Textual Mirrors. Dina Stein
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this question as a riddle (had it been formulated simply, it would have been a wisdom question). The lengthy question emphasizes something else as well—the riddle contains a number of possible roles in which women serve in relation to men, such as daughter, sister, mother, and wife. The riddle thus creates analogies between these familiar units. These supposedly natural affinities, as exemplified in the riddle, are not necessarily distinguished from one another, and indeed—as in Lot’s case—they can be unified.55 The riddle also ends in “I am your sister.” The term “sister” carries clear cultural connotations of a lover, derived from Song of Songs, where the phrase “my sister-bride” (aḥoti-kallah) is repeated.56
In continuation of the first riddle, which shows man (the male) to be the product of differentiations, the second riddle shows these differentiations to be arbitrary, even though socially necessary. The first riddle also contains the option—which Solomon chooses—of perceiving the woman as a maternal figure. As we have already seen, this option underlines the infant’s dependence on his mother and undermines his sovereignty. The Queen of Sheba shrewdly hints that every woman can be a maternal figure, intimating the dependence of men on women (qua women). The second riddle suggests to Solomon that maternal status does not necessarily contradict a threatening sexual interaction. Hence, the refuge that Solomon sought to find in the solution to the first riddle is rendered insecure, and not just on account of the weakness that the mother-child relation indicates; the nonerotic relations of parent and child are due to social differentiation and do not guarantee full protection from intimidating erotic power, as in the case of Lot and his daughters.57
The incest taboo inherently transforms the closest and most familiar to the furthest. By the same logic, it familiarizes the stranger (spouse). The strategy implemented by the riddle is similar, where an estrangement of the familiar concept of language and categorization takes place. The riddle offers, in return, a translation of this strangeness into something familiar.58 Throughout the riddling process, Solomon engages in translating the strange and alien into something familiar. Yet the Queen of Sheba remains a foreign woman who returns to her place almost untransformed (except for her newly acquired recognition of Solomon’s wisdom and the greatness of his God). She does not undergo the same process as her own riddles.
The first two riddles are verbal in nature. The last two are practical, and they are also distinguished from the previous ones by being labeled “tests” (dugma; lit., “examples”). The transition from riddles to examples is a transition from hearsay to eyesight, and thus it picks up on the beginning of the riddling tale: the Queen of Sheba came to witness Solomon’s wisdom with her own eyes. In this stage of the tale, Solomon’s position becomes more prominent. Especially in the last riddle, he takes a more active role vis-à-vis the poser.
In the third riddle, the Queen of Sheba places homogeneous human bodies before him, among which he has to distinguish between males and females. This riddle presents confusion on the level of content, the blurring of a natural, biological distinction between males and females by an external erasure of differences. In contrast to the previous riddle, which pointed out a social categorization, the third riddle challenges what may seem to be a natural category: gender. But perhaps not, since Solomon’s solution depends on gendered behavioral differences. Did the “girls [females] who were ashamed” act according to an arbitrary social norm or instinctively? In other words, are gender distinctions restored, thus saving the social order by employing natural or artificial differentiations? Here, we must bear in mind that Midrash Mishle and the Book of Proverbs define clear gendered, behavioral norms and condemn those who violate them. Solomon’s stratagem depends on the normative system, which determines the required measure of feminine modesty. Furthermore, the riddle and its solution reinforce that normative system by presenting it as a natural one. However, the mere presentation of blurred boundaries between males and females (even though these boundaries are reinstated in the solution) suggests the possibility of gender equality and, by implication, an equality between the king and the queen. This may be especially true since the queen does not meet required feminine behavioral norms as they are depicted in the Book of Proverbs and Midrash Mishle as a whole. These norms serve as the basis for Solomon’s virtuoso solution. In solving the riddle, he uses his eunuchs, who may be considered a neutral (artificial) category. He thus strips all eroticism from the riddle (or rather, from its solution)—eroticism that might have emerged, for example, had he distributed the grain and nuts himself. The solution thus supports the presumption that behavioral differences between men and women correlate with their biological differences. In contrast to the first two riddles, which implicitly convey messages to (and about) Solomon concerning his vulnerability as a man facing a woman (the Queen of Sheba), this example shows a retreat from the queen’s initial aggression: it is no longer an attempt to determine superiority but only equality. The third riddle marks a turning point in yet another sense: the first riddle touched on the primordial, and the second riddle dealt with mythic resonances (the story of Lot’s daughters), whereas here the confrontation between the Queen of Sheba and Solomon is shifted to his home ground—temporally and geographically. The text may thus be implying that this is his only chance to win the game. The riddle also alludes to the dichotomy that the queen wishes to establish for her needs, between men (Solomon) and women (the Queen of Sheba). Furthermore, with her words “My son, you are a great sage,”59 she sends Solomon back to the rhetorical thrust of the previous riddles: the emphasis on the dependence of the man on the woman and the intimidating sexual threat that is embedded in the feminine figure per se.
The last riddle revolves around differentiating between Jews and Gentiles. As with the previous riddle, the distinction is validated naturally and instinctively when the circumcised behave differently from the uncircumcised. The solution to the riddle also transforms the salient but hidden physical difference between Jewish and non-Jewish males (circumcision) into a visible physical feature of a distinctly metaphysical nature (“their faces were filled with the radiance of the Shekhinah”).60 It carries on from the third riddle, which posits natural differences between males and females. Yet we should remember that the third riddle also questions the very notion of naturalness. Furthermore, we must examine the entire riddling process, starting from the level of the living (fetal) mass, through the mixed kinship group of the mature sexual identity in the sociocultural frame, up to the climactic test: the existential cognitive identity of Jew versus Gentile.
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