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ATHALYA BRENNER (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Judges (Feminist Companion to the Bible 4; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993). Pp. 242. Paper L16.50, $24.50.
-, A Feminist Companion to the Latter Prophets (Feminist Companion to the Bible 8; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1995). Pp. 384. Paper l16.50, $24.50.
The volume on Judges is organized into five sections. After an introduction by Brenner in which she sets the particular scope of the volume, four articles are grouped under the general heading of women and history: Lillian R. Klein's two articles "A Spectrum of Female Characters" and "The Book of Judges: Paradigm and Deviation in Images of Women"; Adrien Janis Bledstein's "Is Judges a Women's Satire on Men Who Play God?"; Leila Leah Bronner's "Valorized or Vilified? The Women of Judges in Midrashic Sources." Two articles (plus a brief essay by Brenner at the end of the volume) are focused upon Judges 4-5: Brenner's article "A Triangle and a Rhombus in Narrative Structure: A Proposed Integrative Reading of Judges 4 and 5" and Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes's "Mothers and a Mediator in the Song of Deborah." The last three sections concern the relationality of the women in Judges: Esther Fuchs ("Marginalization, Ambiguity, Silencing: The Story of Jephthah's Daughter") and J. Cheryl Exum ("On Judges 11") explore the woman who is depicted as daughter to a father; Yairah Amit and Adele Reinhartz discuss the mother of Samson and wife of Manoah in "'Manoah Promptly Followed His Wife' (Judges 13:11): On the Place of the Woman in Birth Narratives" and "Samson's Mother: An Unnamed Protagonist" respectively. The last three major articles are devoted to issues evoked by the final three chapters of the biblical book: Koala Jones-Warsaw, "Toward a Womanist Hermeneutic: A Reading of Judges 19-21";...