Abstract
This article contends that ancient Near Eastern gender ideals concerning masculinity are brought to bear by the Exodus narrative to shape an effective rhetoric, a rhetoric which compares and contrasts the primary male characters of the narrative: Yhwh, Moses, and Pharaoh. The text portrays these male characters as variously fulfilling or failing to meet ancient Near East masculine ideals in order to array Yhwh, Moses, and Pharaoh in relation to one another as effective males. In doing so, the text casts Yhwh as a male character who meets the ideal, Pharaoh as a male character who falls short of the ideal, and Moses as a male character who wavers in between the two. By drawing upon ancient gender ideals to shape its rhetoric, the text reinforces these gender ideals, rather than deconstructing them.
1. Introduction
Biblical scholars began employing gender theory as a lens through which to read the biblical text with the advent of Second Wave Feminism. Even then, it was primarily employed, and rightfully so, to illuminate the places of women within the biblical text in order to highlight the patriarchal ideology driving the text. These explorations of the text from feminist perspectives have exposed the ideologies that drive the depictions of feminine characters within the Hebrew Bible (HB). The various depictions of masculinity within these texts, however, has only recently begun to be explored by scholars such as David Clines, Ovidiu Creangă, John Goldingay, Rhiannon Graybill, and Brian DiPalma. 1 These recent forays into how ideologies of masculinity function within the texts of the HB have demonstrated the necessity of grasping the full range of a culture’s ideologies in order to better understand the rhetorical moves of the texts that we study. 2
I will contend that the Exodus narrative, particularly chapters 1–14, is a text in which the ideals of masculinity within the ancient Near East (ANE) and ancient Israel were employed by the author(s) to implement the rhetorical goals of the text. My plan is to bring recent masculinity theory to bear on Exodus 1–14, primarily because of the development of helpful ways of thinking about gender ideals and relations of power, including effective rhetoric. I will first explore some of the pronounced ideals of masculinity in the ANE and the text of the HB. Then, I will turn to an examination of how these ideals are at work in these chapters in the depictions of the chief male characters of the narrative: Pharaoh, Moses, and Yhwh. Other studies have focused on the masculinity modeled by Moses, and DiPalma has compared the masculinities of Moses and Pharaoh. Yet no study has yet traced how the deity is portrayed as a male character in these chapters. 3 Scholars have underlined Moses’s failures to enact an ideal masculinity in Exodus and throughout the Pentateuch, and such an emphasis has led scholars to explore how Moses’s portrayal deconstructs a hegemonic ideal. 4 Yet, a focus on how the text compares and contrasts Moses and Pharaoh alone as male characters has skewed past analyses of the ideal masculinity inscribed by the Exodus narrative. Lacking a consideration of Yhwh’s role in the narrative as a male character, some scholars contend the Exodus narrative offers ‘a critical evaluation’ of the ideals and assumptions that support a hegemonic masculinity. 5 My analysis explores how Yhwh, Moses, and Pharaoh enact the traits of an ideal masculinity with differing degrees of success. In doing so, I will describe how the text’s rhetoric upholds and reinscribes the ideals of an ANE hegemonic masculinity. My goal then is to trace the text’s rhetorical moves to highlight the use of gender norms as rhetoric and demonstrate how ANE gender ideology can contextualize one’s reading of the text of Exodus.
2. Masculininty theory
Recent approaches to masculinity studies are characterized by the interdisciplinary employment of history, ethnography, the social sciences, and post-structuralist theory in an effort to flesh out the diversity and fluidity of masculinities. 6 There has been a move away from psychological or social approaches that have associated masculinity with a personal idea or natural identity, 7 while there has been a move toward the recognition that social and economic structures are influential in the construction and maintenance of masculine identities. 8 Such approaches, rather than positing static and pre-existing norms of masculinity, explore the ongoing construction and re-construction of coexisting masculinities within a culture. 9 In attempting to describe masculinity, we must realize that we are doing so within a single cultural location—a constructed location that differs within a single culture diachronically and among separate cultures synchronically.
Gender is an aspect of social practice that is active, fluid, and integrated within other structures of social practice (class, race, etc.). 10 Masculinities are not isolated constructions but inter-related, complex structures that are determined by and determiners of other social practices. This description of masculinity as a product of gender relations, as a constantly changing and reactive social practice, cautions us against attempting to pin down a single masculinity or even a single expression of one out of multiple masculinities. Raewyn Connell identifies four primary locations of relation among different masculinities in a society: hegemony, subordination, complicity, and marginality. Hegemonic masculinity is the place of domination wherein a certain projection of masculinity is prided—in relations of power, production, and cathexis—over others. Subordinated masculinities are those defined relationally by their lack of or antithesis to the current hegemonic masculinity. Complicit masculinities are those that support and benefit from the hegemonic masculinity without embodying many or any of its claims in practice, and the location of marginal masculinities allows us to think outside of gender relations alone to include issues of class and race in the interaction of masculinities. Again, current relations and power structures are always subject to change, as has been demonstrated throughout history, and so the social process of masculinities is a field of political claims and power struggles. 11
Since there has been some confusion of the term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ in current gender research, 12 I would like to stress that I understand hegemonic masculinity as an ideal masculinity through which the relations of other masculinities are ordered and understood. I am not claiming that hegemonic is the most widespread or widely practiced form of masculinity (that, in my understanding, would be complicit masculinity), but rather is the ideal (or, one ideal) form of masculinity within a culture. 13
3. Biblical gender criticism and (an) ideal masculinity
3.1. Recent research in biblical gender criticism
The application of theories based on modern issues, such as masculinity studies that observe and quantify the actions of modern men, cannot always be applied one-to-one to biblical or ANE texts. It is necessary to probe the ancient textual and material witnesses in an effort to understand how masculinity was understood, at least broadly, by an ancient society. In doing so, we must also be careful to realize that masculinities stand in relation to one another, most likely a tense relation, but a relation nonetheless. It can be dangerous when considering a masculinity of the HB to create only one masculinity and fail to recognize other expressions of masculinities within the texts. 14
Ken Stone explores the differences in role and depiction that the HB assigns to male and female. These differences, such as the concept of man as subject and woman as object in kinship arrangements, are often not based upon the minor biological differences between male and female but upon societal assumptions and constructions. Indeed, the different traditions of the HB witness to the fact that ‘maleness’ is not determined only by being biologically male but also by certain culturally determined ‘male’ actions. So, it is possible for males within a society to attain to different levels of masculinity. Those who do not attain to certain levels of masculinity may be depicted as feminized (and the opposite may occur with women who are masculinized). Such reversals are obviously not meant for the purpose of simply separating between males and females; they serve to create divisions within a single sex group. Gender distinctions are thus able to serve as devices of characterization or plot development, often in a move to assign honor or shame to a character or group of characters. Again, there is fluidity in gender distinctions. There is an ideal that is expected of male and female within a society, but the usage of gender distinctions explicitly to mark out characters that fail to meet the ideal opens up places of slippage in a culture’s gender categories. 15
The above theoretical reflections behoove us to investigate what the HB presents as an ideal, hegemonic masculine identity. 16 Despite the diversity of the HB, an ideal warrior–king masculinity seems to be shared across many texts. However, in some places, this masculinity seems to be stretched or altered, and in other places, the hegemonic masculine ideal comes under (partial) attack. At times, we may view subordinate or marginalized masculinities within different texts or parts of the canon, and at other times particular texts seem to offer a new ideal masculinity. A hegemonic masculinity cannot maintain its place without flexibility and evolution, and so some texts that critique the hegemonic ideal may in fact be coalescences with new situations and reflect an evolution of the reigning masculinity. 17
3.2. An ideal masculinity in the HB: Warrior–King masculinity
I have chosen to focus primarily on examples of masculinity and masculine action from the DtrH and early prophets in order to provide an ANE and specifically biblical picture of the likely masculine ideals that the Exodus narrative accesses. This is both because of the likely pre-exilic origins of these texts (the early layers of the DtrH and the pre-exilic prophets) as well as their content; they are texts often concerned with kings, nations, and gods. This content and the masculine activity portrayed in such contexts provides a suitable background for understanding the masculine activity and relations depicted in the Exodus narrative.
