270 SHAUL BAR condemn such practices as it appears in Deut 26,14 “I have not eaten of the tithe while I was mourning, or removed any of it while I was unclean, or offered any of it to the dead.” Thus, Stade spoke about Israel’s ancestral grave and its close relation to worship, he points to the ‘oak of weeping’ over the grave of Deborah 3. However, we have to stress that the place did not serve as a place of worship and sacrifice, at the time of Jacob. Moreover, the nurse was brought from afar, and therefore, she couldn’t be an object of worship to the Israelites. In Genesis 24, 59 we read that Rebekah was sent with her nurse (htqnm) along with Abraham servant. In Genesis 35, 8 Rebekah’s nurse is identified as Deborah. The Hebrew tqnym is a wet nurse as this term appears for the baby Moses (Exod 2, 7). However, Rebekah did not need a service of a wet nurse. We believe that Deborah, besides acting as a guardian to Rebekah had additional duties as the name place of her burial implies. Dirges or laments were sung at the funerals of both important people and commoners, as well as in times of extreme crisis — e.g., war, drought, and plague. The Bible refers to professional keeners as sarot “ female ˇ singers ” (2 Chr 35,25), meqonnenôt “ female dirge-singers” (Jer 9,16[17]), and hakamôt “ skilled women” (ibid.). They were experts in their craft, ˙ trained ¯to sing or compose funeral songs, who passed their special skills from generation to generation (Jer 9,19[20]). The profession may have been dominated by women because they are considered to be more emotional and sensitive. In the ancient Near East, too, there were professional mourners of both sexes. We read about the screchers; bakkıtu ¯ wailing women; and the lallaru, fem.; lallartu/lallarıtu or professional ¯ wailers. Phoenician reliefs, such as the sarcophagus of King Ahiram of Byblos (tenth century BCE), depict female keeners. We should also recall the passage in Ezekiel about the women who sit and weep (twkbm) for Tammuz (Ezek 8,14). Cooke pointed out that the worship of Tammuz continued till the middle ages. The Syrians of Harran in N. Mesopotamia kept during the month of Tammuz the feast of the mourning women in the honor of the god Ta’ûz 4. Interestingly, the Akkadian term bakkıtu which ¯ means “wailing women”, appears in one of Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the following way: “lu-u ba-ki-tu mu [seniqtu ˇ¯ attu] ”, translated: “whether you be a wailing woman, a nurse” 5. As we pointed out already Rebekah was no longer a younger woman and hardly needed a guardian at this stage of her life. Thus it is more probable B. STADE, Biblische Thelogie des Alten Testaments (Tübingen 1905-1911) 3 I, 51. G.A. COOKE, The Book of Ezekiel (Edinburgh 1936) 98. 4 CT.16.10. v. 25f. 5