When Judah arrived at Enaim on his way to Timnah, he assumed that Tamar was just another nameless prostitute selling her own “goods” in the market, and he shamelessly solicited her.
“And what will you give me to sleep with you?” Tamar asked, playing her role perfectly.
“I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” Judah replied.
“Will you give me something as a pledge until you send it?”
“What pledge should I give you?”
“Your seal and its cord,” Tamar answered, “and the staff in your hand” (VV. 16–18).
So Judah handed over his signet seal, the cord from which it hung, and his staff—all objects of identification, and all signs of his authority. Then he “lay with her,” as the Bible likes to say, Judah never realizing that his mistress was his daughter-in-law.
After the tryst, Tamar sneaked away and put on her widow’s clothing. Judah sent a friend to Enaim to exchange the baby goat for his things, but no prostitute could be found. The friend asked around, but was told there were no prostitutes that waited inside the gate of Enaim.
Embarrassed at having been swindled by a prostitute, Judah told his friend, “Let her keep what she has, or we will become a laughingstock” (Genesis 38:23).
Three months later, Tamar was boasting a baby bump. Neighbors accused her of “playing the whore” and alerted Judah to the situation. Suddenly, the man who wanted Tamar expunged from his household took full ownership of her and declared, “Bring her out and have her burned to death!” (V. 24). Under the patriarchal laws of the day, it would have been fully in his right to execute such an order. But Tamar was ready. She sent Judah his signet, cord, and staff with the message, “I am pregnant by the man who owns these. See if you recognize [them]” (V. 25).
Judah was embarrassed and humbled. “She is more righteous than I,” he declared, “since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah” (V. 26).
The author of Genesis was careful to note that, in keeping with Jewish law, Tamar and Judah never slept together again. Tamar gave birth to twin boys, the youngest of whom would become an ancestor to King David.
Tamar joins a storied troupe of crafty and courageous biblical women who used trickery, sexuality, and manipulation to work the patriarchal system to which they were born and survive to change the course of Israel’s history. In fact, Tamar holds the rare distinction of being one of only four Old Testament women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus. The others include Bathsheba, (a mistress), Ruth, (a foreigner), and Rahab (a prostitute).
God, it seems, prefers chutzpah to status.
December: Obedience
* * *
My Husband, My Master
She must neither begin nor complete anything without man: where he is, there she must be. She must be, and bend before him as before a master, whom she shall fear and to whom she shall be subject and obedient.
—MARTIN LUTHER
TO DO THIS MONTH:
□ Call Dan “master” (1 Peter 3:1–6)
□ Interview a polygamist (Genesis 30; Exodus 21:10)
□ Hold a ceremony in honor of the victims of biblical misogyny ( Judges 11:37–40)
If you ever decide to try a year of biblical living yourself, there are a few things you should know ahead of time:
First of all, translation matters. Where the New American Standard Version will have you singing, “My soul, my soul! I am in anguish! My heart is pounding in me; I cannot be silent,” King James will make morning prayers significantly more embarrassing with “My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace” (Jeremiah 4:19).
Second, no matter how excited you are about your quest, you may want to keep it a secret for a while. Unless, of course, you really love getting ten e-mails a day from perfect strangers convinced they know exactly how you should be a “biblical woman” . . . then you should definitely announce it to the whole world right away.
And finally, if you’re intent on trying to keep all the commands, you should know ahead of time that you’re going to bump into at least three or four that you simply can’t (or won’t) keep. The Bible is a hundred times older than you are. Prepare to be humbled by it.
So far, the first two months of my “radical experiment” had been far from radical. Pulling homemade pies out of the oven, keeping the house tidy, practicing contemplative prayer, refraining from gossip—these are the sorts of things most people expect from a woman living biblically. Up until this point, I’d managed to avoid the fact that I’d planned a year of my life around a collection of ancient texts that routinely describe women as property.
It was time for a reality check.
Despite what some may claim, the Bible’s not the best place to look for traditional family values as we understand them today. The text predates our Western construct of the nuclear family and presents us with a familial culture closer to that of a third-world country (or a TLC reality show) than that of Ward and June Cleaver. In ancient Israel, “biblical womanhood” looked different from woman to woman, depending on her status.
• If you were a slave or concubine, you were expected to be sexually available to your master, ready to bear children on his wife’s behalf should she not be able to conceive herself (Genesis 16:1–4; 30:3–4, 9–10; 35:22). The law permitted your master to beat you, but not to kill you (Exodus 21:20–21). Masters were encouraged to marry their female slaves and instructed to treat all of their wives equally, granting them comparable food, clothing, and conjugal rights (Exodus 21:7–11).