Violence and success in warfare
Within these texts, central masculine characters are often depicted as warriors or men of strength. 18 Capability in battle and training in warfare is depicted as one facet of ideal masculinity, particularly in the DtrH (for example, Josh. 17.1; 1 Sam. 4.9; 16.18; 18.7; 2 Sam. 17.1–4, 8–10; 22.35; 1 Kgs. 11.28; 2 Kgs. 5.1). The hegemonic ideal of masculinity that seems to hold sway in the majority of the DtrH is often characterized with words that denote strength—גבורה, חיל, זרוע, כח, and עז. 19 Throughout the DtrH, the ideal man was often capable and courageous in battle, a successful warrior. 20 This ideal of violence and success in warfare was integrally connected to masculine identity in ancient Israel. Harold Washington argues that this ideal was so ingrained that it was valorized in texts created and circulated even when Judah’s army was failing or non-existent. 21
3.3. Sexual control
A second aspect of ideal masculinity in these texts is sexual dominance and control. The sexual dominance of a man in his household was reflected in his ability to produce progeny and to control all sexual advances made toward those or by those within his household as the active sexual partner in his household. 22 A man who ruled his house well controlled the women in it and controlled his own sexual desires as well. 23 Males in the DtrH are characterized by their active status as sexual partners: they penetrate, control, dominate. 24 While this may not be true of every male in the DtrH, it is the majority view of masculinity, that is, the hegemonic ideal. 25 Women, in contrast, are depicted as objects and receivers. 26 As Ken Stone points out in his impressive survey of sexual acts in the DtrH, these texts over and over again depict men as the subjects and initiators of sexual action while women are portrayed as objects. These texts evince an ideology in which hegemonic males are sexually dominant. 27 Making the connection between sexual dominance and physical strength, Hilary Lipka notes that the imagery of bow and arrows (Ps. 127.3–5) connects the ideas of physical strength to sexual fecundity. 28
3.4. Producing progeny and making a name
Another aspect of an ideal masculinity in the HB is making a name for oneself, specifically through procreation and progeny. 29 Both Mark George and Jacob Wright identify ‘making a name for oneself’ as a masculine ideal in the HB; 30 as Wright puts it, ‘With few exceptions, our sources represent this as a distinctly male ambition’. 31 Though, as Wright points out, making a name was often accomplished through violence and success in warfare (see discussion above as well as 2 Sam. 18.6), both Wright and George contend that in the HB making a name through the production of a son is prided over making a name through violence. 32 Deuteronomy legislates this move to establish progeny as the primary way for a man to make a name for himself in Deuteronomy 20.7 and 24.5. As DiPalma notes, ‘As exemption from such a culturally predominant activity as warfare could be granted to produce a child, it is crucial for masculinity in Deuteronomy’. 33 The levirate marriage laws in Deuteronomy 25 also highlight the importance of a man producing a son so as to establish a name for himself. Prolific procreation seems to be an ideal throughout the biblical literature, and it is important to note that men are listed as ‘begetting’ sons in genealogies: production of sons and making a name is a masculine practice. 34
3.5. Provision and protection
Provision and protection for a household is another aspect of an ideal masculinity in the HB and the ANE, an aspect that is often intertwined with dominance in both violence and sex. 35 Stone highlights the connection between provision of needs and sexual control in Hosea, but then broadens to ANE fertility gods, such as El and Ba’al, in general. 36 Concerns of food, provision, conception, and childbirth often intersect in interesting ways around fertility gods in the ANE, and Stone notes that these gods are predominantly male. 37 Stone contends that the contest depicted between Baal and Yhwh in Hosea is primarily a competition between males. The rhetoric of the text maps categories of ideal masculinity, provision and sexual control, onto the contest between the two deities; it is Yahweh who provides agricultural productivity or opens and shuts the womb, not Ba’al. 38 Importantly for our consideration of the Exodus narrative, Brian DiPalma has pointed to Ex. 21.10 in the Covenant Code as another example of how provision for a woman and/or family was integral to an ideal masculinity. 39
4. Tracing the gendered rhetoric of Exodus 1–14
These four aspects: Violence and Success in Warfare, Sexual Dominance and Control, Progeny and Making a Name, and Protection and Provision provide a broad starting place from which to picture what one ideal conception of masculinity may have looked like in pre-exilic Israel/Judah when the beginnings of the DtrH and the prophetic books were produced. At this point, it is useful to outline how these aspects of an ideal ANE masculinity were accessed and employed as a rhetorical tool to frame and compare the lead masculine characters of the Exodus narrative.
4.1. Violence and success in warfare
In the opening chapters of Exodus, violence is already at play in the characterization of Pharaoh, Moses, and (implicitly) Yhwh. The ‘new Pharaoh’s’ primary worry is the proliferation of the Israelites and their possible capacity for violence. He devises a plan to cut them off before they reach such capacity (Exod. 1.10). When his efforts at oppression do not work, Pharaoh counters the possibility of future violence with his own violent acts. Pharaoh commands the Hebrew midwives 40 to kill all of the sons born to the Hebrews. When the midwives prove resistant, Pharaoh ramps up his attempt and goes public; he commands all of his people to cast any boys born to the Hebrews into the Nile (Exod. 1.22). With these acts of violence, Pharaoh attempts to solidify his dominant position over the Hebrew people. Yet, the irony of the narrative is that Pharaoh’s violent action is thwarted and he is depicted as a failed warrior (Exod. 1.17–18). Pushing the irony even further, Pharaoh is not just thwarted, as if he were met ‘in battle’ by a band of Hebrew soldiers who stop his commands of violence from being carried out, but he is countered and defeated by women. 41 In response to his first command to slay them (Exod. 1.16), the midwives instead let the boys live (Exod. 1.17). In addition, they persuade Pharaoh that the Hebrew women themselves are the problem: they are just different from Egyptian women (Exod. 1.19)! Exodus 2.1–10 is an extended response to Pharaoh’s violent commands and the situation set up in chapter 1. Here, several different women, both Hebrew and Egyptian, subvert Pharaoh’s violence. Moses’s mother ‘sets [שׂים]’ Moses into the river rather than ‘throwing [שׁלכ]’ him, and Pharaoh’s daughter has compassion on Moses rather than slaying him (Exod. 1.22–2.6). 42 The narrative opens with a scene that depicts Pharaoh as a failed man, a man who cannot even enact violence on children who are protected solely by women.
Yhwh and Moses are portrayed differently in chapters 1–2. Yhwh’s role is harder to determine in the earlier chapters than either Moses’s or Pharaoh’s roles. Yhwh is seen at work motivating and blessing the midwives who resist Pharaoh (they work in the fear of God and are rewarded with houses), and it is also implied that it is Yhwh at work in the proliferation of the Israelites in the first place. 43 Still, Yhwh does not explicitly take up the masculine role of violent warrior until chapters 4–14. Moses, however, at this early stage is more successful in his acts of violence than Pharaoh. For example, Moses stops an Egyptian man from beating a Hebrew. Moses, in turn, beat the Egyptian to death (כאשׁר הרגת את־מצרי; Exod. 2.14). Yet, Moses’s action does not fit the ideal of a war hero. Another Hebrew questions Moses’s violent action. This Hebrew neither fears Moses nor is he impressed by his action. In a further departure from the heroic ideal, Moses flees from Pharaoh, who intends ‘to kill (להרג)’ Moses (Exod. 2.15). Though Pharaoh does force Moses to flee, Pharaoh’s violent intentions again go unrealized. Amid these complications, Moses appears as a successful warrior in the following episode as he routs the shepherds in their attempt to ‘drive off (גרשׁ)’ Jethro’s daughters. So, Moses’s failure to consistently meet the masculine ideal of successful violence complicates his masculine characterization. Yet, the opening chapters of Exodus cast Moses as a more successfully violent male than Pharaoh. The violent acts of these males serve as a foil for Yhwh’s action as a masculine character in the coming chapters (Exod. 4–14).
