Abstract
Introduction
In recent years, numerous scholars have tried to define the relationship between wisdom and law in ancient Israel and Judah.
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This has proven no easy task, in part because “wisdom” and “law” are extremely uncertain categories in the ancient sources. Previous discussions have tended to focus on the relationship between biblical law, and here almost paradigmatically the Torah, and its relationship to so-called wisdom literature.
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The aim of this study is not to rehash this debate but rather to approach the convergence of wisdom and law as conceptual domains in the literary traditions of ancient Israel and Judah. To this end, I offer an examination of the narrative known as
The story of the Wise Woman of Tekoa is a brief episode found in 2 Sam. 14, which is part of the larger story of Absalom’s rebellion against his father David (2 Sam. 13–20). It belongs to a group of texts scholars have previously called “juridical parables” or “petitionary narratives” in Samuel-Kings, 3 which constitute short moralizing stories that make use of legal motifs, concepts and practises to enhance their reports of royal judgements. 4 Women often fulfil the role of petitioners or claimants in these stories, granted extraordinary access to present their cases before the king as an arbiter of justice. 5 In some of these narratives, women are depicted as paragons of wisdom, leading some to argue that the “Wise Woman” was a social role open to females in the monarchic or even the pre-monarchic periods. 6 The historical possibilities are intriguing, but the textual evidence is frustratingly lacking. Therefore, I will focus on the roles these named and unnamed characters played as typified agents in the social world implied by the narrative: a widowed woman’s legal petition for royal justice—albeit a fictitious one.
The narrative in 2 Sam. 14 is a particularly rich source of information on the relationship between law and wisdom because it is a dramatic fiction that invites readers to reflect on David’s dilemma based on their background knowledge of ancient Near Eastern legal culture—as reflected in the southern Levant. 7 The concept of wisdom ties the depiction of the unnamed Tekoite and King David to the legal cultures of Syria and Mesopotamia as well, which are the primary comparanda used in this study. Although 2 Sam. 14 and the other petitionary narratives carry their own ideological associations, they offer an alternative vision of Israelite/Judahite law to its presentation in the legal collections of the Pentateuch. These alternative perspectives should caution scholars against adopting a monolithic view of “biblical law”, especially as a homogenous category defined largely against the backdrop of “cuneiform law”.
Law as Narrative
The petitionary narratives are not dispassionate accounts of law but rather stories designed to persuade the reader of a particular point of view. They are pieces of ancient literature that may preserve aspects of Judahite law but function primarily in the service of broader ideological and narrative aims. Extracting information about the legal traditions of ancient Judah from these texts, therefore, demands a hermeneutical approach that can address the complex relationship between law and narrative—or
Wisdom and Royal Justice
I will begin with the motif of wisdom as it relates to the judicial roles and responsibilities of Near Eastern kings. After ordering the death of his brother Amnon for the rape of their sister Tamar, Absalom lived in self-imposed exile at Geshur (2 Sam. 13.38). David’s general Joab convinces a “wise woman” (אשה חכמה) from the town of Tekoa to petition the king with a legal case. This wise woman is a foil to the “very wise man” (איש חכם מאד), Jonadab, who had instigated David’s family crisis in the first place (2 Sam. 13.3). The case she presents the king is as a thinly-veiled analogy to the current situation between David and Absalom, designed to convince the king to pardon his son. 10 Appearing before David, the woman presents herself as a widow (אשה אלמנה אני), and recounts how her two sons had fought in the field, one striking and killing the other, which resulted in the woman’s clan (her משפחה) imposing blood vengeance—that is, death—on the surviving son. The issue of fratricide is an allegory for the immediate narrative context of Absalom’s murder of Amnon, where David must choose between the dispassionate application of the law and the amnesty both he and the woman desire. On the level of allegory, both the woman’s clan and the woman herself potentially represent David—depending on his decision either to impose blood vengeance or to grant amnesty and preserve the life of the remaining son.
