God's Women: Women of the Hebrew Bible

By Mike Manning, S.V.D.

Bringing together the women of the Hebrew Bible is an overwhelming and decidedly shocking experience. These women God has chosen to present to us are not always spiritually up-lifting. Along with women of strong faith we encounter deceivers, adulteresses, prostitutes, and murderers. One woman connives to conceive a baby by having sex with her father-in-law. These ladies would be ideal victims or perpetrators for our television, movie and novel murder mysteries. Manning has successfully taken on the challenge of relating their lives to our quest to know and love God today. Each chapter ends with thought provoking questions that can be used for both personal and group Bible study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9780984062386

Book preview

Conclusion

Introduction

For many years I have had the joy of preparing programs for my weekly television show. Each year that means that I have to come up with twenty to twenty-six presentations. The Word of God has become a vital part of my life.

Through the years I’ve approached the Bible from various directions. One year was devoted to the Gospel of Mark. Another year I delved into the Gospel of Luke. One year I invited actors to dramatize the parables. Most recently I spoke of people in the Gospel of John.

I prayed for God’s direction for the next programs. I asked friends for their opinion. What arose was the challenging and exciting topic: God’s Women: Women of the Hebrew Bible.

So I started moving through the Old Testament to find the women God presented to us. To be honest with you, I was taken aback. Oh, I had read the Bible and knew of all the women, but when I brought them all together, I was a bit overwhelmed and, I admit, a bit shocked with their earthiness. I found women who were not all lofty images of holiness and virtue. Certainly there were women of faith and moral courage, but I also found women whose lives would easily fit into racy novels. They would be prime victims and suspects in TV crime series.

God presents us these women to remind us that God is with us at all times - when things are going well and when our lives seem to be irretrievably falling apart.

This study of women in the Hebrew Bible will speak strongly to women. But there are many blessings for men. These women’s encounters with God have a universal appeal.

We will examine the historical circumstances of each woman. I will relate the facts the Bible gives us for each woman. And then, the most challenging part of this study is relating each woman to our lives today. I will frequently bring in the example of Jesus to help us make the women’s lives connect with ours.

I have brought together this material first for my weekly programs. But I hope also that this can be used as a Bible study either individually or with a group.

Here’s a suggestion of how you might approach a Bible study:

Open with a prayer to the Holy Spirit

Explain the historical context.

Read from the Bible.

What does the Bible story remind you of?

Respond to questions presented.

State an action the Bible study has called you to do.

Conclude with a prayer.

Come with me. Let’s discover God’s exciting and challenging encounter with the women of the Hebrew Bible.

N.B. The Bible quotes are taken from the New American Bible

Chapter 1

Eve

Historical Context

The stories of Genesis were first conveyed by word of mouth. The oral tradition was put in written form around 500 BC perhaps during and after the Babylonian Captivity. Thanks to archeological discoveries of ancient libraries, studies of other writings at the time, scholarly comparisons of differing words and writing styles, we have learned that the books of the Bible have many authors and editors.

Unlike one author sitting down and writing an entire book, many people tried to include what they believed was important for the books that were read in the temple of Jerusalem and local synagogues. People from the north and the south of the Holy Land each had hundreds of years of developing the Biblical revelation. There were priests whose main concerns were covenants with God and the order and regulations of worship. Then, of course, there were the influences of creation stories and understandings of God from the people with whom the Jews lived: Egyptians, the Canaanites and even Babylonians where the Jews were held captive for many decades.

The Bible Story

We know Eve as two different women. At first she is the ideal woman living in the Garden of Eden. She is closely joined to her husband. They are at peace with all of God’s creation: the animals, the earth and its food, the wind, and the water. She is innocent as a young child not wearing clothes. She has a relaxed and intimate relationship with God. She represents the peace we all long for in our relations with others, nature and God. There is no fear of death.

God wants her to move beyond this bliss to the richness that comes with making choices. God wants her to be free to choose or reject Him. So God presents her with a moral challenge. She can continue to live the ideal, the happiness of the Garden, if she will resist one thing: the eating of the fruit of the tree that’s in the center of the Garden.

Along with all her good qualities, Eve is driven by curiosity. She wonders if her life would be better if she went against the restriction of God. Was God afraid of losing something were she to eat the forbidden fruit? She knew that God was greater and more powerful than she. Was there a possibility that she could have some of God’s power? Maybe she could take God’s place?

A serpent tempts her. The fruit certainly looks delicious and enticing. What’s there to lose? Her curiosity takes over. She eats the forbidden fruit and then invites her husband to also eat.

She and her husband are driven from the ideal Garden into the world as we know it today. Eve breaks her trust with God and His one requirement. Her life changes. She has abused the freedom God has given her. She has chosen selfishness over obedience. She has sinned. The sin is pivotal. It changes the course of her life. The result is alienation from nature, innocence, and God. She incurs death.

Genesis 1:16-25; 2:1-7

Relating Eve to our lives today

Adam and Eve represent all men and women

The book of Genesis was written to give us a vision of who we are. We are brought back to the moment of creation. We see our life before sin. We are at peace. There is a healthy and balanced relationship between man and woman and all of creation. Above all there is an accord with God. God is not a stranger, a mysterious and fearful person. God is an intimate friend. Life is at its ideal.

But then Adam and Eve chose to subvert their gift of freedom. They moved to supplant God. After the sin, they moved from the ideal to the struggling and painful reality of our life as we know it now.

Genesis shows our common post-sin characteristics. The story answers basic questions. Why do we wear clothes? Why is our sexuality mixed with shame? Why does the giving birth to a child involve such pain? Why is feeding ourselves so difficult? Why does work mean suffering and pain? What is sin and separation from God? Why do we die?

Adam and Eve reminds us that our place in the world, our place in God’s creation is struggling to get back into the Garden of Eden, back to a good relationship with self, with men and women, and with nature. We long to return to a humble, obedient relationship with God. The road back to Eden is a return to the admission that God is God. We stop striving to be God.

Our drive to be God

What is that forbidden fruit? I think it’s anything that feeds our desire to be like or greater than God. We find the forbidden fruit in our drive for controlling power over others though money and materialism, physical force, intellectual hubris, and religious elitism.

One of marriage’s greatest challenges is trying not to make the partner into what we want him or her to be. We struggle with loving a person as he or she is. An aspect of our desire to be God is our drive to create the partner according to what we want.

The way back into the Garden, back to the fundamental life, joy and meaning we long for, back to a healthy and balanced relationship with our fellow human beings and nature is through reconciliation with God. We humbly admit God is God, the source of who we are. We surrender to a dependence on God and admit our vulnerability. But like a restless child, we long to break free, to run on our own and lose ourselves in our independence, our self sufficiency, our need to be god.

The story of Adam and Eve challenges us to get back to where we belong. We now choose, given our gift of freedom, to stop ruining our lives with sin. We have faith in God’s love and presence. We can have peace in the embrace of God in faith.

Shame and our sexuality

After Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, they become aware that they are naked and are filled with a shame they hadn’t hitherto known. This incident speaks of our struggle with our sexuality today. We can easily pervert the goodness of our bodies and our gift of sexuality into seduction, extra-marital sex, pornography, abortion and shame. Adam and Eve walking naked in the garden speak of an honor, a peace and a balance with our bodies and our sexuality to be restored. Original sin has perverted our respect for our bodies and our sexuality. God, in the image of life in the Garden before sin, offers us hope