Sandra Jacobs’s ​The Body as Property examines the role of physical disfigurement in the Hebrew Bible, with focus on the Torah, and more specifically on the (fictitious) Priestly document, P. After an introduction laying out a rationale for the comparative method that guides her research, she explores circumcision, the use of the lex talionis in penal law, and ends with a chapter on the ear-piercing for slaves.

On the assumption that the human body is a canvas or blank page on which we inscribe cultural signs, she asks, “what meanings were inscribed upon the male and female biblical ‘canvas’? And how were these represented in Pentateuchal law?” (1).

Jacobs’s explanations are sometimes illuminating, sometimes opaque. Her discussion of circumcision is the former. She connects the cut of circumcision (introduced in Genesis 17) with the cutting of animals in the covenant-ceremony of Genesis 15, which she identifies as a “royal land-grand treaty” (37). Circumcision takes the place of a “formal monument (stele, or boundary marker) confirming Israel’s title and possession of the land of Canaan,” a “personal, physical sign” that verified their share in the inheritance of the land (43), a personalization of the “covenant between the pieces” (65). Circumcision was applied on the eighth day of an infant’s life to distinguish the covenant children of Isaac from Abram’s first son, Ishmael, who was circumcised as a teenager. Quite accurately, she denies that circumcision functioned as a “tribal mark or ethnic habit” (63).

She also traces out connections between circumcision, the offering of Isaac, and the Passover sacrifice, such that sacrifices came to be understood “as a substitute for the firstborn in each household” (54). She cites Jon Levenson’s comment that in Israel’s sacrifices the son substituted for the father, as a prince often took the place of the king in other ancient cultures (55).

Her lengthy discussion of the disfigurements of the talion laws is less clear and less successful. Some of her observations are illuminating, like the connection between “eye for eye” disfigurement and the disfigurement of conquered or incompetent kings (134-45). More generally, she suggests that punitive disfigurements represented “the covenantal curse, where the disobedient vassal . . . is depicted as a dead carcass” (131).

One of her central claims is that the phrase “life for life” does not refer to the death penalty (which is specified by the phrase, “and he shall be put to death”) nor monetary compensation (which is typically specified by the verb shalam) but rather refers to the replacement by a living person (e.g., 106). Requiring life for life means that a live person would stand as pledge or surety. A killer would not have to be put to death, except in cases of premeditated murder. Rather, he had to replace the life of the victim with another living person (97). This is suggestive, but her interpretation of the phrase is limited to P, since she acknowledges that Deuteronomy 21:19 uses an equivalent phrase to describe capital punishment (127).

Jacobs’s effort to show that the various forms of mutilation have to do with “legitimate property values” (222) is not entirely successful. While proprietary claims are involved in, say, the ear-boring of a slave, these are bound inseparably with other values. The permanent slave, after all, is one who wants to serve the master he loves. “Property” is too impersonal a term to describe the theology behind circumcision or the lex talionis. I also do not find her claims about the subjection of women in Torah at all convincing. It’s not the case that “the retaliatory mutilation of women was of concern only as an infringement of male property rights” (222).

Peter J. Leithart is President of Trinity House.