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JIONE HAVEA, Elusions of Control: Biblical Law on the Words of Women (SBLSS 41; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003). Pp. xii + 223. Paper $29.95.
Havea immediately assaults the reader's reason with disorienting neologisms. She proposes that we circumread transtextuality, (double)crossing boundaries between law and narrative, locating ourselves between gaps and wakes. She desires to immerse us in wave after wave of (ana)logy until we are at sea.
The text subverted by this cunning deconstruction is the law of vows in Numbers 30. The chapter treats adult men quite differently from women. Men are to perform whatever they vow to Yhwh; women are likewise obligated. But a woman living in the house of her father can have her vow nullified by him and, when she is married, by her husband.
This law appears a model of precision and clarity; however, one can imagine complications and ambiguities. What if a woman makes a vow in the house of her father and then marries? Can her husband nullify a vow her father permitted?
Havea expands her reading to include the literary context of the law of vows....