|
I don't really want to get deeply involved in this thread, but I do want to make two textual notes. If Rebekah covers herself when she sees Isaac, then obviously before that time she was not covered; which means that around the servants in the camel caravan she felt quite free to let her hair, etc., be seen. So patently it was not part of patriarchal culture that all women must at all times have their hair thoroughly covered.
Second, if the priest is to uncover the head of the woman suspected of adultery, we must conclude that the priest is meant to be immune to the enticing power of her hair. Now this could be because priests (like hairdressers?) were endowed with a remarkable constancy in the face of the overwhelming allurement of dead keratin, or because it could be reasonably supposed that any man not in the grip of an overmastering lust would be able to limit a sexual response to hair to that found on the top of his wife's scalp.
|