In chapters 3–6, the text does not foreground violent action; rather, these chapters explore Moses’s subservient role to Yhwh. In chapters 3–4 particularly, Yhwh calls Moses to act on his behalf to challenge Pharaoh and lead Yhwh’s people out of Egypt. Yet, violence is present even in Yhwh and Moses’s relationship. For example, Graybill notes that in Exod 4.6, Yahweh strikes Moses with a scale disease (מצרעת) in an act that serves both to threaten Moses’s doubt as well as index the prophet’s power. 44 Another example is the strange interlude of chapter 4.24–26, which Graybill marks out as a text ‘fundamental to understanding Moses’s performance of masculinity’. 45 Yhwh encounters Moses during his travels and threatens either him or his son with violent action (ויפגשׁהו יהוה ויבקשׁ המיתו). 46 The meaning and focus of this interlude has been much debated. Yet, when reading through the lens of masculinity, Yhwh’s violent action demonstrates his power over Moses and his relation to Moses as a male character in the narrative. 47 Moses’s wife Zipporah intervenes to curb Yhwh’s threat. This text portrays Moses as threatened and passive in ‘a reversal of the ordinary expectations of biblical masculinity’, framing Yhwh as a masculine character who enacts the masculine ideal by violently securing his position of power. 48 Moses, however, fails to maintain this ideal as successfully as the deity. While Moses accepts his role in relation to the deity, Pharaoh does not acquiesce to Yhwh so readily. In the following chapters, Yhwh’s violent action further demonstrates his success over Pharaoh and his place as the dominant male over both Moses and Pharaoh.
In chapters 7–14, Yhwh comes on stage as the central masculine character whose actions may now be measured against the actions of Moses and Pharaoh, the other masculine characters in the narrative. Chapters 5–6 set the scene for Yhwh’s violent action. Pharaoh has refused to acquiesce to Moses’s request, thus denying Yhwh’s authority (Exod. 5.2). Pharaoh asserts his own power by adding to the people’s burdens, enforcing his command with violent action (Exod. 5.6–14). The contest is set. Yhwh declares that he will take back his people with ‘an outstretched arm and great judgments’ (Exod. 6.6). That is, Yhwh will defeat Pharaoh with violent action—with an outstretched arm. 49 In the following chapters (chapters 7–14), this motif is the primary theme. The language of violence associated with Yhwh’s arm/hand indicates Yhwh’s position as successful warrior and thus ideal male. Similarly, the violent nature of the language used to describe Yhwh’s plagues and the episode that casts Yhwh as warrior against Pharaoh and the Egyptian army marks Yhwh’s position as a successful male. In all of these narrative threads, the rhetoric employs violence as an aspect of an ideal masculinity. Violence identifies Yhwh and Moses along with him as successful characters and Pharaoh as a failed character. 50
Throughout the plague narratives, Yhwh repeatedly proclaims his ability to strike down Pharaoh and Egypt with his hand (Exod. 7.4–5; 9.3, 15; 13.9, 14). The plague narratives begin with such a statement in Exod. 7.4–5 when Yhwh tells Moses that he will stretch out his hand against Egypt (ונתתי את־ידי במצרים). This threat is fulfilled in the warlike plagues that follow. The plagues are equated with the hand of Yhwh throughout (Exod. 9.3); the violence and utter destruction brought about by the multiple plagues are Yhwh’s warrior acts against Egypt. If the repeated demonstrations of Yhwh’s warrior prowess through the plagues is not enough, Yhwh explicitly declares his dominant warrior position in comparison to Pharaoh: Yhwh proclaims that he could wipe out Pharaoh and Egypt with his hand at any moment (Exod. 9.15). Even the magicians of Pharaoh’s court recognize Yhwh’s hand, literally ‘finger (אצבע)’, at work against them in the acts of the plagues (Exod. 8.15). By contrast, Pharaoh cannot even lift a ‘finger’ against Yhwh or against Yhwh’s people in retaliation. 51 Pharaoh’s violent threats against Moses in 10.28 are never fulfilled. His attempts to kill the Israelite male children in chapter 1 fail. For his part, throughout the plague narratives, Moses takes part in the violent action of Yhwh. For example, he initiates many of the plagues through violent acts with the staff given to him by Yhwh. 52 At the beginning of the narratives, Moses’s staff swallows (בלע) the staffs of Pharaoh’s magicians (Exod. 7.12). Later, Moses strikes the Nile (Exod. 7.17) and the dust (Exod. 8.13). 53 Yet, in relation to Yhwh Moses is not a dominant male. He simply assists Yhwh. Nevertheless, he is far more involved in the masculine actions of violence and conquering than Pharaoh.
Even when Yhwh does not enact violence with his own hand, the language describing the plagues sent upon Egypt connotes war and violence. The plagues themselves are acts of war against Egypt. The land itself bleeds: the Nile is turned to blood (Exod. 7.19, 21). Yhwh ‘strikes (נגף)’ Egypt with frogs that ‘swarm (ושׁרצ)’ and ‘go up (ועלו)’ against the Egyptians (Exod. 7.27–29). 54 Egypt is filled with gnats and flies that ‘invade (ויבא)’ and ‘ruin (תשׁחת)’ the land of Egypt (Exod. 8.12, 17, 20). 55 The hand of the Lord is against the livestock of Egypt so that they die (Exod. 9.3–6), sends boils upon the Egyptians (Exod. 9.9), and sends hail to ‘strike (נכה)’ and kill the livestock and crops (Exod. 9.19–25). Yhwh sends locusts to ‘cover (כסה)’ and ‘devour (ואכל)’ the land (Exod. 10.5). 56 Finally, Yhwh slaughters the firstborn sons of all of Egypt. Yhwh is the sole actor; Yhwh himself threatens this plague in the first person: ‘I will come . . . and all of the firstborn will die’ (Exod. 11.4–5) and ‘I will pass through the land of Egypt in the night, and I will strike all of the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal’ (Exod. 12.12). The narrative culminates in Yhwh’s climatic action as warrior, ‘Yhwh struck (נכה) down all of the firstborn in the land of Egypt . . . there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house in which death was not present’ (Exod. 12.29–30). This scene turns the narrative of chapters 1–2 on its head. Pharaoh is a failed warrior, unable to kill. Unlike Pharaoh, Yhwh slays Egypt’s sons. Yhwh succeeds in the masculine action that Pharaoh could not accomplish at the beginning of the narrative.
