionally masculine, presentation of the daughters is related to their (implicitly) Transjordanian roots.

Zelophehad’s daughters are thus ‘simultaneously distant and threatening’, as Havrelock notes. ²⁰ Accordingly, the next episode in which these daughters are involved reveals the many threats they pose. Male members of the tribe raise the issue of the daughters marrying out of the tribe, for they would carry their inheritance with them and transfer it to another tribe (Num. 36). This, of course, would deconstruct the notion of fixed tribal allotments. The concern reveals another unspoken fear too, although the text does not directly address it—namely, the fear of these daughters acting as the masculine partner in inheritance. This would deconstruct the gender ideology of having the male receive the inheritance. From this perspective, it also speaks to the concern that these Transjordanian women might marry Cisjordanian men and thus cause these men to settle in the Transjordan—much like the temptation of the Moabite women in Numbers 25.

The solution offered is that the daughters of Zelophehad are required to marry men within their own tribe. This form of endogamy is thus meant to alleviate the daughters’ strangeness. Once this act is accomplished, the daughters will no longer be landholders and men can continue the line of inheritance from generation to generation. In other words, the dangerous daughters are transformed into inheritance-less wives, vessels for their husbands to create sons through in order to restore the patriarchal order of things. It also solves the geographical boundary problem the daughters create. The implicitly Transjordanian women are confined to marrying Transjordanian men, and the potential criss-crossing of the Jordan—particularly the movement of men from the Cisjordan into the Transjordan—is avoided. ²¹

5. Jephthah’s daughter

The prevention of movement across the Jordan is found in the story of Jephthah and his daughter as well, but with a decidedly different fate for the characters. Jephthah is the only major judge who is Transjordanian, and his entire story centers around Transjordan issues. Moreover, this story again presents us with a father without any sons whose only progeny is a daughter. The presence of the daughter highlights the theme of Transjordanian women, especially with the focus on virginity and her eventual sacrifice.

Jephthah is introduced as a thoroughly Transjordanian character. For one, it is said that his father is ‘Gilead’ (Judg. 11.1), as if the entire Gileadite land begets him. ²² Jephthah’s mother, moreover, is a woman of harlotry (זנה‎), which links him to other Transjordan figures that relate to harlotry or secondary wives. ²³ The irony in this is that Jephthah, as a symbolic Transjordanian/Gileadite character, is both an insider and an outsider to the Transjordanian/Gileadite land and people. His own brothers throw him out of his father’s house because he is the son of another woman (Judg. 11.2)—again, this division is because of mixed genealogies and complicated family structures—but then plead to have him back as their head and leader (Judg. 11.6-10). This leads to his central battle with a non-Israelite Transjordanian neighbor, the Ammonites. And this battle against the Ammonites eventually devolves into an Israelite civil war, which takes place at the fords of the Jordan.

The pre-battle dialogue between the Ammonite king and Jephthah fixates on the disputed ownership of Transjordanian land. The Ammonite king forthrightly expresses that the reason for his attack is that Israel took Ammonite land in coming up from Egypt (Judg. 11.13). Jephthah responds with a retelling of Numbers 20-21 and Deut. 2, detailing how the land Israel took belonged to the Amorites, and explicitly denies the Ammonite king’s claim by asserting that ‘Israel did not conquer lands from Moab or Ammon’ (Judg. 11.15). The interesting addition of Moab in this denial points to a significant detail in the rest of Jephthah’s response in vv.16-22—namely that it focuses on Moab and avoids any explicit mention of Ammon whatsoever. ²⁴ Jephthah even proceeds to refer to the Ammonite god as Chemosh, though Chemosh is actually the Moabite god. This mention of Chemosh comes in the midst of Jephthah’s argument that each people’s god possessed a certain land, and that, moreover, Moab has at least as much of a claim to the land as Ammon (vv.23-25). It is clear that the problem of ambiguous Transjordanian territory is rearing its head here. While attempting to defend his claim against Ammon, Jephthah tacitly seems to admit that Moab does indeed have a claim to part of the land that Israel presently occupies. In 11.26, Jephthah states that Israel has been in this land for over 300 years and thus questions why the Ammonite king is only attacking now; this too, however, is an implicit admission that the land did not always belong to Israel and was once occupied by Moab/Ammon.