• If you were a wife, you were still considered the property of your husband, but you enjoyed a higher status and more privileges than slaves (Exodus 20:17). Though your husband was not permitted to discriminate against you or your children because he favored one of his other wives, rivalry among you and the other wives would be common (Genesis 30:1–24, Exodus 21:10; Leviticus 18:18; Deuteronomy 21:15–17). Under normal circumstances, you could not inherit property, pursue divorce, or be trusted to make a vow (Deuteronomy 21:16–17; 24:1–4; Leviticus 27:1–8). Adultery was defined as sex with another man’s wife, not mere infidelity, so your husband was permitted to venture outside of the marriage for sex. However, if you engaged in sexual relations with anyone besides your husband, you and your partner would be put to death (Deuteronomy 22:22). The mere suspicion of adultery could subject you to a strange ritual involving a drink concocted of holy water and dust that, if it made you sick, proved your guilt and sealed your fate (Numbers 5:11–31). Procreation was your most important duty as a wife, with infertility viewed exclusively as a female defect and often assumed to be a curse from God.
• If you were widowed, you were to marry your husband’s brother according to the Law of the Levirate Marriage found in Deuteronomy 25. The first son produced from this marriage would be considered the son of your late husband, “so that his name may not be blotted out from Israel” (V. 6). Since this situation could create a financial burden and would result in a reduced inheritance from their fathers, men often shirked the responsibility of taking a brother’s wife. The law therefore permitted a woman to appeal to the elders of the land, who would summon the man and encourage him to fulfill his duty. If your brother-in-law still refused, you were instructed to strip his sandal from his foot, spit in his face, and publicly declare,
“This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s family line.” According to the law, from that day forward, your brother-in-law’s lineage would be spoken of in Israel as “The Family of the Unsandaled” (NIV).
• If you were an unmarried daughter, you were considered the property of your father and could be either sold into slavery to pay off debt or married for a bride-price (Exodus 21:7; Nehemiah 5:5; Genesis 29:1–10). Marriages were typically arranged by the male members of the family before a girl reached puberty. While the virginity of your future husband was inconsequential, yours could mean the difference between life and death. If you fail
ed to bleed on your wedding night, you were to be executed on the doorstep of your parents’ home (Deuteronomy 22:21). However, if your new husband falsely accused you of premarital sex in order to get out of an unhappy marriage, your parents could save your life by producing evidence of your virginity in the form of bloodied sheets saved from the wedding night, thereby subjecting your husband to a heavy fine (Deuteronomy 22:13–19). If, before you were engaged, you slept with an Israelite man without your father’s permission, the man would be required to pay your father the bride-price for virgins, regardless of whether he married you (Exodus 22:16–17). Daughters of priests who engaged in sexual relations outside of marriage were to be burned alive (Leviticus 21:9).1
• If you were raped, your fate depended largely on where the event occurred. If it happened in the city, where presumably your cries for help should have been heard by passersby, you and your rapist were both stoned to death. If it happened in the country, out of earshot from the rest of the community, only your rapist was executed. If you were not already engaged when the rape occurred, you and your rapist were required to marry each other, without the possibility of divorce (Deuteronomy 22:28–29).
• If you were a captive of war, you were considered plunder, along with any children, livestock, or treasure taken from the besieged city. You were permitted a brief time of mourning in which you shaved your head, trimmed your nails, and wept for those killed in battle. If you caught the eye of an Israelite soldier, he could marry you only after this time had passed and he could never treat you as a slave (Deuteronomy 21:10–14). However, if you were Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, or Jebusite, you were to be killed on the spot (Deuteronomy 20:10–16).
None of this information is easy to swallow. In light of passages like these, I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.
Clearly, I’d reached the limits of what I could authentically reproduce in my year of biblical womanhood. Most Jews and Christians have long abandoned the practices associated with hard patriarchy, so trying to conceive of how ancient Mesopotamian law would play out in the context of a modern Western society proved difficult. However, in my research, I did encounter a few groups committed to preserving as much of the patriarchal structure of Old Testament law as possible. They are part of what is known as the “biblical patriarchy movement,” and perhaps the most influential of these groups is Vision Forum.
Founded by Doug Phillips, Vision Forum produces a prolific array of homeschool curricula, books, media, and even toys—all designed to bring “biblical patriarchy” back to modern-day culture. Calling for a return to “the eternal, unchanging truths found within the pages of Holy Scripture,” Vision Forum released on its website a list of twenty-six principles that make up “The Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy.”2 Among these are admonitions that men serve as head of households, women work exclusively from the home, children are schooled at home, and young girls remain under the authority of their fathers until they are given in marriages that are overseen by their parents. Girls are typically discouraged from attending college and warned against the dangers of feminism, which Vision Forum describes as “an enemy of God and of biblical truth.”
“While unmarried women may have more flexibility in applying the principle that women were created for a domestic calling,” the document states, “it is not the ordinary and fitting role of women to work alongside men as their functional equals in public spheres of dominion (industry, commerce, civil government, the military, etc.).”
