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FIRST WIVES CLUB: DIVORCE, DEMOTION, AND THE FATE OF LEAH IN GENESIS 29

Bruce Wells

SAINT JOSEpH’S UNIVERSITy

In the 1996 movie, The First Wives Club, three middle-aged women discover that their husbands have decided to divorce them.1 The three women see themselves as the victims of an injustice that they have done nothing to deserve. To remedy their situation, they form a close-knit group and endeavor, through a variety of clever moves and not a few comical gambits, to wreak revenge on the male perpetrators of their affliction. If one were to suggest a biblical character who might qualify

1 Abbreviations follow p. H. Alexander et al., eds., The SBL Handbook of Style: For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies (peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999); and CAD. When referring to an editio princeps of a tablet, I will use the full CAD abbreviation (e.g., Roth Marriage Agreements no. 1). When referring to an edition of a document that was published elsewhere, I will use a truncated form of the abbreviation (e.g., Roth no. 6). The more obscure tablet abbreviations are as follows:

AT D. J. Wiseman, The Alalakh Tablets (London, 1953)CTN Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud (London, 1972 ff.)Cyr. J. N. Strassmaier, Inschriften von Cyrus, König von Babylon (= BT 7;

Leipzig, 1890)HSS Harvard Semitic Studies (Cambridge, 1929 ff.)Nbk. J. N. Strassmaier, Inschriften von Nabuchodonosor, König von Babylon (=

BT 5-6, Leipzig, 1889)ND Field numbers of tablets excavated at NimrudOECT Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts (Oxford, 1923 ff.)TIM Texts in the Iraq Museum (Baghdad/Wiesbaden, 1964 ff.)VAS Vorderasiatische SchriftdenkmäleryOS yale Oriental Series, Babylonian Texts (New Haven, 1915 ff.)

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for admission to their club, I venture to say that the first person to come to mind would be Leah, the first wife of Jacob.

An important difference with Leah, however, is that, while she is re-jected in certain ways by Jacob, she remains in his household and con-tinues to function as a wife of the man who has turned his attention to another woman. But what exactly did Jacob do? That is, when the nar-rative of Genesis 29 says that Jacob, after having married Leah, took Rachel as his wife and then “loved Rachel more than Leah” (v. 30), what does the narrative seek to convey? Is the meaning simply that Jacob had stronger romantic feelings for Rachel than he did for Leah? Or is there another connotation that one can infer from the text—a connotation that may well fit the larger narrative more aptly? As the reader will likely have guessed, merely by virtue of my having asked these questions, I wish to argue for the latter. In what follows, I will seek to show that what Leah experiences in the narrative is a legal demotion from the status of first-ranking wife to that of second-ranking wife.

In the spring semester of 2000, in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University, professor Raymond Westbrook led a seminar on the topic of biblical law in which I participated as a gradu-ate student. The specific focus of the seminar was the analysis of bibli-cal narratives from a legal point of view. While we did not discuss the narrative of Genesis 29 during the seminar, I wish to apply the general methodology that we utilized in the course to this particular narrative. professor Westbrook was a beloved mentor, friend, and eventual col-league, and it is an honor to contribute this study in his memory.

The methodology to which I refer consists of a particular kind of legal analysis of biblical narratives.2 It begins with the axiom that the law (i.e., references or allusions to legal rules, principles, institutions, and the like) included unconsciously by a narrator—that is, without a deliberate attempt on the part of the author but simply in the natural course of the author’s narration—can provide the reader with insight into elements of the legal system of that narrator’s society.3 The law that a narrator

2 While some scholars might eschew the search for law in narrative, p. Barmash has recently argued that “narrative texts are indispensable for the study of biblical law. The analysis of literary texts is necessary for reconstructing legal practice and the perception of how law operated. Statutes only tell us so much” (“The Narrative Quandary: Cases of Law in Literature,” VT 54 [2004]: 1–16 [quote on p. 2]).

3 D. Friedmann offers numerous analyses of narratives from the Hebrew Bible, in which he seeks to ascertain the “legal and moral concepts they [the narratives] reflect and the system of laws underlying them” (To Kill and Take Possession: Law, Morality, and Society in Biblical Stories [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002]: quote on vii). His work contains a number of significant insights, although I would disagree with his assessment of the legal issues at stake in a variety of narratives.

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consciously includes, however, could be—though it need not be—law that the narrator is reworking or even inventing for literary purposes. Admittedly, distinguishing between the two is often no simple matter. On the other hand, besides the acquisition of insight into law from the study of narratives, the converse is also possible: insight into narratives from the study of law. Legal texts can elucidate that which has been included unconsciously and about which the narrative contains little de-tail.4 It must be acknowledged, of course, that stories can play with and distort the law, just as they do with history, social customs, geographical settings, and even the laws of nature.5 That a story asserts the existence of some legal custom or rule does not lead directly to the conclusion that said custom or rule was, in fact, practiced in the society about which—or even from which—the narrative seems to be. Although one cannot al-ways be certain, the general rule is that the law that appears to have been included more or less offhandedly is likely to be genuine, whereas the law to which the narrator draws special attention may well be a distor-tion.

In addition to this axiom, though, it is important to compare the law that one claims to have found in a given narrative with controls external to the narrative. Two principal sets of controls come into play. First, a comparison with the pentateuchal legal collections is necessary. To be sure, not every provision within the Covenant Code, the Deuteronomic Code, or the Holiness Code appears to reflect a law that was operative in ancient Israel and Judah. Nevertheless, it is likely that a number of these provisions do indeed reflect legal issues that were of concern or rules that were in effect in those societies.6 Thus, should the law derived from the narrative seem to correspond with the law set forth in the codes, the likelihood that the former provides insight into operative law increases. Certainty remains elusive, of course: a later narrative may have been composed intentionally to fit with a particular pentateuchal provision,

4 See the discussion in D. Daube, Studies in Biblical Law (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 1947): 1–73. See also the essays in K.-P. Adam et al., eds., Law and Narrative in the Bible and Neighbouring Ancient Cultures (FAT II/54; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012).

5 The grounding of this insight comes in large measure from the work done outside of biblical scholarship on the relationship between law and literature. It is not my intention here to enter into a discussion of that material. For an overview of important aspects of that work from a variety of perspectives, see p. Brooks and p. Gewirtz, eds., Law’s Stories: Narrative and Rhetoric in the Law (New Haven: yale Univ., 1996). For a perceptive discussion of how that work can assist in the interpretation of a biblical text, see F. R. Magdalene, On the Scales of Righteousness: Neo-Babylonian Trial Law and the Book of Job (BJS 348; Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2007): 46–53.

6 See, B. Wells, “What Is Biblical Law? A Look at pentateuchal Rules and Near Eastern practice,” CBQ 70 (2008): 223–243.

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and the provision may not reflect real law at all.7 This is where the second set of controls becomes important—a set composed of the thousands of legal documents of practice from the broader ancient Near East. Because the data from this set do not come from law collections (e.g., the Laws of Hammurabi) but from the everyday practice of law (e.g., from contracts, trial records, letters), they provide the best insight of any of the data sources at the modern scholar’s disposal into what operative law was like in an array of ancient Near Eastern societies.8 While there is, again, no absolute certainty that the everyday practice of law from Israel and Judah’s regional neighbors reflects the law that was operative in Israel and Judah, a reasonable match between a biblical narrative’s law and that of these documents of practice cannot help but further increase the likeli-hood that the law in the narrative has a connection to functioning law.

In the text to be examined below, Genesis 29, there are certain legal traditions and terminology that the narrator appears to assume will be fa-miliar to his audience and that he feels no need to explain in detail. This is the sort of legal material that one can argue was incorporated by the narrator unconsciously and that can, first, provide insight into law and, second, be elucidated by reference to legal texts outside the narrative. On the other hand, when there is law that the narrator has consciously in-cluded in the story, whether congruent or incongruent with the practiced law of the narrator’s own society, or when there is law that the narrator has distorted for dramatic purposes, the narrator typically draws attention to such law. This is the case in our text with the legal custom described by Laban in v. 26: to give the oldest daughter in marriage first. Whether this was a custom that would have been familiar to the narrator’s audi-ence remains unclear for modern interpreters because of the narrator’s conscious highlighting of it in the text. Those elements of the law that the narrator does not highlight are worth taking much more seriously. The notions of love and hate in the narrative lack any such highlighting, and it is these notions that are the principal objects of my analysis.

7 For example, the narrative concerning the trial of Naboth in 1 Kings 21 was likely composed to conform to the two-witness rule in Deuteronomy (Deut 17:6 and 19:15). Besides correspondences, however, direct contradictions can arise as well. The parade example that relates to our text in Genesis 29 is the simultaneous marriage of Jacob to two sisters, a practice forbidden in Lev 18:18 and about which the Genesis narratives express no concern whatsoever.

8 On the value of these sorts of documents of practice, see p. Barmash, Homicide in the Biblical World (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 2005): 5–6.

