Fleshy, Embodied, Embedded Speech

This essay was part of a 2025 SBL Conference Book Review Panel devoted to Body Language: Voice, Embodiment, and Textuality in the Hebrew Bible, by Jacqueline Vayntrub.

A Welcome Reorientation

First, I would ask my reader to recall the HBO series called Rome. The first season aired in 2005. More specifically, I would like you to think of the Newsreader in the series, a character immortalized by the actor Ian McNeice.[1] In Rome, the Newsreader stands in the square and reads the latest news in a loud voice. What makes his performance striking is his body language. Every news item is accompanied by a theatrical pose and by hand and arm gestures that emphasize particular aspects of the news. The creators of Rome seem to have taken inspiration from Quintilian’s work on oration when they wrote this part.[2] When I was reading Vayntrub’s book, the Newsreader often sprang to mind, because to me this character’s behavior is a welcome reminder of the strangeness of ancient cultures. To most modern viewers, the Newsreader’s body language seems delightfully over the top and ridiculous, but this is because we are not socialized into a professional rhetorical culture, where speech without the proper gestures is basically ‘empty words.’ All cultures appear to have body language, but body languages are not universal.

When reading texts from the Hebrew Bible or ancient Rome, it is tempting to focus on the similarities between ‘them’ and ‘us’, our shared humanity, and the very familiar descriptions of longing, love, fear, and despair that make us identify with the peoples of the past, and ‘understand’ them. In particular, anything connected with the body may seem deceptively familiar. In any culture, bodies are understood to be natural, just as cultural constructs of bodies are naturalized to a large extent. In other words, it is easy to forget that our perception of the body is a cultural construct, not a natural fact, and that historical body perceptions are constructs too.

I think this is one of the many valuable contributions that Jacqueline Vayntrub makes with this book. She reminds me that the authors of the Hebrew Bible understood and conceptualized speech and speechmaking very differently from how I, a modern person, intuitively think of speechmaking and how it relates to texts. Vayntrub puts this point very well in a discussion of Hannah’s behavior in the sanctuary in Shilo in 1 Sam 1: “…we should not assume that we understand even the most basic concepts being expressed; we should reorient ourselves to the anatomical language of the verse.”[3] I greatly appreciate this reminder to constantly question what I think I understand in the Hebrew Bible and to reorient myself towards the Hebrew Bible’s “corporeal idiom,” as Vayntrub calls it in her Chapter 1, and to its corporeal worldview.

In the book, Vayntrub demonstrates clearly how the Hebrew Bible’s native concept of speechmaking is both embodied, social, and material. She shows how the embodied notion of speech production in the Hebrew Bible forms the conceptual basis for text production, and she unpacks the written texts in their ‘flat’ two-dimensionality so that they become ‘fleshy’ and tangible, and truly three-dimensional. In the following, I will apply some of Vayntrub’s insights to two other Hebrew Bible texts that were not included in the discussion in the book. I do this to continue the conversation that Body Language initiates.

Embodied Instruction in Deuteronomy

First, I turn to the book’s chapter 3, “Speechmaking Is Social: Speaking and Hearing in Instruction and Petition.” In this chapter, Vayntrub describes how instruction is intended to modify the body of the instructed, usually to preserve and protect this body. She further points out that instruction can only take effect if it is embodied by the instructed and shapes their behavior. Vayntrub illustrates her point with pertinent examples from Proverbs and from the Shema in Deuteronomy 6, where the instruction to recite the words of the commandment and to tie them to one’s arm and forehead both modify the body and shape the actions of the instructed person. I think this insight applies to a broader section of the Book of Deuteronomy than the Shema in Deuteronomy 6 and the cognate passage in Deuteronomy 11. Several times in Deuteronomy, Yhwh commands the people of Israel to keep his statutes and ordinances and to ‘do’ them, to act upon them and carry them out. For instance, in Deuteronomy 7:12: “…if you hear (תשמעון) these ordinances and keep (ושמרתם) them and do (ועשיתם) them, then Yhwh your god will keep (ושמר) with you the covenant and the loyalty that he swore to your fathers.”[4] The following verse 13 details the blessing that Israel will receive in return for their obedience. Yhwh will love them, bless them, multiply them and reward them with abundance. It is well-known that the author of Deuteronomy stresses active listening and obedience. In Deuteronomy, to hear should also entail to do what is said. However, I think Vayntrub’s work adds a new dimension to our understanding of this Deuteronomic refrain. The instruction is given with the distinct intention to shape and modify the behavior of the instructed. Their obedience to Yhwh’s commandments should not be limited to an intellectual or cognitive exercise of agreement or, dare I say it, mindfulness. True commitment is expressed through action, the instructed must perform the commandments, and when they do so to Yhwh’s satisfaction, the reward will be tangible and embodied as well. Yhwh will multiply the bodies of the Israelites, he will make their wombs swell, and he will fatten them with grain, oil, and cattle. In this way, Deuteronomy’s repeated call to listen to the commandments and to do them, is another good illustration of Vayntrub’s point that instruction is only effective if it is embodied and performed by the instructed. Furthermore, the reward for heeding instruction is promised through speechmaking in the text, but the reward itself is realized in the bodies of the instructed as they munch on the fruits of the land and produce multitudes of babies.

