A History of the Wife (3 page)

Eve’s story then goes from bad to worse. She follows the serpent’s advice to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil, contrary to God’s com- mandment, and then tempts Adam to eat of it as well. These acts have permanent consequences for both sexes: God punishes Eve by inflict- ing the pangs of childbirth on all mothers and the burden of sweat- producing labor on all men. In addition, it is decreed that the female will be in a subordinate position to her husband for eternity. As God tells Eve after the Fall, “Your urge shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.” Like most myths, this one sought to explain a cul- tural phenomenon that had been entrenched for so long it seemed to be the will of God.

But there are other ways of looking at this story, which put Eve in a more favorable light. Some feminists have suggested that Eve was not just an afterthought, but an improvement over Adam. And even con- servative commentators recognize that she represented more than a biological necessity. The notion of the wife as a man’s companion, “sus- tainer” or “helpmeet” (from the Hebrew word
‘ezer
) has had a long and meaningful history among Jews and Christians. Indeed, one later com- mentary in the Talmud (the code of Jewish religious and civil law) sees the
‘ezer
as providing a moral check on her husband: “When he is good, she supports him, when he is bad, she rises up against him.”
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And most of all, those arguing for the equal partnership of husband and

wife can cite the moving last words of Chapter Two of Genesis: “There- fore does a man leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and they become one flesh.”

In biblical days, a Hebrew husband was allowed to have more than one wife. For each, he had to give his father-in-law a sum of money, the
mohar
of fifty silver shekels (Deut. 22:28–29) and then he had to pro- vide for her upkeep. This probably meant that only the affluent could afford more than one.
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In addition, the groom or his family was expected to give gifts to the bride and her family. Once the
mohar
had been paid and the gifts accepted, the marriage was legally binding and the bride effectively belonged to her husband, even if they did not yet live together.

A bride’s father would generally give her a
chiluhim,
or dowry. The dowry consisted of material goods to be used in the future household, including servants and livestock, and even land, as well as a portion of the
mohar
that reverted to the girl “as payment for the price of her vir- ginity.”
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The specific sum of the dowry would be written down in the marriage contract, or
ketubah,
as well as the sum of money that would revert to the wife in the event of divorce or widowhood. Jewish mar- riage contracts going back to the eighth century
B
.
C
.
E
. usually contained a ritual formula pronounced by the groom to the bride in the presence of witnesses: “She is my wife and I am her husband from this day forth and forever.”

The last stage of the marriage was the banquet that preceded the wedding night. These festivities could go on for as long as a week, though the marriage was consummated the first night. If, however, the husband found that his bride was no longer a virgin, he could have her killed according to the words of the Torah: “then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of the city shall stone her with stones that she die” (Deut. 22:21).

Once married, a bride was obliged by law and custom to obey her husband—a requirement so fundamental to the biblical idea of a wife that it remained in most Jewish and Christian wedding vows until the late twentieth century. After all, wives were considered a husband’s “property,” alongside his cattle and his slaves. And above all, a wife would have been consumed by the need to produce a son. For only as the mother of a son would she have been fully honored in her new family.

And even then, if a husband wanted to get rid of his wife, he had only to write out a bill of divorce, hand it to her in the presence of two witnesses, and send her away. The wife’s agreement was not required. The Hebrew law allowed that a husband can cast off his wife if “she finds no favor in his eyes” because he has discovered something shame- ful in her (Deut. 24:1). What was shameful in those days? Adultery, for sure, even the suspicion of adultery, but also immodesty, disobedience, and barrenness. Rabbinical commentaries from later centuries all insisted on the husband’s right to initiate divorce and the wife’s need to avoid any behavior that might lead a husband to seek to divorce her.
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Even today, among Orthodox Jews, it is the husband who plays the determining role in a divorce. If a wife wants a divorce, the husband must consent to it and give her a document called a
get
. If he refuses— because he thinks she will eventually come back to him or because he hopes to exchange the
get
for reduced support payments or custody rights—the wife cannot be freed from the religious marriage bond and remarry. There are hundreds of Orthodox Jewish women in the United States and Israel today in this state of marital limbo. But a husband can divorce his wife without her consent, as long as he is able to hand the document to her.

