Gender Reversal and Cosmic Chaos

A Study on the Book of Ezekiel

S. Tamar Kamionkowski

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Supplement Series 368

Copyright © 2003 Sheffield Academic Press

A Continuum imprint

Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd

The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0-82646-224-3

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Chapter 1

Introduction

1. Ezekiel and Gender Reversal

2. Preliminary Considerations

a. Composition and Dating

b. Approaches to Ezekiel 16 and 23

1. Traditional Commentators

2. Feminist Readers

3. Covenant Theologians

3. Where Do We Go from Here?

Chapter 2

Metaphor

1. Metaphor Theories

2. Cognitive Metaphor Theory

3. Schemas and Slots

4. Metaphor and Contextual Knowledge

5. Metaphor and Persuasion

6. Metaphor and Biblical Studies

7. ‘A Metaphor is Just a Metaphor’

8. Conclusions

Chapter 3

Gender Reversal: A Weak Man Is a Woman

1. Metaphor in Socio-Cultural and Historical Context

a. Exile, Shame and Gender Crisis

b. Ezekiel and Exile

c. Responses to Gender Confusion: Hypervirility

d. Responses to Gender Confusion: Emasculation

e. Excursus: Psychologizing Ezekiel

2. Metaphor in Literary Context

a. The Mesopotamian Evidence

b. The Biblical Evidence

3. Conclusions

Chapter 4

Ezekiel 16 and the Emasculated Man

1. The Passive Girl

a. Translation and Commentary

b. Vulnerability ad absurdum

c. He Gives her Life

d. He Gives her Sexual Experience

2. The Assertive Woman

a. Translation and Commentary

b. Women’s Ejaculation

c. Usurping the Phallus

d. The Violent Woman

e. Financial Independence

f. Women’s Ejaculation, Again

g. Inversion of Gender Order

3. Conclusions

Chapter 5

Ezekiel 23 and the Hypervirile Man

1. Introducing Oholah and Oholibah

2. Differences between Ezekiel 16 and Ezekiel 23

a. Roels of the Characters and Use of Verbs

b. Reuse and Reformulation of Key Phrases

c. Affinities with Hosean and Jeremian Traditions

3. Conclusions

Chapter 6

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index of References

Index of Authors

Preface

When I was a little girl, I would chase my youngest brother around the house with a bottle of perfume because he was afraid that if the perfume touched him he would turn into a girl. Already, at that young age, he was encoded with a complex system of socially determined gender identities. For my little brother, perfume could turn him into a girl and he expressed this fear through tears. For the biblical prophet Ezekiel, the traumas of military defeat and exile had a similar gender-bending effect, but Ezekiel used the more subtle art of metaphor through ...