Oriental Women

by Edward B. Pollard

We find the virtuous woman, as ideally drawn in the Book of Proverbs, to be one who finds good wool and flax and works willingly with her hands; distaff and spindle fly at her finger's bidding, so that her whole household sits doubly clothed in scarlet, and even fine linen is wrought in her house, and rich girdles go out to the merchantmen. She makes the field and vineyard turn out profitably and imports her food from afar. Whether as shepherdess, gleaner, or the maker of food stuffs or textiles, the Hebrew woman may justly hold a place of respect among her sex.

Among the amusements in which women specially engaged, those of music and dancing should be given first place. These often had a religious or semi-religious character. Women did not usually sit down, or rather recline, at banquets with the opposite sex. Their songs and dances were generally among themselves; dancing with the opposite sex was unknown. Instrumental music frequently accompanied their singing, a sort of tambourine or hand drum being a favorite instrument. Women played an important part also in mourning customs. Professional female mourners were hired to go up and down the highways, wailing piteously as part of the funeral rites. The prophet Nahum in predicting the overthrow of Nineveh uses a figure suggested by frequent observation of mourning: "Her maids shall lead her, as with the voice of doves, tabering upon their breasts."

The religious status of woman is one of the most significant facts in Israel's history. Passing out of the patriarchal stage of life, when the father was high priest in his home, into a more complex existence, it is not surprising that woman's place should become subordinated. Besides this, the Hebrew worshipped no goddesses, except in times of religious lapses. The women of Israel, however, are often found engaged in sacrifices, prayers, and active service to their God Jehovah.

While only the men were required to attend the annual feasts, the attendance of women in large numbers is often recorded. Their presence seems to be presupposed in the accounts of Hebrew worship; though for them the annual religious pilgrimages to Jerusalem were not obligatory.

In the temple worship they had a separate court, further removed from the inner precincts of the holy altar than the court of the men. And while they might join in the eating of some sacrificial meals, the sin offering was only to be partaken of by males. The official duties of the sanctuary were performed by men, but there were "serving women" who performed certain menial tasks about the sacred enclosure. When the temple ritual became elaborated, women were among the singers in the temple choirs, and they often aided in the music and by singing and dancing in times of great national rejoicing. And it is not without its suggestiveness that the Hebrews spoke of a divine revelation as Bath Kol, or "daughter voice."

In the days when religious secretism became popular in Israel, and the people began to divide the exclusive adoration they had hitherto given to Jehovah and to worship other gods and even goddesses, women became prominent in idolatrous rites. Jezebel, who was a worshipper of the Phoenician goddess Ashtoreth, not only became the patron of the priests and puppets of the Baal cult, but endeavored to break down Jehovah worship by the destruction of his prophets. Maachah, the mother of King Asa of the southern kingdom of Judah, introduced the worship of the Assyrian goddess Astarte. Devotion to Ishtar, the chief goddess of Babylon became the fashion in Jerusalem in the days of Jeremiah the prophet, who tells of Hebrew women kneading dough and baking cakes in shape of the silvery moon in honor of the "queen of heaven," Ishtar, the moon goddess; or perhaps, as some hold, this was the worship of the planet Venus, for similar offerings were made in Arabia to the goddess Al-Uzza, who was represented by the star Venus; and the Athenians too, we are told, offered cakes of the shape of the full moon in honor of Artemis.

During the period of the Babylonish captivity, before the final fall of Jerusalem, Ezekiel rebukes the women of Jerusalem for worshipping Tammuz, the Babylonian Adonis, who had been taken to the under world; for, says the prophet, "There sat the women weeping for Tammuz," the departed husband of Ishtar.

There was never among the Israelites that reverence for women, akin to awe, which was manifested among the Teutonic tribes--a reverence which made women natural oracles. Doubtless in Israel, as everywhere, the instinctive, intuitive nature of women was discovered by the men of Israel as in other parts of the world. But women as oracles are isolated and exceptional. There were witches, who were under the ban. The highest spiritual influence and leadership in Israel was that of the prophet, for he was regarded as the mouthpiece of God, and, though of a far higher order, corresponded to the oracle among heathen peoples. Could a woman hold this place of dignity and power? The first person of this class mentioned in the literature of Israel is Miriam the prophetess. In the days of political confusion, before the time of the monarchy, Deborah the prophetess arose; and it was Huldah the prophetess who directed the reforms instituted by King Josiah, when the worship of Jehovah was purified, the temple repaired, and Mosaism restored to power. Just as there were false prophets in the days of religious decline, so there arose false prophetesses, like Noadiah, who attempted to thwart the reforms of Nehemiah and put his life in jeopardy. In the early days, the counterfeit of the prophetess, namely, the witch and sorceress, was not unknown in the land of Palestine. The law, however, was very stringent against such persons, though King Saul himself once went disguised to consult the Witch of Endor. Scripture says: "Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live." These are the words which were thought to give sanction to the burning of witches in New England a century or more ago.

In writing of the women in the days of the kings, one naturally turns to the days of David, the first who brought Israel to a state of political stability. The familiar saying, "The great men are not always wise," is well illustrated in the matrimonial experiences of King David. Many times was he married. Four of the wives of David are worthy of note. The first may be called his wife of youthful romance, Michal, Saul's daughter; the next, Abigail, the wife of manhood's admiration; the third, Bathsheba, the wife of lustful passion; the fourth, Maachah, the wife of old age's sorrow, for she bore unto him Absalom, the rebel. It was a giddy and dangerous height to which David the youth had suddenly arisen when the people were giving him, because of his prowess in slaying Goliath of Gath, greater honor than the king. Even the young Princess Michal could not disguise her admiration for the new and youthful hero. But he must slay one hundred Philistines if he is to possess Michal, says Saul, thinking David would lose his life in the attempt. But the young man slew two hundred, and claimed his bride. While her father was plotting the life of his young rival, Michal was plotting more skilfully to save it; for, overhearing her father give orders that her husband and lover should be slain, she let him down from the window, substituting for her absent lord an image resting in her bed, beneath the covering, in such wise as to support her statement to the messengers, who came to take him before Saul, that David was sick. Michal, having to make choice between her father and her husband, chose the latter; and though she was long separated from him while David warred with Saul, when at last David reigned he sent and recovered her, his first love, and Michal became his wife again.

But there were women of affairs in Israel, as well as women of sentiment and devotion. The story of Abigail, wife of Nabal, and how she became espoused to David, is a pleasing chapter of woman's power to excite the admiration of a manly heart by combining the grace and the tact of the womanly character with worldly wisdom and courage. It is one of the finest illustrations recorded of woman's independence in the land of the Hebrews. The story of Bathsheba's marriage to David is well known. Falling in love with Bathsheba's beautiful form, the king plotted the life of her husband, put him in the front rank in the battle, and, when he fell, took her to his own house as wife. And while Maachah became the mother of a son who was to be a very thorn in the heart of his father, the wickedness which brought about the marriage to Bathsheba became the cause of the bitterest expression of penitential anguish in all the range of literature. For an ancient tradition, embodied in the introduction to the fifty-first Psalm, affirms that that poem of heart-stinging grief was written when Nathan the prophet had shown King David the heinous blackness of his sin toward Uriah the Hittite.