ABSTRACT
Maverick is not a word often associated with women, much less girls in the biblical text. As feminist scholarship over the last decades has shown, women had an important voice, playing a vital role within the household. Women provided daily meals, drew water, wove textiles, produced and reared children, and perpetuated the domestic cult. But a woman’s role was very specific and subject to specific expectations. To be a woman meant conforming to the gender roles required by Israelite society; it meant being the opposite of a maverick, being a ‘yes-woman.’ The stories of Dinah, Jephthah’s daughter, Zelophahad’s daughters, Zipporah, and the little slave girl in 2 Kings 5:1–14 represent girls who are nonconformists, who are not properly gendered. Their stories are complicated. On the one hand, they have agency. They are girls and teenagers who go against societal expectation and speak up or act out, thereby directing the course of the narrative. Perhaps they are allowed this freedom because of their age. As children, they are not threatening. On the other hand, their stories become tales of warning. They outlive their narrative usefulness and are written out of the story, demonstrating the folly of their independent nature. In this way, the biblical text treats them like their grown-up counterparts, erased from the text; their stories ultimately become about something else—intermarriage, (im)proper worship, inheritance, leadership—anything save the celebration of unfettered individualism. Their non-conventional stories become conventional. Through the use of child-centered interpretation, this essay seeks to both point out the attitude towards girling gone wrong, and to celebrate it. In doing so, it will point out the narrative freedom given to these children, because they are children. This, in turn, provides insight into the biblical conception of children, especially female children as the least threatening group in biblical society.