Sarah Schlissel of the Chalcedon Foundation fully accepts her role as a young woman in this patriarchal subculture. In an essay titled “Daddy’s Girl: Courtship and a Father’s Rights,” she wrote, “I am owned by my father. If someone is interested in me, he should see him . . . No man can approach me as an independent agent because I am not my own, but belong, until marriage, to my father. At the time of my marriage, my father gives me away to my husband, and there is a lawful change in ownership. At that point, and at that point only, I am no longer bound to do my father’s will. Instead, I must answer to my husband.”3
The irony of course, is that while advocates of biblical patriarchy accuse everyone else of biblical selectivity, they themselves do not appear to be stoning adulterers, selling their daughters into slavery, taking multiple wives, or demanding that state laws be adjusted to include death sentences for rape victims . . . at least not yet. Those who decry the evils of selective literalism tend to be rather clumsy at spotting it in themselves.4
Still, like it or not, the Vision Forum’s “Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy” bears a closer resemblance to what we actually find in the Bible than the 1950s throwback idealized by so many other groups in the “biblical womanhood” movement.
I’ve heard all kinds of explanations from Christian apologists for why the Bible includes such harsh laws about women: that the laws were progressive in comparison to the surrounding culture, that they were designed to protect women from exploitation, that they weren’t strictly observed anyway. These are useful insights, I suppose, but sometimes I wish these apologists wouldn’t be in such a hurry to explain these troubling texts away, that they would allow themselves to be bothered by them now and then.
As a Christian, I do take some comfort in the fact that Jesus got himself into quite a bit of trouble for his own selective literalism. Known for healing on the Sabbath, touching the untouchables, and fraternizing with prostitutes and tax collectors, Jesus liked to begin his sermons by quoting a passage of Scripture (“You have heard that it was said . . .”) and then turning it on its head (“but I tell you . . .”). Perhaps the most famous example of this technique is captured in Matthew 5:43–45, where Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (UPDATED NIV).
This approach caused so much controversy in first-century Galilee that the religious leaders tried to test Jesus’ commitment to the Scripture by bringing him a woman caught in the act of adultery. The man who shared her guilt makes no appearance in the story, but the Pharisees seemed intent upon executing the prescribed judgment upon the woman, right there in the temple courts.
“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”
Jesus responded not with a sermon or a rebuke, but by stooping to the ground to write something in the sand with his finger. The text leaves the content of his message a mystery, though I’m sure you could find a handful of first-year seminarians happy to tell you exactly what it meant.
Frustrated, the Pharisees pressed Jesus again, to which he responded, “Let any of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
He then went back to writing in the sand.
One by one the Pharisees left, starting with the oldest, until only the woman remained.
“Where are they?” Jesus asked her. “Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin” (John 8:3–11 UPDATED NIV).
Jesus once said that his mission was not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And in this instance, fulfilling the law meant letting it go. It may serve as little comfort to those who have suffered abuse at the hand of Bible-wielding literalists, but the disturbing laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy lose just a bit of their potency when God himself breaks them.
Wives, in the same way, submit yourselves to your own husbands . . . For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in
God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord.
—1 PETER 3:1, 5–6 UPDATED NIV
“One week. Th
at’s as long as I can bring myself to do it.”
“This translation says ‘lord,’” Dan offered. “Should we use that instead?”
“Well, other translations say ‘master,’” I responded, “which for some reason sounds less creepy to me . . . Or would you rather be called ‘lord’?”
Dan looked as though he’d prefer a lobotomy to this conversation.
“I’d rather be called Dan, because both sound creepy, if you ask me. People are going to think I’m a jerk or that we’re in a cult or something.”
We sat at the dining room table, eating leftover Papa John’s pizza for dinner and watching drops of frozen rain assail the sliding glass door. We were not really mad at each other, just stir-crazy and cold and a little on edge, as I expect any couple would be if they were stuck in the house, trying to figure out how to apply a two-thousand-year-old letter to their lives.
“I know!” I said. “We’ll just play it like Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden.”
I crossed my arms in front of me, and with a swift bob of my head, issued a cheery “Yes, Master!” then waited for a laugh.
Dan, who apparently managed to find his way through childhood without catching an I Dream of Jeannie marathon on Nick at Nite, looked at me like I’d cracked.
“This seems like it should be a turn-on, but it’s not,” he finally said.
The passage responsible for all this tension in the Evans home comes from a letter to the persecuted churches of Asia Minor attributed to Saint Peter. In it, Christian women are admonished to submit to their husbands and imitate Sarah, the wife of Abraham, who called her husband “master.”
I wanted to try and take this passage as literally as possible, so we had some fun with it, working the I Dream of Jeannie bit whenever Dan asked me to pass the salt—“Yes, Master”—or beckoned me from another room—“I’ll be right there, Master”—or requested help in locating his car keys—“Well, where the heck did you see them last, Master?”
A Year of Biblical Womanhood Page 7