Abstract
Focusing on the quotidian reality of (im)migrant women farmworkers in the U.S., this chapter delves into the legal and ideological aspects at the intersection of gender and immigration in the legal material of the Pentateuch. This study is divided into two main parts: (1) it provides three guiding principles to challenge the indifference and dehumanization that render this community invisible then and now; and (2) it offers a general analysis of the Hebrew term גר (ger)—used to refer to the “immigrant/alien”—in the Pentateuch’s legal codes to show that despite the fact that these codes do not address the specific issue of sexual assault of immigrant women farmworkers, it provides a paradigm that upholds “principled” laws.
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Notes
- 1.
All biblical citations will be from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
- 2.
- 3.
A PDF copy of the report is available online at https://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/Sexual_violence_against_women_farmworkers_full_doc.pdf.
- 4.
Sara Kominers, “Working in Fear: Sexual Violence against Women Farmworkers in the United States; A Literature Review” (Boston, MA: Oxfam America, 2015), 1.
- 5.
Kominers, “Working in Fear,” 1.
- 6.
Kominers, 2.
- 7.
Kominers, 2.
- 8.
Kominers, 4.
- 9.
José Ramirez Kidd makes reference to this event and Ruth’s use of a different term (not ger) to refer to herself as a foreigner. He explains that the “noun רג could not have been used in the case of Ruth during her sojourn in Bethlehem (a Moabite coming to Israel)… [because it] designates a legal status and is, therefore, restricted to men… Ruth introduces herself, therefore, as נכריה.” See José E. Ramirez Kidd, Alterity and Identity in Israel: The ‘ger’ in the Old Testament (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 1999), 24. Ramirez Kidd (28, fn. 99) points out, however, that the verb גור is used in a few occasions to refer to women (Exod 3:22 [part. sing. fem. constr.]; 2 Kgs 8:1 [imperf. 2 fem.] and 2 Kgs 8:2 [imperf. 3 fem.]).
- 10.
David Shepherd, “Violence in the Fields? Translating, Reading, and Revising in Ruth 2,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 63 (2001): 459 [444–463]. These acts of violence against women in the field are “not unique to ancient Israel, as demonstrated in the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope, which advises its audience not to ‘pounce on a widow when you find her in the field’” (Alice L. Laffey and Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, Ruth; eds. Amy-Jill Levine and Barbara Reid [Wisdom Commentary Series 8; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2017], 77–78). See also, Kirsten Nielsen, Ruth: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 58; and Tod Linafelt and Timothy K. Beal, Ruth and Esther (Berit Olam; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 34–35.
- 11.
Nonetheless, it is worth pointing out that the book of Ruth partially addresses a legal matter included in the Pentateuch—the Levirate Law (Deut 25:1–5).
- 12.
Ramirez Kidd, Alterity and Identity in Israel, 16.
- 13.
G. D. Mailhiot, “La Actitud de Israel con Respecto al Extranjero en el Antiguo Testamento,” Anamnesis 7 (1997): 32 [31–54].
- 14.
F. A. Spina, “Israelites as gerim: Sojourners in Social and Historical Context,” in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of his Sixtieth Birthday (ed. C. L. Meyers and M. O’Connor; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 323–324 [321–335].
- 15.
Christiana van Houten, The Alien in Israelite Law, JSOTSup 107 (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 19.
- 16.
These are proposed translations for the Hebrew term ger, but there are other terms used in the Old Testament to designate “the person who, in the perspective of the writer or the audience, is irreducibly ‘other,’ the non-belonger in some respect” include: זור and נכר. See Christopher T. Begg, “Foreigner,” ABD 2:829 [829–830].
- 17.
See van Houten, The Alien in Israelite Law; see also, Rainer Albertz, “From Aliens to Proselytes: Non-Priestly Legislation Concerning Strangers,” in The Foreigner and the Law: Perspectives from the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, eds. Reinhard Achenbach, Rainer Albertz, and Jakob Wöhrle (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011).
- 18.
An important aspect of my Latina identity, which has its roots in Latin American Liberation Theology, is that theology is understood and lived as praxis. Ada-Maria Isasi-Diaz explains that “to understand theology as praxis means that we accept the fact that we cannot separate thinking from acting.” See her Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 71. On this perspective see also, Ahida Calderón Pilarski, “A Latina Biblical Critic and Intellectual: At the Intersection of Ethnicity, Gender, Hermeneutics, and Faith,” in Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics: Problematics, Objectives, Strategies; eds. Francisco Lozada and Fernando F. Segovia (Semeia Studies; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 231–248; and the section on “A Methodological Framework: The Importance of Praxis” in my essay “Hagar and the Well in the Wilderness (Genesis 21:9–21)” in Minoritized Biblical Criticism: Readings of Genesis 21; eds. Fernando F. Segovia and T. B. Liew (Semeia Studies; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature), forthcoming.