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TO LOVE AND TO HATE IN LAW

I begin with an examination of legal texts in order to clarify some of the legal issues at stake in this discussion. The legal text from the Hebrew Bible that is most relevant for a discussion of Jacob’s love and hate in Genesis 29 is Deut 21:15–17.9 Although various commentators have long noted a possible connection between the Genesis narrative and the Deuteronomic law, in recent scholarship it is the work of Calum Carmichael that stands out as attempting to identify a direct connection between the two passages. (The question of whether or not such a con-nection exists will be taken up later in this study.) As Carmichael points out, this legal text “raises the question . . . about what a man might do should he be married to two wives, one of whom he hates, the other whom he loves, and whose firstborn son is by the former. It is Reuben’s situation exactly.”10 In other words, the situation of the firstborn son de-scribed in the law matches with that of Reuben described in Genesis. But in terms of the wife who is said to be the hated one in the Deuteronomic text, that would seem to be Leah’s situation exactly. What, therefore, does the law mean when it says that one of the wives is “hated”?

According to H. Z. Szubin and B. porten’s recent study of Aramaic marriage contracts from Elephantine, the Aramaic term śn¥ (‘to hate’), when it occurs in legal texts and within the context of marriage, connotes “repudiation with a concomitant demotion of status.”11 They include in their study a consideration of biblical, Babylonian, and Egyptian texts as well, and their understanding of the term “to hate” in those texts (Hebrew

9 For a fuller discussion of the law in Deut 21:15–17 and the details of its interpretation, see B. Wells, “The Hated Wife in Deuteronomic Law,” VT 60 (2010): 131–146.

10 C. Carmichael, “Uncovering a Major Source of Mosaic Law: The Evidence of Deut 21:15–22:5,” JBL 101 (1982): 505–520 (quote on 508).

11 H. Z. Szubin and B. porten, “The Status of a Repudiated Spouse: A New Interpretation of Kraeling 7 (TAD B3.8),” Israel Law Review 35 (2001): 46–78 (quote on 60). The three intact Aramaic marriage contracts from Elephantine are TAD B2.6, B3.3, and B3.8 (ibid., 61). All three use the term “to hate” in this way. Moreover, not one of the three contains a clause about the husband sending his wife away in addition to his “hating” her, although two of the three state that the wife may leave the household and go wherever she desires (see below for more on these sorts of clauses). The one document that does not contain this latter statement is TAD B3.3. The bride in this contract is a slave, whose master functioned as the other party to conclude the marriage contract with the groom. As porten states, because of the bride’s slave status, “the options of going wherever she wished or of returning to her father’s house . . . were not viable for a handmaiden like Tamet. She was apparently not forced to leave [her husband’s] domicile but might remain in his household as a married woman, albeit demoted in status (akin to the ‘hated’ Leah [Gen. 29:31] and the hated wife of Deut. 21:15–17)” (B. porten, The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change [Leiden: Brill, 1996]: 209–210 n. 20).

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śn¥; Akkadian zêru; Demotic mst) is the same. They acknowledge that these terms can occur in the context of divorce, but they emphasize that terms for “hate” do not mean divorce in and of themselves. This is an important point. It seems to be the case that, in order for a text to convey the meaning of divorce, a verb for “hate” cannot be the only verb to rep-resent the action being taken. Rather, the “hate” verb must be combined with another verb indicating that the “hated” spouse has been sent away from the household. Such verbs include Hebrew šlḥ and Akkadian ezēbu and wuššuru/muššuru. Without being combined with another verb in this way, a term for ‘to hate’, according to Szubin and porten, “conveys the meaning of demotion, reduction of status.”12

If Szubin and porten are right, and I believe that they have made a very strong case for their position, then the hated wife of Deut 21:15–17 is one who has been demoted to the status of second-ranking wife, and the loved wife, by the same token, is the one who now holds the status of first-ranking wife.13 What Szubin and porten do not point out, however, is that “hate” in a legal context typically stands for a particular kind of demotion or repudiation—namely, a demotion or repudiation that is not based on the misconduct of the one being demoted or repudiated. Just as there were divorces with grounds (based on the spouse’s mis-conduct) and divorces without grounds in the ancient Near East, so, too, there could be demotions with and without grounds.14 Moreover, it has

12 Szubin and porten (n 11): 59. Besides containing the term “hate” by itself (i.e., without an accompanying statement about sending the wife away), some contracts (about which more will be said below) include only the possibility that the husband will say, “She is not a wife,” and thus also omit a sending-away clause. As K. Abraham states, “Perhaps the husbands in these . . . documents did not intend to dissolve the marriage, but only wanted to reduce their wife in rank when declaring ‘She is not a wife’. In such a case the phrase would mean ‘She is not a first-ranking wife’ ” (“West Semitic and Judean Brides in Cuneiform Sources from the Sixth Century BCE: New Evidence from a Marriage Contract from Āl-Yahudu,” AfO 51 [2005–2006]: 198–219 [quote on 203]).

13 To be demoted in this way could have a variety of disadvantages for a wife: fewer rations, less access to economic resources, a poorer domicile, more and/or harder physical labor, less frequent interaction with the husband, and the like. On rations, S. Paul cites Laws of Lipit-Ishtar 28, Laws of Hammurabi 148, and Exod 21:10–11 and states: “Hence, all three collections of laws . . . obligate the husband to continue to provide for the maintenance of his first wife who has been subsequently bypassed in favor of another” (Studies in the Book of the Covenant in the Light of Cuneiform and Biblical Law [VTSup 18; Leiden: Brill, 1970]: 56). According to Paul, though, this maintenance consists simply in the “basic necessities of life”: food, clothing, and oil (ibid., 59). Thus, supporting the first wife does not necessarily mean keeping her in the lifestyle to which she was accustomed.

14 For demotion without grounds, see Wunsch Urkunden no. 5 (discussed below). For demotion with grounds, see Laws of Hammurabi 141. For further discussion, see Wells, “Hated Wife” (n 9): 142–143 n. 42.

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been shown, fairly convincingly to my mind, that, in matters that clearly involve divorce, the term “hate” appears only when the divorce is one without grounds.15 It stands to reason, therefore, that the demotion in Deut 21:15–17, because it is referred to with the term śn¥, was a demo-tion without grounds. The husband had the right to enact such a demo-tion, but, in the eyes of the law, the wife had done nothing to deserve it.

Thus, the law in Deut 21:15–17 envisions a situation in which a hus-band has promoted one of his wives to the status of first-ranking wife and simultaneously demoted (without grounds) the other one to the status of second-ranking wife. This would mean, so it appears, that the position of first-ranking wife had originally been held by the now-demoted wife. The law goes on to say that, in this particular situation, the husband is not allowed also to demote the son of the “hated” wife without grounds, presumably because this wife has already been on the receiving end of a demotion without grounds and would be affected yet again by the demo-tion of her son. I qualify the demotion of the son that this law forbids as one without grounds, because a fairly apparent legal principle through-out the ancient Near East was that the demotion—and even the full disin-heritance—of a firstborn son with grounds was an option that was always at the disposal of a head of household.16

A range of other legal texts from the ancient Near East also refer to the possible demotion of a wife, although a large number do not use a word for “hate” but describe the demotion in other terms. Many of these come from the Late Bronze Age—from sites such as Alalakh, Emar, and Nuzi—as well as from even older periods, such as the Old Babylonian period.17 Many also come from southern Mesopotamia

15 This is articulated most clearly in R. Westbrook, “The prohibition on Restoration of Marriage in Deuteronomy 24:1–4,” in Studies in Bible, 1986 (S. Japhet, ed.; ScrHier 31; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986): 387–405. Westbrook addresses in detail the two biblical texts that speak both of “hate” (śn¥) and “divorce” (šlḥ): Deut 24:1–4 and Mal 2:16. See also I. M. Rowe, “Alalakh,” in A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law (2 vols.; R. Westbrook, ed.; HdO 72; Leiden: Brill, 2003): 1.710 (full article, pp. 693–717); and D. L. Ellens, Women in the Sex Texts of Leviticus and Deuteronomy: A Comparative Conceptual Analysis (Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 458; New York: Clark, 2008): 235–248. For disagreement with this point of view, see C. pressler, The View of Women Found in the Deuteronomic Family Laws (BZAW 216; New York: de Gruyter, 1993): 57 n. 43; and E. Otto, Gottes Recht als Menschenrecht: Rechts- und literaturhistorische Studien zum Deuteronomium (BZAR 2; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002): 256.

16 R. Westbrook, “Introduction: The Character of Ancient Near Eastern Law,” in A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law (2 vols.; R. Westbrook, ed.; HdO 72; Leiden: Brill, 2003): 1.60 (full article, pp. 1–90). Westbrook considers this to be one of the testamentary powers held by a head of household.