Jezabel and Ahab’s Seal in First Kings 21

My second example is inspired by two central points that Vayntrub develops throughout the book. The first is that in the Hebrew Bible speech and words are conceptualized as objects that have an effect in the world.[5] The second is that in the Hebrew Bible the body is seen as a composite unit, an assemblage of parts, and that a large category of bodily equipment, such  as individual organs, a person’s name, their clothing, their image, and their seal, may function as material objects and as extensions of the person in the world.[6] This made me think of the story of Naboth’s vineyard in First Kings 21, and more specifically of Jezebel’s actions as she uses both King Ahab’s name and seal to write letters to the leaders of Naboth’s village so that they may falsely accuse, convict and kill Naboth (v. 8). I follow Amy Kalmanofsky in my reading of this story. Kalmanofsky argues that Jezebel does not use Ahab’s seal and name because she wants to masquerade as him. Instead, Jezebel overtly usurps Ahab’s royal power and wields it to bring Naboth down. As Kalmanofsky points out, this reading is supported by two details in the narrative that follows. First, in verse 11, it is specified that the men of Naboth’s city acted according to the letters that Jezebel had sent to them, and secondly, in verse 14, the men of the city send word directly to Jezebel to inform her of Naboth’s death.[7] Jezebel is not pretending to be her husband the king, she acts openly as she uses his power.

If we apply Vayntrub’s insights to this narrative, a couple of interesting aspects emerge. First, Jezebel uses Ahab’s name and his seal, two implements of a person that may function as extensions of this person in the world. Secondly, Jezebel uses these two extensions of Ahab’s person to accompany a letter, a textualized voice, but not the voice of Ahab. It is her own voice and her own command to kill Naboth. One could argue that Jezebel simply adds Ahab’s person and power to her own voice, so that the men of Naboth’s city receive a letter containing Jezebel’s speech bolstered by the tangible extended agency of Ahab’s kingly power in the shape of his name and his seal. In this reading, Jezebel’s words are backed and given weight by her husband the king – with or without his consent or knowledge.

There is another option, which I find even more alluring, and very much in line with the general portrayal of Jezebel in Kings as a person who takes action and who does not shy away from power. In this reading, Jezebel seizes two aspects of Ahab’s person, his name and his seal, and she sends them out to have an effect on the world together with her own written-down speech. Jezebel captures and harnesses two aspects of Ahab’s person and then she makes them work and speak on behalf of and as extensions of her person. If we follow Vayntrub’s line of thought, this is so much more than forging someone’s signature. This is possessing and taking charge of another person’s voice and extended body. It is invasive, transgressive, and bold.

With these two simple examples I hope to have shown how Vayntrub’s excellent book inspires new readings and reflections on biblical literature in light of the Hebrew Bible’s corporeal idiom and worldview. I thank Jackie for initiating such a stimulating conversation with her work and I congratulate her on the publication of this timely volume.

Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme is professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Oslo. She is co-author (with Søren Lorenzen) of The Body in the Hebrew Bible (Eisenbrauns, 2026).

[1] https://youtu.be/zQyLLCFzuZg?si=nlN7rOJtVw-Hp9oe

[2] See, for instance, Quintillian, Institutio Oratoria, Book XI, Chapter III, lines 61–106; Levene, D.S., 'Quintilian on Memory and Delivery', in Marc Van Der Poel, Michael Edwards, and James J. Murphy (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Quintilian, Oxford Handbooks (2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 8 Dec. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198713784.013.9, accessed 4 Mar. 2026.

[3] Jacqueline Vayntrub, Body Language: Voice, Embodiment, and Textuality in the Hebrew Bible, Yale University Press, 2026, p. 45.

[4] My translation. See also Deut 4:6.16.23.25(x2); 29.8.

[5] Vayntrub 2026: 26.

[6] Vayntrub 2026: 42, 48, 87, 95, 109 and 115.

[7] Amy Kalmanofsky, Gender-Play in the Hebrew Bible: The Ways the Bible Challenges Its Gender Norms, London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 103-104.