As far as the comparative cuneiform evidence suggests, royal justice was almost exclusively an appellate mechanism, invoked by litigants who felt wronged by lower adjudicating authorities. In the Old Babylonian period, this legal status was characterised by the “wronged man or woman” (the
The greatest obstacle to pursuing legal self-help was gaining an audience with the king and his officials, which explains Joab’s first instructions to the Tekoite woman. The woman’s widowhood means she cannot produce another son for her deceased husband, but it also identifies her as an archetypical subject of royal justice. The judicial responsibility of ancient Near Eastern kings to the weakest members of society, typified by the orphan and the widow, stretches back to the earliest cuneiform legal documents with clear lines of continuity from Mesopotamia to the west in the second and first millennia
The case that Joab and the Tekoite woman present to David draws on the traditional stock of royal judicial rhetoric, other petitionary narratives, legal scenarios known from biblical and Near Eastern law, and allegorical elements tied to the immediate narrative of Absalom’s rebellion. Although David is largely oblivious to the ruse the woman presents to him, she nonetheless attributes semi-divine wisdom to him twice: after he renders a verdict in her favour (v. 17) and again when she reveals that Joab had coerced the king to issue a binding judgment in order to “change the situation” (סבב את־פני הדבר) with Absalom (v. 20). In both instances, David’s justice is equated with that of a divine being or a messenger of God:
David is compared to a divine messenger elsewhere (1 Sam. 29.9), including in another petitionary narrative (2 Sam. 19.28). His judicial wisdom would only be surpassed by that of his son, Solomon.
This wisdom enabled these kings to differentiate between right and wrong and affirmed that their decisions were beyond reproach (Ackerman, 1990: 42; Leonard, 1980: 138–39). The Eden narrative repurposes this royal ideology in its ontological vision for the orders of creation (Gen. 3.22), where “knowing good and evil” (לדעת טוב ורע) brings humanity into close proximity with the gods (cf. Gen 1.26–27), equal to them except for their mortality.
But what does it mean to say that Solomon has the wisdom of God, while David has only the wisdom of a האלהים מלאך? Perhaps this is an affirmation that Solomon’s wisdom is unsurpassed, even by his celebrated father. Alternatively, and more plausibly, David’s depiction may reflect this scribe’s hesitation to equate the human king with God—a hesitation not shared by the author of 1 Kgs. 3. This tension over the depiction of David was evidently still ongoing in the postexilic period, as shown by what the BHS identifies as a redactional gloss in Zech. 12.8: 17
The traditional prestige of David and Solomon may have spared some of these older traditions from elimination or revision by later biblical tradents. Even still, the author of the Rule of the King (Deut. 17.16–17) elliptically critiques Solomon’s pharaonic ambitions (horses, wives, riches), which are depicted positively elsewhere as a divine gift for his altruism (1 Kgs. 3.9–13). The pretentions of foreign kings to divine wisdom, by contrast, were sharply critiqued by postmonarchic writers. This is most evident in Ezekiel’s prophecy against the ruler of Tyre (Ezek. 28.1–10):
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The word of Yhwh came to me:
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O Mortal, say to the ruler of Tyre (נגיד צר): Thus says Yhwh, God: “Because your heart is proud and you have said, ‘I am a god (אל אני); I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas.’ Yet you are but a mortal and no god (ולא־אל), although you compare your mind with the mind of a god (כלב־אלהים).
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You are indeed wiser (חכם) than Danēl; no secret is hidden from you;
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by your wisdom and your understanding (בחכמתך ובתבונתך) you have amassed wealth for yourself and have gathered gold and silver into your treasuries.
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By your great wisdom (ברב חכמתך) in trade you have increased your wealth, and your heart has become proud in your wealth …
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Will you still say, ‘I am a god (אלהים אני),’ in the presence of those who kill you, though you are but a mortal and no god, in the hands of those who pierce you?”
Wisdom (חכמה) and understanding (תבונה)—attributes positively associated with Solomon (1 Kgs. 3.12; 5.9)—are derided by the prophet here. In criticizing the ruler of Tyre, the prophet seeks to disabuse this ruler, and perhaps all rulers, of any claim to divine status or divine wisdom (Nevader, 2014). Thus, the authors of 2 Sam. 14 and especially 1 Kgs. 3 offer an alternative and I believe older view that felt less apprehension about attributing some divine features to human kings, especially in their judicial capacities. Yet, comparing David to a מלאך האלהים rather than to God himself seems like a later negotiated allusion to royal ideology in contrast to the more unapologetic depiction of Solomon in 1 Kgs. 3. It reflects the same uncertainty or concerns as those found in Zech. 12.8 and Ezek. 28, perhaps pointing to a postmonarchic date for this composition.
