When strangers interact in the Old Testament, women assume a lower status while men assume superiority
A newfound pattern in Biblical stories shows that, when strangers know nothing of their interlocutor's social status, men talk as if they have higher status
Joseph Brean
Jun 19, 2019 • Last Updated June 19, 2019 • 4 minute read
Rebekah and Eliezer. Photo by Getty Images
Thousands of academics gathered in Vancouver for the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences from June 1-7. They presented papers on everything from child marriage in Canada to why dodgeball is problematic. In its Oh, The Humanities! series, the National Post showcases some of the most interesting research.
There is a passage in the Book of Genesis that takes places when Abraham, patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is very old.
It is a minor story of a servant meeting a girl at a well. In the long run, it is significant for the romantic introduction it makes and the marriage that results. But otherwise it offers none of the high drama or portent of some of the other tales in Genesis, such as the Garden of Eden or the Flood.
It does, however, stand out in the Hebrew Bible for one very unusual reason, as a window into gender relations in the days of what Christians call the Old Testament. It shows how women are expected to be politely formal with strangers, while men are expected to act more intimate, casual and socially superior.
Also, I will draw for your camels until they have finished drinking
It is a prime example of the newfound pattern in Biblical stories that, when strangers know nothing of their interlocutor's social status, men talk as if they have higher status, while women talk as if they have lower status. In other words, the way men and women interact when they are strangers is most like how they interact when the man is a social superior, even if, as in this case, the woman is noble and the man is a mere camel driver doing an errand for his master.
"And that's just automatic," said Laura Hare, an expert in Biblical linguistics at the University of Toronto. Through her research into the word choices of the authors of the Genesis and other books in the Hebrew Bible, she has previously identified, for example, the stereotypically male speaking patterns in the quoted words of Jezebel, a Phoenician princess from the island city of Tyre in modern Lebanon who married King Ahab to become Queen of Israel and one of the Bible's great villains. Her male style of speech, Hare discovered, marks her as an outsider, an unwomanly woman, as she is forever issuing orders, conveying her sense of superiority, and demanding immediate answers to any questions she deigns to ask.
Hare's latest research extends that analysis of speech patterns to conversations between strangers. It was presented at the recent Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Vancouver, under the title: "What Should I Call You? Social Intimacy and Social Distance in Conversations between Male and Female Strangers in the Hebrew Bible."
Tell me please, is there a place for us to stay at the house of your father
The result is a novel perspective on gender inequality in the ancient Middle East. It illustrates the discrepancy of social norms in which women are expected to be polite to strangers, while men are expected to be more intimate more quickly, something Hare says seems to be the case in many modern languages too, especially in middle class English Western culture.
"The authors (of the Biblical texts) are probably drawing from their own experience," Hare said in an interview.
In the story of the servant and the girl, Abraham's tribulations over his son Isaac — whom God famously ordered Abraham to sacrifice as a test of faith, but called it off at the last instant — are behind him. His wife Sarah is dead, and he is soon to follow, so he is seeking a wife for Isaac, to continue his lineage.
So Abraham enlists the help of a servant, a man named Eliezer, who sets out to Abraham's homeland of Mesopotamia, and waits by a spring as the women come out to draw water.
There, he meets the beautiful Rebekah, daughter of a wealthy man.
"Please let me drink a little water from your jar," the servant said.
"Drink, my lord," answers Rebekah. "Also, I will draw for your camels until they have finished drinking."
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"Whose daughter are you?" the servant asked. "Tell me please, is there a place for us to stay at the house of your father."
"Everything Rebekah says and does in this conversation is in response to the requests and questions of Abraham's servant, with the exception that she actually goes above and beyond what he originally asked for (watering his camels when he just asked for a drink)," Hare writes. "Rebekah does not ask any questions of the servant, even after he asks who she is, nor does she make any requests of him."
"In conversations between male and female strangers, women use subordinate clauses at a significantly higher rate than men," she writes. "All of the variables considered in this paper support the argument that in mixed-gender conversations between strangers in biblical narrative, the male speaker is treated by default as the social superior, who may appropriately use intimate, direct, and imperatory speech, while the female speaker is treated as the social inferior, who must use formal and indirect speech."
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