Abstract
This book analyses the rationale behind the ordered lists in Hebrew scripture of the twelve tribes of Israel as grouped under the four matriarchs: Leah, Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah. Smith questions whether the sequences of the twelve tribes were redacted for an ideological purpose and whether the role of Jacob’s wives and biblical women is underplayed by scholars, biblical texts or both. Critiquing the modern notion of manipulated or unfixed tribal lists, Smith shows that Mesopotamian and much later Arabic genealogical lists fastidiously preserved genealogical orders. Smith’s developing reflections on the continued importance of the four wives of Jacob/Israel throughout the Hebrew Bible contribute to the evidence that Israelite women played an active role theologically in the covenantal promises and socially in the community. Smith helps decipher various rationales invoking altered list orders – inheritance, geographical and territorial claims – which affect the position and ranking of Jacob/Israel’s sons and the tribes throughout the texts of the Hebrew Bible. Notably, Smith’s analysis presents new readings of tribal epithets and inter-tribal interactions with sensitivity as to how each biblical author approaches the twelve tribes and their matriarchs and why.
Smith’s realignment of Pentateuchal criticism of the tribal genealogical lists involves questioning mid-to-late 20th-century queries and assumptions affecting scholarly approaches to oral–written transmission and matriarchal importance. 1 Here in Smith, there is a redressing effort to integrate better the evidence of wider Mesopotamian and Levantine primary sources, on both the cultural roles of women and the transmission of genealogical lists.
The source-critical and form-critical approaches to Pentateuch genealogies by Wellhausen, Noth and others aimed at recovering narratives from a presumed manipulated or redacted version, for example, the later South/North political distancing between Judah and Israel. Redactional re-discovery necessitated that genealogies should be treated with scepticism, as examples of unreliable transmission. Scholarship also downplayed the role of the matriarchs and women in Genesis, partly from the now-discredited idea that Israel was an oppressive patriarchal society. Smith demonstrates that such ‘against the grain’ readings are themselves misleading temptations of modern exegetical study on either side. A double bind thus arose for scholars: overlooking the order and prominence of the matriarchs meant that the order of Jacob’s sons in genealogical lists was presumed to be polemic, political or otherwise manipulated in each iteration. Smith is not attempting egalitarianism either, however, since the four wives of Jacob had their own hierarchical order asserted by a fixed ranking. Smith finds, crucially, that this matriarchal ranking remained in memory even while the order of the sons/tribes varies according to territorial/geographical/inheritance needs. Smith’s advancement is thus that rankings and genealogical lists did not serve solely to conceal or manipulate either tribes or women as much as previously claimed. For example, Smith describes camp/procession style lists and wilderness procession lists. The army list of Israel’s second generation in the wilderness (Num 26:5–51, pp. 77–79) preserves an order of the twelve tribes that preserves the birth order within the rank of each mother in nearly the same sequence as Numbers 1:20–54, the original census, except that Ephraim precedes Manasseh. This list functions to highlight and preview the later organisation in settling the Canaanite land. A slightly different sequencing function of geography and territory is apparent in the land allotment of Numbers 34:16–29, as Smith observes rightly that the absence of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh is simply because these tribes had settled in the Transjordan (pp. 79–81). Here the sons are in no particular order, but the matriarch sequence is more constant (Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, Zilpah). Another list, however, that of the Song of Deborah (Judg 5:14–23), is significantly different in preserving a geographic orientation from south to north (pp. 97–100). Thus, each list has its own respective orientation and contextual rationale for inclusion, sequencing, and epithets.
Smith’s monograph is presented in a lucid style considering the amount of data considered here, with well-organised tables, charts, page layout and indices. The book is refreshing to read and persuasive, and the writing style is concise, engaging and sincere. The methodological model is on solid ground and resists the oversimplification of ‘polemics as rationale’. Interested readers would be any who are interested in Genesis, genealogical lists, orality, transmission, the Jacob cycle, the Chronicler, treatment of foreign women, names and epithets, the tribal and United Monarchy narratives, and women in the ancient Israel and Judaism.