Large Group #6: Women in the Bible

Hey everyone,

Today Madeleine led large group (her first time--good job, Madeleine!) about the role of women in the bible. Due to limited time, we discussed several women (mostly from the old testament), what their role was, what this meant for society, what this meant for us, etc.

Please read on to check out what we talked about :)

God bless you all!


Eve: Genesis 3:1-6
Zippora: Exodus 4:24-26
Lot’s Daughters: Genesis 19:30-38
Jael: Judges 4:17-22
Delilah: Judges 16:15-20
Mary Magdalene: John 20:11-18

We want to discuss why these things were written in the bible and what this means for us.

(I didn’t get to type in everything about all the women. Sorry.)

Lot’s daughters

This could be a contrast between what God wants versus what the world wants. But note that the bible does not say “And God saw that it was evil, blah blah”, so perhaps in the day, back then, the important thing was continuing the family line, and that was why they were so pressured to have children, even through their father.

Also, it’s important to know where the Ammonites and Moabites came from.

Jael

Background story: during the time of Judges, society was very corrupt and there was no moral standard. Judges were raised up to lead the people. During the time where we had the one and only female judge (Deborah), she told a certain person to lead an army to fight against Sisera because God has given them over to the Israelites, but that person was afraid and said “I won’t go unless you go with me,” and Deborah responded that “I’ll go with you but because of [your lack of faith] God will give the glory to a woman…”

Liz says that this is pretty assuring. When Deborah says “the glory will go to a woman”, you’d think she was talking about herself, but instead God surprises us by bringing in a housewife (God is totally awesome!)

In fact, it was because she was a woman that she was able to kill the army commander.

Delilah

Actually, Delilah tried to set the Philistines on Samson three times. You’d think Samson would have caught on and realized that Delilah had evil intentions… David said he thinks this speaks a bit more about Samson’s foolishness rather than Delilah’s manipulative nature, since we do see many evil manipulative people in the bible, both female and male.

Christine thought it was strange/ double-standard that God was angry at Samson having his hair cut rather than his way of life (like chasing after Philistinian prostitutes). Grace says that Samson was a Nazirite, and God said that his covenant, for the Nazirites, would be symbolized by not cutting their hair. Does this mean a symbol is more important than how you live your life? We’ll talk about this more later.

Deuteronomy 22

Madeleine thinks that the punishment (death by stoning) is too harsh for someone to be stoned to death if she cannot prove her virginity. There is no fool-proof way to prove you have not lost your virginity.

But also, note about rapes, if a girl is raped where she’s out of earshot of help (eg. In the countryside) then it’s not held against her, while if a girl is raped in earshot of help (eg. In a city (but this is not always true)) then it’s held against her because she’s in a position where she could have gotten help but chose not to.  We talked some more about this, but some people seem unhappy that women and men are treated differently (like how many men in the bible have many wives).

Note that God did design woman to have a means of telling whether or not she’s a virgin while there’s no way for men.

Leviticus 15:19-30

Menstruation, was it always a natural part of life (did Eve menstruate?), or was it something tacked on after the fall? Someone suggested that perhaps menstruation is unclean because it’s symbolic for original sin.

There’s a lot expected out of women; there’s a really high standard. Like in Proverbs…

Proverbs 31:10-31

Madeleine says you can see there’s a whole ton of expectation for the “perfect wife”. Managing finances, being respectable, taking care of blahblahblah… Christina says that from her point of view, it was more like a woman has the capability to do such things, and not that she has to do all these things. Robb says that it’s surprising to see that, in that culture and time, that women can buy and sell land. This is empowering. Christina says this is actually freeing.

Grace thinks that everyone in the church (both men and women) is the bride of Christ.  So all of these rules about women and standards for women applies to all of us in the church.

How is it that there are so many churches that are very male-centric and anti-women’s-rights even though there are all these evidence that empower women.

Some say: they cling onto what they want to hear.

Someone brought up the verse that a woman must not teach a man, some people take that literally and that’s why they keep holding onto it today. It’s not really that they think women are inferior, but because they find biblical support for that.

The verses about women remaining silent or women cannot be ordained, it’s still being disputed today.

Liz says that she has not found any biblical support for women/men segregation, which does happen in some churches, unfortunately.

Perhaps it’s distracting for men and women to sit together? Liz thinks that trying to separate genders and trying to keep their thoughts pure does not work, and it’s probably better to have them mix and see each other’s flaws.

Christina says that for the Catholic faith, there are many empowered women (Mother Teresa, the virgin Mary, other saints, etc.).

Isaiah 3:16-24

Madeleine describes this as the “unideal woman.” They’re a more external reflection of the people at the time. In fact, you can see that women often/sometimes reflect what society is like at the time.

Tim mentioned hearing that in the bible, we see that women often sin because they can’t discern between right and wrong, while for men they do know what is right and wrong but they choose the wrong anyway.