Biblical values about women

Proceed with caution

Christians and Jews talk a lot about biblical values. But what do we do when the biblical value demeans women? Are we allowed to reject a biblical value that brings pain to people?

Let’s start 2,000 years ago with a writer who didn’t make the Protestant canon cut, but who did make the point about the place of women. A Hebrew sage named Ben Sira wrote, “The birth of a daughter is a loss” and “better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good.”  What do we do with that? For starters, let’s acknowledge that Ben Sira was not alone in his assessment of gender worth.

According to religion scholar Christopher Rollston of George Washington University, “From Mesopotamia to Egypt, women in the ancient world were considered property—valuable property, but property nonetheless.”

That’s not to say exceptions can’t be found, especially in the Bible. Biblical women like Ruth, Deborah, Lydia and Pricilla were able to overcome social norms. However, overwhelmingly, women in the Bible were viewed as second class, if even that.

The Big 10

The Ten Commandments is as good a place to start as any. Commandment #10: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male slave, his female slave, his ox, his donkey or anything which belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:21). We’ve read and heard these words so many times that we miss the obvious: The wife is classified as her husband’s property, so she’s listed with the slaves and work animals.

So where’s the opposite: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s husband”? It’s not there. Why not? The Ten Commandments were written to men, not women.

Furthermore, as Rollston points out, the form of “you” in every single commandment is masculine singular. The text assumes that its readers are men.

Women in Genesis

Let’s back up to the book of Genesis. Of all the biblical books, Genesis is the one with the best stories, many detailing the plight of women. Eve, of course, gets the blame for taking the first bite. A close reading of the text puts a silent, complicit Adam right by Eve’s side, but for millennia the first man gets to play the seduced victim. And the first woman? She’s the temptress.

Egyptian slave girl Hagar gives birth to Abram’s first son Ishmael. The great omission in this documented event is the picture of old Abram, head down and high stepping his way to the slave tent. Does anyone actually think Hagar was happy to see him?

Canaanite woman Tamar is widowed twice after the deaths of two of Judah’s sons. To protect her rights of inheritance, she is to be impregnated by Judah’s third and only remaining son. Of course, Judah is not willing to take this risk, given what happened to his other two boys. So Tamar is forced to use deception in order to get the inheritance she should get by right! The resourceful Tamar masquerades as a cult prostitute so that her father-in-law, Judah, impregnates her. When Judah discovers Tamar to be pregnant—not knowing of course that he is the child’s father—Judah orders her burned as a harlot. The double standard is obvious.

In the same vein, Rebekah has to fool her husband Isaac in order to get the right son in the right place. Why the need for trickery? It’s what women in the Bible did in order to get done what needed doing.

The book of Wisdom

Again, according to Rollston, women are marginalized in the book of Proverbs as well:

“Quite a number of times Proverbs uses the phrase ‘my son.’  The phrase ‘my daughter’ does not occur.  And the commands in Proverbs are consistently second person masculine, never second person feminine. And the readership of the book of Proverbs is warned to beware of the evil seductress (e.g., Proverbs 5), but the reverse doesn’t occur: never does the book warn women to beware of a male seducer. The authors say living with a contentious woman is terrible, but never say the same about a contentious man” (Proverbs 25:24).

Like the rest of the biblical books, Proverbs was written to men, not women. Even if many of the biblical books were oral before written, the message is the same: women were not seen as men’s equals.

How about the New Testament?

The New Testament contains texts that marginalize women as well. Among the harshest of these texts is 1 Timothy 2. The author is discussing worship and begins by stating that “men should pray” and then says “women should dress themselves modestly and decently.” So men are to pray and women are to dress modestly. That’s quite a contrast.

But there’s more: “Let a woman learn in silence and full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to be silent.” The author’s rationale: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Timothy 2:8-14). So, according to this text, women were to be silent in worship because they were created second and sinned first. And the final blow is this: a woman “will be saved through childbirth, if she remains in faith and love and sanctification with modesty” (1 Timothy 2:15). Therefore, for the author of 1 Timothy, eternal salvation for women comes through childbirth.

The texts of abuse

Of course, there are even more difficult texts, with men said to be willing to surrender women to horrendous violence.  For example, Genesis says the patriarch Lot was willing to force his two daughters out the door to be raped, and the book of Judges says a Levite actually did force his concubine out the door to be gang raped, and after she died he cut her corpse into twelve pieces (Genesis 34; Judges 19-21). And an unmarried woman could be compelled to marry her rapist, as long as the rapist could pay the standard bride price and the woman’s father was comfortable with the marriage (Deuteronomy 22:28-29; Exodus 22:16-17). And some fathers were comfortable, if Jacob is any indication (Genesis 34).

Even within marriage a woman was not assured fair treatment. Within the “Household Codes” of the New Testament, husbands are commanded to “love their wives” and to avoid treating them “harshly,” but women are commanded to “submit to” their husbands (Colossians 3:18-19; Ephesians 5:22-25). And the custom of a marital “bride price” (money given by the groom’s family to the bride’s family) reveals that marriage was, at least in some respects, a property transfer, as payment had been made to acquire the bride (Genesis 34:12; Exodus 22:16; 1 Samuel 18:25; Genesis 24:53).

A reasonable stopping point for now

My next blog post will present the pushback texts in the Bible. I want to share where I see biblical writers challenging the prevailing biblical view that women are the weaker sex.

As you leave this post, consider with me the central question I am raising: what do we do with biblical values that cause others harm?