Tantalizing

The umbrella collects two passages where speech is used to wound — once between rival wives in a household, once between a prophet and the priests of a foreign god.

Domestic Provocation

Hannah's barrenness is made worse by the woman who shares her husband. The provocation is described as a settled habit rather than a single quarrel: "And her rival provoked her intensely, to make her fret, because Yahweh had shut up her womb. And [as] he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of Yahweh, so she provoked her; therefore she wept, and did not eat" (1 Sam 1:6-7). The taunting is timed to the pilgrimage feast, where Hannah's wound is most public, and its effect is measured by what she stops doing — eating, lifting her head — rather than by anything she says back.

Mocking the Prophets of Baal

The other instance is openly polemical. On Carmel, Elijah waits while the prophets of Baal call on their god from morning to noon, and then turns their silence into a series of suggestions: "And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud; for he is a god: either he is musing, or he has gone aside, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he sleeps and must be awakened" (1 Kgs 18:27). The taunt is a contest tactic — every alternative Elijah offers is a way for a deity to be unavailable, and the implication is that the cult of Baal has no answer for any of them.