17 For the Nuzi texts, see J. M. Breneman, “Nuzi Marriage Tablets” (ph.D. Diss., Brandeis Univ., 1971): 290–292. On Old Babylonian texts, see R. Westbrook, Old

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during the Neo-Babylonian and persian periods. In addition, there are a handful of Neo-Assyrian marriage contracts that have survived and some of which do indeed use the term “to hate” (ziāru) in similar fashion to the Aramaic contracts from Elephantine. Since the latter texts (the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and the persian-period texts) fall much clos-er in time to the period when most biblical texts were composed, I will focus primarily on these documents. In virtually all periods of ancient Near Eastern history, the documents that refer most often to possible demotion and/or divorce are marriage contracts that anticipate such ac-tions and often spell out consequences for spouses who decide to pursue them. This is certainly the case for the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and persian periods.

The marriage contracts from these periods refer with some frequency both to the possible demotion and to the possible divorce of a wife. For this discussion, my sample of texts includes, first of all, the sixteen Neo-Assyrian marriage contracts discussed by K. Radner.18 It also includes, from the Neo-Babylonian and persian periods, the forty-four contracts edited by M. T. Roth, the seven edited by C. Wunsch, and the one edited by K. Abraham.19 Of these sixty-eight contracts, there are twenty-two (twenty are Neo-Babylonian/Persian; only two are Neo-Assyrian)20 that

Babylonian Marriage Law (Horn, Austria: Berger & Söhne, 1988).18 K. Radner, Die neuassyrischen Privatrechtsurkunden als Quelle für Mensch

und Umwelt (SAAS 6; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus project, 1997): 157–171. According to Radner, “Neuassyrische Urkunden, die eine Eheschließung zum Inhalt haben, sind selten. Es sind bisher sechzehn Belege aus Ninūa, Kalhu und Assur bekannt geworden” (ibid., 157).

19 M. T. Roth, Babylonian Marriage Agreements: 7th–3rd Centuries B.C. (AOAT 222; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1989); C. Wunsch, Urkunden zum Ehe-, Vermögens- und Erbrecht aus verschiedenen neubabylonischen Archiven (Babylonische Archive 2; Dresden: ISLET, 2003); and Abraham (n 12).

20 A third Neo-Assyrian text, TIM 11 14, might warrant inclusion, but I have not included it due to its several peculiarities. As J. N. postgate notes, the text reads much like the sale of a slave, but it is clear that, even though the woman in question may have been the slave of the seller, the buyer is acquiring her as a wife (“On Some Assyrian Ladies,” Iraq 41 [1979]: 89–103, esp. 98–99). Apparently, the buyer is giving up his right to treat the woman as a slave and sell her to yet another buyer. The text goes on to state that, if the husband/buyer “hates” (ziāru) his wife (the woman being purchased), she will have to pay ten shekels of silver to him (see ibid., 98). This is a surprising statement: one would have expected payment by the husband to the wife. It may be that, because the husband/buyer is losing his right to profit from her by selling her in the future, he has decided to retain the right to earn a smaller bit of profit from the woman herself, should he decide eventually to reject her—a rejection, I would argue, that would be, in light of the use of the word “hate,” without grounds. According to my reading of the text, the woman may then leave the household: ta-lak tú-ú-ṣa (“she may leave; she may go out”). The editors of the text considered this reading but rejected it as being “unnecessarily pleonastic” (J.

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refer with sufficient clarity—the relevant clauses are either intact or at least partially legible—to a possible future attempt by the husband to demote and/or divorce his wife.21 See Table 1 for a complete list. Of these 22, fourteen documents, only one of which is Neo-Assyrian, ap-pear to refer to both.22 The relevant portion of each of these fourteen texts contains two clauses. One of the two clauses, were it to have occurred by itself, might have indicated only demotion but, when combined with the other clause, becomes part of a larger statement that indicates full-fledged divorce and the sending of the wife away from the house-hold. This latter clause that signals actual divorce typically has the verb muššuru (‘to release, send away’), although šapāru (‘to send’) and ezēbu (‘to divorce’) also occur. The other clause, which often comes after the muššuru-clause, typically refers to the possibility of another marriage on the part of the husband and contains a verb meaning ‘to marry’ (e.g., aḫāzu, rašû).23 Thus, the two clauses together envision that the husband

N. Postgate and Bahija Kalil Ismail, Texts from Niniveh [TIM 11; Baghdad: Ministry of Culture and Information, Directorate General of Antiquities & Heritage, 1993]: 29). They opt instead for ta-lak-tú-ú-šá, which they translate as “going-away (money),” and they admit that this is “without any lexical support from the dictionaries or parallel passages” (ibid., 29). Radner seems to want to accept both readings. She first accepts ta-lak-tú-ú-šá as “Scheidegeld” but then claims that the text states that “die Frau ihren Mann verlassen kann: sie wird hinausgehen (tu-u-ṣa)” (Radner [n 18]: 160). But the only place where either tú-ú-ṣa (or, as Radner has it, tu-u-ṣa) might show up is in line 22, which is exactly where the editors read ta-lak-tú-ú-šá. It is either one or the other, and the reading ta-lak tú-ú-ṣa seems to be the better reading, since another Neo-Assyrian marriage contract, CTN 2 247, contains an identical statement, tal-lak tu-ú-ṣa, which postgate himself translates as “she . . . may go and leave” (The Governor’s Palace Archive [London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 1973]: 230).

21 There may well be others in this sample of sixty-eight documents that anticipate future demotion and/or divorce since several are completely broken where one would expect such clauses (e.g., Wunsch Urkunden no. 6). Only one of the twenty-two that are clear in this regard includes a clause anticipating that the wife might initiate a divorce: Durand Textes babyloniens 93 (Roth no. 34). It is worth noting, however, that one Persian-period document (Wunsch Urkunden no. 9) appears to record a divorce that was indeed instigated by the woman (see Wunsch [n 19]: 42). It is possible that the Neo-Assyrian text, Iraq 16 55 (ND 2307), also refers to divorce initiated by the wife; see Radner (n 18): 159. But part of one of the relevant lines (line 48) is broken.

22 See the list at the beginning of Table 1. Of these fourteen, ten are edited by Roth. She notes (Roth [n 19]: 13) that there are ten documents among her forty-four that use the verb muššuru—a verb that is an important feature of documents in this category. I count, however, only nine documents in her book that include muššuru. This is because Roth claims that Roth Marriage Agreements no. 30 contains this verb (Roth [n 19]: 13 n. 52), but there is no evidence of it in her edition of the text (ibid., 99–100). I also include in this category, though, Roth Marriage Agreements no. 5, which brings the total from Roth’s collection to ten.

23 For aḫāzu, see Roth Marriage Agreements no. 1 and Strassmaier Liverpool 8 (Roth

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might release or send his first wife away and then marry another wife (e.g., aššatu šanītu irtašu in VAS 6 61 [Roth no. 8]).

I interpret the remaining eight texts as referring primarily, if not exclu-sively, to the demotion of the wife by the husband. Like the fourteen doc-uments discussed above that refer ultimately to divorce, these eight (of which, again, only one is Neo-Assyrian) generally consider the possibil-ity that the husband will marry another woman, but they do not include a muššuru-clause or any other clause about sending the wife away.24 Given the extremely high penalties (e.g., six minas of silver in Roth Marriage Agreements no. 2) that can be attached to the husband’s tak-ing of another wife—such penalties also occur in contracts that include a muššuru-clause (e.g., six minas in Wunsch Urkunden no. 2)—most of these contracts were drafted to prevent the husbands from performing this action.25 The fines are prohibitively expensive. Nevertheless, that

no. 6). For rašû, see VAS 6 61 (Roth no. 8), Cyr. 183 (Roth no. 19), OECT 10 130 (Roth no. 20), Roth Marriage Agreements no. 26, and Wunsch Urkunden no. 2. The verb in Durand Textes babyloniens 93 (Roth no. 34) is the D-stem of wašābu: “if pN1 should send away pN2, his wife, and cause another wife to live (in the house)” (lines 28–30). The verb in yOS 6 188 (Roth no. 17) is written as ú-e-ra, which CAD tentatively assumes comes from warû (“to bring”): “if pN brings(?) a . . . woman into his house as (a second) wife” (CAD M/1 17, s.v. mādija). The verbs in Roth Marriage Agreements no. 16 and Wunsch Urkunden no. 1 are broken. The texts of Roth Marriage Agreements no. 5 and Abraham AfO 51 199 follow a different pattern. The latter, which includes a muššuru-clause, substitutes the statement, “She is not a wife,” in place of saying that the husband might marry another woman. The former begins with the possibility that the husband will say “pN is not a wife.” It then says that the wife will be sent (šapāru as opposed to muššuru) back to her father’s house—and not by her husband but by the husband’s adoptive father, his former master. The one Neo-Assyrian text in this category, Iraq 16 55 (ND 2307), has the following (lines 49–50): šum-ma mmil-ki-ra-m[u . . .] e-zi-ra e-zib-ši “if PN (the husband) [. . .] hates (her, and) he divorces her . . . .” One could say that the clause with ziāru (‘to hate’) functions in the place of a clause that refers to a subsequent marriage for the husband. According to Radner, “Wir dürfen annehmen, daß auch eine zweite Heirat des Ehemanns ohne Zustimmung der ersten Ehefrau unter den Tatbestand des ‘Hasses’ fiele” (Radner [n 18]: 160).

