Lucy Davey: An Inspirational Scholar of Hebrew Poetry & Semitic Languages

By Dr Natalie F. Mylonas
ACU Sydney

I knew Lucy Davey as a mysterious woman, one with unrelenting curiosity, generosity and empathy. She was one of the few people in the southern hemisphere who was an expert in Ugaritic – a Northwest Semitic language once spoken and written in the area of ancient Ugarit. This Bronze Age city, excavated since 1928, was a Phoenician or Cannaanite port at the Ras Shamra headland of ancient to modern Laodicea (Latakia), now on the border between Syria and Turkey. She learned Ugaritic from Professor Bill Jobling, when she undertook her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney (See image below, Lucy on Graduation Day)

​Lucy was also proficient in Biblical Hebrew, which she taught for many decades at the University of Sydney. She also knew Aramaic, the ancient to modern language of the Levant, and she was fluent in numerous other medieval to modern languages, including French. Lucy’s intellectual curiosity extended well beyond the Hebrew Bible and its cognate literature, however, and also included an interest in Carl Jung, English literature and Caodaism (the Vietnamese Great Faith for the Third Universal Redemption).  

Lucy on Graduation Day at the University of Sydney

​Like Lucy herself, her classes at the University of Sydney were always animated, interesting, unique and unpredictable. Lucy’s strong spirit and passion for Hebrew poetry was contagious, and totally transformed how I (and her other students) read the Hebrew Bible. Lucy went well beyond teaching her students the bread-and-butter tools of reading Biblical Hebrew poetry, including how to identify and appreciate certain poetic techniques like parallelism and wordplay. Lucy taught me how to feel the poetry with my whole body by showing me that she could feel it with hers.

​By the time I sat in her classes, Lucy was 70 years old, yet she would still jump in the air and raise her hands with excitement when describing how God parted the sea for the Israelites in Exodus 15.

​She would also re-enact with vigour the scene where Yael drives the tent peg through Sisera’s head in Judges 5, in both Hebrew and English, of course. “Down!” she would scream, “Down he sank, still he lay, where he sank, there he fell, dead!” It was hard not to get caught up in the excitement of Lucy’s poetry classes, and I would leave every class buzzing with energy and gratitude.

Lucy also instilled in me the value of compassion, of reading against the text and empathising with all the characters, not just the “good guys”. In fact, Lucy didn’t seem to subscribe to such categories as “good” and “bad”, and would often reframe traditional readings of texts and characters in provocative and unexpected ways that led me to question what I thought I knew. Perhaps Lucy’s wisdom and compassion came from the depth and breadth of her life experience. Lucy came to academia later in life, in her 40’s, after having had a full career as a nun and a teacher. She mixed fieldwork in the Middle East (see above) with travel and teaching at the University of Sydney. 

Lucy was an intensely private person, who rarely spoke about herself, but she was one of the most well-connected people on campus. She seemed to know someone from every part of the university, and her influence spread well beyond the small department of Semitic Studies. Lucy always took the time to strike up conversations with her students and colleagues in the hallway, often asking “How are you?” and “What are you working on?”. Lucy’s interest was genuine, and she had a way of making you feel like you were the only person in the world when she listened to your response, always giving you her full attention, head tilted to one side, with a big smile on her face.

Then Lucy would always respond with helpful suggestions, “Have you read so and so’s book on this”, or “Have you thought about approaching it this way…” – it seemed there was never a topic I researched that Lucy didn’t know something about!  

​Lucy passed away on Sunday 26th June, 2022, aged 82, but her spirit lives on in the lives of those whose paths she crossed, including my own. Lucy instilled in me a passion for Biblical Hebrew poetry that I still carry with me today, and now have the privilege of imparting to my own students. I hope I am doing her proud as I too now raise my hands in excitement, and re-enact my own version of Judges 5, tent peg and all!