What did they do? They led, they prophesied, they taught, they were apostles, they were deacons, they were co-workers in Paul’s mission, and they were local church mentors. At this point, all we need to grant is that there are—at a minimum—women who were exceptions to the dominant cultural perception of women as inferior. They were exceptions whom God raised above the norm to accomplish his will. I will go beyond the word “exception” in what follows, but for now we can ask if we are permitting women these same (supposed) exceptions in our churches. I know many who believe there should be no exceptions—they are caging and silencing even the exceptional blue parakeet. That is contrary to the Bible itself and I will contend also that making women exceptions is also contrary to the Bible.
In my conversations with friends after we have discussed both the WDWD passages and the “Women Keep Silence Passages” (WKSP), I always conclude with this question: Do you permit women to do in your churches what women did in the Bible and in the early churches?
No matter how seriously you take the WKSPs, it is profoundly unbiblical to let those passages overcome the WDWDs so that all we have left is silenced and caged blue parakeets! Whatever Paul meant by silence, he did not mean that the WDWD passages were false. The man who spoke of silence did not, in fact, totally silence women in his churches.
So now we ask: What did women do in the Bible?2 If we want to be biblical, this question needs to be asked and answered. I believe reading the Bible through a fossilized tradition has prevented us even from asking the question, let alone answering it. The place to begin is with an all-encompassing text—the creation narrative—that establishes how the Bible’s story is to be read.
Creation and New Creation
If we read the Bible as Story, we begin all questions at the beginning, with Genesis 1–3. And if we begin here, the entire story is reshaped. We learn from these chapters that God created male and female as mutuals—made for each other—and they were at one with each another. They were made for an Eden-like world, which in the Bible’s Story will be the Kingdom of God, but they preferred another world. The fall3 distorted mutuality by turning women against men and men against women; oneness became otherness and rivalry for power. Here are the climactic, tragic words from Genesis 3:16: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” We read here a prediction of what life will be like for those living in otherness instead of oneness.
The sin of Adam and Eve, or better yet, Eve and Adam, created tension in relationship. The woman’s desire is for the man but the man’s desire is corrupted to rule over her. Her sin turned the woman to seek dominance over the man, and the man’s sin turned the man to seek dominance over the woman.4 A life of struggling for control is the way of life for sinners. This war of wills was not God’s design, but God has granted to both males and females a freedom to exercise the will, and the Bible’s description and prediction (not prescription) is that men and women will not always get along! But the good news story of the Bible is that the broken creation eventually gives way to new creation; the dead can be reborn and re-created; instead of a war of wills there can be a unity of wills. Sadly, the church has far too often perpetuated what is described in Genesis 3:16 as a permanent condition designed by God until the new creation. Perpetuating Genesis 3:16 and the war of wills with the male ruling the female entails failing to restore creation conditions when it comes to male and female relationships. This is against both Jesus and Paul, who each read the Bible as a story that moves from creation (oneness) to new creation (oneness). Reading Genesis 3:16 as divine prescription (God’s will until the new creation but partly undone with redemption) rather than prediction and description means God has willed women to be contrarians and men as dominators. This is far from the way of God in the Bible’s Story: God’s redemption means oneness and mutuality, not hierarchy and a war of wills.
Jesus informed his disciples that although Moses permitted divorce, which annihilates the Creator’s designed union in marriage, divorce was not God’s original intention. Permanence, love, oneness, and mutuality were God’s intent in the original creation. Jesus, then, appeals to the first chapter in the King and His Kingdom Story, to the original creation, to show how God’s people are supposed to live in the new creation. Moses’s permission for divorce pertains, so it seems to me, to a life too deeply marred by the fall. A Jesus community undoes the distortions of the fall because it seeks to live out the fullness of the Story.
The apostle Paul twice appeals to original creation to explain God’s redemption. In 2 Corinthians 5:17 Paul says: “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old [the fall] has gone, the new [creation] is here!” (emphasis added). What can this mean but that the implications of Genesis 3:16 are being undone for those who are in Christ? This draws us directly back to Genesis 3:16 to see that the otherness struggle for control between the sexes has ended because we are now in the new creation. New creation means we are being restored to the equality and mutuality of Genesis 1–2.
Paul does much the same in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (emphasis added). The words Paul uses for “male . . . female” are quoted from Genesis 1:27, the original creation story. The word “one” evokes God’s oneness and God’s design for oneness among his created beings. What is Paul claiming here? He is—and notice this carefully—contending that in Christ we return to Eden’s mutuality. He is contending that life in Christ creates unity, equality, and oneness.