24 With respect to the clauses that consider a subsequent marriage for the husband, six of these eight contracts use either aḫāzu (Roth Marriage Agreements no. 2, Roth Marriage Agreements no. 25, Wunsch Urkunden no. 5, and the one Neo-Assyrian text in this category, CTN 2 247), rašû (Nbk. 101 [Roth no. 4]), or the D-stem of wašābu (Roth Marriage Agreements no. 15; in the same sense as this verb is used in Durand Textes babyloniens 93 [Roth no. 34]). The text of Wunsch Urkunden no. 3 includes a statement by the husband similar to that in Roth Marriage Agreements no. 5: “[Meine] Ehefrau [bist du] <nicht>!” (Wunsch [n 19]: 15). But it includes no verb (e.g., muššuru, šapāru) or clause for sending the wife away and is thus included in this second, smaller category. The verb in Roth Marriage Agreements no. 30 is broken.

25 On this point, Abraham seems to be mistaken when she says that “a husband who took a second wife, but did not ‘release’ his first wife, paid only one mina of silver” (Abraham [n 12]: 203 n. 11). She contrasts this situation with documents that include a muššuru-

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the contracts make any reference to the action at all signals the exis-tence of this right on the part of the husband. He does indeed have the right to take a second wife, and, as Roth notes, “a second marriage need not always result in the dissolution of the first.”26 In fact, one marriage contract (VAS 6 3 [Roth no. 3]) makes clear that this is the husband’s second marriage and that his first wife will not be leaving the household. Another (Wunsch Urkunden no. 5) indicates that, should the husband take a second wife after marrying the woman who is the subject of the contract, that woman—the man’s first wife—will remain and not leave (more on why below).

Is it possible, though, to show that these eight contracts that do not mention sending the wife away are referring only to demotion and not to full-fledged divorce? First, that these contracts omit a muššuru-clause places them into a similar category as those that Szubin and porten iden-tify as referring only to “hatred” of the wife by the husband.27 If docu-ments in the one category—those that contain only “hate” clauses—refer to demotion because they omit a sending-away clause, it stands to reason that documents in the other category—those containing only a clause about the husband marrying again or a similar clause—also refer to de-motion because they, too, omit a sending-away clause. Second, one of the eight contracts stands out by virtue of the consequence that it lists for the husband’s decision to take another wife. This is Wunsch Urkunden no. 5, mentioned above. The clause in question states (lines 2–4): ina u4-mu d[am šá-n]i-ti i-taḫ-[ḫa]-zu fdna-bé-e-ḫi-in-i’ áš-<šá-ti>-galti, “on the day when he (the husband) takes another wife, Nabê-ḫinnī is the great wife.” In other words, Nabê-ḫinnī will not have her status de-moted to that of second-ranking wife.28 The inclusion of this stipulation strongly suggests that, without it, a second marriage on the part of the husband would indeed have led to a reduction in status for Nabê-ḫinnī. If this is correct, then the other seven contracts that do not contain such

clause and then require “compensation between five and six minas of silver” (ibid.). She lists Roth Marriage Agreements no. 2, which has a penalty of six minas, among the latter, even though it does not contain a muššuru-clause. Thus, the one-mina penalty is not the only penalty for husbands who take a second wife but do not release the first one. She does seem to be correct, however, that the one-mina penalty does not occur outside of those documents that lack a muššuru-clause. The significance of this, though, is unclear.

26 Roth (n 19): 13.27 yOS 6 188 (Roth no. 7) shows that the action represented by the muššuru-clause and

the action represented by the clause about the husband taking another wife are two separate actions. As Roth states, “[These actions] are not necessarily simultaneous actions, nor is one necessarily a consequence of the other. [YOS 6 188] expresses these two actions in two distinct clauses, separated by a clause dealing with adultery” (Roth [n 19]: 13).

28 On this text, see the comments of Wunsch (n 19): 24.

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a stipulation are most likely presuming that a second marriage will result in demotion for the first wife.

One possible objection to this line of reasoning is that several of these contracts indicate that, should a second marriage occur, the first wife “will/may go where she pleases” (usually either ašar ṣebâta tallak or ašar maḫri tallak). This sort of clause also occurs in documents that include a muššuru-clause and thus refer to divorce and not merely to demotion. If the first wife can now “go where she pleases,” would that not point to divorce as opposed to demotion, even in those contracts that do not contain a muššuru-clause? This does not seem to be the case. The clause does not mean that the woman necessarily has to leave the household and go somewhere else. Some of the contracts—both those with and without a muššuru-clause—do not include the clause at all. I suggest, therefore, that the wife’s ability to leave the household is a con-ditional right that a wife generally possessed and to which marriage con-tracts could make reference, although to do so appears not to have been mandatory. The condition that, when fulfilled, allows the right to become active is a second marriage by the husband. Such a marriage now allows the first wife the opportunity to exercise this right, and, should she so choose, her departure from the household would terminate the marital relationship and thus result in divorce. If, on the other hand, she should choose not to exercise this right, she can remain in the household, albeit very likely in the capacity of a second-ranking wife.

At least one Neo-Babylonian marriage contract and several signifi-cantly older contracts suggest that one of the chief reasons why a husband might demote his first wife is that she appears unable to bear children. The Neo-Babylonian text, VAS 6 3 (Roth no. 3), contains an agreement for what is clearly the husband’s second marriage. The contract states that, if the husband’s first wife should eventually bear a son, then that son will be considered the firstborn and will receive two thirds of the husband’s estate at the time of inheritance. If, however, she fails to bear children and the second wife bears a son, “then the property of pN1 (the husband)—in city and country, as much as there may be—will belong to pN2 (the second wife) and her children.” At the time of the second marriage, the first wife has obviously not yet given birth to any children; hence, the husband’s motivation for taking a second wife. If the first wife remains barren, it appears as if the second wife will be the first-ranking wife since the husband’s estate will “belong to her and her children.” This arrangement is somewhat similar to that expressed in a Late Bronze Age marriage contract from the site of Nuzi (HSS 19 84, lines 11–17):

If pN1 (the bride—the object of the contract) does not give birth, then pN2 (the husband) may take a second wife. If pN1

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does give birth and pN2 still takes another wife, then pN3 (the brother of the bride) will come and take pN1 away, together with her children.

The contract from Nuzi strongly implies that the taking of a second wife by the husband means demotion for the first wife. The contract provides justification for the demotion, as long as the first wife has not yet borne a son. There is no justification, however, should the demotion come after the first wife has given birth to a son. In that event, the brother of the first wife has the right to come and take his sister and her children away from the husband. In both of these contracts, the barrenness of the first wife can lead to the husband’s decision to take a second wife, and this, in turn, leads to the demotion of the first.

In addition, one can infer from VAS 6 3 (Roth no. 3), the Neo-Babylonian text mentioned above, that, should the first wife eventually bear a son—perhaps even after the second wife has borne a son—she (the first wife) will be reinstated as the first-ranking wife. This appears to follow from the contract’s stipulation that the son of the first wife should be treated as the firstborn and receive the additional inheritance share, since the reverse of that, where the second wife and her children receive the estate, indicates first-ranking status for the second wife. That such reinstatement was possible in the ancient Near East is confirmed by another Late Bronze Age marriage contract, this time from Alalakh. The contract, AT 92, anticipates that the bride may not produce a son right away and that the groom may decide to marry another woman. It assumes that the current bride will remain in the household after this second marriage, and it goes on to state quite clearly that, should the first wife bear a son, even after the second wife has borne a son, the first wife’s son shall be deemed and treated as the firstborn, even though he is not the eldest chronologically.29 In this text, too, the implication is

29 See Rowe (n 15): 710. The same seems to be true of AT 94, which is substantially broken (see ibid.). A recent analysis of AT 92 comes to a slightly different conclusion: J. J. Justel, “The Marriage Contract AlT 92 (Alalakh IV) in the Light of the Marriage System of Late Bronze Age Syria,” AoF 36 (2009): 97–109. Justel argues that the contract does not record the groom’s first marriage but rather his second. He states: “Iri-ǵalba [the groom] already had a wife called Tatadu. This clause stipulates that the first son that Iri-ǵalba conceives with Naidu [the bride in the current contract] will be entitled to the right of primogeniture even if Tatadu had previously given Iri-ǵalba a son” (ibid., 104). In either case—whether Naidu is the first wife and is demoted to make room for a second wife, or whether she is the second wife, as Justel claims, and is demoted at the time when the first wife bears a son—whenever Naidu herself gives birth to a son is the time at which she will be reinstated as first-ranking wife. This is accurate, of course, only insofar as it is correct to

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that the elevation of the woman’s son to the status of firstborn entails a renewed elevation of her status as well.30 In other words, if her barren-ness resulted in her demotion, it stands to reason that her belated fertility should result in her reinstatement as first-ranking wife. Thus, one can say that the persian-period contract described above, Wunsch Urkunden no. 5, states that the bride in question will retain her first-ranking status re-gardless of what happens in the future, while these other contracts allow the bride to regain her first-ranking status if she bears a son subsequent to her demotion.

