Women Ministers at the Tent of Meeting

Buried within the description of the building of the Tabernacle at the end of Exodus, is a curious phrase:

(Bezalel) made the bronze basin and its bronze stand from the mirrors of the women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. (Exodus 38:8).

Who were these mysterious women ministers and what was their role?

This phrase caught my attention especially because the verb used (tsava) is multifaceted with a wide range of semantic meaning. It can refer to a soldier or someone on military duty. Similarly, this is also the word that refers to the "heavenly host" or YHWH in the Hebrew Bible. Adonai Tsavaot is an epithet of God that seems to refer to God's heavenly armies (see, for example, 1 Samuel 1:3). 

This is also the verb used to refer to the ministry of the Levites in the Tent of Meeting. Wait - what?

Two chapters in Numbers furnish details about the work of both the Gershonites and the Levites at the Tent of Meeting. Both use this same verb to refer to this work. Let's have a closer look.

Numbers 4:23-24 states this:

All the men between thirty and fifty years of age, eligible for work/military service (tsava) will minister/do work (tsava) in the Tent of Meeting... They shall carry the curtains of the tabernacle, and the tent of meeting with its covering, and the fine leather that is on top of it, and the screen for the entrance of the meeting... 

Numbers 8:24 states this:

This concerns the Levites. From the age of twenty-five onwards, the Levites will serve/work/minister (tsava) in the Tent of Meeting. 

Both passages refer to active service in the tent of meeting by those who are acting as ritual experts on some level. The Gershonites are tasked with special care of the textiles used in the Tent of Meeting while the Levites are tasked and anointed to offer sacrifices in the Tent of Meeting.

The same verb used for the women at the Tent of Meeting suggests that they also had a special task but its details were not included in the detailed list in Numbers. This special task seems to have involved mirrors, likely as some sort of ritual object.

What did this "Service" at the Tent of Meeting involve?

Susan Ackerman suggests that the verb's associations with military duty mean that the women served as guardians of the entrance. [1] Door guardians were a popular motif at entrances to temples and palaces in the ancient Near East. The biblical cherubim play this role also with their wings stretched out covering the ark in the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple, and as guardians of the Garden of Eden. Perhaps the mirrors were some form of ritual weaponry or iconography of weaponry used by these women guardians.

Janet Everhart calls this verse a "puzzle for scholarship." She posits a cultic role for these women in the Tent of Meeting.

These women serving in the Tent of Meeting are also mentioned in 1 Samuel 2:22b where the sons of Eli are accused of having sexual relations with them. No mention of mirrors is made, however. On the basis of this verse, some scholars have concluded that these women were cult prostitutes serving in the tent of meeting. However, if this were the case, then the sons of Eli would not be accused of wrongdoing. This seems like a case of sexualizing these women in order to diminish their role as ministers of the Tent.

It is worth observing also that women did play significant roles in the religious cultures of the ancient Near East. Women served as priestesses, prophets, and other significant liturgical roles. [3] The idea that women served in a similar capacity in ancient Israel and Judah is plausible and in keeping with wider religious cultures and traditions of the time and region.

Furthermore, as Janet Everhart observes, the mirrors are a key element that gives us a clue about the role and status of these women. Female deities are depicted holding mirrors in ancient Near Eastern iconography. [4]. This use of mirrors in ancient art from the cultural period of the Bible suggests associations of mirrors with the divine, with femininity and power,  and their use as ritual objects. In addition, the melting down of the bronze from the mirrors and re-purposing of the metal as a bronze basin in the Tabernacle adds weight to the idea that the mirrors were liturgical objects.

While we will never know the precise role of the women ministering at the Tent of Meeting, the  mention of the mirrors in association with the fashioning of ritual objects for the Tabernacle certainly strongly suggests a liturgical role for the women. 

[1] Susan Ackerman, "Mirrors, Drums, and Trees," in Congress Volume Helsinki 2010 (Brill, 2012), 537-567, 553. 

[2] Janet Everhart, "Serving Women and Their Mirrors: A Feminist Reading of Exodus 38:8b," Catholic Biblical Quarterly (2004): 44.

[3] For a basic overview of women in these roles, see Marten Stol, Women in the Ancient Near East (Boston: DeGruyter, 2016).