The notion that a wife cannot initiate divorce has biblical precedent, yet even in biblical times, there was one peculiar circumstance that allowed a wife to take action. If a wife was widowed and had no chil- dren, her dead husband’s brother was expected to marry her to “give her seed,” according to a tradition known as levirate marriage. But if the brother refused to marry her, or to have sex with her after their enforced marriage, the wife was permitted to go to the elders at the town gate and lay her claim against him. There, in front of the whole populace, she was allowed to humiliate him for not fulfilling his obliga- tions: “She shall pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face and declare: ‘Thus we requite the man who will not build up his brother’s family’ ” (Deut. 25:9–10). The overriding Hebrew concern with prog- eny allowed for this rare display of officially sanctioned female revenge. It is true that this dismal wifely scenario is based upon prescriptive texts, which did not always correspond to everyday life. There are cer- tainly many indications in the Bible suggesting behaviors different from the prescribed norm. For example, despite the great pressure on wives to produce children, a husband might continue to love his barren wife,

and even to favor her over a first or second wife who had given him a son. This was the case of Elkanah, who preferred his childless wife, Hannah, to his other wife, Peninnah, the mother of his children. Once finding Hannah weeping over her childless state, Elkanah tried to soothe her by saying: “Hannah, why are you crying and eating nothing? Why are you so miserable? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” (I Samuel 1:8). Even with all the societal honor bestowed upon a mother and the humiliation heaped upon a childless wife, there was then, as now, no way to legislate an individual’s feelings.

Married couples were held in high esteem among the ancient Hebrews, as evidenced by the many stories about them. This contrasts with the New Testament, where couples do not play significant roles. In time, Jews and Christians alike looked to the older Hebrew examples for positive (and negative) conjugal models.

Among the positive examples of what one might hope for in a wife, Sarah, the wife of Abraham, comes first to mind. Hers was a careful bal- ancing act of wifely strength and submission. As a good Israelite spouse, she was obliged to follow even the most morally questionable of her husband’s commands. Twice at his behest she passed herself off as his sister, rather than his wife, so that he could gain favor first with the Egyptian pharaoh, then with the Semitic King Abimelech. Though these acts entailed sleeping with foreign monarchs, Sarah followed her husband’s orders; in the end, this strategy proved beneficial, since they came away from each incident with increased riches.

Because Sarah had passed the childbearing age without producing offspring, she encouraged Abraham to take her Egyptian slave girl, Hagar, as a second wife. But later, when Sarah felt humiliated by Hagar’s pregnancy, Abraham found himself in the awkward situation of having to decide between the two women. Though he decided in favor of the first wife and sent Hagar into exile, God Himself intervened by sending the servant back with the assurance that she would bear a son to Abra- ham and become the ancestor of a great people. Thus Abraham once again had two wives in residence and a firstborn son, named Ishmael. Centuries later Ishmael would be claimed by the Muslims as the forefa- ther of the Arab people. In their old age, Abraham and Sarah miracu- lously produced a son of their own, Isaac—an event that Sarah greeted with astonishment and perhaps some sense of embarrassment.
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As was the custom, she nursed her baby, probably for two to three years, and a

great feast was celebrated when the baby was weaned.

Abraham and Sarah may be no more than mythical characters rep- resenting the ancestors of the Hebrew people, but in the course of their narrative, they emerge as a real couple living together in biblical times: they wander as nomads to villages and cities, moving with their kins- men, animals, servants, slaves, and goods; they set up their tent among peoples who cannot be counted on for kindness; they show hospitality to strangers in the form of curds and milk and freshly made loaves of bread; they exchange opinions, complaints, laughter. And when Sarah dies before her husband, we are not surprised to read that “Abraham came to mourn Sarah and to keen for her” (Gen. 23:2). Not ashamed of publicly mourning a wife like Sarah, Abraham went to great trouble to provide her with an appropriate burial site, in the cave of Mach- pelah near Hebron, which he purchased at an exhorbitant price from the Hittites.