But why did this author evoke such royal judicial ideology, albeit through the mouth of the Tekoite woman? The answer, I believe, lies in the broader narrative of Absalom’s rebellion, where the very legitimacy of David’s kingship is in question. Immediately following the Tekoite woman’s petition, which convinces David to pardon his son, Absalom begins his conspiracy against his father by usurping his judicial prerogatives (2 Sam. 15:1–6). There is precedent in Near Eastern literature and history for sons assuming the judicial prerogatives of their fathers to claim the throne, especially in cases where the former are considered to be ailing. 18 Unlike in those cases, where the king’s infirmity and resulting judicial ineffectuality are cited as the motives for their sons to seize the throne, the reader knows that David’s sense of justice remains intact. While the first affirmation (v. 17) of David’s wisdom may be simple flattery on the woman’s part, the second affirmation (v. 20) seems to be an honest assessment of David at this stage in the narrative. Yet, Absalom nonetheless attempts to usurp his father through his royal obligation to maintain justice, ultimately failing and opening the path of royal succession to Solomon. 19 Through the traditional motif of the king’s divine-like judicial wisdom, 2 Sam. 14 sets the scene for an impatient royal heir who covets the throne his father is not yet ready to abdicate. Though he was initially oblivious to the allegory Joab and the woman presented him, the author communicates that David can still discern justice and is therefore fit for the throne—despite what his son will claim (2 Sam. 15.4–6). 20
Rhetorical Strategies in Legal Petitions and the “Diplomatic” Language of Juridical Parables
David is not the only—or even the primary—wisdom-figure in this story. The story opens with the narrator recounting how Joab fetched a “wise woman” from Tekoa. Scholars have endeavoured to understand how Joab would know of this woman’s wisdom, if she held some traditional position of authority within the town of Tekoa, or if the “wise woman” constituted a social institution open to women during the monarchic or even the premonarchic age. Given her anonymity, this wise woman likely represented some kind of social archetype in the author’s mind, but only as far as it existed in the social world imagined by the narrative—namely in a story about a widow’s legal appeal to the king. I find the evidence too scant to confirm or deny the existence of institutionally based “wisdom” roles for women in ancient Israel and Judah; I can, however, confirm the existence of women who interacted with the king’s justice in much the same way as the Tekoite woman engaged with David.
Inasmuch as this narrative is a literary fiction, it draws on specific rhetorical modes of communication and persuasion known from epigraphic documents containing legal petitions. Two revealing dynamics behind the Tekoite woman’s quoted speech have important implications for understanding her wisdom and the textual genres influencing this text’s author. The dialogue between the woman and David is extremely formal, with the woman addressing David only as king (המלך) or my lord (אדני), never by name, and referring to herself only as his servant (שפחה /אמה). Locating these terms in the diplomatic language of the royal court, Irmtraud Fischer characterised the woman’s speech as a “masterwork of Oriental eloquence.” 21 But the Tekoite woman’s dialogue and word choice is not mere politeness; she also deploys metaphors and parables for rhetorical and strategic emphasis in her attempt to persuade the king of her position. This represents a second and complementary form of wisdom: parabolic or proverbial wisdom.
The introduction to the Book of Proverbs reflects on two distinct components or aspects of wisdom (בינה/חכמה) that come to bear on this narrative: one is judicial or ethical in nature (Prov. 1.3), while the other relates to understanding and interpreting the meaning behind non-literal modes of communicating information (i.e., proverbs, allegories, and riddles [Prov. 1.6]). 22 Most are familiar with proverbs in a compiled collection, as they appear in the Book of Proverbs. But proverbs were disseminated in many formal and informal media, both orally and through writing. Akkadian and West Semitic scribes exchanged proverbs in letters throughout the second millennium (Cohen, 2013: 213–32), a practise that seems to have continued in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period as well (Alster, 1989). 23 The woman’s speech mimics and evokes this elevated formal style known from correspondence connected to official adjudication. Her use of proverbial sayings (2 Sam. 14.14) was also at home in these types of epistolary exchanges, where scribes added such literary flourishes to both entertain and influence their recipients, especially other scribes.