This overview of ‘to love’ and ‘to hate’ in Deut 21:15–17 and of mar-riage contracts (from the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and persian periods) that refer to demotion point toward several important conclu-sions.

1. Generally speaking, husbands had the right to demote or divorce their wives without grounds, although this right could be elimi-nated or made prohibitively expensive via contractual stipula-tions. The very fact that some contracts attempt to prevent the husband from demoting and/or divorcing his wife tends to sup-port the existence of this right.31

2. provisions in marriage contracts that (either by stating that the husband “hates” the wife or by considering a second marriage on the part of the husband) refer to the possible rejection of the wife by the husband likely refer only to demotion if they lack a clause or a verb that refers to the husband’s sending the wife away from the household.

3. The demotion of a first wife to the status of second-ranking wife typically took place at the time when the husband wedded a sec-ond wife.

say that the elevation of Naidu’s son to firstborn status entails an elevation for her as well. 30 previous interpretations of AT 92 have followed that of D. J. Wiseman (The Alalakh

Tablets [London: British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, 1953]: 55) and assumed that lines 19–20 of the text stated that Naidu is “the great one” (rabūti). Justel reads the text as stating that the son of Naidu is “the great one” (rabūti). The difference hinges on how one reads a sign in line 19 that could be read either as the syllable -i- or as the logogram dumu. If Justel (n 29) is right, then previous readings have been mistaken, and that is why I have offered the explanation above, since it does not rely on the previous readings. If, on the other hand, the previous readings are correct, then the text is absolutely clear in its statement that Naidu will be reinstated as the first-ranking wife, and no further inferences are needed.

31 For more on this point, see Westbrook, “Character” [n 16]: 48–49.

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4. One of the most common reasons for demoting a wife without grounds was perceived barrenness on the part of the wife.32

5. Generally speaking, a demoted wife had the right to leave the household and thus convert the demotion into full divorce, or she could remain a part of the household in her reduced status.

6. Some contracts suggest that, should a wife choose to stay with her husband after being demoted, she could be reinstated as first-ranking wife, were she eventually to give birth to a son.

The discussion below goes on to examine the narrative in Genesis 29 concerning Jacob, Leah, and Rachel. It will consider the legal issues in the narrative and the relationship between those issues and the foregoing discussion of “love” and “hate” in law.

TO LOVE AND TO HATE IN NARRATIVE

The story in Genesis 29 of Jacob and his two wives, Leah and Rachel, is, of course, well known. Laban smuggles Leah surreptitiously into Jacob’s bed, and Jacob is forced to agree to another seven years of work for Laban in order to win Rachel’s hand. A week after his unexpected night with Leah, Jacob is allowed to consummate his relationship with Rachel: “Jacob went also to Rachel, and he loved Rachel more than Leah” (Gen 29:30). The expression ¥hb + pN1 + comparative min + pN2 is noteworthy. The most common translation is “to love pN1 more than pN2,” but, given how the comparative use of min occurs in biblical texts, an equally viable translation is “to love PN1 rather than pN2.”

33 In either case, one of the results of Jacob’s loving Rachel more (or rather) than

32 Most of the evidence for this comes from the Late Bronze Age. In addition to what has already been cited, see the text of AT 93 (translation in COS 3.101C; I thank my student Maxwell Husband for bringing this reference to my attention). See also C. Zaccagnini, “Nuzi,” in A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law (2 vols.; R. Westbrook, ed.; HdO 72; Leiden: Brill, 2003): 1.592–593 (565–617); and R. Westbrook, “Emar,” in A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law (2 vols.; R. Westbrook, ed.; HdO 72; Leiden: Brill, 2003): 1.668 (657–691).

33 In fact, this is how B. K. Waltke and M. O’Connor translate the verse (An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax [Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990]: 265). They call this use of min a “comparison of exclusion” whereby X (in our case, Rachel) “alone possesses the quality” at issue, “to the exclusion of” Y (Leah). GKC seems unwilling to go quite this far but says that this use of min indicates “a separation, distinction or superiority of one person or thing from or over others” (GKC §133b).

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Leah is to place Leah in a position where she can now be referred to as śǝnû¥āh—“hated” or “the hated one” (vv. 31 and 33).34

The compositional history of Genesis 29, however, is disputed.35 According to R. Kratz, for example, the text originally consisted only of vv. 16–23, 25–28, 30, 32a (“Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and she named him Reuben”), the very first part of v. 33 (“she became pregnant again and gave birth to a son”), 33b (“and she named him Simeon”), and 34.36 If this analysis is correct, then neither of the two uses of śǝnû¥āh (in vv. 31 and 33) would have belonged to the original version of the story. It might be possible to infer from this analysis that I am reading too much into v. 30 and its statement about Jacob’s love for Rachel. perhaps the author who put the story down in its original written form did not think of Leah as being śǝnû¥āh. Kratz goes on, though, to argue that there was a later yahwistic revision of the original text and that this revision included several additions to the story in chapter 29: Jacob’s encounter with Rachel at the well, his initial meeting with Laban, “the introduction to the births in 29.31, the secondary etymologies in 29.32f. (Reuben and Simeon alongside Levi), the addition of the birth of Judah in 29.35.”37 If Kratz is right about this, then it is the Yahwistic author who seems to have taken Jacob’s love for Rachel (contained in the original version) as warrant for assigning to Leah the status of śǝnû¥āh.

34 Mesopotamian literature also knows marriages where a man has a loved wife and a hated wife. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, Gilgamesh tells Enkidu (tablet 12, lines 24–25), “You must not kiss the wife you love, You must not hit the wife you hate.” Later, Enkidu ignores this advice (lines 43–44): “He kissed the wife he loved, He hit the wife he hated” (translation from S. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia [Oxford: Oxford Univ., 1989]: 121–122).

35 Many previous and current scholars who accept the classic documentary hypothesis argue that all of Genesis 29 stems from source J. See, for example, O. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction (p. R. Ackroyd, trans.; New york: Harper and Row, 1965): 199; C. Westermann, Genesis: A Commentary (John J. Scullion, trans.; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985): 463–464; and R. E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (San Francisco: Harper, 1997): 248.

36 R. G. Kratz, The Composition of the Narrative Books of the Old Testament (J. Bowden, trans.; New york: Clark, 2005): 266, 296 n. 26, and 323 n. 21.

37 Ibid., 266. It is important to note that Kratz’s J-source is not the same as that of the classic documentary hypothesis. “Of the various pieces of original material, the anthropogony in Gen. 2–4, the Noachite table of nations in Gen. 10, the Lot narrative in Gen. 19, the Isaac-Jacob narrative cycle in Gen. 26–35 which first grew up independently, and an Abraham tradition that we can hardly grasp any longer form the basis of the—yahwistic—primal history and patriarchal history (J). . . . Someone else has (re)constructed the history of the exodus of Israel from Egypt, the wandering in the wilderness, and the settlement in Exod. 2–Josh. 12 out of the victory over the Egyptians in Exod. 12–14, Miriam’s hymn of victory in Exod. 15.20f., the Joshua narratives in Josh. 6 and 8, and a Moses tradition” (ibid., 304–305).

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This points to the notion that an ancient reader, such as the yahwistic reviser, would have understood the full implications of a text saying that a husband loves his second wife “more than” or “rather than” his first. At the very least, this is evidence for the conclusion that some ancient readers could have interpreted the text in this way.

On the other hand, it is also worthwhile to consider the text from a synchronic point of view. As M. Fishbane states in his analysis of the Jacob stories:

Whatever the “original” shape of the various traditions “under-lying” the Jacob Cycle, any serious analysis must also consider their morphological unity. We must ask: are there grounds for investigating the structural coherence of the received Cycle? Is the Cycle merely a patchwork of narrative strands, or have these been integrated by a sustained literary imagination? In other words, is there ground for assuming a skillful intention-ality behind the editing?38

As one might anticipate, Fishbane opts for “the structural coherence” of the text as it now stands. Thus, the legal analysis that I seek to employ with this text should be carried out in such a way that it can function well and help to make sense of the text within either a diachronic or a synchronic frame of reference.

I wish to proceed, then, without putting a great deal of interpretive weight on the question of whether the text, as we have it, is best seen as a yahwistic revision of an older story or as a literary work crafted by a single individual at a single point in time (the latter seems unlikely but not impossible). Irrespective of this issue, if one applies the under-standing of “love,” “hate,” and demotion set forth above to the narrative of Genesis 29, the conclusion that, upon his marriage to Rachel, Jacob elevated Rachel to the status of first-ranking wife and demoted Leah to the status of second-ranking wife seems nearly inevitable.39 Either the yahwistic author has interpreted the original story in this way and added comments of his own that fit with such an interpretation, or the author of the text, if it is a single composition, wrote it in this way from the outset. Some might wish to argue, however, that the application of the technical

38 M. Fishbane, “Composition and Structure in the Jacob Cycle (Gen. 25:19–35:22),” JJS 26 (1975): 15–38 (quote on 18).

39 Even a literary scholar like R. Alter seems to sense that this is the case, but he still wants to hedge his bets by allowing for two possible interpretations: “The Hebrew term for ‘despised’ (or ‘hated’) seems to have emotional implications, as Leah’s words in verse 33 suggest, but it is also a technical, legal term for the unfavored co-wife” (Genesis: Translation and Commentary [New York: Norton, 1996]: 155).