As negotiations stall, war breaks out, and Jephthah emerges victorious. His victory is predicated on his vow to dedicate ‘whoever emerges from the doors of my house’ as a burnt sacrifice when he returns from battle (11.30-31)—and the sacrificial object is tragically (but perhaps predictably) revealed to be his own daughter. ²⁵ The entry of Jephthah’s daughter into the story again highlights the connection between problematic land and problematic women. Of particular interest is how the success in battle is paired with, or contingent upon, the sacrifice of the daughter. In both cases, there is the risk of Transjordanian pollution/contagion. And indeed, the problems that Transjordan land presents (such as loss of identity and power) are mirrored in the problems that Jephthah’s daughter presents. Havrelock notes, for instance, how Jephthah’s daughter, as an only child, could press a claim for territory like Zelophehad’s daughters, and thus presents a problem for set gender and inheritance roles that needs to be solved (or removed) in some way. ²⁶ The focus on the daughter’s virginity might highlight this, as she is a (sexually available) Transjordanian woman who could seduce Cisjordanian men into crossing over. As her father’s daughter, moreover, the issue of lineage would be even more anxiety inducing, since it is not clear that Jephthah himself has an inheritance in Gilead, given his marginal status. ²⁷

There is, moreover, an interesting correspondence between the daughter’s sacrifice and the sexual anomie and incest that characterizes the Moabites and Ammonites. Francis Landy thus observes,

The sacrifice of a virginal daughter to God in the paternal home corresponds to, and reverses, the possibility of incest. Sexual union between father and daughter is the antithesis of, and equivalent to, the consumptive union of the daughter with the patriarchal deity in the flame. ²⁸

Similarly, one might note how the sacrifice of his daughter connects Jephthah to Lot—to the archetypal Transjordanian man who is feminized by his daughter(s)—for Jephthah’s sacrifice is a type of castration. Both stories, furthermore, reveal the pattern of anxiety over lost lineages and identities in Transjordan territory. In Lot’s case, however, the father’s seed is preserved, while Jephthah’s sacrifice results in the end of his family line.

The sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter, therefore, produces a complicated result. On the one hand, as I have mentioned, it ‘solves’ some of the troublesome issues that Transjordan daughters present; however, it does so by implying a connection between Israel and its non-Israelite Transjordanian neighbors. Child sacrifice, like incest, is supposed to be what the perverse Moabites do, as in King Mesha’s sacrifice of his eldest son in 2 Kgs. 3.27 (a sacrifice, it should be noted, that was also meant to ensure victory in battle), and not what Israelites do—but the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter (which makes her into a type of cult figure) shows that the difference between the two peoples is not as firm as it seems.

Jephthah’s victory over the Ammonites is thus a pyrrhic one not only because of the toll of having to sacrifice his daughter (his sole progeny) but also because this very daughter is a symbol of the blurring of identity that calls into question the validity of the battle in the first place. This is highlighted in the ensuing battle between the Gileadites and the Ephraimites in Judg. 12.1-6. The victory against the Ammonites only leads to a civil war. In other words, the battle to protect against Transjordanian contamination only leads to an internal battle of Transjordanian Israel against Cisjordanian Israel. It is no surprise, therefore, that the battle centers on the fords of the Jordan and the prevention of the Ephraimites from crossing over. ²⁹ The Shibboleth test itself is symbolic in this regard, as it simultaneously reveals the difference between the Ephraimites and Gileadites and the minuteness of that difference. Havrelock astutely comments,

The Jordan brings into relief a minute but irreducible variant of pronunciation—a consonant that determines who can cross and live. The absurdity of difference hanging on a consonant reflects back the emptiness of territory as a signifier. The border has created the arbitrary differences that it claims to protect. ³⁰

The themes of Transjordanian contamination and the blurring of boundaries and identity are also highlighted in the ritual that commemorates the death of Jephthah’s daughter, in which daughters of Israel lament over her for four days of the year (11.39-40). Jobling points out that the text implies a crossing over of the Jordan, as it seems that women from all Israel go to the Transjordan to enact the custom. ³¹ If so, this would represent a reversal of the ‘proper’ movement of women from the east bank to the west. It would, moreover, be a distorted parallel to the obligation of Transjordanian men having to fulfill their cultic obligation on the west bank, as is outlined in Josh. 22.10-34. That is, just as Transjordanian men go to the west bank to fulfill their cultic obligation, so do the Cisjordanian women go to the east bank to fulfill theirs. The east bank is again presented as a place that is different, alien, and rebellious—where things like incest, child sacrifice, and irregular cultic activity occur (centering around issues of gender). Of course, as we have seen, the east bank is not fully other, and such ‘irregular’ activities are done by the Israelites as much as they are by their neighbors. ³²

6. Ruth: incest and exogamy

In the book of Ruth, the themes of incest and exogamy fuse and blend together, just as the character of Ruth combines the identity of Israelite and Moabite. The book begins with the movement from Cisjordan to Transjordan, and the marrying of Israelite men to Moabite women (1.4). The anxiety of exogamy thus rears its head, and the fear of lost identity and genealogies is highlighted by the death of the male members of the family—Elimelech, Mahlon, and Chilion—in foreign territory. ³³ By the end of the book, the movement is reversed, as women cross over from the Transjordan to Cisjordan, and the line of the father is preserved there through marriage to a Cisjordanian man. The method by which Naomi and Ruth secure the marriage to Boaz is especially noteworthy, for the seduction of Boaz on the threshing floor in Ruth 3 echoes the rape of Lot by his daughters and highlights the incestuous undertones in the book.

