Exodus 19:8 - On the “people” label

(The above rendering and its footnote come from the RJPS translation, an adaptation of the NJPS translation.)

In the rest of this long account (chapters 19–20), the body that is present at the Revelation is repeatedly labeled as הָעָם or as כׇּל־הָעָם. Either women’s presence (or absence) in this scene was not the narrator’s concern, or it was inferable from context and went without saying. So let us look more closely at what went without saying.

Given the Torah audience’s natural expectation of textual coherence, הָעָם must refer here specifically to זִקְנֵי הָעָם “the elders of the people” (v. 7). It goes without saying that, at least in certain respects, this body can speak and act on the people’s behalf. (Reliance upon the people’s representation by elders is already the normal way that Moses has been communicating with them: see 4:29–31; 12:3, 27.)

In describing who answers Moses at this point, the narrator is employing the linguistic device called metonymy: “all the people” means the totality of the assembled elders, in their capacity as stand-ins for the nation as a whole. It is precisely the disjunction in referential scope between זִקְנֵי הָעָם in the previous verse and כׇּל־הָעָם here that signals that the latter term is not meant to be taken literally; it is the hallmark of metonymy.

In the remainder of this passage, continued metonymy is likely when the label הָעָם is used—except perhaps in 19:12, 21, 23–24, which warn about the danger of encroachment. (There, the more literal construal of הָעָם as “the people” readily yields an informative and coherent text.)

On metonymic expressions and how they are handled in this translation, see the section “Gender and Figurative Language” in this introduction, pp. 3–4; and see my comment to 12:3.

Julie K. Gordon has attempted to resolve the gender implications of כׇּל־הָעָם by asserting that in this passage, the plural form of the verbs and nouns that are co-referential with הָעָם indicates that this term refers to “the entire people” (“We All Stood at Sinai,” in Elyse Goldstein, ed., The Women’s Torah Commentary [Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2000], 143–147, here 145). While this assertion has midrashic standing, it does not work in terms of the passage’s plain sense. According to normal rules of Hebrew usage, such plurals are not a reliable indicator of a mixed-gender referent. Consider that the Bible uses plurals even where עַם denotes a male-only body (e.g., Num. 31:3; Judg 8:5, 9:37). In this passage, the grammar and wording are agnostic with regard to the gender of the collectivity referred to as הָעָם.

The Bible nowhere discusses the gender of those whom it designates as “elders.” It does not make an issue of whether they are male or female. I believe that the text’s ancient audience would have understood זִקְנֵי הָעָם to denote a typically male body—but not an exclusively male one. Circumstantial evidence that in the social world of the Bible, a given body of elders may well have included a woman or two is the fact that the Bible depicts women as occasionally doing what elders presumably did: run a wealthy corporate household (2 Kings 8:3–6, in light of 4:8); and found a new clan lineage. (Consider the biblical prominence of certain women with regard to lineage and locale: Ephrath(ah) and Achsah, in Judah; the five daughters of Zelophehad, as well as Maacah, in Manasseh; Serah, in Asher; and Sheerah, in Ephraim.)

In short, while a female “elder” was presumably rare, we lack the grounds to rule out women as possibly being among a specific body of elders.