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meaning of a term—a technical meaning that it carries in legal texts—to an occurrence of that term in a narrative text is misguided. I offer two reasons why the application of the technical meanings for “love” and “hate” to the narrative in Genesis 29 is legitimate.

First, the technical legal meanings of these terms imply that the posi-tion of the loved wife can be held by only one woman at a time, and the narrative of Genesis 29 also assumes that this is the case. After informing us of Jacob’s love for Rachel in v. 30, the text indicates in the very next verse that “yahweh saw that Leah was the hated one.” She thus no longer occupies the position of the loved wife, as she has been pushed aside by her sister. That Jacob had, at one time, “loved” Leah is evident from the narrator’s statement in v. 30, since the assertion that Jacob now loves Rachel “more than Leah” or “rather than Leah” intimates, with little inference required from the reader, that, prior to the consummation of Jacob and Rachel’s relationship, Leah was Jacob’s “loved wife.” As soon as Rachel begins to occupy this position, however, Leah is relegated—in fact, has to be relegated—to an entirely different status.

Second, the narrative appears to assume that the reader is fully aware of what it means for Jacob to love Rachel “more than” or “rather than” Leah.40 Upon hearing this, the reader is expected to recognize that what accompanies the “loving” of Rachel is the “hating” of Leah. The text does not state this explicitly but merely acknowledges in v. 31, where the term śǝnû¥āh appears, that it has occurred. Moreover, the way in which the term is used there suggests that the reader already knows that this “hatred” of Leah has taken place. In other words, in v. 31, the text is simply making clear that yahweh is now aware of what the reader was already able to infer from v. 30. Thus, it seems sufficiently evident that the narrative presumes an awareness on the part of its readers that for a husband to love one wife “more than” or “rather than” another results in the status of śǝnû¥āh for the latter.

The application of the technical legal meanings for “love” and “hate” to the events of the latter part of Genesis 29, therefore, seems quite apro-pos. And the astute reader could surely have anticipated what was about to happen when Jacob took Rachel to bed to consummate his marriage with her. She was the one he had wanted initially, and his marriage to Leah was carried out against his will. To be sure, Leah had originally been the “loved” wife, simply because she had been Jacob’s only wife. But that was bound to change, of course, just as soon as the marriage to Rachel was official.

40 I agree with Barmash, when she states: “The literary conventions and motifs on which narrative is built bear a relationship to actual law, or else they would be neither recognizable nor acceptable to the readers of their time” (Barmash, “Narrative Quandary” [n 2]: 4).

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Based on the above analysis of the term “hate” in legal texts, however, we have to go one step further. Not only did Jacob demote Leah upon his marriage to Rachel, but he demoted her without grounds. One possible objection to this is that the demotion was, in fact, carried out due to mis-conduct on Leah’s part. What sort of misconduct would that have been? A passage from Genesis Rabba suggests one possible answer:

All that night he kept calling her “Rachel” and she kept answer-ing him “yes?” “But the next morning, behold, it was Leah” [Gen. 29:25]. He said to her, “Liar and daughter-of-a-liar!”41

In other words, is it possible that the narrative implies collusion on the part of Leah with her father and that Jacob demotes her for the role she played in the deception? If so, then it could be argued that Jacob’s demotion of Leah was indeed a demotion with grounds. I do not find this line of reasoning convincing, however, principally because of the nature of marriage contracts in the ancient Near East and because of how breaches of such contracts were handled. Marriage contracts were typically concluded between the groom and/or his parents and the father (or, in some cases, the mother and/or brother) of the bride. The fault for any violation of the contract would be that of the contracting party alone. In this instance, the contracting parties to the marriage contract are clearly Jacob and Laban. From a legal point of view, then, the fault for the breach of contract that takes place—substituting Leah for the woman that Jacob contracted to marry—is that of Laban alone. Moreover, there is no indication in the text that Leah’s demotion is due to her participa-tion in Laban’s ruse. On the contrary, the text implies, if not states out-right, that the demotion is tied directly to Jacob’s love for Rachel. Thus, the conclusion can be retained that the demotion of Leah was enacted without grounds.

The section of Genesis 29 that follows v. 30—namely, vv. 31–35—is best interpreted in the light of this understanding of “love” and “hate.” According to v. 31, “yahweh saw that Leah was the hated one (śǝnû¥āh). He therefore opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.” If one accepts that the term śǝnû¥āh signals a demotion without grounds, it is not hard to see how the narrative suggests that what Leah experiences in this re-gard is an injustice.42 The response that the narrative then attributes to yahweh is one that seeks, at least in part, to compensate for this injustice.

41 Quoted from J. L. Kugel, The Bible As It Was (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1997): 219.42 This injustice is referred to as “affliction” (¿ŏnî) in v. 32. Although this line may

well be a later addition, according to W. Brueggemann, it carries great significance: “This seemingly incidental assertion of Leah in 29:32 is the claim of the entire narrative. God

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Leah is made—by yahweh, the text is clear to say—to be fertile, whereas Rachel goes childless for the time being. Each of Leah’s responses in the subsequent verses to the birth of her first four sons also reflects the vantage point that Leah now holds—that of an unjustly demoted wife.

The recounting of the births in vv. 32–35 is structured in four largely parallel units.43 Each unit contains a statement that Leah is pregnant, a statement that she births a son, an account of her naming of the son, and the reason for the name she chooses.44 The constituent parts of each unit are delineated in Table 2. What stands out the most from an analysis of these units is that the fourth unit concerning Judah, while similar in much of its structure to the other units, is qualitatively quite different. Some discussion of the units is required to establish this point.

There are a variety of verbal parallels and correspondences that one can observe among all four units (see Table 2). But let us assume, for the moment, that the text does indeed result from a yahwistic revision of a simpler story. I will follow Kratz’s assessment that there were two major sections added to the text during the revision (these sections are marked with shading in Table 2).45

looks upon the affliction of his children” (Genesis [Interpretation; Atlanta: Knox, 1982]: 255–256).

43 One difference among the four is that the first unit includes the naming of the son before it provides the explanation from Leah regarding the name. This is probably nothing more than a stylistic difference. B. O. Long, following J. Fichtner (“Die etymologische Ätiologie in der Namengebung der geschichtlichen Bücher des Alten Testaments,” VT 6 [1956]: 372–396), distinguishes between two forms of etymological etiologies. The first form (Form I) is precisely what one finds in Gen 29:32: a naming statement, followed by a kî-clause that opens with the verb ¥mr and contains the etymological explanation (The Problem of Etiological Narrative in the Old Testament [BZAW 108; Berlin: Töpelmann, 1968]: 5). Although Gen 29:33 essentially reverses these two elements, Long considers it nothing more than a variation of Form I (ibid., 33). As for vv. 34–35, Long numbers these among his five “cases of very advanced mixing,” because, in these etymologies, “the distinctions between Forms I and II have almost disappeared” (ibid., 54). Thus, a number of the differences among these four units are probably more about stylistic variation than about substantive meaning.

44 On the etymologies, see A. Strus, “Etymologies des noms propres dans Gen 29,32–30,24, valeurs littéraires et fonctionnelles,” Salesianum 40 (1978): 57–72.

45 Westermann’s analysis is somewhat similar, though far from identical, to that of Kratz. Westermann believes that underlying chapter 29 are several originally independent oral narratives. The first to give these written form was J: “J is the composer and the composition emerges as a unit because of the consideration given to form” (Westermann [n 35]: 464). Like Kratz, however, Westermann believes that there was a reviser who incorporated additions and other alterations to the text. Most relevant for our discussion is Westermann’s claim that the reviser inserted 29:33–35 and probably changed 29:32b (ibid., 472). Thus, according to Westermann, the reviser added the accounts of Simeon, Levi, and Judah’s births, whereas Kratz would say that only Judah’s was added and that the

WELLS: FIRST WIVES CLUB 121

First, the reviser inserted etymologies for Reuben and Simeon’s names and followed a specific pattern when doing so: kî + perfect verb form + yhwh + a predicate complement to the verb (a prepositional phrase in v. 32 and a subordinate clause in v. 33) + an additional clause of explana-tion. In both of these etymologies, the assumption that Leah has been demoted to second-ranking wife comes through clearly. The etymology for Reuben indicates, initially, Leah’s belief that yahweh has seen the injustice that she has endured, but it has Leah continue with the belief that now, subsequent to Reuben’s birth, she will be reinstated as the first-ranking wife: “now my husband will love me” (v. 32). For Leah to have this expectation is entirely understandable, given what we have already seen regarding the connection between childlessness and demotion. Most ancient readers probably would have assumed exactly what Leah assumes—that the fertile wife will take over the top position. The ety-mology for Simeon is similar with the quotation that it attributes to Leah: “yahweh has heard that I am the hated one” (v. 33). The parallelism between the two suggests that Leah’s “affliction” or “injustice” in v. 32 is precisely that she is now the “hated one,” the one demoted to second-ranking wife. Either the yahwistic reviser misinterpreted—intentionally or unintentionally—the original story and established the idea of Leah’s demotion as a new turn of events within the narrative, or he interpreted the reference to Jacob’s love for Rachel in v. 30 correctly and used it as a basis for the etymologies that he invented. In either case, the reviser must have assumed that his audience would not be terribly startled or not be startled at all by Leah’s allusions to her secondary status.