- 19.
Daniel Carroll Rodas, Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2008 [2nd ed. 2014]).
- 20.
Jean-Pierre Ruiz, Reading from the Edges (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011).
- 21.
Anthony Thiselton describes socio-critical hermeneutics as “an approach to texts (or to traditions and institutions) which seeks to penetrate beneath their surface-function to expose their role as instruments of power, domination, or social manipulation” in his New Horizons in Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 379.
- 22.
The reference to Post-Occidental was coined by Walter Mignolo who, articulating a decolonial view from a Latin American context, differentiates between postcolonial and Post-Occidental epistemologies (see Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking [Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000]). Postmodern thinking is still Eurocentric (that is, Western/Occidental), and post-Occidental thinking includes the border thinking that happens from the exterior borders of the colonial world. See Ahida Calderón Pilarski, “Hagar and the Well in the Wilderness (Genesis 21:9–21),” in Minoritized Readings of Genesis 21, eds. Tat-Siong Benny Liew and Fernando F. Segovia; Semeia Studies Series (Atlanta: SBL Press, forthcoming).
- 23.
Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (trans. J.S. Black and A. Menzies; Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1983).
- 24.
Albrecht Alt, “The Origins of Israelite Law,” in Essays on Old Testament History and Religion (trans. R.A. Wilson; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), 79–132.
- 25.
Martin Noth, “The Laws in the Pentateuch,” in The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Studies (trans. D.R. Ap-Thomas; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 1–107.
- 26.
Van Houten, The Alien in Israelite Law, 11.
- 27.
Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
- 28.
J.G. McConville, Law and Theology in Deuteronomy (JSOTSup, 33; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984).
- 29.
E. Feldman, Biblical and Post-Biblical Defilement and Mourning: Law as Theology (New York: Ktav, 1977).
- 30.
Van Houten, 13.
- 31.
Bennett, Injustice Made Legal, 15. See Cornel West, “CLS and Liberal Critic,” in Keeping Faith: Race and Philosophy in America (New York: Routledge, 1994), 220.
- 32.
Cheryl B. Anderson, Women, Ideology, and Violence: Critical Theory and the Construction of the Covenant Code and the Deuteronomic Law (London and New York: T&T Clark International, 2004).
- 33.
Anderson, Women, Ideology, and Violence, 2.
- 34.
Anderson, 3.
- 35.
Anderson, 3.
- 36.
Ibidem. See Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, The Transformation of Torah from Scribal Advice to Law (JSOTSup, 287; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); and Craig Calhoun, Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of Difference (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995).
- 37.
John R. Searle, Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
- 38.
Bernard S. Jackson, Studies in the Semiotics of Biblical Law (JSOTSup, 314; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000).
- 39.
Anderson, 4.
- 40.
Here Anderson is referring to the work of James L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972).
- 41.
Anderson, 6.
- 42.
Anderson provides a list of these inclusive and exclusive laws in the Pentateuchal legal codes as an appendix to her book (Appendix A, 118–125).
- 43.
Beatrice Hanssen, Critique of Violence: Between Poststructuralism and Critical Theory (New York: Routledge, 2000); Cecilia Menjivar, Enduring Violence: Ladina Women’s Lives in Guatemala (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2011). For a very didactical introduction to the dire effects of toxic violence in the development of brain architecture, please visit Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child: https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/brain-architecture/.
- 44.
Hanssen, Critique of Violence, 9.
- 45.
Cecilia Menjivar, “Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants,” American Journal of Sociology 117 (2012): 1380–1421. She argues that “legal violence … is imbedded in legal practices, sanctioned, actively implemented through formal procedures, and legitimated—and consequently seen as ‘normal’ and natural because it ‘is the law’” (1387).
- 46.
Menjivar, Enduring Violence, 27.
- 47.
Menjivar, 28.
- 48.
Menjivar, 29.
- 49.
Menjivar, Enduring Violence, 43.
- 50.
Douglas Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System (New York: Russell Sage, 2007), 150.
- 51.
Menjivar, “Legal Violence,” 1389–1390.
- 52.
Carroll R., Christians at the Border, 48.
- 53.
Carroll R., 49.
- 54.
Ibid., 51.
- 55.
The book also includes a chapter dedicated to the New Testament, and one that looks at the future conversations on the issue of immigration.
- 56.
Ibid., 97.
- 57.
Ruiz, Readings from the Edges, ix.
- 58.
Ruiz, Readings from the Edges, 6–7. Ruiz’s book consists of nine chapters; three dedicated to methods and reading strategies, and the remaining chapters to specific biblical passages (Gen 12:10–20; Ezekiel 12:1–6; 20; Nehemiah 13; Matt 20:1–16, and Revelation) that “are rarely marshaled in the service of arguments on behalf of people on the move or of policy reform regarding immigrants and refugees” (8).
