Weapons upon her body

"The biblical stories of Lot's daughters, Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba, share much in common - singular women who are left to rely upon their own wits to achieve some measure of victory over the men around them. Scholarly interpretation of these women often reduces them to mere stock characters who inform civic notions about Israel, the perennial underdog who, like these women, achieves against great odds. Or, they reflect the trickery and moral ambiguity inherent in their line as ancestresses of the House of David ... Using methods from biblical study as well as folklore, this study identifies biblical women motivated by self-interest coupled with decption and an incidence of the 'bedtrick, ' an instance of sexual trickery that challenges the text's power and gender dynamics."--Cover, p. [4].