For these two etymologies, the yahwistic reviser might have taken his cue not only from the statement in v. 30 but also from the etymology given for Levi in the original story: “Now this time my husband will be joined (Nip¿al of lwh) to me”—the implication being, joined in the kind of legal relationship that they previously had when Leah was Jacob’s only wife. He might have interpreted this etymology as representing the idea that Leah had been demoted when Jacob took Rachel into his house-hold as his second wife. It seems to carry the same implication as the etymology that the reviser inserts for Reuben: that Leah expects a full reinstatement to her former position.

Second, the yahwistic reviser inserted the report of Judah’s birth and the accompanying etymology of Judah’s name. This report was mod-eled on that of Levi in v. 34: wattahar . . . wattēled . . . wattō¥mer . . .

etymology for Simeon’s name was created by the reviser. Both would agree, though, that the etymology for Reuben in v. 32b was either added or altered by the reviser.

122 MAARAV 18.1–2 (2011)

happa¿am . . . ¿al kēn.46 What is striking about the report in v. 35, how-ever, is that there is no allusion whatsoever to Leah’s current status or her hope that she might be restored to her former status—that which she pos-sessed when she was Jacob’s only wife. All of that has disappeared. The clause in Levi’s etymology that begins with ¿attāh happa¿am express-es Leah’s wish to be favored once again by Jacob. The corresponding clause in Judah’s etymology, which begins with happa¿am and which one might expect to match the clause in Levi’s etymology in terms of its sentiments, states simply: “I will praise yahweh” (v. 35). For whatever reason, the yahwistic reviser—or, perhaps, the original storyteller—de-cided to have Leah give up, at least at this point in the story, her hopes of being restored to the position of first-ranking wife. Instead, she expresses her gratefulness to yahweh for the birth of this additional son, and that is as far as the reviser (or narrator) allows Leah to go. perhaps the intent was to say that Leah has resigned herself to the fate of being Jacob’s second-ranking wife and is content with nothing more than proclaiming her gratitude, although one can hardly help but feel some degree of pity for her and hope that her fortunes will change for better later in the story.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE LAW AND THE NARRATIVE

I must now turn to the possible connection between the Deuteronomic law (Deut 21:15–17) and the Genesis narrative.47 At least three main possibilities present themselves. First, there might be no connection be-tween the two texts at all. Any thematic or even verbal parallels that exist could be purely coincidental. Second, one could argue for an indirect connection. For example, the author of the legal text in Deuteronomy might have been familiar with a story about Jacob that is similar to the one in Genesis, but it might not have been the exact same story and might have been known to him only in oral rather than written form. He might then have composed his law based on the narrative situation with which he was acquainted. The reverse of this could also be a possibility, where the author of the narrative was familiar with a legal tradition like the one described in Deuteronomy and arranged his narrative to include the same basic legal issue as that dealt with by the legal tradition. Third, there might be a direct connection between the texts, with the author of

46 Verse 34 begins its fourth clause with ¿attāh happa¿am.47 For an overview of this issue with relevant literature, see B. S. Jackson, Studies in the

Semiotics of Biblical Law (JSOTSup 314; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2000): 227–230.

WELLS: FIRST WIVES CLUB 123

one having read the other and incorporated its theme into his own work. The question would then be: which text depends on the other?

Carmichael has argued forcefully for direct dependence of the law on the narrative.48 In his view, the narrative came first and prompted the lawgiver in Deuteronomy to explore more carefully the type of situa-tion represented by the story of Jacob and his two wives. What the law-giver found troubling, according to Carmichael, was Jacob’s selection of a younger son, Joseph, as the one to receive the privileges and ben-efits of the birthright. The Deuteronomic text, according to Carmichael, describes the precise situation in which the eldest son, Reuben, finds himself, namely, as the son of the hated wife. For Carmichael, then, the most likely motivation behind the legal text is to render “a confirmed judgment upon Jacob’s decision to choose Joseph.”49 He claims that, in addition to the thematic connection between the two texts, one finds the legal text using the exact same wording as one of the Genesis tradi-tions about Jacob and his family. The text of Gen 49:3 has Jacob refer to Reuben as “the first fruits of my vigor” (rē¥šît ¥ônî). The same basic phrase occurs in Deut 21:17 as “the first fruits of his vigor” (rē¥šît ¥ônô), referring to the eldest son who is to receive the birthright.50

All of this raises the age-old question of how to determine the direc-tion of textual dependence, about which very little can be said here.51 Let me make just two points. First, the verbal parallel cited by Carmichael may not be as strong as it appears. The phrase rē¥šît ¥ôn also occurs in two other texts (both poetic, as is Gen 49:3): Ps 78:51 (rē¥šît ¥ônîm, “the first fruits of their vigor”) and Ps 105:36 (rē¥šît lǝkol ¥ônām, “the first fruits of all their vigor”), both of which refer to the firstborn sons of the Egyptians. Thus, it is not unique to the two texts under discussion and

48 Carmichael (n 10): 506–508. See also C. Carmichael, Law and Narrative in the Bible: The Evidence of the Deuteronomic Laws and the Decalogue (Ithaca: Cornell Univ., 1985): 142–145.

49 In his full statement, Carmichael says that the issue raised in the legal text “might be hypothetical rather than a reflection of a confirmed judgment upon Jacob’s decision to choose Joseph, although it is probably the latter” (Carmichael, Law and Narrative [n 48]: 145).

50 Jackson finds this parallel quite convincing. In his review of an earlier work by Carmichael, he states: “Carmichael’s explanation that the law alludes to the story of Jacob’s wives is not to be lightly dismissed. The thematic link on its own would be a rather tenuous basis, but here as often the author backs it up with a linguistic parallel” (review of C. Carmichael, The Laws of Deuteronomy, JJS 27 [1976]: 84–87 [quote on 85]).

51 For a general discussion of the issue, see D. Carr, “Method in Determination of Direction of Dependence: An Empirical Test of Criteria Applied to Exodus 34, 11–26 and Its parallels,” in Gottes Volk am Sinai: Untersuchungen zu Ex 32–34 und Dtn 9–10 (M. Köckert and E. Blum, eds.; Gütersloh: Gütersloh, 2001): 107–140.

124 MAARAV 18.1–2 (2011)

may have been a not uncommon expression in poetic discourse, the use of which could well be nothing more than a stylistic flourish in the legal prose of Deuteronomy. Second, it is not at all clear that the Deuteronomic law is rendering any sort of judgment on Jacob’s choice of Joseph as the firstborn. If one reads the various biblical traditions about Jacob and his sons from a synchronic point of view, one finds that the reason for Jacob’s dismissal of Reuben as the firstborn was based on Reuben’s misconduct—namely, his having slept with Bilhah (Gen 35:22; 1 Chr 5:1–2)—and not merely on Joseph’s being the son of his “loved” wife. In the ancient Near East, a head of household always had the right to reduce or even eliminate completely the inheritance of a son for cause. This would mean, therefore, that, once Reuben lay with Bilhah, Jacob was no longer bound by any rule or tradition like the one in Deut 21:15–17. If the author of this latter text were intending to comment on the narrative, surely he would have known this.

The law in Deut 21:15–17 appears to fit well with other provisions that can be said to come from the law-code tradition of the ancient Near East. Like most other provisions in the region’s extant law codes, it is casuis-tically formulated, academic in nature (no reference to specific people, times, or places), made up of only third-person verb forms and pronomi-nal suffixes, and rather suited to that tradition in terms of its contents.52 One must then ask whence the scribes who composed the law codes de-rived the provisions that they included in their legal collections. Various sources are possible, the two foremost being the legal traditions of their own societies and their own speculation regarding how the legal system or systems with which they were familiar might handle unusual, border-line, or even oft-discussed legal problems. It certainly seems reasonable that another possible source would be narrative traditions current in the scribes’ day. Such traditions might provide the sorts of unusual cases that scribes were wont to incorporate on occasion into their lists of legal sce-narios. It may well have been the case, then, that the situation envisioned in Deut 21:15–17 was inspired by the story of Jacob and his two wives, but in exactly what form the author or authors of that text had access to that narrative tradition remains an open question. Thus, an indirect con-nection between the Deuteronomic law and the Genesis narrative is quite plausible, whereas the conclusion that there is a direct connection seems to have a much lower degree of probability.

52 It is traditional in that it deals with a problem that might arise in a case of polygamy—a general issue treated by a number of other law-code provisions (e.g., Laws of Lipit-Ishtar 24–28, Laws of Hammurabi 144–149).

