From Deborah to Esther: Sexual Politics in the Hebrew Bible

I am a woman deeply troubled.... I have been pouring out my soul before Yahweh.- Hannah (1 Sam. 1:15)The Hebrew Bibles fascinating narratives about women have occasioned some of the most important biblical scholarship of the last generation. Lillian Klein contributes to that wealth with her absorbing studies of key figures in the narrative material: Deborah Jephthas daughter Delilah Jael the whore of Gaza Kalebs daughter Achsah Hannah Esther the wife of Job Davids wife Michal and Bathsheba. With a marvelous eye for the telling detail - or its absence - Klein examines the biblical portraits often unfortunately brief of these women and the dynamics of gender power and honor at work in their stories.A remarkably lucid and careful scholar Klein has surfaced the underlying and ironic ideals of womanhood in a society that both honored and marginalized women in stories of seduction and rivalry deviation and obedience public shame and private power.