Women and the Land
excerpt from Joshua and the Promised Land
by Roy H. May, Jr.
Joshua 13-19 preserves two ancient traditions of women owning land: Achsah (15:17-19); and Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, the daughters of Zelophehad (17:3-6).
You may have noticed that, except for Rahab, women are not mentioned. Dana Nolan Fewell, who teaches Old Testament at Perkins School of Theology, points out that women are nearly invisible in the Book of Joshua. Some exceptional women are included in the story, but men are the primary actors. (6) Phyllis Bird, professor of Old Testament at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, explains:
The Old Testament is a collection of writings by males from a society dominated by males, These writings portray a man's world. They speak of events and activities engaged in primarily or exclusively by males (war, cult, and government) and of a jealously singular God who is described and addressed in terms normally used for males. (7)
This is very evident in the Book of Joshua. For these reasons, traditions of women who own land are remarkable. They must have been important people.
In the Hebrew family, the husband and father was considered the head and administrator of all aspects of its economic and social life. The family was the "father's house." Women were viewed largely as the property of males. Although they had significant roles as household or family administrators, they had few rights as citizens or autonomous persons. Property rights were passed on through males. It was presumed that women would have access to land through marriage. Thus, part of a father's duties to his daughter was to arrange a suitable marriage for her. This is background for the texts regarding women and the land.
Caleb, Achsah's father, gave her as a reward (!) to Othniel for having taken a piece of land important to the family. On their wedding day, she asked her father for a gift. She wanted land of her own. He complied and gave her two important springs, just as she had requested. Fewell comments, "Achsah is a women who understands the importance of the land and its life-giving water. She recognizes that the land is a gift, and she takes the initiative to secure the water that will sustain life in the land." (8)
The situation of the daughters of Zelophehad is different. Since they had no brothers to inherit the family land, they believed they were the rightful heirs. These women pled their case before Eleazar and Joshua. They argued that Moses had commanded that they were to receive an inheritance "along with our male kin" (17:4). They won their case and were awarded "an inheritance among the kinsmen of their father" (17:4). About these women, Fewell says, "Marginal women, unentitled to property, aggressively seek and secure a more central place in the Israelite social system." (9) Allowing women to inherit land may have been the custom of the tribe of Manasseh. Verse 6 suggests this by putting the statement, "the daughters of Manasseh received an inheritance along with his sons," as a summary conclusion explaining the tribe's landholdings. The story is not about an actual historical event. Rather, it is an ancient account to explain why women had land along with the men in the tribe of Manasseh.
Fewell believes the importance of these two stories is that they subvert the male perspective that dominates the Book of Joshua. She says that Achsah and the daughters of Zelophehad "undermine Israel's vision of itself as a monolithic, male-centered institution." (10)
Women and land raise a critical issue for justice and economic development today. Most of the world's farmers are women, yet legal ownership of land usually is vested with men. Land reforms in Latin America, for instance, have granted ownership rights to "the head of the family," who is always defined as male. During twenty-five years of land reform in Costa Rica, only twelve percent of the beneficiaries have been women. However, high rates of male abandonment of their families means that women are in fact the heads of households. For example, in Costa Rica, thirty-four percent of rural households are "headed" by women. Likewise, in common law marriages, a widespread custom, women seldom have recognized claims to their partners' property. In many common law relationships, the male has a legal family elsewhere. For the women not to have legal title to land accentuates her economic vulnerability. Without it, she has no viable source for generating food and income. She is defenseless when she is expelled by her partner. She has no collateral for securing bank loans for economic improvement. (11)
Women in ancient Israel faced some of these same problems. The strongly patriarchal society disallowed wives as heirs to their husband's land. Still, in some instances women did own land. Unlike other Near Eastern societies of the time, Israel sought through social legislation to protect the landless and the most vulnerable: widows, orphans, and resident foreigners.
Foototes:
6. Dana Nolan Fewell, "Joshua," in Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe, eds. The Women's Bible Commentary (London and Louisville: SPCK and Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), p. 64. (return to text)
7. Phyllis A. Bird, "Images of Women in the Old Testament," in Norman K. Gottwald, ed., The Bible and Liberation: Political and Social Hermeneutics (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1983), p. 253. (return to text)
8. Fewell, "Judges," p. 68. (return to text)
9. Fewell, "Judges," p. 64. (return to text)
10. Fewell, "Joshua," p. 66. (return to text)
11. Vanessa Bravo, "Ellas también producen," in Viva, revista diaria de La Nación (San José, Costa Rica), October 6, 1994, p. 1. (return to text)
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