WELLS: FIRST WIVES CLUB 125

CONCLUSION

To summarize, the story of a “hated” wife is one of rejection by her husband. This rejection can result in a demotion within the household or in a divorce that terminates the marital relationship. The texts that use the term “hate” in reference to divorce combine that term with other expres-sions that signify the action of banishing the wife from the household. When the term “hate” occurs alone, the most likely type of rejection to which it refers is demotion. Moreover, a “hated” wife, whether demoted or divorced, has been rejected by her husband without grounds, an action on his part that is perfectly legal but one that requires him to forfeit some other right to which he would ordinarily have been entitled. In the case of demotion, the Deuteronomic authors wish to specify precisely which right he forfeits: namely, the right to demote the son of the wife in ques-tion. He still retained the right to demote a firstborn son for cause, should the son egregiously misbehave.

This seems to be, in many important respects, the story of Leah. In The First Wives Club, the three protagonists are interviewed by a televi-sion news reporter just after they have accomplished both revenge upon their former partners and the creation of a center for exploited, abused, and hurting women. The reporter asks them if it is indeed the case that each had a husband who left them for a younger woman. They reply in the affirmative. Leah, too, in the narrative of Genesis 29, was rejected by her husband for a younger woman. Unfortunately for her character in the story, however, there was no recourse to the kinds of methods and re-sources that modern women, like the three in the movie, can make use of to escape problematic situations and create a better life for themselves. Hence, for as long as biblical texts are read and studied, Leah will con-tinue to be known as the “hated” first wife of Jacob.

MAARAV 18.1–2 (2011) 126

Tabl

e 1.

Neo

-Ass

yria

n, N

eo-B

abyl

onia

n, a

nd P

ersi

an M

arria

ge C

ontra

cts

Ant

icip

atin

g D

ivor

ce o

r Dem

otio

n

(doc

umen

ts re

ferr

ing

to d

ivor

ce c

ome

first

, fol

low

ed b

y th

ose

refe

rrin

g to

dem

otio

n on

ly)

Doc

umen

tPe

riod

Verb

for

send

ing

wife

aw

ayVe

rb fo

r ta

king

an

othe

r w

ife (o

r ot

her

elem

ent)

Pena

lty fo

r hu

sban

d“S

he m

ay g

o w

here

she

plea

ses”

Iraq

16

55 (N

D

2307

)N

eo-A

ssyr

ian

ezēb

u“i

f he

hate

s (zi

āru)

. .

. he

r”“h

e m

ust p

ay”

no

Rot

h M

arri

age

Agre

emen

ts n

o. 1

Neo

-Bab

ylon

ian

muš

šuru

aḫāz

u[b

roke

n]un

know

n (b

roke

n)

Rot

h M

arri

age

Agre

emen

ts n

o. 5

Neo

-Bab

ylon

ian

šapā

ru“P

N is

not

a w

ife”

6 m

inas

(pai

d by

gr

oom

’s fa

ther

)gr

oom

’s fa

ther

will

“se

nd h

er

back

to h

er fa

ther

’s h

ouse

”R

oth

Mar

riag

e Ag

reem

ents

no.

16

Neo

-Bab

ylon

ian

muš

šuru

[bro

ken]

[bro

ken]

yes

Stra

ssm

aier

Li

verp

ool 8

(Rot

h no

. 6)

Neo

-Bab

ylon

ian

muš

šuru

aḫāz

u6

min

asye

s

VAS

6 61

(Rot

h no

. 8)

Neo

-Bab

ylon

ian

muš

šuru

rašû

5 m

inas

no

Wun

sch

Urk

unde

n no

. 1N

eo-B

abyl

onia

n[m

uššu

ru]

[bro

ken]

6 m

inas

no

Wun

sch

Urk

unde

n no

. 2N

eo-B

abyl

onia

nm

uššu

rura

šû6

min

asye

s

127 WELLS: FIRST WIVES CLUB

Doc

umen

tPe

riod

Verb

for

send

ing

wife

aw

ayVe

rb fo

r ta

king

an

othe

r w

ife (o

r ot

her

elem

ent)

Pena

lty fo

r hu

sban

d“S

he m

ay g

o w

here

she

plea

ses”

YO

S 6

188

(Rot

h no

. 17)

Neo

-Bab

ylon

ian

[muš

šuru

]w

arû(

?)•

send

ing

wife

aw

ay: 6

shek

els

of si

lver

• ta

king

ano

ther

w

ife: 6

shek

els

of si

lver

“she

may

go

to th

e ho

use

of a

mār

ban

î” (f

or b

oth

infr

actio

ns)

Abr

aham

AfO

51

199

Pers

ian

muš

šuru

“She

is n

ot a

wife

”6

min

asye

s

Cyr

. 183

(Rot

h no

. 19

)Pe

rsia

nm

uššu

rura

šû6

min

asye

s

Dur

and

Text

es

baby

loni

ens 9

3 (R

oth

no. 3

4)

Pers

ian

muš

šuru

waš

ābu

(D-s

tem

)5

min

as “

in a

dditi

on

to h

er d

owry

”no

OEC

T 10

130

(Rot

h no

. 20)

Pers

ian

muš

šuru

rašû

[bro

ken]

min

asye

s

Rot

h M

arri

age

Agre

emen

ts n

o. 2

6Pe

rsia

nm

uššu

rura

šû6

min

as“s

he m

ay g

o to

the

hous

e of

he

r fat

her”

CTN

2 2

47N

eo-A

ssyr

ian

n/a

aḫāz

u“s

he m

ay ta

ke w

hat

has b

een

acqu

ired”

“she

may

leav

e; sh

e m

ay

go o

ut”

Nbk

. 101

(Rot

h no

. 4)

Neo

-Bab

ylon

ian

n/a

rašû

1 m

ina

yes

MAARAV 18.1–2 (2011) 128

Doc

umen

tPe

riod

Verb

for

send

ing

wife

aw

ayVe

rb fo

r ta

king

an

othe

r w

ife (o

r ot

her

elem

ent)

Pena

lty fo

r hu

sban

d“S

he m

ay g

o w

here

she

plea

ses”

Rot

h M

arri

age

Agre

emen

ts n

o. 2

Neo

-Bab

ylon

ian

n/a

aḫāz

u6

min

asye

s

Rot

h M

arri

age

Agre

emen

ts n

o. 1

5N

eo-B

abyl

onia

nn/

aw

ašāb

u (D

-ste

m)

retu

rn o

f dow

ryye

s

Rot

h M

arri

age

Agre

emen

ts n

o. 2

5Pe

rsia

nn/

aaḫ

āzu

1 m

ina

no

Rot

h M

arri

age

Agre

emen

ts n

o. 3

0Pe

rsia

nn/

a[b

roke

n][b

roke

n]“s

he m

ay g

o to

the

hous

e of

he

r fat

her”

Wun

sch

Urk

unde

n no

. 3Pe

rsia

nn/

a“Y

ou a

re n

ot m

y w

ife”

1 m

ina

no

Wun

sch

Urk

unde

n no

. 5Pe

rsia

nn/

a aḫā

zufir

st w

ife w

ill re

mai

n fir

st-r

anki

ng w

ifeno

129 WELLS: FIRST WIVES CLUBTa

ble

2. T

he B

irth

Acc

ount

s in

Gen

29:

32–3

5

(sha

ded

area

s = p

roba

ble

addi

tions

by

a Yah

wis

tic re

vise

r)

v. 3

2 –

Reu

ben

v. 3

3 –

Sim

eon

v. 3

4 –

Levi

v. 3

5 –

Juda

h

wat

taha

r lē¥

āhw

atta

har ¿

ôdw

atta

har ¿

ôdw

atta

har ¿

ôd

wat

tēle

d bē

nw

attē

led

bēn

wat

tēle

d bē

nw

attē

led

bēn

wat

tiqrā

¥ šǝ

mô

PN--

---

---

-

kî ¥

āmǝr

āhw

attō

¥mer

wat

tō¥m

erw

attō

¥mer

kî rā

¥āh

yhw

h bǝ

¿ony

îkî

šām

a¿ y

hwh

kî śǝ

nû¥ā

h ¥ā

nōkî

¿attā

h ha

ppa¿

am y

illāw

eh ¥îš

î ¥ē

lay

happ

a¿am

¥ôd

eh ¥et

yhw

h

kî ¿

attā

h ye

¥ĕhā

banî

¥îš

îw

ayyi

tten

lî ga

m ¥

et ze

hkî

yāl

adtî

lô šǝ

lōšā

h bā

nîm

---

---

wat

tiqrā

¥ šǝ

mô

šim

¿ôn

¿al k

ēn q

ārǝ¥

āh*

šǝm

ô lē

wî

¿al k

ēn q

ārǝ¥

āh šǝ

mô

yǝhû

dāh

* Th

e m

t ha

s qār

ā¥; m

y re

adin

g, a

s tha

t of m

ost o

ther

scho

lars

, fol

low

s the

lx

x a

nd m

ost o

f the

ver

sion

s.