To understand how wisdom intersects with law in this story, it is important to recognise that biblical authors relied on a much larger referential framework than the literary tradition preserved in the various manuscript editions of the Hebrew Bible. This is especially true for the many facets of Israelite and Judahite legal traditions, which are almost entirely lost to us today. 24 In this regard, Dobbs-Allsopp (1994) and Westbrook (1988: 30–35) characterised 2 Sam. 14 as an example of what they deemed an “extrajudicial petition,” which were legal appeals addressed to high-ranking officials and even kings in cases of an abuse of power. 25 The epigraphic record provides only one example of a legal petition from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, in the form of the seventh-century Mes.ad Hashavyahu ostracon. 26
The Meṣad Ḥashavyahu Ostracon (seventh cent.
Let my lord ( “Your servant is a reaper (and) your servant was in H.as.ar-Asam. Your servant finished, and he gathered it like every day before stopping. Just as [y]our servant finished harvesting and gathering as always, H.oshaʿyahu the son of Shobay came and took the garment of your servant. Just as I finished this harvest of mine, as always, he took your servant’s garment! And all my companions will testify for me—those who reaped with me in the heat [of the su]n. My companions will testify for me truthfully. I am innocent from any wron[gdoing … ]
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my garment! Surely it is for the governor to retu[rn the garment of his se[rvant].
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May you give him (the claimant) compass[ion and ret]urn the [garment of] your servant. Do not be silent (concerning) me.”
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My interest in this text is not the legal matter, but rather in its rhetorical style and its connection to modes of communicating legal petitions to judicial authorities.
Like 2 Sam. 14, the petitioner’s claim in this inscription is communicated through direct speech characterised by an abundance of formal titles and appellations: the claimant identifies himself only as “my lord” (
An eighteenth-century Mari letter from a woman named Šewrum-parat to King Zimri-Lim gives us an early example of an epistolary legal petition: Say to (King) Zimri-lim, thus says Šewrum-parat, your female servant ( Without hearing from you, you sent me here. Now, I am legally wronged (
Like the biblical narrative, it too concerns the legal appeal of a woman to the king. Following the standard epistolary introduction, we see the same formal language as with the Tekoite woman’s speech and the Mes.ad-Hašavyahu ostracon: the king is addressed only as “my lord” (
Moreover, she mentions three times that a local official had “legally wronged” her, using a verb (
This judicial phenomenon was not some idiosyncratic feature of the Old Babylonian period, but rather a persistent element of royal lawgiving that endured well into the first millennium as well (Garelli, 1989; Maul, 1998: 201–14; Postgate, 1980). In a seventh-century letter sent to King Esarhaddon of Assyria, for example, a man named Mardî similarly appeals an injustice he had suffered at the hands of an unscrupulous governor ( [To the king ( “May [Ninurta], Zababa, Nergal, Madanu [and Nabû] bless the strong and righteous [kin]g, my lord [From the begin]ing I have been his servant. My brother tried to make Bel-zeru-ibni kill me, (but) I grasped [the feet of the crown prince (
Like the other examples of legal petitions, Mardî’s complaint is composed in direct speech with an abundance of formal titles. In deference to Esarhaddon—whom Mardî calls king (
It is in this rhetorical tradition that the Tekoite woman’s speech to David is most at home. Her deferential formality, use of metaphors and parables, and awareness of royal judicial ideology were important components of royal petitions in the ancient Near East—probably well known to this text’s author. While I agree with Westbrook’s and Dobbs-Allsopp’s identification of this text as a legal petition, I reject their claims that such petitions were “extrajudicial” because the king was very much part of his kingdom’s judicial apparatus.
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The literary nature of this biblical story should caution against reading it as a direct historical account of the judicial activities of Israelite and Judahite kings (
Conclusion
The petitionary narrative of the Tekoite woman reveals that the intersection of wisdom, law, and justice is not a homogenous phenomenon in biblical tradition. Wisdom, which is an extremely elastic concept in the ancient Near East, exhibits distinctive meanings in different intellectual or cultural contexts. Even within a singular intellectual sphere, such as law, the concept of wisdom is polysemic and depends on a diverse array of attitudes and beliefs tied to the social world imagined in the narrative. This is most evident from the different forms of wisdom alluded to in 2 Sam. 14, tied to the figures to whom the author attributes this characteristic.