The war that has been one-sided up to this point shifts in chapter 14. Pharaoh attempts once again to take up the warrior role by mobilizing his army and pursuing the Israelites. The scene is set: Yhwh and Pharaoh are set to clash on the battlefield as generals. The more capable warrior, and thus the more capable male, will be the one to rise victorious. 57 Just as Pharaoh’s mustering of his armies marks him as a warrior, so the text also highlights Yhwh’s role as warrior. As Pharaoh’s army approaches, Moses attempts to calm the Israelites with the cry, ‘Yhwh will fight them for you, so you now be silent!’ (Exod. 14.14). One warrior must win. Yet, v. 14 also marks how Yhwh breaks the script of competing generals: Yhwh takes on the entire Egyptian army alone. He wrecks their chariots, turns the sea against them, and casts those fleeing back into the waters (Exod. 14.25–28). The chapter ends with an image of the Egyptian conquered and dead, lying on the shore of the sea as the Israelites recognize the ‘great (martial) hand/power (היד גדלה)’ of Yhwh. Throughout Exodus 1–14, violence is utilized as one aspect of an ANE masculine ideal to highlight Yhwh as a successful male character over and against Pharaoh. Moses assumes a submissive position in relation to Yhwh, yet his relationship to Yhwh highlights Pharaoh’s complete failure as a male character in comparison to both Moses and Yhwh.
4.2. Sexual control 58
Sexual dominance or control is not an immediately obvious theme of masculinity in the Exodus narrative. Yet, it does shade the account. In chapters 1–2, Pharaoh attempts to solidify his dominant position through both violence and sexual control. The ideal man in the HB controlled the sexual actions within his household. 59 Pharaoh attempts to control the sexual reproduction of the Israelites, who are in his household in the sense that they are in his power. The plan Pharaoh sets in place in chapter 1 is a clear attempt to regulate the Israelites’ reproduction rate; he asserts, ‘Let us act wisely towards them lest they become numerous’ (Exod. 1.10). Pharaoh first attempts to exhaust them so that will not have the energy to reproduce (Exod. 1.11–14). When this plan fails, Pharaoh turns to explicit violence to deal with the Israelites’ proliferation. In 1.15–16, Pharaoh seeks to control what happens on the ‘birthing stones (האבנים)’. 60 Pharaoh’s action through midwives and not soldiers or some other means hints that Pharaoh is attempting to control sexual outcomes.
It is ironic then that the midwives, who should be subservient to Pharaoh as both his servants and as females, eschew Pharaoh’s commands. Instead, these women act in service to a different male, Yhwh (Exod. 1.17). Pharaoh fails to establish any control over the sexual actions of his household; the Hebrew women continue to bear ‘like animals’ or ‘with liveliness’ (כי־חיות הנה) despite Pharaoh’s attempts at control (Exod. 1.19). 61 The language of 1.7, 10, 12, and 20 (פרה, שׁרץ, רבה, פרץ) is related to creation and Yhwh’s promise to the patriarchs that he would multiply their descendants, which signals that Yhwh is involved with the miraculous fecundity of the Israelites. 62 In Exod. 1.20, the proliferation is attributed directly to Yhwh. Exodus 2.1–10 further underscores Pharaoh’s lack of control over reproductive outcomes by continuing to demonstrate his failure as a male in the face of resistance from women. Just as the midwives did in chapter 1, the women of chapter 2 work against Pharaoh’s commands, keeping him from demonstrating sexual control. Pharaoh is a failed male in light of the ideal, while Yhwh is portrayed as a male able to exert control over the reproduction of his people.
4.3. Producing progeny and making a name
The birth of Israel is a dominant theme in the Exodus account. 63 The book opens with this theme with the miraculous fecundity of the children of Jacob/Israel, who quickly grow from a family group to a nation: ‘Look, the people, the children of Israel, are too numerous and mighty for us’ (Exod. 1.9). Throughout the narrative, Yhwh protects these children as his own. 64 He ties them to himself with commandments for the future (Exod. 12–13). Yhwh makes a name for himself though his children by means of the law. The laws covering commemorative acts such as celebrating Passover and dedicating the firstborn of all people and livestock to Yhwh call upon the people of Israel to remember Yhwh and his acts on their behalf. 65 These actions serve a pedagogical function to maintain Yhwh’s name for successive generations. In the production of progeny, Yhwh is a masculine character who meets the underlying cultural ideal.
Pharaoh, on the other hand, fails to maintain this masculine ideal. At first, Pharaoh seems to meet this ideal; he is a king with a son to follow him and perpetuate his name. Yet, a contest focused upon this aspect of masculinity is set up early in the narrative between Pharaoh and Yhwh. It begins, as sketched out above, with Pharaoh’s attempt to solidify his power over the Israelites by killing all of the Israelite boys (Exod. 1–2). Pharaoh fails in this task, and then soon after Yhwh explicitly names the contest with his ominous statement to Moses in 4.22–23: ‘Then you will say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, ‘Israel is my firstborn child’. I said to you, ‘Send out my child so that he may serve me’, yet you refused to send him out. Therefore, I am going to kill your firstborn son’. This contest is the climax of the plague narrative. In 11.4–6, Yhwh threatens Pharaoh (through Moses): ‘At midnight, I will come into the midst of Egypt, and all of the firstborn in the land of Egypt will die. . . . Then there will be a great outcry in all of the land of Egypt, like which there never has been and like which there never will be again’. Finally, in chapter 13, Yhwh carries out this threat. Not only does Yhwh threaten Pharaoh’s progeny and thus Pharaoh’s masculine identity by killing his firstborn son, but he goes further and slaughters all of the firstborn sons of all Egyptians, human or animal. Yhwh tears away Pharaoh’s progeny (and so also his name for himself in the world). Yhwh then proceeds to produce his own progeny by bringing them out of Egypt. Not only is Pharaoh a failed man in that he no longer has a male descendant, he also fails to protect and provide for his people, as Yhwh takes all of Egypt’s firstborn children.
In contrast to Pharaoh, Moses does produce a male child (2.21), and, unlike the Egyptian children, the child survives Yhwh’s threats (4.24–26). Yhwh’s threat of violence depicted within Exod 4.24–26 also represents a threat to progeny in order to arrange masculine relationships in a hierarchy of power. The text’s ambiguity simultaneously displays Moses surviving a threat to his body and to ‘his genealogical line—second-degree sterility, narrowly avoided’. 66 In this way, the text portrays Moses as a more successful man than Pharaoh. Yet, in comparison to Yhwh and his children, Moses’s son is mentioned only a few times within the narrative (Exod. 2.22; 4.20; 18.2–6) and never seems to play an important role; at no point in the Pentateuch does Moses’s son take up his mantle or provide his father with a reputation. On the contrary, it is Joshua, Nun’s son, who takes up Moses’s mantle. So, while Moses is portrayed as a more successful male character than Pharaoh, his own masculinity pales in comparison to Yhwh’s.
4.4. Protection and provision
The text invites comparison between Yahweh and Pharaoh in their ability to provide for and protect their respective people. 67 Yhwh provides for his people throughout the narrative, at first, obliquely, by providing houses for the midwives of the children of Israel (Exod. 1.20–21). 68 Provision and protection language is interwoven throughout the plague narratives: Yhwh works to ‘deliver the children of Israel from their midst’ (Exod. 7.5), to make a distinction between the children of Israel and the Egyptians during the plagues by protecting the Israelites and their livestock (Exod. 8.18–19 [ושׂמתי פדת]; 9.4 [והפלה יהוה], 26; 10.23), to provide the Israelites with spoils and protection as they leave the land (Exod. 11.2–3, 7; 12.35), and to protect the Israelites from the advance of the Egyptian army (ch. 14, esp. vv. 29–30). Yhwh’s constant provision for and protection of his own people in the midst of Egypt is a prominent theme of the narrative. Yhwh protects his household even as he attacks, despoils, and destroys the Egyptians and their land. The double-edged violence and provision aspect of Yhwh’s character is wonderfully illustrated by the multiple references to Yhwh’s ‘hand [יד יהוה, ידי]’, discussed above in relation to Yhwh’s warrior prowess. Yhwh’s hand is described as both striking the Egyptians and as delivering the Israelites. With this imagery, Yhwh is rendered simultaneously as a warrior and as a provider. 69 Yhwh is set up as an able provider even as Pharaoh is cast once again as a failed male. Indeed, the correlate of Yhwh’s actions to provide for the Israelites is frequently an action of despoiling the Egyptians.
