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The Talmudic sugya of Menachot 85b opens with an apparently technical discussion of the optimal quality of olive oil for Temple meal offerings (menachot), identifies Tekoa as the premier source of such oil, and then—in a characteristically digressive move—pauses to ask why Joab sent specifically to Tekoa to fetch a wise woman.
The answer, attributed to Rabbi Yochanan, is deceptively simple: because the people of Tekoa are habituated to olive oil, and olive oil engenders wisdom. This explanatory aside is not a detour from the halachic discussion; it is the sugya's mechanism for elevating the city of Tekoa from a geographical designation to a theological-epistemological category.
We explore the hermeneutical moves our daf takes in valorizing the wise woman from Tekoa in II Sam 14.