On the one hand is the woman’s rhetorical wisdom, characterised by discrete strategies of persuasion, the use of metaphors, and allegorical parables. This type of wisdom was probably largely oral in nature, though our access to it comes through the quotation of direct speech in letters and narratives like 2 Sam. 14. The woman’s wisdom is also tied to the imagined judicial apparatus of the narrative (an appeal to royal justice), which she manipulates to her advantage much like Šewrum-Parat did in the letter sent to King Zimri-Lim. Both these women recalled and repurposed the ambitious claims of royal judicial ideology—protecting the widow and orphan and giving justice to the legally wronged—to compel their sovereigns to settle a case in their favour. This wisdom was both learned and improvisational, recalling traditional or familiar motifs, sayings, metaphors, and ideas but repurposing them in the creation of a compelling story or petition.
On the other hand is the king’s wisdom: divine-like and derived from millennia-old motifs circulating in royal judicial ideology. The Hebrew Bible preserves little memory of this ideological tradition, 37 which engendered varying degrees of apprehension among the biblical authors who did engage with it (Ezek. 28.1–10; Zech. 12.8). The story of the woman from Tekoa occupies a middle ground between attributing divine qualities to the king (1 Kgs. 3; Ps. 72; Zech. 12.8) and rejecting pretensions to divine kingship altogether (Ezek. 28). Whereas the woman’s wisdom was utilised in the service of the immediate episode of 2 Sam. 14, David’s royal wisdom related to the unfolding story about Absalom’s rebellion. By design, royal justice was meant to convey continuity in the office of kingship between the death of one king and the accession of another. This made it a potent ideological tool for restless royal heirs, both in history and in literature. These ideas appear in texts that may well postdate the end of the Judahite monarchy, but they nonetheless rely on motifs that likely emerged from it. This is evident because biblical authors also developed other ways to speak about the intersections of law and justice that left this entire king-based model behind.
The law collections of the Pentateuch present the foundation of Israel’s legal order without the king as an intermediary, which scholars have increasingly come to view as an innerbiblical historical development (Otto, 2005; Schmid, 2021). This development, I believe, can also be seen in the changing conception of judicial wisdom. In a postmonarchic text like Deut. 4.5–8 (Krüger, 2013: 49; Markl, 2020: 287; Otto, 2012: 588–92), for example, the statutes of Yhwh and the Israelites’ ability to access this divine law make them a “wise and understanding people” (עם־חכם ונבון)—reusing the wisdom motifs at home in royal ideology. According to this view, however, judicial wisdom no longer reflects the intellect of the lawgiver (human or divine) but the intellect of
The intersections of law, wisdom, and justice are as diverse as the compositional and redactional hands that drafted the many books of the Hebrew Bible. They reflect older ideas that had circulated in the Near East for millennia as well as the new theological directions devised by biblical authors. A text like 2 Sam. 14 and the other petitionary narratives offer important alternative viewpoints about the legal cultures of ancient Israel and Judah to those espoused in the Pentateuch. 2 Sam. 14 has a foot in both worlds, preserving certain assumptions about a legal tradition centred on the king as the earthly re-presentation of God in the execution of justice, but already exhibiting a level of uncertainty about these royal motifs among the intellectual currents redefining the foundation of Israel’s law in a postmonarchic world.
Footnotes
Funding
ORCID iD
1.
).2.
).3.
: 344).4.
: 8) prefer to call these texts “petitionary narratives.” In addition to these biblical texts,Schipper (2009 : 61) suggests including the Egyptian myth,Horus and Seth,where the goddess Isis similarly disguises herself as a widow and presents an allegorical legal petition about inheritance to Seth.5.
: 92) characterised this feature as the “woman with a cause motif.”6.
argued that the “wisdom” is better attributed to Joab than to the Tekoite woman—a view that has elicited mostly negative appraisals.7.
: 229.8.