What we learn from Genesis 1–2, then, is that God originally made Adam and Eve as mutuals, that their sin distorted that relationship, and that the story of the Bible’s plot leads us to see redemption in Christ as new creation. Both Jesus and Paul see in Genesis 1–2 the original design for what Christ’s redemption brings to men and women in this world. If there is any place in the world where this mutuality should be restored, it should be in the church. Ironically, it can be the least redemptive place of the week!
We now move to some specific women in the Old Testament. That these three women are not household names concerns me, not just because it means that we don’t read our Bibles thoroughly enough. No, what concerns me more is that we can discuss women in church ministries without taking into consideration concrete examples of what women did in the Bible. The principle of WDWD brings them to the table.
Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah
That God could raise up into leadership women who exercised considerable authority can be seen in three women who come alive in the pages of the Old Testament. They are part of Israel’s story, and no storytelling is fair that does not include them. Miriam was one of Israel’s spiritual leaders, Deborah was a presidential leader of God’s people, and Huldah was a prophet above (mostly male) prophets.
Miriam: Spiritual Leader
Miriam was one-third of Israel’s triumvirate of leadership: Moses as lawgiver, Aaron as priest, and Miriam as prophetess. When the children of Israel escaped the clutches of Pharaoh, it was Miriam who led the Israelites into worship with these inspired words:
Sing to the LORD,
for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
he has hurled into the sea. (Exodus 15:21)
The Song of Moses, found now at Exodus 15:1–18, may well have been composed under inspiration by Miriam. Other women are found singing within the pages of the Bible’s story—women like Deborah (Judges 5:1–31) and Mary (Luke 1:46–55). Singing was connected to the gift of prophecy in the Bible (1 Chronicles 25:1–7). When a later prophet, Micah, spoke of Israel’s deliverance, he quoted the Lord, saying: “I brought you up out of Egypt. . . . I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam” (Micah 6:4).
Miriam was the one who fetched Moses from the Nile; as Moses’s older sister she no doubt participated in Moses’s own family celebrations of Passover in Egypt; and as older sister she sang alongside Moses and Aaron about God’s deli
verance. In Numbers 12 she sticks her neck out: Miriam thought Moses’s choice of wife inappropriate and summarily gives him the business and gossips with Aaron about him (Numbers 12:1). “Hasn’t he [the LORD] also spoken through us?” she asks, knowing full well the answer (yes) and the silliness of her stance. God hears and summons them both, but clearly Miriam is the problem here, for she is envious and jealous of Moses’s expanding power. The Lord reveals to Miriam and Aaron that prophets (as she is) hear from God in dreams and visions, but God speaks with Moses “face to face.” God is not happy with Aaron and Miriam and departs, and when the cloud of glory lifts, Miriam has a defiling skin disease. Her skin became “white as snow.” Aaron calls for a family prayer meeting in which Moses petitions God and Miriam is healed.
It takes some chutzpah to speak against Moses, and we should not condone what Miriam (or Aaron) did. But what we should see is the strength, power, and authority Miriam possessed that led her to think that she, even she, could call Moses into question. She made a mistake, a serious one, but it was not because she was a woman. It was because she envied Moses—her sin was envy, not being a woman. Other leaders sin in the Old Testament, including Moses (who does not get to enter the promised land) or David (whose sins shook the kingdom). Miriam was a blue parakeet who was permitted to sing because God had given her his voice.
Deborah: Presidential Leader
Deborah was, to use modern analogies, the president, the pope, and Rambo all bundled up in one female body! Judges 4–5 reveals that God called women—it is not mentioned that she is an “exception”—to lead his people. Every reading of her story reveals she was exceptional.
Like Miriam, Deborah was a prophet: “Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading [shapat] Israel at that time” (Judges 4:4). When the Bible says she was “leading” Israel, it uses the term for the judge of Israel. She was to her generation what Moses was to his. The word translated “judged” (shapat) combines the ideas of “national leadership,” “judicial decisions,” and “political, military savior.” If we ask what did women do, and we ask this question of Deborah, we learn that women could speak for God as a prophet, render decisions in a law court as a judge, exercise leadership over the entire spiritual-social Israel, and be a military commander who brought Israel to victory. To use other terms, she led the nation spiritually, musically, legally, politically, and militarily. Let us not pretend her tasks were social and secular; Deborah was a leader of the entire people of God.
Deborah’s theology flows gloriously out of the Song of Deborah in Judges 5. I include her words here and ask you to read this song, saying it aloud, and then jot down some ideas about her theology. I will offer minimal commentary as we read this text together. Barak, under the leadership of Deborah, defeated Jabin, king of Canaan, and they sang together this masterpiece victory song, which clearly is Deborah’s own Spirit-led song:
On that day Deborah and Barak son of Abinoam sang this song:
“When the princes in Israel take the lead,
when the people willingly offer themselves—praise the LORD!