The marriages of Sarah and Abraham’s son Isaac to Rebekah and their grandson Jacob to Rachel (and Leah) give us further insights into the status of wives in ancient Israel. In the case of Isaac and Rebekah, a servant was sent to the land of Abraham’s birth to contract a marriage for Isaac. The servant made the marriage agreement not with Rebekah herself, but with Rebekah’s brother Laban. (Brothers often stood in for fathers and had the right to dispose of their sisters.) The marriage was contracted without the bride or groom ever seeing each other. Still, Rebekah had some say in the matter. After Laban had given his acqui- escence, he said: “ ‘Let us call the young woman and ask for her answer.’ And they called Rebekah and said to her, ‘Will you go with this man?’ And she said, ‘I will’ ” (Gen.24:58–59). This is one of the few indications that a nubile Hebrew woman sometimes had the right to accept or refuse a prospective groom.

The actual meeting of Rebekah and Isaac did not take place until she had journeyed with his servant back to Canaan. The story ends with Isaac’s favorable reaction to his bride: “And Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother and took Rebekah as wife. And he loved her, and Isaac was consoled after his mother’s death” (Gen. 24:67). The last sentence is particularly moving, for Isaac not only loves the wife who had been chosen for him, but finds an emotional replacement for his mother. We can imagine Freud nodding in agreement.

The story of the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah’s son, Jacob, to

Rachel is more complicated. Rebekah sent Jacob (rather than a servant) back to her brother Laban to seek a wife. Laban received his nephew Jacob hospitably, but not without making him work for his keep. After a month, they reached an agreement on the wages Jacob would receive if he remained in Laban’s service. The wages were in effect a bride-price for Rachel. Rachel, however, had an older sister, Leah, who, by tradi- tion, should have been married first. The two young women are described in the following manner: “Laban had two daughters. The name of the elder was Leah and the name of the younger Rachel. And Leah’s eyes were tender, but Rachel was comely in features and comely to look at, and Jacob loved Rachel” (Gen. 29: 16–18). Jacob contracted to serve seven years for Rachel. In the eloquent words of the biblical narrator: “And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed in his eyes but a few days in his love for her” (Gen. 29:21).

But when the time came for Jacob to reap the fruits of his labors, he was cruelly deceived by his uncle. In the dark of night, he was given Leah rather than Rachel, and bedded the wrong woman. In the morn- ing, seeing that it was Leah, Jacob said to Laban: “What is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served you?” Laban replied that it was not the custom in his land “to give the younger girl before the firstborn,” and proposed that Jacob serve another seven years to acquire Rachel as well.

All in all, Jacob spent twenty years serving his crafty uncle Laban, acquiring two wives and their slave girls and quite a number of chil- dren. Since sons represented the ultimate good in biblical households, the wives competed with each other in producing male offspring. First Leah, the least loved, was compensated by the birth of three sons, and Rachel, who remained barren, became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob: “Here is my slavegirl Bilhah. Come to bed with her, that she may give birth on my knees, so that I, too, shall be built up through her” (Gen. 30:3). Placing the baby on her knees after its birth indicated adoption.

The competition between wives was intensified by the use of man- drakes, plants thought to have magical aphrodisiac and fertility- promoting properties. With the help of these plants, Leah continued to produce more sons and a daughter, and Rachel, finally, gave birth to a son. Jacob was now the father of a miniature tribe. This story illustrates the fierce rivalries between wives living in a society that valued married

women primarily as the mothers of sons. And like the story of Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar, it illuminates the role of female “outsiders” within Hebrew households—Egyptian slave girls, for example, whose bodies facilitated the very existence of Hebrew families.