A common question posed to those of us who teach Bible professionally is why biblical characters are such horrible people. In her insightful book, Rachel E. Adelman narrows this question, and considers why so many biblical women lie, and the significant role women's deception plays “in advancing the divine plot” (x). As Adelman observes, The Female Ruse is the first full-length study of female subterfuge in the Bible. Adelman's approach to her material is synchronic, literary, and intertextual. She is “primarily interested in the inter-text, in the way each narrative speaks to another across the spectrum of the twenty-four books of the Bible” (7).
Feminist biblical criticism often conforms broadly to two types. The first exposes patriarchal strategies and assumptions in the Bible (see Esther Fuchs, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman [Sheffield Academic Press, 2000]). The second uncovers counternarratives in the Bible that affirm female power and that challenge the claim that the Bible only supports and purports patriarchal assumptions (see Ilana Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach [Harvard University Press, 1992]). Adelman's claim that the “divine will allies with the women” (2) in the narratives she examines places her study within the second type. Adelman argues that the female trickster “enables renewal or transformation” (3), and, more importantly, “as the vanguard of the divine, steers the course of patriarchal history” (87).
Adelman selects narratives that “promote the ‘providential plan’ and, that thematically, explore how the nexus of truth becomes gender embodied” (3). Although she begins with matriarchs Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah, many of the deceptive women she examines are significant characters in the Davidic narratives. She considers the figures of Tamar in Genesis 38, Michal, Abigail, and Bathsheba. Her final chapter on Esther and Joseph may be the most provocative in the book. In this chapter, Adelman argues that Joseph and Esther are “feminine figures” who “use the art of discretion, concealing their identity, for the salvation of their people” (199). This chapter makes the significant point that “the art of discretion or deceit as a feminine mode of subterfuge is not bound to the second sex; it is engendered, but not biologically determined” (198). In response to this claim, I wonder if Adelman identifies other figures, like Joseph, who are feminized male tricksters in the Bible, and if so, what differentiates these figures from men who deceive, but are not feminized. My question reveals a desire to understand better if and how Adelman differentiates between male and female deception in the Bible. Abraham lies to Abimelech in Genesis 20, Laban tricks Jacob in Genesis 29, and Saul disguises himself when he meets the Witch of En-dor in 1 Samuel 28. Would Adelman argue that these acts of deception form the characters’ masculinity and serve the same rhetorical purpose in the biblical narrative as those acts done by women?
Understanding the difference between male and female subterfuge would strengthen Adelman's argument that women deceivers advance the divine plot in a particular way. Adelman's intriguing central claim is that narratives of female deception reveal the fundamental tension between divine and human knowledge, and demonstrate the limitations of the “best laid plans of men” (emphasis mine) who are bound by social and legal norms. In these narratives, women see what God sees, and act accordingly. For example Rebekah “is given insight into the divine plan,” and secures God's blessing for Jacob, while near-blind Isaac “sees only as mortals see” (22), and favors Esau. Adelman suggests that pregnancy grants women “an advantage in the realm of knowing, both carnal and conscious” from men, which allows for “the inner workings of God through the female body” (3). Endowed with this knowledge, women function as divine agents who employ deception to determine the heir for the chosen line.
Although Adelman's thesis is provocative, and particularly appealing to readers who look for ways that the Bible empowers its women, I question how broadly to apply it. Adelman argues for an essential affinity between God and women that stems from the biological experiences of pregnancy, and a particular association of women with deception. I wonder if Adelman thinks that all biblical women have an affinity with God, or just the deceptive ones. I wonder if the rare woman whose story is not about fertility, like Deborah or Miriam, experiences this affinity. Both of these women are labeled prophets, and therefore must be privy to divine knowledge, yet their stories are not about birthing heirs. I also question whether Adelman's selected narratives coalesce as neatly around the theme of women's deception as she suggests. I perceive a difference between characters like Rebekah, Tamar, and Michal who initiate deception, and those like Rachel and Leah who are subject to others’ machinations. Also, Adelman's examination of the “women of oath” who secure David's position, in my view, stretches her focus on the female ruse. Bathsheba may manipulate David, but I am not convinced that she deceives him.
Adelman is a sensitive reader who draws from an impressive variety of traditional and contemporary resources such as Rashi, Ramban, Robert Alter, Avivah Zornberg, William Shakespeare, Aristotle, Leonard Cohen, William Butler Yeats, Emmanuel Levinas, and Robert Cover, to name but a few. By my count, she also refers to three musicals, even quoting twice from South Pacific. This remarkable breadth makes Adelman's prose engaging, but less textually focused. At times, I felt that she was talking around the text, and not about the text. For this reason, The Female Ruse may appeal more to Jewish seminary students who are willing to read between the lines of the biblical text than to biblical scholars. Adelman could have strengthened her argument, and provided greater focus to the book if she included synoptic conclusions at the end of each chapter, as well as a full conclusion at the end of the book. As is, The Female Ruse addresses a significant motif in the Bible—women's deception—and offers compelling readings of familiar texts. Adelman's study enables readers to understand the relationship between deception and knowledge in the Bible, and how crooked women align with God to become crucial actors in their biblical narratives.
