The Protective Red Thread

Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.

E.g., Jes Peter Asmussen, “Bemerkungen Zur Sakralen Prostitution Im Alten Testament,” Studia Theologica 11.1 (1957): 167–192; Phyllis A. Bird, “The Harlot as Heroine: Narrative Art and Social Presuppositions in Three Old Testament Texts,” Semeia 46 (1989): 119–139; Elly Teman, “The Red String: The Cultural History of a Jewish Folk Symbol,” in Jewishness: Expression, Identity, and Representation, ed. Simon J. Bronner (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 1.29–57; Scott B. Noegel, “Scarlet and Harlots: Seeing Red in the Hebrew Bible,” Hebrew Union College Annual 87 (2016): 1–47.

Indeed, many commentators assume that the Hebrew Bible presents Tamar and Rahab as immoral characters in need of forgiveness due to their profession. See, e.g., Leila Leah Bronner, “Aggadic Attitudes Toward Prostitution: Rabbinic Rehabilitation of the Marginalized Woman,” in Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, June 22–29, 1993, ed. David Assaf (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1994), 33–40; Trent C. Butler, Joshua, Word Biblical Commentary 7 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983): 35.

Noegel, “Scarlet and Harlots,” 8–9.

Teman, “The Red String,” 39.

E.g., Isaiah 1:21–23; 2:7–22; 3:16–24.

NRSVue. The phrase may have a gendered element to it, since verse 21 calls Jerusalem a zonah: אֵיכָה הָיְתָה לְזוֹנָה, “Alas, she has become a harlot!” (Noegel, “Scarlet and Harlots,” 9–10).

Kassia St. Clair, The Secret Lives of Color (New York: Penguin Books, 2016). Thus, Lamentations uses an image of red clothing to describe the reversal of fortunes that occurred for the wealthy when the Babylonians defeated Jerusalem:

^{איכה ד:ה} הָאֹכְלִים לְמַעֲדַנִּים נָשַׁמּוּ בַּחוּצוֹת הָאֱמֻנִים עֲלֵי תוֹלָע חִבְּקוּ אַשְׁפַּתּוֹת.

^{Lam 4:5} Those who feasted on delicacies perish in the streets; those who were [once] nursed upon scarlet (tolaʿ) cling to rubbish heaps.

The phrase “nursed upon scarlet” suggests that the women who nursed the wealthy wore scarlet.

NRSVue. Although her actions are those of a sex worker looking for clients, she is in fact YHWH’s unfaithful wife in this metaphor (Jer 2:2; 3:1).

Copious imagery of blood and redness is a common feature of the prophetic metaphor of the sinful city as a female sex worker and/or unfaithful wife (e.g., Isaiah 1; Jeremiah 2–4; Ezekiel 16; 23; Hosea 1–3; Nahum 2–3; cf. Ezekiel 22 and 36). The motif confuses the distinction between blood that causes regular impurities according to biblical law—including menstruation and childbirth (Lev 12:1–5; 15:19–30)—and things that are sins bearing capital punishment, such as murder (Exod 21:12; Lev 24:17; Num 35:30–33). See Elizabeth W. Goldstein, “‘By the Blood That You Shed You Are Guilty’: Perspectives on Female Blood in Leviticus and Ezekiel,” in Jewish Blood: Reality and Metaphor in History, Religion, and Culture, ed. Mitchell B. Hart (London: Routledge, 2009), 57–69; Noegel, “Scarlet and Harlots,” 34.

NRSVue, with modifications.

The Hebrew term in Song of Songs 7:6 is karmel rather than karmil, which is a later Hebrew word for scarlet (e.g., 2 Chr 2:6). Some translators render the word as “Carmel,” but its placement in parallel with argaman (Tyrian purple) makes the similarly bright, luxurious dye karmil a more likely option. (So also NJPS, following Jonah ibn Janah [ca. 990–1055 C.E.] and Abraham ibn Ezra [1089–1164], who interpret karmel as a by-form of karmil).

When Judah’s friend Hiram is searching for the mysterious woman with whom Judah slept (Gen 38:21–22), he asks after a קְדֵשָׁה, lit. “holy woman.” Qedeshah was long thought to refer to a cult prostitute, but comparative evidence regarding the Mesopotamian qadishtu, “holy woman,” suggests the term instead refers to a woman set apart from normative society—usually for a religious role, such as being responsible for rituals surrounding childbirth. (See Joan Goodnick Westenholz, “Tamar, Qědēšā, Qadištu, and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia,” Harvard Theological Review 82.3 [1989]: 245–265; Scurlock, “Baby-Snatching Demons, Restless Souls and the Dangers of Childbirth,” 142; Noegel, “Scarlet and Harlots,” 6, n. 15.) Some of the biblical writers did not approve of the qedeshah (e.g., Deut 23:18; 2 Kgs 23:7; Hos 4:14; Job 36:14), but this attitude likely derives from her association with rituals that were not related to the centralized worship of YHWH in the Jerusalem temple. Since the zonah (sex worker) was set apart from normative society in a similar manner to the qedeshah, it is possible that she was considered to occupy a similar social space to female ritual specialists who lived and supported themselves outside of male-headed family households (See Adele Brenner, The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and “Sexuality” in the Hebrew Bible, Biblical Interpretation Series 26, Leiden: Brill, 1997, 149). Thus, the terminology used to refer to these two types of women may have become blurred in ancient Israelite society: hence Hiram’s reference to Tamar as a qedeshah, when the narrator tells us she dressed as a zonah. Editor’s note: For a summary of the debate over the nature of the qedeshah as a cultic prostitute, non-cultic prostitute, or ritual practitioner, see Hacham Isaac S. D. Sassoon, “What Does Deuteronomy Say about Homosexuality?” TheTorah (2017), who reaches a different conclusion about the possibility that cultic prostitution existed in ancient Israel.

