Was Isaiah sexist?
In chapter 22 Isaiah echoes the drunk songs of Jerusalem on the tip of an abyss. In today’s chapter he hears the sad song of an old prostitute, still seducing clients - a disturbing symbol of loss and grief. But also a disturbing reminder of how the prophetic attitudes function within an enduringly hostile and patriarchal framework, as toxic now as it was then.
Chapter 23 is the final of Isaiah’s international prophecies. The Phoenician kingdom ruled the seas in his day, with fleets that carried cargo as far as Spain. Isaiah’s ire is not just against its vast wealth and worship of idols, but uses its eventual fall - and rise - as a warning sign for Judah’s own possible fate. Historical research ponders this chapter that includes a seventy year span - Isaiah predicts that Tyre, the major Phoenician trading city, where once Queen Jezebel of Israel was born, will be crushed but then manage to revive and be rebuilt. Some suggest that this was added much later to Isaiah’s 8th century BCE reality. But what’s most striking here is the imagery he uses to depict the kingdom’s future - going back to the way Jezebel herself is referred to in the Books of Kings - a queen degraded as a prostitute.
Why talk of a vast nation, once an ally to Jerusalem and supplier of its cedar trees to build the temple - as whore? And how does Isaiah’s use of such distressing terminologies fit into his worldview and that of the other prophets? Feminist readers want to know.
In her book, "Are We Not Men?: Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets", the Biblical and Religious Studies scholar, Dr. Rhiannon Graybill suggests that:
“Prophecy is largely an affair by and for men, at least in the biblical world, or more accurately, the world that the authors of the Hebrew Bible, imagine. There are not many women to be found, still fewer in the prophetic texts. When they do appear, it is frequently in the form of sexualized or maternalized fantasies of whores, wives, and mothers…
The figure of woman - and here I intentionally describe not real women, but rather their representation in a masculine economy of fantasy - is highly productive for thinking through questions of prophecy, embodiment, and masculinity...
Repeatedly, biblical texts use female bodies, to think with, to provide an occasion of ground to work through other issues.”
With Graybill’s words in mind, we look at what Isaiah is depicting here, as he imagines the future day in which Tyre will be torn down and its people howl in pain:
וְהָיָה֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֔וּא וְנִשְׁכַּ֤חַת צֹר֙ שִׁבְעִ֣ים שָׁנָ֔ה כִּימֵ֖י מֶ֣לֶךְ אֶחָ֑ד מִקֵּ֞ץ שִׁבְעִ֤ים שָׁנָה֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לְצֹ֔ר כְּשִׁירַ֖ת הַזּוֹנָֽה׃ קְחִ֥י כִנּ֛וֹר סֹ֥בִּי עִ֖יר זוֹנָ֣ה נִשְׁכָּחָ֑ה הֵיטִ֤יבִי נַגֵּן֙ הַרְבִּי־שִׁ֔יר לְמַ֖עַן תִּזָּכֵֽרִי׃
On that day, Tyre shall remain forgotten for seventy years, equaling the lifetime of one king. After a lapse of seventy years, Tyre’s fate will be as with the prostitute in the song:
Take a lyre, go about the town,
Prostitute long forgotten; Sweetly play, make much music,
And you will be remembered.”
Isaiah 23:14-15
What seems to happen here is that Isaiah imagines the vast city (that he may never have visited) as an aged prostitute, singing a song to seduce her old customers, should they remember, or want her, seventy years later. Is this redemption or degradation? Why paint the pain with such vivid and vilifying words? Isaiah ends the metaphor with one more curious idea - Tyre will rise again and return to its glory, but not through the song of the women who were once young and strong in their seductions - but by the will of the divine, eternal and ageless. The prostitute’s earnings will be consecrated and raised up as reconstruction of the city - honored and sanctified, appreciated and remembered. The image is powerful - but why is he using it and how does it fit within his ongoing references to women?
Sivan Rotholz, contemporary scholar, feminist writer and rabbinical student, takes on Isaiah's troubling text here:
“Without derogatory feminine imagery, this story is straightforward, but not poetic. Without metaphor, it’s merely prediction; with metaphor, it’s prophecy. And with a misogynistic metaphor, it’s particularly Isaian.
The Book of Isaiah repeatedly relies upon misogynistic depictions of women. This is not the Song of Songs. This is not Miriam leading the Israelite women in celebratory dance. This is a prophet operating well into a patriarchal monotheistic age, and his negative views of women shed light on the dangers of such a system. When man alone is at the center of mythology and theology, what follows is a power structure wherein men believe themselves superior and marginalize and oppress women to maintain such a hierarchy.
If he who wields the pen wields the power, perhaps it’s time to let her wield the pen.”
So was he sexist? Probably.
Isaiah, as the writers quotes today point out, operated in a system that we recognize today as racist and sexist, patriarchal through and through. As many in the United States mark Juneteenth today - we know how long it takes to uproot all those biases culturally constructed - and hot critical it is to do so. Perhaps he too would agree today and choose other forms of protest towards the justice of all people he so often raises up as divine law.
Either way: Isaiah’s world is about to crumble. However he is implicated in being part of the problem, one striving for solutions, or both - his words still echo, and the world he lived in still derives it power from these words and worldviews, for better or worse.
In the chapters coming up he will look on with dismay and horror at how the harsh end will come to each of us regardless of gender, age or class, race or sexual choices, nationality or pronoun preference, all equally humbled, maybe equally honored too?
Image: @EmmaThompson in her role as a 77 year old prostitute in the 2015 film The Legend of Barney Thomson.
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