WOMEN IN THE PENTATEUCH PART II By Ashley Marivittori Gorman

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1 WOMEN IN THE PENTATEUCH PART II By Ashley Marivittori Gorman RECAP: In Women in the Pentateuch Part I, we covered two broad roles for women as seen in Genesis 2: a. Helper a particular role for married women to support and sustain their husbands b. Mother of all the living a universal role for every woman to be life-givers and lifepreservers. If you haven t already read Part I, takes some time to read it before moving to Part II. I. THE ROLES OF WOMEN FLESHED OUT: Exodus So we know the theoretical roles of women now. But are there any real-life examples in the Scripture of a woman being a helper or a giver and preserver of life? Absolutely! While we could explore many Biblical passages the Pentateuch, the Exodus woman is one of the clearest examples of helping and preserving life in all of the Pentateuch! Let s get to know some of these women on a first-name basis. A. Shiphrah and Puah: Israel has set up shop in Egypt, but their shop isn t so little anymore; they have been multiplying. Pharaoh is nervous because if the Israelites keep growing, they may get big enough to overthrow him. In efforts to stay in power, he devises a grotesque plan: kill all the Israelite babies who are male so Israel can t reproduce anymore. He orders the Hebrew midwives particularly two women named Shiphrah and Puah to slaughter all the male newborns that come from the women of Israel. You can imagine how scary this scene must have been. Execute the male newborns of your own people or die by the hand of the mighty and merciless Pharaoh. Amidst the insanity of it all, Shiphrah and Puah did an incredible thing. Exodus 1:17 tells us that the Hebrew midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. When the King came back and saw that the males were living, he got angry and asked why. They answered with a cleverness that clearly came from the minds of two creative women these Hebrew women must have incredibly fast births! They are rolling through their births faster than we can even get to them! By the time we show up, everything s finished! (Sorry not sorry). Because of Shiphrah and Puah s great faith, an entire generation of male babies avoided slaughter. Truly these women were heroic preservers of life, and because of their bravery, God showed them favor in their own families (Ex. 1:20-21). The fate of these male youngsters was still to be revealed, however. As it turns out, they have another threat of murder to avoid, and guess who saves the day again? Women.

2 B. Jochebed Pharaoh is not happy about the midwives refusal to kill all the male babies, so he comes up with a backup plan. Instead of hiding his plan with a few women, he makes a national edict for all his people: Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile River, but you shall let every daughter live (Exodus 1:22). Now every person living in the land Hebrew or Egyptian is responsible to slaughter the males! The anti has been upped, and you d think the women would cower in fear. Not Jochebed! Jochebed is Moses mother (Numbers 26:59) and Exodus 2 tells us something incredible about her despite the threat of death on her own life, she preserves the life of Moses! She saw that he was a beautiful and strong baby, and she hid him for three months from the authorities. When she could hide him no longer, she knew she had to get him out of harm s way. Instead of throwing him bare into the Nile like the King commanded, she carefully places him inside a waterproof basket made of papyrus reeds and sends him off to escape the coming slaughter. Again we see our second Exodus woman helping Moses and preserving life. C. Miriam At this point you may be thinking, wait! How could Jochebed just let her child float down a river? How does she know what will happen to him? Enter Miriam, Moses sister. She gets commissioned (either by herself or her mother) to walk along the river bank to keep watch on the floating basking, ensuring Moses safety. Miriam is our third Exodus woman, and she s clearly up to the same thing the others are: preserving life. D. Pharaoh s Daughter It s bath time for Pharaoh s daughter, so she heads to the Nile with her maidens and a lufa. While she s mid-scrub, she sees a basket caught in some reeds, and tells her maidens to intercept it. She pulls the blanket open to find little Moses screaming. In a moment of deep compassion, she realizes what s going on: This is one of the Hebrew s children (Exodus 2:6) The truth hits her: this is one of those babies my dad is trying to slaughter. Looks like Pharoah s plan is about be undone by yet another woman, this one in his own family! Miriam has been watching all of this from the reeds, and materializes in front of Pharoah s daughters. For the second time in Exodus, we see a clever plan that could have only come from a woman. Miriam solves a clear problem oh it looks like the crying child needs a nurse. Perhaps I can enlist a Hebrew woman to nurse him for you, princess? The princess agrees and the plan works. Miriam has secured another year or so for her mother to enjoy and nurse Moses before returning him to the princess to be a protected member of Pharaoh s household! Pharaoh s daughter eventually raises Moses as her own son the first purposeful, interracial adoption we ve seen so far in the Scriptures! This part of the story is a perfect illustration that being a preserver of life is a universal part of womanhood, and not just wifely thing or a people of God thing. Pharaoh s daughter is both

