“She Gazed Through the Window”: Gender and Grammatical Voice in Ancient Hebrew

Abstract

The verbs נִשְׁקַף and הִשְׁקִיף are usually both rendered into English as “to look down,” with no apparent difference in meaning despite their occurrence in the niphal and the hiphil, respectively. However, there seems to be a clear pattern in the choice between the two binyanim, which is determined by the gender of the person described. The author’s selection of either stem may give us a glimpse into the Weltanschauung of the biblical writers and their perception of how men and women acted in society and on the stage of life. In one interesting instance regarding queen Jezebel (2 Kgs 9:30), the regular linguistic pattern is reversed to further emphasise the stark contrast between her character and the usual way in which female characters are described in the Hebrew Bible. Paying attention to the general pattern also gives additional evidence in the question of the identity of the speaker in Prov 7:6.