In contrast to Yhwh, throughout the plague narratives Pharaoh repeatedly fails to provide for his people or protect them against Yhwh’s onslaught. Many of the plagues specifically mark out Pharaoh’s inability to provide food, water, and shelter for his people in the face of Yhwh’s wrath. For example, in the description of the first plague it is noted that the Nile will be made unfit for provision of resources: ‘Each fish that is in the Nile will die and then the Nile will stink. Then the Egyptians will no longer be able to drink the water from the Nile’ (Exod. 7.18). Later in the chapter, the frogs sent by Yhwh invade not only Pharaoh’s abode but also ‘the house[s] of your servants and among your people, as well as your ovens and your bowls’, complicating the peoples’ ability to feed themselves (Exod. 7.28). Yhwh kills the Egyptians’ livestock and then strikes the people with boils and blisters (Exod. 9.4–6, 9). This is followed by further destruction of the Egyptians’ land and food sources with the plagues of hail and locusts (Exod. 9.26; 10.15). Pharaoh is even helpless to stop his people from giving their very possessions to the Israelites as they flee (Exod. 11.2–7; 12.35). Pharaoh is represented as a male who is unable to provide for or protect his people throughout the narrative, whereas Yhwh functions as an endless source of provision for his people. On one occasion, even Moses is portrayed in the role of successful protector and provider when he rescues Jethro’s daughters from the shepherds and then tends to their flocks (Exod. 2.17–19). Though his protection pales in comparison to Yhwh’s acts of provision and protection, Moses’s act of successfully providing for the daughters further shames and emasculates Pharaoh.
5. Conclusion
Throughout the Exodus narrative, the primary male characters—Pharaoh, Moses, and Yhwh—are arrayed against one another and ranked in light of their effectiveness as ideal males within an ANE context. The texts access and foreground at least four aspects of ANE ideal masculinity: 1. violence and success in warfare, 2. sexual control, 3. production of progeny and name making, and 4. provision and protection of subordinates. These cultural ideals concerning an ideal masculinity function in the text as rhetorical tools, serving to present Pharaoh as a failed masculine character and Yhwh as a highly successful, dominant masculine character. Throughout the narrative, Moses is portrayed as a character who pales in comparison with Yhwh as a hegemonic male character while at the same time ranking above Pharaoh in his embodiment of these aspects of masculinity. 70 That Pharaoh is unable to enact his masculine role even in comparison to Moses confirms his emasculation. I propose that Moses is portrayed as only partially embodying the script of ideal masculinity in order to heighten the rhetoric concerning Yhwh’s fulfillment of this role and Pharaoh’s inability to enact this role. That is, the depiction of Moses’s masculinity does not consciously undo or deconstruct this ideal masculinity but rather reinforces it and brings it to bear rhetorically against the character of Pharaoh. 71 As this study demonstrates, culturally accepted gender norms were drawn upon to shape the characters of the Exodus narrative and the dynamics of the text–that is, to construct effective rhetoric.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr Carolyn Sharp for instilling in me a passion for the study of rhetoric and an understanding of the cultural situatedness of all rhetorical endeavors. I would also like to thank Dr Jeffrey Audirsch, Dr Brent Strawn, and Dr Joel LeMon. They read and commented upon multiple earlier drafts of this work, sometimes in protracted conversation over the larger concepts and at other times in notes within paper marginalia. Their critique and feedback has most certainly shaped this work for the better. Finally, I would like to thank Dr LeMon for his support, encouragement, and critique. I cannot imagine having completed this piece without his investments of time and his kind, thoughtful discourse. I, of course, take all responsibility for any remaining mistakes or oversights.
1.
David Clines, ‘Biblical Traits of Davidic Masculinity’ in Interested Parties: Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible, ed. David Clines (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 212–43; John Goldingay, ‘Hosea 1–3, Genesis 1–4, and Masculist Interpretation,’ HBT 17 (1995): 37–44; Ovidiu Creangă, ‘Variations on the Theme of Masculinity: Joshua’s Gender In/stability in the Conquest Narrative (Josh 1–12),’ in Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, ed. Ovidiu Creangă (Sheffield: Sheffield Pheonix Press, 2010), 64–82; Rhiannon Graybill, Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Brian DiPalma, Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel: Advancing Gender Studies in the Hebrew Bible, Routledge Studies in the Biblical World (Abingdon; Routledge, 2018).
2.
Of course, the multiple studies that have attended to how different aspects of ANE culture were employed to shape the Exodus narrative reinforce this point. For example, how Yahweh and Pharaoh are cast as competing warriors (Patrick Miller, The Divine Warrior in Early Israel [Atlanta: SBL, 1973]; c.f. Peter Enns, Exodus, NIV Application Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000], 196–239), how Yahweh’s power is portrayed in relation to Egyptian deities (Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus, trans. Israel Abrahams [Jerusalem: Central Press, 1967], 97 and 129), how Moses and Pharaoh are contrasted as competing deity-kings (Gary Rendsburg, ‘Moses as Equal to Pharaoh,’ in Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion, Brown Judaic Studies 346, ed. Gary M. Beckman and Theodore J. Lewis [Providence: Brown University, 2006], 201–19), or the royal aspects of Moses and Yahweh’s relationship (Danny Matthews, Royal Motifs in the Pentateuchal Portrayal of Moses, LHBOTS 571 [London: T&T Clark, 2012]). This study explores how ANE conceptions of masculinity shape the rhetoric of this narrative. It is an attempt to add another layer to an ideologically contextual interpretation of the Exodus narrative.
3.
David J. A. Clines, “Dancing and Shining at Sinai: Playing the Man in Exodus 32–34,” in Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, ed. Ovidiu Creangă (Sheffield: Sheffield Pheonix Press, 2010), 54–63; Brian Dipalma, ‘De/Constructing Masculinity in Exodus 1–4,’ in Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, ed. Ovidiu Creanga (Sheffield: Sheffield Pheonix Press, 2010), 36–53; Graybill, Are We Not Men?, 23–47. DiPalma actually argues against viewing the deity as a male character in Exod 1–4, contending that the deity enacts no traits that are specifically masculine and displays no gendered body in the text (DiPalma, ‘De/Constructing Masculinity in Exodus 1–4,’ 48, note 15). Eilberg-Schwartz, however, has shown that de-gendering the body of God in the Hebrew Bible is an approach influenced largely by Western and particularly modern philosophy, and, despite the fact that the deity’s gender is complicated by some biblical texts, the reigning conception of Yhwh throughout the HB is that the deity is male (Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism [Boston: Beacon Press, 1994], 1–10). I will contend below that the deity does indeed embody and enact aspects of an ANE ideal masculinity to function as a successful character in the Exodus narrative.
4.
Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus, 142–52; DiPalma, “De/Constructing Masculinity in Exodus 1–4,” 36–53; Graybill, Are We Not Men?, 23–47.
5.
See Brian Dipalma, ‘De/Constructing Masculinity in Exodus 1–4,’ 36–7. Graybill also draws attention to how Moses’s body fails to display the masculine ideal and how, ‘Moses repeatedly breaks with hegemonic masculinity’ (Graybill, Are We Not Men?, 34). Graybill uses Moses’s body as an entrance to viewing ‘prophetic masculinity as an alternative to the dominant norms of gender and embodiment found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible’ (Graybill, Are We Not Men?, 14). Yet, she pursues this task with an eye to how the reigning masculine ideal is still upheld by the text in other ways, such as the presence of Yahweh who, as a masculine deity, threatens and ‘destabilize[s] human masculinity’ (Graybill, Are We Not Men?, 40; cf. Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus, 60–64).
