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In Hebrew, as in English, the masculine form takes precedence over the feminine, and consequently many masculine terms can serve both generic and sex-specific functions. Almost all biblical laws, whether formulated in the imperative or in the third person, appear in singular or plural masculine form, and therefore present a major difficulty in terms of gender interpretation. The position of women in the legal covenant is thus rendered highly ambiguous. / The tannaitic sages, Jewish biblical exegetes of the first post-Christian centuries, were acutely aware of the problem and wrote numerous midrashim which interpreted ambiguous terms of gender in the biblical legal corpus. They determined the extent to which the various gender references referred to women. / These interpretations have been almost totally neglected in modern biblical and rabbinic scholarship, and are here collated and carefully analyzed for the first time. It is shown that though the sages operated within an ideological framework, their exegetical procedures played a major role in their legislation.