- 59.
Calderón Pilarski, “Hagar and the Well in the Wilderness,” n.p.; in my references to Croatto’s work, see especially, Severino Croatto, Hermenéutica Práctica:Los Principios de la Hermenéutica Bíblica en Ejemplos (Quito, Ecuador: Centro Bíblico Verbo Divino, 2002).
- 60.
Calderón Pilarski, n.p.
- 61.
Ibidem.
- 62.
Ada María Isasi-Diaz, Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005 [First Edition, 1996]), 68.
- 63.
Isasi-Diaz, Mujerista Theology, 67.
- 64.
Maria Pilar Aquino, “Latina Feminist Theology: Central Features,” in A Reader in Latina Feminist Theology: Religion and Justice; eds. Maria Pilar Aquino, Daisy L. Machado, and Jeanette Rodriguez (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 137 [133–160].
- 65.
From a more recent edited volume, The Foreigner and the Law: Perspectives from the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (2011), I will refer to the essay by Rainer Albertz, “From Aliens to Proselytes,” because it advances some aspects of the earlier work by van Houten. For a more current bibliography on immigration, see Daniel Carroll Rodas, Christians at the Border.
- 66.
Van Houten, The Alien in Israelite Law, 19–20.
- 67.
Van Houten, 158. Although Ramirez Kidd disagrees with her conclusion regarding the ethical development, he acknowledges and builds on van Houten’s work.
- 68.
Van Houten, 50.
- 69.
Van Houten, 50.
- 70.
Albertz, “From Aliens to Proselytes,” 54.
- 71.
Van Houten, 51.
- 72.
Van Houten, 67.
- 73.
Van Houten, 73.
- 74.
Albertz, 54.
- 75.
Van Houten, 79.
- 76.
Van Houten, 90.
- 77.
Van Houten, 94.
- 78.
Van Houten, 95.
- 79.
Van Houten, 97 (emphasis mine).
- 80.
Gerhard von Rad, Studies in Deuteronomy (London: SCM Press, 1953), 16. Van Houten observes that this description is still apt (van Houten, 70).
- 81.
Van Houten, 70.
- 82.
Van Houten, 108.
- 83.
Albertz, 56.
- 84.
Exod 12:19, 48, 49; Lev 16:29; Num 9:14; 15:14, 15, 16, 26, 29, 30; 19:10; 35:15.
- 85.
Van Houten, 162.
- 86.
See also the work of Ulrich Berges on Trito-Isaiah in “Trito-isaiah and the Reforms of Ezra/Nehemiah: Consent or Conflict?” Biblica 98 (2017): 173–190. Berges argues that the inclusion/integration of foreigners (bn nhr) was prominent in the postexilic period.
- 87.
Van Houten, 163–164.
- 88.
Albertz, 59.
- 89.
Van Houten, 133.
- 90.
Albertz, 60.
- 91.
In his treatment of the ger in the priestly material, Ramirez Kidd also distinguishes two kinds of laws: “(1) laws given to the Israelites for the protection of the ger and (2) laws addressed equally to the Israelites and the ger for the preservation of holiness. The origin and aim of these two kinds of law is different” (Alterity and Identity in Israel, 57–58).
- 92.
Van Houten, 175.
- 93.
Albertz, 66.
- 94.
Ramirez Kidd, 11.
- 95.
Ramirez Kidd, 24.
- 96.
Cheryl B. Anderson, Ancient Laws and Contemporary Controversies: The Need for Inclusive Biblical Interpretation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
- 97.
Anderson, Ancient Laws and Contemporary Controversies, 32.
- 98.
Anderson, 34.
- 99.
Donna Gabaccia, in her sociodemographic study of women migrants, demonstrates that women have been about half of the immigrant population in the U.S. for more than a century. The feminization of immigration is not a new reality, but policies rarely attend to women’s particular life conditions. See Donna R. Gabaccia, From the Other Side: Women, Gender, and Immigrant Life in the U.S. – 1820–1990 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994).
- 100.
Emphasis mine; report is available as a PDF at http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/populationfacts/docs/MigrationPopFacts20154.pdf.
- 101.
Jorge Piedad Sánchez, “‘No Oprimas al Extranjero…’: La Hospitalidad hacia el Extranjero en los Códigos del Pentateuco,” Efemerides Mexicana 22 (2004): 198 [181–199].
- 102.
Daniel Groody, “Crossing the Divide: Foundations of a Theology of Migration and Refugees,” Theological Studies 70 (2009): 638–667.
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Pilarski, A.C. (2018). Gendering (Im)migration in the Pentateuch’s Legal Codes: A Reading from a Latina Perspective. In: Agosto, E., Hidalgo, J. (eds) Latinxs, the Bible, and Migration. The Bible and Cultural Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96695-3_3
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