“Hear this, you kings! Listen, you rulers!
I, even I, will sing to the LORD;
I will praise the LORD, the God of Israel, in song.
[Notice that God’s victory over the Canaanites reaches back into the victory of God through the Exodus, the giving of the Torah, the forming of the covenant, and entry into the land:]
“When you, LORD, went out from Seir,
when you marched from the land of Edom,
the earth shook, the heavens poured,
the clouds poured down water.
The mountains quaked before the LORD, the One of Sinai,
before the LORD, the God of Israel.
[Israel began to fade in its commitment until Deborah, “a mother in Israel,” arose to stir the nation to action:]
“In the days of Shamgar son of Anath,
in the days of Jael, the highways were abandoned;
travelers took to winding paths.
Villagers in Israel would not fight;
they held back until I, Deborah, arose,
until I arose, a mother in Israel.
God chose new leaders when war came to the city gates,
but not a shield or spear was seen among forty thousand in Israel.
[Those who mustered the courage to act in good faith are now praised by Deborah:]
My heart is with Israel’s princes,
with the willing volunteers among the people.
Praise the LORD!
“You who ride on white donkeys,
sitting on your saddle blankets,
and you who walk along the road,
consider the voice of the singers at the watering places.
They recite the victories of the LORD,
the victories of his villagers in Israel.
“Then the people of the LORD went down to the city gates.
‘Wake up, wake up, Deborah!
Wake up, wake up, break out in song!
Arise, Barak!
Take captive your captives, son of Abinoam.’
[The roll call of participants in the battle:]
“The remnant of the nobles came down;
the people of the LORD came down to me against the mighty.
Some came from Ephraim, whose roots were in Amalek;
Benjamin was with the people who followed you.
From Makir captains came down,
from Zebulun those who bear a commander’s staff.
The princes of Issachar were with Deborah;
yes, Issachar was with Barak,
sent under his command into the valley.
In the districts of Reuben there was much searching of heart.
Why did you stay among the sheep pens to hear the whistling for the flocks?
In the districts of Reuben there was much searching of heart.
Gilead stayed beyond the Jordan.
And Dan, why did he linger by the ships?
Asher remained on the coast and stayed in his coves.
The people of Zebulun risked their very lives;
so did Naphtali on the terraced fields.
[The battle is fought against Canaan and its leader, Sisera. God’s people win, and Deborah’s triumph becomes clear as she sums up what was recounted one chapter earlier in Judges:]
“Kings came, they fought,
the kings of Canaan fought.
At Taanach, by the waters of Megiddo,
they took no plunder of silver.
From the heavens the stars fought,
from their courses they fought against Sisera.
The river Kishon swept them away,
the age-old river, the river Kishon.
March on, my soul; be strong!
Then thundered the horses’ hooves—galloping, galloping go his mighty steeds.
[Meroz, a village that acts faithlessly, is cursed by Deborah because they are not loyal to God:]
‘Curse Meroz,’ said the angel of the LORD.
‘Curse its people bitterly,
because they did not come to help the LORD,
to help the LORD against the mighty.’
[Barak, because he sought help, did not finish off the victory; instead, Jael, a woman, kills Sisera. Yes, the battle is gruesome and the victory bloody and the language graphic:]
“Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
most blessed of tent-dwelling women.
He asked for water, and she gave him milk;
in a bowl fit for nobles she brought him curdled milk.
Her hand reached for the tent peg,
her right hand for the workman’s hammer.
She struck Sisera, she crushed his head,
she shattered and pierced his temple.
At her feet he sank,
he fell; there he lay.
At her feet he sank, he fell;
where he sank, there he
fell—dead.
[Deborah turns to recount the experience of military victory through the eyes of another woman, the mother of Sisera, the fallen Canaanite king, who thinks the delay of her son is because he’s mopping up Israel. Deborah has the last word, and it strikes the modern reader as a combination of bitter contempt and exultant satire:]
“Through the window peered Sisera’s mother;
behind the lattice she cried out,
‘Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why is the clatter of his chariots delayed?’
The wisest of her ladies answer her;
indeed, she keeps saying to herself,
‘Are they not finding and dividing the spoils:
a woman or two for each man,
colorful garments as plunder for Sisera,
[I interrupt; the singer and reader know that Sisera’s mother, who is depicted as staring through the lattice in anticipation of victory, is living a dream. The reality is that the “highly embroidered garments for my neck” she is about to mention turned out to be sackcloth and ashes.]
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