By working out a marriage between a Moabite and an Israelite, the book of Ruth can be understood as a polemic against, or variant of, other biblical texts that prohibit exogamy altogether. From this perspective, Ruth contrasts with the notion of ‘holy seed’ that is developed in Ezra and Nehemiah—that is, the notion that Israelite ‘seed’ can be kept pure by the removal of all foreign lineage, particularly foreign women. The Moabites and the Ammonites are included in this list of foreigners (see Ezra 9.1) and are even singled out at times (see Neh. 13.1). Ezra and Nehemiah thus reflect the recurring theme of dangerous exogamy associated with Moabites that extends back to texts like Numbers 25. The book of Ruth offers an alternative version of exogamy by showing the advantages of marrying a Moabite and thereby breaking down the divide between Moab and Israel. ³⁴

Indeed, the marriage of Ruth and Boaz brings together the lines of Lot and Abraham that were separated in Genesis 13. Lot is the father of Moab and thus the ancestor of Ruth; Abraham is the father of Judah, who is the father of Perez, and Boaz comes from the line of Perez (4.18-22). ³⁵ On an even broader level, the marriage draws attention to the reunification of Terah’s line. Thus, just how the marriages of Isaac with Rebekah and of Jacob with Rachel and Leah brought together the lines of Abraham and Nahor, now, through the union of Ruth and Boaz, Abraham’s line is reunited with Haran’s (the father of Lot) (Gen. 11.27). ³⁶ The bringing together of these lines, however, points to the interesting status of Ruth, for she is portrayed not just as a Moabite foreigner but also as a kinswoman—Eunny P. Lee aptly calls her a ‘foreigner-kinswoman’. ³⁷ That is, she is kin who has become foreign since the generations of separation from the time of Lot (and this kinship is then reaffirmed by her union with Boaz which unites the separated lines).

With this in mind, we can now see more clearly the connection between exogamy and incest in the book, for Boaz’s marriage to Ruth is exogamous but is tinged with incestuous links. This is perhaps most obvious, as I mentioned above, in Ruth’s seduction of Boaz in ch. 3, since it characterizes her as a typical Moabite woman (active and sexually deviant) that echoes the rape of Lot by his daughters. The scene is less explicit than that of Lot’s daughters with their father, though it is full of sexual innuendos. There is, for instance, the uncovering of Boaz’s feet, ³⁸ implying the uncovering of genitals; the mention of sexually suggestive terms like ‘lie down’ (שׂכב‎) and ‘enter/come’ (בוא‎), along with Naomi’s instruction for Ruth to make herself ‘known’ (ידע‎) to Boaz; the invitation to Boaz to spread his ‘wing/skirt’ (כנף‎) over Ruth; and the setting of the threshing floor (a potential symbol of fertility and licentiousness). ³⁹ Like Lot, moreover, it is perhaps suggested that Boaz is intoxicated, given his ‘merry heart’, after a night of eating and drinking (3.7, see also 3.3). In each case, therefore, the aged patriarch (compare Ruth 3.10 with Gen. 19.31) is implicitly feminized by being the unwitting object of seduction.

The incest theme in the book of Ruth is also highlighted by another important intertext: Tamar’s seduction of Judah in Genesis 38. Indeed, as Harold Fisch notes, there are not only significant thematic and symbolic parallels between the stories of Lot and his daughters, Judah and Tamar, and Ruth and Boaz, they are all episodes in the history of a single family as well. ⁴⁰ As I mentioned above, Judah is the father of Perez, and Perez is the son that Tamar bears from her seduction of Judah (Ruth, moreover, specifically draws attention to this in 4.12). The story of Tamar, therefore, serves as a mediator between Lot’s daughters and Ruth. It shares with the other two stories several important features: the initial ‘abandonment’ theme (in which the women are thrust into a desperate situation without men to continue the father’s line), a scene of (sexual) deception (between a father and daughter figure), and the eventual preservation of the father’s line. Fisch points out that all three stories evoke the law of levirate duty (see Deut. 25.5-10)—even though none of them are explicitly about a husband’s brother and the brother’s wife—and this links the stories together through the theme of incest. ⁴¹ Thus, not just Ruth’s lineage (the Moabite one) but also Boaz’s (the Israelite one) contains traces of incest. Of particular interest is how the incest theme is softened in the line from Lot’s daughters to Ruth, as it moves from explicit father-daughter incest to a stage removed in Judah and Tamar (father-in-law and daughter-in-law) to another stage removed between a metaphorical ‘daughter’ (Boaz calls Ruth ‘my daughter’ in 2.8 and 3.10-11) and a close kinsman.