6.
See Sonya Rose, What is Gender History? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), 27–29. A lack of dichotomous gender categories is demonstrated in the fact that multiple societies throughout history have maintained different (from Western) and multiple gender categories. Gender is in large part a performed social process, and so changes in performance result in different locations of gender. See R. W. Connell, Gender in World Perspective (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 109.
7.
It is a mistake to assume that gender distinctions (rather than say, sexual reproductive distinctions) are natural and based upon a biological dichotomy. See Connell, Gender in World Perspective, 5; also see Hilary Lips, Gender: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2014), 16.
8.
Candace West and Don Zimmerman, ‘Doing Gender,’ Gender & Society 1/2 (1987): 126.
9.
Ethnographical research demonstrates that there is no stable, worldwide concept of masculinity that may be extracted from collected ethnographic data. See Connell, Masculinities, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 32–33.
10.
See Sonya Rose, What is Gender History?, 18.
11.
Connell, Masculinities, 76–86. Cf. Tod Reeser, Masculinities in Theory: An Introduction (West Sussux, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 14.
12.
James Messerschmidt, ‘Engendering Gendered Knowledge: Assessing the Academic Appropriation of Hegemonic Masculinity,’ Men and Masculinities 15 (2012): 64.
13.
Or, for this paper, one ideal within the literary construction that is the HB. Hegemonic masculinity is not meant to label that which is normal but rather that which is normative. See R. W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,’ Gender and Society 19 (2005): 832.
14.
Martti Nissinen, ‘Biblical Masculinities: Musings on Theory and Agenda,’ in Biblical Masculinities Foregrounded, ed. Ovidiu Creanga and Peter-Ben Smit (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2014), 271–76.
15.
Ken Stone, ‘The Un-Manning of Abimelech,’ in Judges and Method, 2nd ed., ed. Gale Yee (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 185–92. Stone’s exploration of Abimelech’s characterization is an excellent example. As Graybill points out, these places of slippage and fluidity might be explored from our vantage point as offering, ‘transformations to the very representation of “masculinity” as a category’ (Graybill, Are We Not Men?, 14).
16.
Though, as I study one particular construction of ideal masculinity, it should be noted that the biblical texts seem to reflect multiple different or shifting ideal masculinities, differing with their contexts and authors. For example, see DiPalma, Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel, 48–9.
17.
Hilary Lipka, ‘Masculinities in Proverbs: An Alternative to the Hegemonic Ideal,’ in Biblical Masculinities Foregrounded, ed. Ovidiu Creanga and Peter-Ben Smit (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2014), 86–87.
18.
Clines, ‘Biblical Traits of Davidic Masculinity,’ 212–43.
19.
Lipka, ‘Masculinities in Proverbs,’ 88–89. For example, חיל in Deut. 3.18; Judg. 21.10; 1 Sam. 16.18; 18.17; 2 Sam. 2.7. זרוע in Deut. 4.34; 2 Kgs. 17.36; Jer. 17.5. כח in Judg. 16.5, 6, 9, 15, 17. גבורה in Judg. 8.21; 1 Kgs. 15.23; 16.5, 27; 2 Kgs. 18.20; Jer. 9.22; 49.35; 51.30. Lipka suggests that each of these terms carry connotations of warfare and violence, even when they are not used to speak of war.
20.
Some examples might be traced with attention to characters labeled as warriors, גבור חיל or אישׁ מלחמה. Gideon is greeted by the angel of the Lord as a גבור החיל in Judg. 6.12, marking Gideon out as a leading warrior. In Judg. 11.1, the phrase characterizes the superior warrior quality of Jephthah, who is introduced as the liberator of the Gileadites after their question at the end of ch. 10: ‘Who is the man who will begin to fight against the Ammonites? He will be the head over all the inhabitants of Gilead’ (v. 18). The phrase here indicates a certain type of man, the hegemonic ideal, who will be able to step up to the task, though the label in this pericope most likely serves to further ironize the missteps that Jephthah makes. In 1 Sam. 9.1, the phrase is a description of Saul’s father. It is possible that it is an ascription of great wealth, as some modern translations understand it. However, it occurs right after the Israelites demand a king who will ‘go out before us and fight our battles’ in 8.22, so the ideas of a mighty warrior and a man of renown or wealth are likely tied together here. Saul is described as ויעשׂ חיל in 1 Sam. 14.48, a phrase that is set in apposition to ‘he struck down the Amalekites.’ 1 Sam. 15 glorifies Saul’s acts of war in striking (נכה in vv. 3 and 7) and destroying (חרם in vv. 3 and 8) the Amalekites. In 1 Sam. 18.17, Saul asks David to become a לבן־חיל for him, a phrase clarified by the following request to ‘fight the Lord’s battles.’ The phrase גבור חיל also occurs in 1 Sam. 16.18, used in a description of David provided by one of Saul’s servants. The description is preceded by David’s anointing. Here David is painted as an ideal man over and against Saul. The label refers to his prowess as a warrior, as it is followed immediately by the phrase, ‘man of war’ (אישׁ מלחמה). In 2 Sam. 17.10, Absalom is told that the hearts of even his בני חיל will melt before David, specifically because David is a גבור and those with him are בני חיל. In 1 Kgs. 11.28, the phrase accompanies the introduction of Jeroboam, a ‘mighty man of valor.’ It marks him as an ideal man, indicating why he was recognized by Solomon and again introducing a man whom God would select to be king.
21.
Harold Washington, ‘Violence and the Construction of Gender in the Hebrew Bible: A New Historicist Approach,’ Biblical Interpretation 5 (1997): 344.
22.
See Ken Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History, LHBOTS 234 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 43–6; Athalya Brenner, The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and ‘Sexuality’ in the Hebrew Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 136–39; Tikva Frymer-Kensky, ‘Virginity in the Bible,’ in Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, JSOTSupp 262 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 84–5; Lipka, ‘Masculinities in Proverbs,’ 89.
23.
Lipka (‘Masculinities in Proverbs,’ 89) points to the anxiety within the legal and narrative material over a man’s ability to control the sexual activity in his house in both those passages that discuss outsiders coming in to the house and those that discuss women going out seeking sexual activity such as Lev. 21.9 or Deut. 22.22–23.1. In these texts, anxiety is expressed both over outsiders coming in and women going out as in Deut. 22.23–24 or earlier in vv. 13–21. In vv. 20–21, it is the girl who is punished but the father who is shamed for his daughter’s behavior. Also see Gen. 34, the story of Dinah going out and encountering a man. See Frymer-Kensky, ‘Virginity in the Bible,’ 86–96 and Victor Matthews, ‘Honor and Shame in Gender-Related Legal Situations in the Hebrew Bible,’ in Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, JSOTSupp 262 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 108–12, for a thorough analysis of the Genesis and Deuteronomy texts.
24.
Indicated by the language used to describe sex in the HB, such as בוא אל and קרב אל. These phrases, when used in sexual contexts, almost always feature a masculine subject and a female object. The verb בעל, ‘to have sexual intercourse,’ always has a male subject, indicating a man’s dominant place in ‘mastering’ a female (see Deut. 21.13; 24.1; Isa. 62.5). Athalya Brenner (The Intercourse of Knowledge, 21–8) provides an overview of terms for sexual intercourse in the HB and the implications of how they are employed. Cf. Stone’s discussion of sexual actions in the DtrH and their concern with masculine honor and shame (Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History, 135–37).
25.
