Easy-to-read book provides deep Biblical insight

Daily Life in Biblical Times by Liora Ravid, Gefen Publishing House, 2013, ISBN 978-965-229-609-2, 461 pages plus bibliography, $24.95

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — If Liora Ravid’s book receives the attention I believe it deserves, it will transform the Bible for many readers from a vaguely-understood, often misunderstood, set of documents to one in which the world’s best-known stories are better appreciated in their original context.

I started reading this book on Yom Kippur, wrongly figuring from its title that the book would be dry and boring — and thus perfect accompaniment for a day of penance.  But instead of having to fight my way through the text, it gently carried me along its path. I had conflicting emotions.  The sense of discovery made me smile, but some of the underlying beliefs during Bible times made me frown.  Well before my family gathered to break the fast, I had resolved to snatch some time each day to read more and more of this book until I concluded.  I finally finished Daily Life in Biblical Times during the week of Sukkot, and henceforth when I listen to discussions of Torah portions, I am certain I will do so with far more insight.

Author Liora Ravid helps us to understand the submissive role that women who lived during biblical times were required to play.  You may think of Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel as having been women in their 20’s when they were married respectively to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but Ravid tells us they probably were no older than 12 and may even have been younger.  In those days, life expectancy was short, and a girl was expected to build up the strength and survival prospects of her husband’s family by having as many children as she could before she died.  In ancient days, says Ravid, a woman’s life expectancy was only 30 years, or even less.  So girls were married off young in order that no  opportunity for impregnation was missed.

Whatever she and other women may think of such an arrangement today, Ravid reminds us that feminism, women’s rights, egalitarianism and other such movements born in the 20th century were as foreign to the imagination of biblical women as were rocket ships, nuclear weapons, and Comic Con.  Girls understood their role was to bring children into the world — preferably male children — and they knew that their status within the biblical household depended upon it.

In those days men could take senior wives (for whom they paid a bride price), concubines (women to whom they were married without a bride price requirement) and female slaves.  With society’s approval, the men could have children with any or all of these women. Being fruitful and multiplying were  imperatives in agricultural and nomadic families that had no machines to help them in their quest for economic well-being.  If one female in the household could not bring children into the world, surely others could.

In two well-known  Genesis stories, women’s quest to fulfill the role of having children–and thus assuring their status within the family — result in some bitter rivalries. The first is that of Sarah and Hagar, her Egyptian maid.  Being barren, Sarah seeks to elevate her status in her husband Abraham’s eyes by offering him Hagar, who turns out to be quite fertile.  Ishmael is born to Hagar and Abraham, and as the first son, under the primogeniture practices of the time, he stands to inherit everything that Abraham owns, including God’s promise to be the father of a nation. This is bad enough, but Hagar, emboldened by her status as mother of the first born son,  now speaks disrespectfully to Sarah, adding to Sarah’s sense of humiliation.  Then Sarah has a son of her own–Isaac–and she becomes determined to banish this upstart slave and also to assure that Isaac, and not Ishmael, will become the father of a nation.  So she persuades Abraham to banish both Hagar and Ishmael–and in the process to start a second nation, that which many people believe evolved into the Arab nation.

Even more pronounced is the rivalry between Leah and Rachel. In telling this story, we should be aware that in Ravid’s opinion when it comes to numbers, the Bible engages in hyperbole.  Just as today we say, “I’ve told you a million times” without literally meaning one million, so too did the Bible use numbers loosely rather than with precision.  The idea that Jacob worked seven years before acquiring Leah as his wife, and another seven years for Rachel, suggests that by the time Jacob and Rachel were married, she was near the end of her life expectancy and still a virgin.  Ravid suggests seven was a way of saying “a long time” just as today a million today means “very many.”  God labored six days to create the universe, and rested the seventh day.  Jacob worked seven years.  A long time, in other words, perhaps as much as two years.

When Ravid  reads that Abraham was 100  years old and Sarah, his wife and half sister ,was  about 90, she does not take these ages literally.  We can surmise that Abraham and Sarah were older than most couples when they had their first son together, but not really such an advanced age.

The rivalry between Leah and Rachel stems from the fact that Leah was older and plainer than Rachel.   Their father Laban naturally would have liked the older daughter to be married first, but Jacob was more attracted to Rachel.  So Laban tricked Jacob, putting Leah not Rachel into the marriage bed.  As Jacob worked to acquire Rachel, he fumed against both Laban and Leah.   The older daughter, who probably was compelled by her father to trick Jacob, was miserable, and that misery is portrayed, according to the author, in the Hebrew names that she gave her children. The first son’s name, Reuben, connoted “humilation.”‘  The second son’s name, Simeon, meant “because I am hated.”  The third son, Levi, meant “this time my husband will join me” –in all, three names that bespoke Leah’s misery.

Rachel, meanwhile, was barren, and gradually Jacob began to appreciate Leah more than Rachel, causing the younger sister to feel miserable.  The name of Leah’s fourth son, Judah, reflects this turnabout; It means “let me gratefully praise the Lord.”  Afterwards Leah’s slave woman Zilpah gave birth to two children, whom Leah named.  The name of the fifth child, Gad, meant “Good luck.”  The sixth son, Asher, means “great happiness.”  Then Leah gave birth to a seventh child, her personal fifth.  He was named Issachar, for “God has granted me my reward.”  And then Leah had yet an eighth child, Zebulon, whose name means “palace” as in “my husband will make his palace with me.”  Leah felt like a queen.  Her next child was a daughter, Dinah, whose name she did not explain.

With each birth in Leah’s household, writes Ravid, Rachel felt more and more devalued.  “Give me children–otherwise I am dead” she demanded of Jacob.   Her husband lashed out at her, saying it wasn’t him, but God, who had decided that she should be barren.  So like her sister, Rachel decided to give one of her slave women, Bilhah, to him as a wife.  Bilhah gave birth to Dan, which means “judge.”   In assigning that name, Rachel felt that she had been “judged” by God for her barrenness.   Then Bilhah had a second child, Naphtali, for “grapple.”  Rachel felt that she was grappling with her sister and was now winning.

At last, Rachel had her own son, Joseph, whose name had the meanings of “God has removed my disgrace,” and “May the Lord add on for me another son.”  This, of course, was the boy that Jacob later favored with a coat of many colors, arousing the jealousy of all the other sons.  The final child born to Rachel–who died in childbirth–she named Ben-oni, a name that means “the son who announces my death.”  Jacob changed this name to “Benjamin,” which means “son of the south.”

Ravid delves into the rape of Dinah by Shechem as well as at other rape stories in the Bible.  She explain that in ancient times the rape of a woman was considered an insult not only against her, but more importantly in the standards of those times , a grave insult to the members of her family who now were denied the opportunity to marry her to a family with whom an alliance could be built.

Rape was a crime that had to be avenged by the girl’s family by executing the rapist. This was such an imperative that when Amnon raped his  half-sister Tamar, Absalom (who was Tamar’s full brother) felt duty bound to execute Amnon and to rebel against King David, their father, for not punishing Amnon in the first place.

There are many other biblical insights and surprises throughout Ravid’s well-researched and well-written book.  Although some of the biblical family practices may be deemed ugly by modern Western standards, they still exist in other parts of the world.   The book may even help us to better understand the culture clash between  democratic western societies and tribal societies whose practices are close to those of our biblical ancestors.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com