2 - Death Wish as Negotiation Strategy

Summary

For me, the most striking use of the death wish in the Hebrew Bible is the death wish as negotiation strategy, and thus I start with it. These death wishes are found in the Pentateuch, where they are uttered by Rebecca, Rachel, and Moses. They function as deliberate strategies employed by the person with less power in an unequal relationship. Sometimes the inequality is gendered, as when Rebecca and Rachel speak up against their husbands. At other times, there is a divine–human power differential, as with Moses’s two death wishes, which are voiced in dialogues with YHWH. Although Rebecca, Rachel, and Moses all utter death wishes, I will argue that they have no real desire to die. Rather, they use the language of the death wish as a means to achieve specific goals. The weaker party is the one who utters the death wish, setting the stakes and taking a substantial risk by bargaining with their life. Because of the power differential between petitioner and addressee, a death wish can thus function as an act of empowerment, as we will see in the following.