Similar progressions can be found in other ways as well. In each of the three stories, for example, there is a growing self-awareness of the man and an increased concern with moral justification. In Genesis 19, Lot remains without knowledge of his daughters’ actions and there is no judgment provided. Judah, although initially unaware, eventually discovers what happened and comes to realize that Tamar is a more righteous character than he is (Gen. 38.26). Boaz, for his part, is only partially deceived and comes to accept his responsibility as kinsman; moreover, his union with Ruth is celebrated and accepted by the elders of the gate and the neighborhood women (it is, therefore, a union approved by law, custom, and public observers). For Fisch, these progressions point to an important purpose: redemption. The function of the story of Ruth is ‘to “redeem” the previous episodes in the corpus’, exemplified by the frequency of the root גאל‎ (redeem) in the book. ⁴² He thus writes,

Of whom, we may ask, is Ruth the redeemer? Might it be suggested that she is the redeemer of the unnamed ancestress who lay with her father in Gen xix? Just as Boaz is the ‘redeemer’ of his ancestor, Judah who, in an only slightly more edifying fashion, ‘went in’ to the supposed prostitute at the crossroads leaving her his seal, his cord and his staff as a pledge. Boaz redeems that pledge. ⁴³

Thus, the Ruth-Boaz story, in a meta-critical fashion, is a means of redeeming the entire corpus. It takes the incestuous origins of the Moabites and brings them back into the Israelite story By way of Israel’s own (implicitly) incestuous past.

In contrast to Fisch, however, I would caution against seeing any clean formula of redemption. If Ruth does offer redemption, as David Gunn and Danna Fewell observe, it is a ‘compromising redemption’. ⁴⁴ The book is a reflection of ‘the complex of difference and kinship that constitutes Israel’s relationship with other’ ⁴⁵ and thus holds in tension its paradoxical stances and duplicitous meanings and characters. It displays how Moab is both a symbol of alien territory and archaic matrix, just as Ruth is both foreigner and kinswoman. Similarly, it reminds the reader that for every Ruth there is an Orpah (who returns to Moab), for every Boaz there is a Machlon (an Israelite who dies in Moab), and for every Machlon there is a Chilion (an Israelite who not only dies in Moab but whose name is not perpetuated). One may even further note that the genealogy at the end of the book (4.18-22) does not mention Machlon (or Elimelech) at all—thereby effacing the very effort to raise up the name of the dead.

The ambiguity and deconstructive traces surrounding kinship and geography in the book are further highlighted when one considers issues of gender. The relationship between Moab and Israel is altered when the focus is not between a man and a woman/women but between two women; in other words, opposition turns into alliance by merely changing the gender of one of the players. ⁴⁶ Similarly, Mieke Bal notes that Boaz is a hero because he ‘dares to assume the point of view of the woman’, and thus he accepts being positioned in the female role. ⁴⁷ While Mieke Bal attributes this only to the Boaz of ch. 4, one can see this in Boaz’s recognition scene in ch. 3 as well, especially his declaration that Ruth is a ‘woman of worth’ (אשׁת חיל‎) (3.11), itself a reflection of the description of Boaz as a ‘mighty man of worth’ (אישׁ גבר חיל‎) (2.1). ⁴⁸ The parallelism in description suggests an equivalence between the two and how they work together as a pair. From another perspective, however, we might note how Boaz is the least feminized man of the Ruth corpus in terms of sexual cognition (compared to Lot and Judah), and thus the most masculine and fatherly. The concluding genealogy, moreover, effaces not just Machlon (and Elimelech) but also Ruth and Naomi. They are transformed from central protagonists to vessels for male reproduction; the peasant women’s story becomes deflected to that of men and future kings. ⁴⁹ The gender bending that the book has played with (in a line that extends back to Lot’s daughters) thus seems to revert back to archetypal patriarchal mystification, the subsuming of the female into the male. ⁵⁰

7. Conclusion

Ruth offers an appropriate conclusion to this inquiry into the gendered dimensions of Moabite and Israelite relations, for whether the book celebrates or simply acknowledges the presence of strangeness within Israelite identity (both exogamous and incestuous), it does not eliminate anxiety about it. Indeed, the primal anxiety found in the story of Lot and his daughters concerning masculine identity—patriarchal authority and the need to preserve the father’s seed—is perhaps what ultimately ties together the texts I have analyzed in this article. More specifically, it speaks to the fragility of the Hebrew Bible’s patriarchal construction of masculine identity. Thus, whether it is seen in the navigating of territorial boundaries, proper sexual behavior, or kinship relations, this issue is always present. This article has shown, moreover, how all of these concerns revolve around the biblical figuration of Moab (Israel’s quintessential Transjordan Other) and Moabite women.