NRSVue.

Together with expensive blue and purple fabrics, large amounts of scarlet fabric are used for the clothing of priests and soft furnishings inside the tabernacle and temple (Exod 25–28; 35–39; Num 4; 2 Chronicles 2–3). However, because scarlet appears as one among many luxury decorative items in these passages—and never as a thread or something that can be bound—these uses are less relevant to the current study.

Editor’s Note: On the ritual in Numbers 19 as a soap-making procedure, see Joseph Weinstein, “Red Heifer: A Soap Ritual,” TheTorah (2022).

Noga Ayali-Darshan, “Scapegoat: The Origins of the Crimson Thread,” TheTorah (2020); and Noga Ayali-Darshan, “The Origin and Meaning of the Crimson Thread in the Mishnaic Scapegoat Ritual in Light of an Ancient Syro-Anatolian Custom,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 44 (2013): 530–552.

Ayali-Darshan, “Scapegoat: The Origins of the Crimson Thread,” citing CTH 402.

J. A. Scurlock, “Baby-Snatching Demons, Restless Souls and the Dangers of Childbirth: Medico-Magical Means of Dealing with Some of the Perils of Motherhood in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Incognita 2 (1991): 137–185.

Scurlock, “Baby-Snatching Demons, Restless Souls and the Dangers of Childbirth,” 140. See also Walter Farber, Schlaf, Kindchen, Schlaf! Mesopotamische Baby-Beschwörungen und -Rituale (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1989).

Scurlock “Baby-Snatching Demons, Restless Souls and the Dangers of Childbirth,” 140.

E.g. J. van Dijk, “Incantations accompagnant la naissance de l’homme,” Orientalia 44.1 (1975): 52–79; Scurlock, “Baby-Snatching Demons, Restless Souls and the Dangers of Childbirth,” 143–144. See also Irving L. Finkel, “The Crescent Fertile,” Archiv für Orientforschung 27 (1980): 37–52.

Teman, “The Red String,” 34–35.

That Mesopotamian pregnancy and childbirth rituals are especially informative for interpreting the red thread in the Tamar narrative has been suggested in Nancy R. Bowen, “The Daughters of Your People: Female Prophets in Ezekiel 13:17–23,” Journal of Biblical Literature 118.3 (1998): 417–433. Noegel (“Scarlot and Harlots,” 26–27) agrees that the scarlet threads in the Tamar and Rahab narratives have an apotropaic function, yet he rejects the view that they were involved in childbirth rituals due to a lack of evidence for this in the Hebrew Bible as well as the high economic value of scarlet (7). It is scarlet’s high value, however, that likely gave it ritual power, even in the small quantities required by a thread. Tabarru (an Akkadian term for red wool) was prized by royalty across the ancient Near East (Shiyanthi Thavapalan, The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia, Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 104 [Leiden: Brill, 2020]) and it was used in childbirth rituals. The concept that scarlet threads could protect babies against demons and diseases can also be found much later in one of John Chrysostom’s (c. 347–407 C.E.) writings, which condemns early Christians for trying scarlet threads around their babies’ hands rather than relying on “the protection of the Cross” (John Chrysostom, The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom Archbishop of Constantinople on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians: The Oxford Translation Revised with Additional Notes, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Talbot W. Chambers, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church XII [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995]).

Scurlock, “Baby-Snatching Demons, Restless Souls and the Dangers of Childbirth,” 150.

After all, twin boys were considered a bad omen in Mesopotamian tradition (Erle Leichty, The Omen Series Shumma Izbu, Texts from Cuneiform Sources [Locust Valley, NY: J.J. Augustin, 1970]; as noted in Noegel, “Scarlet and Harlotes,” 26, n. 91).

The MT has וַיִּקְרָא, “he called,” both here and in v. 30, but the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac, and several manuscripts in Hebrew and Aramaic have “she called.” This is the more natural option, as neither Judah nor any other male subject appears to be present at the birth. “She” could refer to either Tamar or her midwife.

One further indication that binding could have protective value in the Hebrew Bible might be found in Genesis 30, which describes the stronger sheep and goats bred by Jacob as the “bound” ones (Gen 30:41–42).