Gender in the Book of Jeremiah: A Feminist-Literary Reading

Abstract

Bell & Howell Information and Learning: Foreign text omitted. ... Gender in Book of Jeremiah: A Feminist-Literary Reading, by Angela Bauer. Studies in Biblical Literature 5. New York/Bern: Peter Lang, 1999. Pp. xiv + 203. $47.95. This slim volume addresses important questions usually treated only glancingly by Jeremiah scholars, with notable exception of Robert Carroll. Bauer employs literary and rhetorical-critical methodologies a feminist perspective to discern how gender (mainly female) is inscribed through metaphors and images of feminine in jeremiah. Chapter 1 describes metaphorization of as faithful bride and pornographic representation of as promiscuous woman in Jeremiah 1-2. Bauer faults male commentators for not acknowledging that image of Israel's blood-stained skirts in 2:34 resonates with undertones of as sexually violated female (p. 41), a reading she offers without argumentation. In chapter 2, Bauer discusses tropes from divorce to labor pain in Jeremiah 3-6, proposing that impersonates a woman in labor (4:19a) as a means of identification with doomed Jerusalem; that this might be Zion's voice (cf. 4:31 ) is not given adequate consideration. Chapter 3 highlights women's roles in ritual and requiem as leaders in worship of Queen of Heaven (7:18) and as mourners (9:16-20), setting wise women's in a rather strained contrast with male wisdom, power, and wealth in 9:22-23: the wisdom of men is worthless. . . . only wisdom left in land is ascribed to women who know music of mourning (pp. 95-97). In chapter 4 Bauer reviews more metaphors of sexually violated woman and other negative images (e.g., mother bereaved in 15:8-9, birth cursed in 20:14-18), including unsettling portrayal of Jeremiah as having suffered metaphorical rape himself (20:7). In chapter 5, Bauer studies eschatological motifs in Jeremiah 30-31, seizing particularly on enigmatic ...: (female surrounds warrior-male) of 31:22b, wherein she finds the promise of a new creation that embodies functions of female imagery in book of Jeremiah as a whole (p. 145). Bauer is an intelligent and attentive reader, but she supplies too little argumentation for her more innovative readings, and there are significant flaws in theoretical underpinnings of her exegesis. Debatable assumptions are in evidence regarding how a text's surface structure might architectonically convey a deeper semantic sense; for instance, she writes of 1:5, the sentence structure around `the womb' symbolizes content of call: separation, protection, and challenge . . . . The three lines shrink in length visually symbolizing a focusing on birth of prophet (pp. 13-14). In fact, 1:5 is precisely not about birth of prophet. More attention to complex questions of how metaphor and voice function in literature would have helped situate Bauer's own approach, which presumes that implied reader is to with figures. For example, in 3:4-5 she discerns a rhetorical strategy pressing male Israel to identify with metaphorical wife, daughter, and husband/father, thus requiring hapless ancient reader both to try on identification with female and to resist that role at same time (p. …