For example, in Judges 4 and 5, Sisera is penetrated as a sign of his demasculinization–a sign of his failure to live up to the hegemonic ideal. See Gale A. Yee, ‘By the Hand of a Woman: The Metaphor of the Woman Warrior in Judges 4,’ in Women, War, and Metaphor: Language and Society in the Study of the Hebrew Bible, eds. Claudia V. Camp and Carole R. Fontaine, Semeia 61 (Atlanta: SBL, 1993), 99–132.
26.
The term for female, נקבה, illustrates the female’s place as one that exists to be penetrated. See, J. Scharben, נקב in TDOT, v. 9: 551–53 on נקבה and its association with the verbal root נקב, ‘to pierce, penetrate.’ Brenner considers the cultural implications of this root forming the label for ‘female’ (Brenner, The Intercourse of Knowledge, 12–13). In Ezek. chs. 16 and 23, the text’s rhetoric is effective because of the reversal of this theme, wherein the woman seeks out sexual acts instead of being pursued by men. See Brenner, The Intercourse of Knowledge, 178.
27.
Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History, 135.
28.
Lipka, ‘Masculinities in Proverbs,’ 90. See also 2 Sam. 1.22; 22.35; 2 Kgs. 13.15–19.
29.
See Jacob Wright, ‘Making a Name for Oneself: Martial Valor, Heroic Death, and Procreation in the Hebrew Bible,’ JSOT 36 (2011): 126.
30.
Mark George, ‘Masculinity and its Regimentation in Deuteronomy,’ in Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, ed. Ovidiu Creanga (Sheffield: Sheffield Pheonix Press, 2010), 74–77; Also, Wright, ‘Making a Name for Oneself.’
31.
Wright, ‘Making a Name for Oneself,’ 132.
32.
Cf. Brian DiPalma’s excellent discussion of this issue in DiPalma, Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel, 67–8. Psalm 127, noted above, is also an example of a biblical text that valorizes both warrior masculinity and fecundity/procreation.
33.
DiPalma, Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel, 68.
34.
See the genealogies in Gen. 5.1–32; Ruth 4.18–22; 1 Chr. 1–9. As both Wright (‘Making a Name for Oneself,’ 132–43) and DiPalma (Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel, 67–71) demonstrate, the production of progeny was an aspect of ideal masculinity through the ANE, not just the HB.
35.
See particularly Hos. 2.7, 10–11, 14; 13.5–6; Gen. 3.17–19. 2 Samuel 21.1–11 demonstrates the responsibility of the king to provide for his people and their basic needs.
36.
On El and Ba’al as fertility deities, concerned with the provision of food and the production of children, see Jo Ann Hackett, ‘Can a Sexist Model Liberate Us? Ancient Near Eastern “Fertility” Goddesses,’ JFSR 5 (1989): 65–76.
37.
Contrary to popular understandings of ANE fertility cults as predominantly feminine or related to goddesses, see Ken Stone, ‘Lovers and Raisin Cakes: Food, Sex, and Divine Insecurity in Hosea,’ 116–39 in Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible, ed. Ken Stone (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001), 123.
38.
See Hosea 2.10–14; 9.2, 11–16; 13.5–6. Of course, other texts note Yahweh’s role in providing children, for examples see Gen. 20.18; 29.31; 30.22; 1 Sam. 1.6; Isa. 66.9.
39.
DiPalma, Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel, 72–3.
40.
Or, ‘midwives of the Hebrews,’ based on how the construct chain מילדת העברית is understood.
41.
Pharaoh’s defeat at the hand of females has been noted by many scholars in other contexts. For example, it has been pointed out by classical historical-critical scholars such as Brevard Childs (The Book of Exodus: A Critical and Theological Commentary, OTL [Louisville: The Westminster Press, 1974], 16–19). Of course, many feminist scholars have paid specific attention to these chapters and their depictions of women; for excellent examples of such work, see Jopie Siebert-Holmes, ‘Die Geburtsgeschichte des Mose innerhalb des Erzählzusammenhangs von Exodus i und ii,’ VT 42 (1992), 399–400; Cheryl Exum, ‘“You Shall Let Every Daughter Live”: A Study of Exodus 1.8–2.10,’ in A Feminist Companion to Exodus to Deuteronomy, ed. Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994), 35–61, as well as her reflections on this article ‘Second Thoughts about Secondary Characters: Women in Exodus 1.8–2.10,’ 75–87 in the same volume. In the second article, Exum points out how the portrayal of these female characters in the opening chapters of Exodus is less a liberative depiction of women and more a rhetorical depiction that shames Pharaoh by showing him thwarted by women. Thus, in the text’s historical context, the portrayal of female resistance against Pharaoh explicitly highlights Pharaoh’s embarrassing failure as a man and symbol of manhood rather than depicting the success of women simply for women’s sake. Also see Nyasha Junior’s discussion of the need to nuance how women are depicted in Exodus (and other biblical texts) by keeping the androcentric goals of the text in sight at all times (‘Exodus,’ in Women’s Bible Commentary, 3rd ed., eds. Carol Newsom, Sharon Ringe, and Jacqueline Lapsley [Louisville: Westminster John Know Press, 2012], 57–58).
42.
Childs also notes the ironic nature of the contrast between Pharaoh’s command and the narration of Moses’s mother’s actions. See Childs, Exodus, 18.
43.
Other scholars have claimed that the text implies that Yhwh is at work behind the scenes in the survival and proliferation of the Israelites in these early chapters of Exodus; see Exum, ‘Second Thoughts on Secondary Characters,’ 83, as well as William Propp, Exodus 1–18, AB vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 134.
44.
Graybill, Are We Not Men?, 29–31.
45.
Graybill, Are We Not Men?, 44.
46.
The ambiguity of the Hebrew pronouns here may well be intentional. See Lawrence Kaplan, ‘“And the Lord Sought to Kill Him” (Exod 4:24): Yet Once Again,’ HAR 5 (1981): 65–74. C.f. Childs, Exodus, 98. However, as Graybill remarks, either way this text displays ‘the human male body’ as ‘a site of vulnerability, of potential (for Moses) and prophylactic (for the son) wounding’ (Graybill, Are We Not Men?, 40). Either an attack on Moses or his son would assert Yhwh’s power over Moses in a violent form.
47.
There are multiple other angles and understandings from which this short pericope might be understood. See Childs, Exodus, 95–101 for multiple possible interpretations from the pre-critical to more recent critical options. C.f. George W. Coats, Exodus 1–18, FOTL IIA (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 44–46.
48.
Graybill, Are We Not Men?, 40.
49.
For discussion of the connection of Yhwh’s hand/arm with violent action see James K. Hoffmeier, ‘The Arm of God Versus the Arm of Pharaoh in the Exodus Narratives,’ Bib 67 (1986): 378–87. Brent Strawn and Joel LeMon have demonstrated that the literary imagery of Yahweh dealing violently with his enemies with an outstretched hand/arm draws explicitly on the Egyptian artistic motif of the Pharaoh displaying his power in the smiting posture. See Brent A. Strawn, ‘“With a Strong Hand and an Outstretched Arm”: On the Meaning(s) of the Exodus Tradition(s),’ in Iconographic Exegesis of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: An Introduction to Its Theory, Method, and Practice, eds. Izaak J. de Hulster, Brent A. Strawn, and Ryan P. Bonfiglio (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 103–116, and Joel M. LeMon, ‘Yahweh’s Hand and the Iconography of the Blow in Psalm 81:14-16,’ JBL 132 (2013): 865–82.
50.