3 unmarried and a non-israelite, yet her knack of preserving life shines through in amazing ways! She senses life being threatened and she intervenes, regardless of her religious or marital status. E. Zipporah Eventually Moses grows up and gets married to Zipporah. One of God s commands to this couple was to circumcise their son. You d think that Moses, the leader of the people, would be the first in line to obey this command, but for whatever reason, he put it off. (Remember that to make Israel distinct from other nations, God used an outward sign of circumcision to communicate that these were His chosen people.) God calls Moses and Zipporah to make a trip to free their people from Egyptian oppression. Finally! The big Exodus from Egypt is almost under way! Yet, midway through the trip, God threatens death upon Moses for not circumcising his son. It seems strange that God would put off freeing an entire people group from oppression over one simple instance of an uncircumcised son. At this point our hands go up in the air really, Moses? I get that you couldn t survive without intervention as a baby, but you re a grown up now! What s going on?! In this fearful interaction with God, Zipporah astutely recognizes the cause of God s wrath. First, she helps her husband. She intervenes on behalf of her husband and circumcises their son herself. By this action, she appeases God s anger with her obedience and protects her husband from near death. Due to her intervention to preserve life (even when she s not particularly happy with the situation), God lets them keep going on their mission. This story tells us of the helping and life-preserving power of a wife, yes. But it also clues us into a huge lesson about God. We could be well on our way to huge ministry achievements. We could be freeing the world of cancer or leading thousands to Christ, but God still cares about our personal, behind-thescenes obedience to him. He is not so impressed with our outward achievements that he glosses over our inward habits. F. Summary Suffice it to say that Moses life and ministry survived on the backs of brave women who were intervening left and right! As mentioned before, the Exodus woman is a force to be reckoned with, indeed. She is a clear picture of what it looks like to help and to preserve life in a bizarre, broken culture. These Exodus stories show us that that women both help and preserve any kind of life our own children, a foreign, abandoned child that isn t ours, a husband, a family member, anyone! Time and time again in the Pentateuch we see women saving the day at the risk of their own lives. II. CONCLUSION The previously discussed verses are not the only places we see the Pentateuch Woman on display but they should serve as a biblical grid to think through as you read about women in the Bible.

4 .And guess what? All of that was just to whet your appetite! Until now we have just explored the lifepreserving woman as a protagonist. Her (seriously deranged) antagonist comes on the scene in just a few books, so get be on the lookout for the next women s article exploring the next phase of the story! Thoughtbox 1: BUT WHAT ABOUT THE OFFENSIVE STORIES ABOUT WOMEN? While some stories clearly exalt women in the Bible, other stories show them getting the raw end of the deal, so to speak, and those stories are understandably confusing, even frustrating for the modern woman. Sometimes we see women treated with kindness and justice, but other times we see them suffer cruelty at the hands of men and even other women. As you read through the Pentateuch, you ll see examples of both these types of stories, so here are some helpful tips for reading: 1. The laws regarding women were a serious upgrade to the surrounding savagery that characterized the customs of neighboring nations. We think that the laws regarding women in Israel are extremely strange in 21 st century America, and guess what? The ancient pagan cultures surrounding Israel at the time found them just as strange! The nations surrounding Israel did detestable things to the women and children of their culture, and to them, it was normal. The special laws God gives to Israel regarding women actually end up protecting them instead of allowing them to be treated like the surrounding nations would have treated them. According to God, Israel was supposed to be different in its treatment of women and set a different standard. For example, in Deut. 22, if a man and a women were sexually active, God commanded the man to marry the woman he was sleeping with. In other nations, the woman of the sexual relationship would have been publically killed by her family in order to preserve their honor, regardless of how it happened. The woman could have been raped, or perhaps it was a consensual encounter, or maybe they were engaged. For other nations and cultures, the context didn t matter: the woman had to die. God sets up a different type of system with Israel! If the woman was sexually forced against her will, she was protected by God and no one could harm her. If she and the man were committed but not married, God required the man to marry her. This particular Levitical law was intended to free the woman of the public shame (and even fear of death!) that could have come her way in that type of primitive culture. It was also a way for God to light a fire under the man who was taking advantage of the physical perks of a woman s body without offering her a real marital commitment! This law was God s way of saying, You don t get to enjoy part of her it s all or none. You can t just have sex with her anytime you want with no commitment. Sleeping around isn t okay. If you want her body, you better want the rest of her, too. While these rules seem archaic to the modern woman, protective laws for women like this didn t exist in any other culture at the time. (For further reading and other examples head here: 2. Cruel stories are not prescriptive, they are descriptive! While some protective laws for women are overt, other horrible stories have sad endings, with no apparent intervention from God. How are we to read these stories? Remember that the Bible teaches both through overt laws and through storytelling. For example, let s say you want to teach your child not to run on the slippery pavement at the pool. You could do this one of two ways: add no running at the pool to your house-rules list, or you could buy a book that tells the story of a kid named Johnny who ran at the pool and hurt his arm. You tell the sad story to your child not to promote running at the pool, but to clearly show that the outcome of his decision was a hurt arm the bad story carries a meaningful lesson! The laws in the Pentateuch regarding women are the ones God chose to add to the house-rules list. The other lessons he wants us to understand regarding gender are told in story narratives. For example, every time a

5 family chooses a lifestyle of polygamy in the Old Testament, things turn out pretty bad. There s no big rule about polygamy, but the numerous stories that include it have a clear lesson attached to them this doesn t work! Stop doing it! A story of something bad in the Bible doesn t prescribe us to do the bad thing. It s simply describing what happened when a Bible character chooses to do the bad thing, and then the story reveals the horrible outcome. The same goes for harsh stories about women. While they don t attach laws to them, any sane person who reads the end of the story walks away with important lessons about how to value women and how not to treat them. When you approach any story in the Bible, tell yourself this: I m not supposed to obey every action that happens in this story, I m supposed to pull out principles from the story. What s the big lesson here? 3. God is our avenger. In some stories, we see God immediately avenge women who have been treated poorly. In other stories, we see him avenge a particular wrongdoing at an opportune time generations later, when it can accomplish a higher degree of justice. And in yet other stories, we are told that God will one day execute final justice for all wrongdoing on the Last Day. While the timing of divine justice is not always clear, one thing always is: God is the avenger of the afflicted, and he has a serious problem with oppressing the weak. (Psalm 9:12, Job 34:28, see goo.gl/df6hcg). Regardless of the wrongdoing we see both in the Scriptures or in our own lives, we rest in the solid promise that we do not have to avenge ourselves because God settles all accounts in the end: Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. (Romans 12:19) words!