Parashat Ki Tetze (Deut 21:10-25:19)
Commodification
Two weeks ago, we talked about a hapax legomenon, a word that occurs only once in the Bible. You might have thought it would be pretty unlikely we would be talking about another one so soon — and we’re not. Instead, I'm going to be talking about a word that occurs only twice in the Bible, both times in this week's reading.
It is in the passage right at the beginning of Ki Tetze, in Deut 21:10–14, the passage that's called in Jewish law that of “the beautiful captive.” It’s part of the law of war; כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֥א means “when you go out,” and where you are going is out to war. Here it is in the NJPS translation:
Deut 21:10 When you take the field against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive, 11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her and would take her to wife, 12 you shall bring her into your house, and she shall trim her hair, pare her nails, 13 and discard her captive’s garb. She shall spend a month’s time in your house lamenting her father and mother; after that you may come to her and possess her, and she shall be your wife. 14 Then, should you no longer want her, you must release her outright. You must not sell her for money: since you had your will of her, you must not enslave her.
Among the civilian captives of the war — we are not talking about uniformed combatants here — is a beautiful woman, and “you” (the soldier who captures her) desire her. Well, there are certain rules and regulations that you must follow in order to be allowed to do that: You bring her into your house, she cuts her hair and trims her nails, and she takes off her captive’s garb.
That seems to mean that she's now transitioning from being a prisoner of war to having some different status. Why is she mourning for her father and mother? Perhaps they were killed in the fighting or its aftermath. In any case, she is not going to see them again. Only when she has had a month to do all that can “you” have sex with her and make her your wife. We’ve spoken before about the addressees of the Torah, who are (for example) the people who buy slaves, not the slaves who are bought. War is hell, and hell is hotter for some than for others.
Jewish tradition certainly found this passage somewhat troubling; you can read more about that from my friends at thetorah.com. I’m a Bible scholar, not a rabbi, so my job is to understand what the original writer meant to say, not to pass judgment on him. This week, that involves our twice repeated word.
There's an interesting twist in v. 14, which says that if it turns out that you then don't want this “beautiful captive,” then you have to let her go. This is a society with humans owned by other humans as slaves, remember, and in the ancient world one of the ways to acquire a slave was to seize someone in the aftermath of a battle. In this case, though in some sense “you” possess this beautiful captive, you must not sell her for money.
And you may not (here is our mysterious word) you may not תִתְעַמֵּ֣ר בָּ֔הּ titammer bah. Why not? Because you have “had your will of” her. (There is a vast amount of scholarly discussion about precisely what this latter Hebrew verb, innitah, really means, mostly centered on Dinah in Genesis 34:2; Alison Joseph’s article on that verse is one place to start looking at it.)
What is it that you are not permitted to do? Also in this week’s reading, we find a man who has kidnapped another Israelite and hitammer bo. (Don’t try this at home; you will be put to death for it.) What does this word mean? As I said a couple of weeks ago, in the case of a word that only occurs once, what you need to do is …
look at the context;
look at the ancient translations; and
look at other Semitic languages that may have words from this root.
The context in both our cases is obvious: they are cases of seizing other human beings against their will. What about other Semitic languages? There seems to be an example of this root in Ugaritic, where it refers to conscript labor (the same semantic field that gave us our previous hapax, missat). NJPS translates it as “enslave,” but Jeff Tigay writes in the JPS Torah commentary:
The meaning of titꜥamer is uncertain. This translation is an ancient conjecture based on the context here and in 24:7, the only other place in which it appears.
He adds a footnote with another “ancient conjecture” (our category of “hapax evidence” from ancient translations), in this case the Aramaic and I believe also the Greek:
Others take the verb to mean “treat as merchandise,” “engage in trade with” (Targums here and at 24:7; Ibn Janaḥ). In a similar Muslim law, the pregnant captive may not be sold in the market or ransomed back to her people for money, suggesting that hitꜥamer could mean “ransom for money.”
I have a different suggestion. We biblical scholars talk a lot about folk etymologies, the ancient linguistic equivalent of what we call today “an urban legend.” People think they know where a word comes from because it resembles some other word that they know. If you were to trace the history of that word linguistically, it’s not actually where that word came from at all, but “everybody” thinks that it is. One example is copacetic (“A-OK”), which sounds enough like Hebrew ha-kol b’seder (with the same meaning, “everything’s okay”) to convince some people.
What about our word? The other thing that this root עמר means in Hebrew, which everyone would certainly know about, is an omer, a sheaf of grain or a unit that was used for measuring grain. (When you are “counting the Omer,” you are counting the days from when the first sheaf is offered, for seven weeks/50 days until Shavuot.) I suspect this folk etymology is what’s happening in the Aramaic translation cited by Tigay:
But you must not sell her for silver; you shall not trade her because you have humbled her. [21:14]
If a man is found kidnapping a person from his brethren, from the children of Israel, and should trade him or sell him … [24:7]
I think in Deuteronomy they are thinking of this as a word that means to omerize, “to treat someone as if they were a commodity.” Combat is disruptive to the point of being deadly, so it is no surprise if the norms that keep society functioning aren’t maintained in wartime. How do you return to them afterward? By re-asserting them, even in this case where the soldier can have sex with this captive against her will. At that point, he must return to civilized behavior and either make her his wife or free her. What he can’t do is commodify her.
The one thing we haven’t mentioned yet is the binyan of this verb. (More on binyanim in Lesson 15 of my Hebrew course; you can always watch Lesson 1 for free here.) The Hitpael binyan of this verb is a way of taking a root and doing it reciprocally (to each other) or reflexively (to oneself). If you hitammer bah, you would not be doing something merely to her but also to yourself. Commodification works in two directions, not just one.
And, yes, the dictionaries wonder whether this עמר is where the biblical city of Gomorrah (עֲמֹרָה) — Sodom’s sister city — got its name: a whole town where commodification is the norm. Truth be told, we scholars like folk etymologies too.