This book is about both the fear of gender reversal and its expression in the prophet Ezekiel's reworking of the marital metaphor. Kamionkowski argues that the abomination of "wife Jerusalem" is that she is attempting to pass for a male, thereby crossing gender boundaries and upsetting the world order. This story is therefore one of confused gender scripts, ensuing chaos and a re-ordering through the reinforcement of these strictly defined prescriptions of gendered behaviour.

Using socio-historical evidence and the existence of the literary motif of "men turning into women" as a framework, this book argues that Ezekiel 16, in particular, reflects the gender chaos which arises as an aftermath of social and theological crises.

Recognizing that human experience is very much influenced by inhabiting bodies, the past decade has seen a surge in studies about representation of bodies in religious experience and human imaginations regarding the Divine. The understanding of embodiment as central to human experience has made a big impact within religious studies particularly in contemporary Christian theology, feminist, cultural and ideological criticism and anthropological approaches to the Hebrew Bible. Within the sub-field of theology of the Hebrew Bible, the conversation is still dominated by assumptions that the God of the Hebrew Bible does not have a body and that embodiment of the divine is a new concept introduced outside of the Hebrew Bible. To a great extent, the insights regarding how body discourse can communicate information have not yet been incorporated into theological studies.

The book of Leviticus provides two different theologies related to God's presence within ancient Israel. Leviticus 1-16 was written by an elite caste of priests (P), and Leviticus 17-26 (H) was added to the book to "democratize" access to God. While the Priestly work has hardly inspired lay readers, the Holiness Writings provide some of the most inspiring and well-known verses from the Bible. This volume shows how gender dynamics shift between the static worldview of P and the dynamic approach of H and that, ironically, as holiness expands from the priests to the people, from the temple to the land of Israel, gender behaviors become more highly regulated. This complicates associations between power and gender dynamics and opens the door to questions about the relationships between power, gender, and theological perspectives.

Recognizing that human experience is very much influenced by inhabiting bodies, the past decade has seen a surge in studies about representation of bodies in religious experience and human imaginations regarding the Divine. The understanding of embodiment as central to human experience has made a big impact within religious studies particularly in contemporary Christian theology, feminist, cultural and ideological criticism and anthropological approaches to the Hebrew Bible. Within the sub-field of theology of the Hebrew Bible, the conversation is still dominated by assumptions that the God of the Hebrew Bible does not have a body and that embodiment of the divine is a new concept introduced outside of the Hebrew Bible. To a great extent, the insights regarding how body discourse can communicate information have not yet been incorporated into theological studies.