: 2–22) added that the term parable (usually used to translate the Hebrew word משל) describes the function of a story rather than its genre. Describing any short narrative that makes a comparison,these types of stories “invoke elements that recall and use particular modes of speech to provide their parable with a particular rhetorical orientation” (p. 8). Schipper believes 2 Sam. 14 makes use of the “petitionary narrative” genre,though it is probably more accurate to simply say that it emulates the rhetoric of a legal petition—narrative or otherwise.9.
: 46–47).10.
ardent criticism of Nicol’s interpretation.11.
: 13) offered a broader understanding of this form of adjudication: “Under such circumstances [an abuse of judicial power],those who had been wronged addressed a petition to a higher authority. During the monarchies,the final such authority was the king … Often,the justice or legality of an action or legal decision was not at issue at all—the complainant was simply appealing for relief from adverse circumstances.”12.
: 119) assertion that this story and others like it (e.g.,2 Sam. 12.1–4;1 Kgs. 3.16–28;20.35–43) were “pure fictions” that have no implications for the position of the king in the judicial organisation of Israel and Judah.13.
: 1–13.14.
: 155–157. If the gods created humanity to alleviate their toil,they created kingship to bring justice to them. In biblical tradition,the judicial function of the king is listed as a key feature—alongside leadership in war—in Israel’s request to Samuel to place a king over them (1 Sam. 8.20).15.
: 38–45.16.
: 422) observed,was not the imposition of blood vengeance but rather their conflict of interest over the inheritance of the widow’s estate should her surviving heir (היורש) be executed (2 Sam. 14:7). This concern serves as an allegory for the uncertainty over royal succession with Absalom in exile.17.
: 108,123). But reading מלאך יהוה and אלהיםin apposition creates a new problem: do these two terms really designate the same entity? Given that the only other text that places מלאךand אלהיםin parallel (Hos. 12:4–5) is probably also a gloss ( Hamori,2008 : 111),a synchronic reading of Zech. 12.8b seems unlikely.18.
19.
: 26–30,43,n. 93). Aside from 2 Sam. 15.2–6,the only trace of this in biblical tradition comes from Ps. 72.1: “give the king your justice,O God,and your righteousness to the son of the king” (אלהים משפטיך למלך תן וצדקתך לבן־מלך). Connecting royal justice to the office of kingship,rather than an individual king,ensured greater continuity during the ever-tumultuous period of succession. Impatient sons who wish to rush this transferral of power (as seen with Samsu-iluna,Yas.s.ib,and Absalom),could create significant political instability.20.
: 158).21.
: 52–56.22.
: 53.23.
24.
). Most legal practises were probably carried out orally,but this does not discount the fact that a fairly substantial number of legal documents may have been produced in Israel and Judah (Jer. 32).25.
: 30–35) proposed that 2 Sam. 14 and other texts like it (2 Sam. 12;Gen. 21.25;Ps. 6) dealt primarily with the unjust seizure of property,occasionally signified by the verb גזל (“tear away,seize,rob”). Westbrook’s narrow concentration on the appropriation of property overshadowed his more meaningful observation that legal petitions to kings often responded to a wide variety of perceived judicial abuses by lower adjudicatory authorities.26.
: 30–35.27.
: 44).28.
.29.
: §84). I read this construction as a Qal stative verb with a pseudo-dative object suffix ( Joüon and Muraoka,2011 : §125ba),which is a rare construction but best suits the context: the petitioner asks the governor not to remain silent regarding his case (i.e.,render a verdict).30.
: 62,n. 1) more clearly connected it to a legal form (a lawsuit).31.
: 207–208. Anbar also compared the Mes.ad H.ašavyahu ostracon with letters from the Mari archives,and I thank the anonymous JSOT reviewer for bringing this article to my attention. Anbar compared the role of the שר in this letter to that of Mari’s šāpitum (= “governor”),who were both “responsable[s] auprès du roi” in legal and administrative matters (2001: 51).32.
: 53–55) considered the “wronged one” ( ḫablu / ḫabiltu ) a social category that included those oppressed by nature (the poor,widows,and orphans) and those who have been treated unjustly: the “occasionally oppressed” ( des opprimés occasionnels ).33.
: 266).34.
35.
36.
: nos. 29–75.37.
.