Of course, violent action is not the only lens that the plagues narratives can be viewed through. ‘Yhwh as warrior’ is only one of the multiple threads of ideology that the narrative draws upon to effectively shape rhetorical goals. Yet, Yhwh’s violence is certainly a cultural thread accessed and foregrounded within the text, as other scholars have noted; for example, see Miller, The Divine Warrior in Early Israel. For examples of other possible aspects of ideology that surface in the text, see Propp’s (Exodus, 346–47) suggestion that the plague narratives portray Yhwh as ultimate judge, or see Terrence Fretheim’s (‘The Plagues as Ecological Signs of Historical Disaster,’ in What Kind of God? Collected Essays of Terence E. Fretheim, eds. Michal Chan and Brent Strawn [Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015], 225–35) discussion of the underlying aspects of God as creator and the plagues as anti-creation. The aspect of violence, however, is a fruitful one for understanding how ANE ideals of masculinity are employed rhetorically to depict Yhwh, Moses, and Pharaoh in relation to one another.
51.
Though Pharaoh recreates some of the early plagues by means of his magicians, Pharaoh never damages or enacts violence against the Israelites in the plague narrative like Yhwh does against Egypt.
52.
Or, a staff that is at least blessed in some way by Yhwh. For a discussion of Moses’s staff, where it comes from and its purpose, see Propp, Exodus, 216–17 and 227–29.
53.
Fretheim points out the intertwined nature of both God and Moses and Aaron as initiators of the plagues here in chapter 7. See Terence Fretheim, Exodus, Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 115.
54.
For a few examples of the usage of these verbs in contexts of war and violence, see Deut. 1.41; 9.23; 28.25; Josh. 6.5, 20; 7.3; 10.5; Judg. 12.3; 20.39; 1 Sam. 4.3; 7.7; 2 Sam. 10.15; 1 Kgs. 22.12. שׁרץ is not explicitly connected to violent action in other contexts, except possibly in the beginning of Exodus (Exod. 1.7) when Pharaoh feels threatened by the Israelites’ proliferation and ‘swarming (שׁרץ)’ to the point of filling the land.
55.
Cf. the description of the Midianite armies as locusts that ‘destroyed (שׁחת)’ the land in Judg. 6.5–6.
56.
Cf. the imagery of Joel 1 and the invading locusts/insects.
57.
See Childs, Exodus, 225–26; c.f. Fretheim, Exodus, 154–58.
58.
The following three sections on the masculine ideals of sexual control, producing progeny and making a name, and protection and provision are based on work I began in an article co-authored with Caralie Focht focused on studying the Exodus narrative through the lenses of both ancient and modern ideologies, including gender criticism from ancient and modern perspectives. Here, I have reworked, refined, and largely expanded upon my earlier work in response to helpful feedback and criticism. See ‘Competing Masculinities: YHWH vs Pharaoh in an Integrative Ideological Reading of Exodus 1–14,’ in Hebrew Masculinities Anew, ed. Ovidiu Creangă (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2019).
59.
Again, see texts such as Deut. 5.21; 22.12–27; Ezek. 16 and 23; Jer. 3.1. Mark George labels this as a specific concern of masculinity in Deuteronomy. See, Mark George, ‘Masculinity and its Regimentation in Deuteronomy,’ 73–77.
60.
I translate האבנים in Exod. 1.15 as ‘birthing stones’ in light of other ANE texts. For examples, see the Sumerian myth Enki and the World Order, ‘Aruru, the sister of Enlil, Nintu, the Lady of Birth, she has received the pure brick of birthgiving,’ or in Atra-ḫasīs where the goddess Mami is at work creating humankind (cast in the imagery of birthing), ‘Mami is drawing the blueprint of mankind. In the house of child-bearing women in confinement, let the brick be laid, seven days.’ Both of these translations come from Marten Stol, Birth in Babylonia and in the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting (Groningen: STYX Publications, 2000), 111 and 114–15, respectively.
61.
Though the pointing of חַיּוֹת as ‘like animals’ is seemingly not an option ever chosen in the Masoretic text tradition, a repointing that placed a dagesh forte in the yod would allow for such a reading. This pointing would also make sense in light of the attestations of this word in other texts, as its current pointing in the MT leaves it as a hapax legomenon. Moreover, חיות as a feminine plural noun ‘animals’ occurs multiple times throughout the HB and makes sense here if we understand the midwives as slyly disparaging the Hebrew women before Pharaoh, as in ‘they are like animals/animal-like.’
62.
See, for example, Gen. 1 and 17.4–7. Other scholars have noted this implication: Renita J. Weems, ‘The Hebrew Women Are Not Like the Egyptian Women: The Ideology of Race, Gender, and Sexual Reproduction in Exodus 1,’ in Ideological Criticism of Biblical Texts, Semeia 59, eds. David Jobling and Tina Pippin (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1992), 28–30; Exum, ‘Second Thoughts on Secondary Characters,’ 83; Propp, Exodus, 134; and Fretheim, Exodus, 24–26. See also Eilberg-Schwartz’s discussion of Yhwh as the divine masculine who exercises control over sexual fecundity: ‘To be sure, unlike the fallen angels, God is not imagined as having physical intercourse with specific Israelite women, but he is the ultimate dispenser of fertility throughout the narratives of the Hebrew Bible’ (Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus, 138–41, quote from 139).
63.
See J. Gerald Janzen, Exodus, WBC (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 21–22; Fretheim, Exodus, 38–40 and 140–142; Propp, Exodus, 154.
64.
For example, Exod. 7.4: ‘I will bring out my hosts, my people–the children of Israel–from the land of Egypt with great acts of judgment.’
65.
See Exod. 13.12, 14: ‘Then you will dedicate everything that is first to open the womb to the Lord. All of the firstborn offspring of your animals [that are] males will be the Lord’s . . . When your child questions you in the future saying, “What is this?” Then you will say to him, “The Lord brought us out from Egypt—from the house of slavery—with a strong hand.”’ Also Exod. 10.2 illustrates this theme: ‘and so that you will recount in the ears of your son and your grandson that which I have dealt severely with the Egyptians along with my signs which I placed among them. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’
66.
Graybill, Are We Not Men?, 40.
67.
Chapman states that these roles are also tied to kingship in the ANE, particularly noted by the title ‘shepherd’ for kings: ‘Among these titles, the most important one for understanding the royal concept of masculinity is “shepherd (re’û)” because this title covers the king’s role as protector of and provider for his people.’ See Chapman, The Gendered Language of Warfare, 21.
68.
It also should be noted that Moses’s mother, who rebels against Pharaoh, is eventually provided with wages for doing so (Exod. 2.9), but Yhwh is not explicitly given credit for this turn of events.
69.
Strawn demonstrates the interconnectedness of warrior violence and provision in both the literary themes and iconographic imagery of the outstretched hand/arm (‘“With a Strong Hand and an Outstretched Arm”,’ 106–15).
70.
See Eilberg-Schwatz’s consideration of the different ways the biblical text depicts Moses as a male. He notes that Moses’s masculinity is both non-hegemonic in relation to the deity and yet also over-emphasized in relation to others (men and women). This instability in Moses’s masculinity reflects the deity’s place as ideal male (Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus, 141–51). This subservient but empowered place that Moses holds, enacts, and embodies in relation to other humans and Yhwh is not just at work in the depiction of Moses as a masculine character but also in cultural ideals of royalty accessed and employed by this narrative. See Danny Matthews, Royal Motifs in the Pentateuchal Portrayal of Moses, LHBOTS 571 (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 141–50. The clear usage of cultural understandings of masculinity, royalty, and other vectors of cultural ideology helps to demonstrate that an understanding of multiple aspects of cultural ideology(ies) is key to tracing and making sense of the multitudinous threads of the text’s rhetorical strategies.
71.
Contra DiPalma, ‘De/Constructing Masculinity in Exodus 1–4.’