A Year of Biblical Womanhood

by Rachel Held Evans

  We clipped along just fine until day 4, when suddenly, while exerting the extreme physical fortitude it takes to pull your pants down, I randomly threw my back out. The pain took my breath away and pulsed through my entire body after even the slightest movement. Somehow I managed to find my way to the living room recliner, where I perched like a hen on a nest of pillows for three days, watching Cosmos with Dan and complaining about all the Christmas shopping I wasn’t doing.

  Dan loves watching shows like The Universe and Cosmos because he says the vastness of space and time puts all the little stresses of life into perspective. These shows have the opposite effect on me, however, as I tend to experience a mini faith crisis each time Neil deGrasse Tyson cheerfully informs me that the earth’s going to get burned up by the sun someday—if it’s not smashed to bits by a meteor first. But what was I to do? This year, Dan was in charge of the remote control.

  Obviously, this turn of events changed the routine a little. Dan remained master in name only, as my frail condition required some assistance: Will you please get the heating pad for me, Master? Master, my water needs refilling. Oops, I dropped my pen, Master.

  At least he didn’t have to worry about getting embarrassed in public any more.

  I took some comfort in the fact that the woman hailed as my model for submission wasn’t any good at it either. Saint Peter chose an unlikely candidate in Sarah, who in a pivotal moment in Israel’s history usurped the wishes of Abraham, and apparently won the support of God in her defiance.

  As the story goes, the aging Sarah urged Abraham to marry her slave Hagar so that she could bear him children on Sarah’s behalf. Abraham obliged, and sure enough, Hagar became pregnant. This created considerable tension between Sarah and her slave, to the point that Sarah mistreated Hagar so badly, she fled. However God intervened, meeting Hagar at the famous well called Beer Lhai Roi to tell her that she would bear a son named Ishmael whose descends would be too numerous to count. Hagar returned and gave birth to Ishmael.

  Not long after the birth of Ishmael, Sarah herself became pregnant and bore a son named Isaac. Concerned about the potential rivalry between the male offspring of the house, Sarah ordered Abraham to “get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” Genesis 21 reports that “the matter distressed Abraham greatly,” because he loved his son Ishmael and did not want to send him away. But God told Abraham, “Listen to whatever Sarah tells you,” and so Abraham banished Hagar and her young son, who nearly died in the desert before God once again intervened to provide for them.

  Frankly, the story makes Sarah look more like a potential cast member for The Real Housewives of Canaan County than a dutiful and submissive wife. But a survey of the Old Testament reveals that she was not alone, that, when it came to the futures of their families, the matriarchs often did whatever it took to get their way. Rebekah tricked her own blind husband into giving his blessing to her preferred son, Jacob. Rachel, despite being Jacob’s second wife and barren throughout most of their marriage, ensured that her son Joseph won his father’s favor over Leah’s six older boys. What went down behind the flaps of the women’s tents in Canaan influenced the fate of nations. Sarah’s banishment of Hagar, for example, is hailed in both Jewish and Muslim traditions as the moment in which the Nation of Islam was born.

  “Master,” it seems, is a relatively loose term.

  Dan’s Journal

  December 13, 2010

  Today marks the second day that Rachel has to call me “Master.” I’ve specifically requested a few little things for her to do: put away some dishes, organize the mail, send our friend Quentin a bizarre instant message just for fun. Sure enough, she says, “Yes, Master,” and does it! Though the words seem to depart from her lips with a bit of hesitation. The possibilities are quite tempting. Like maybe, “Clean out the garage.” But it’s pretty cold out there, and she’s trying to finish writing the first few chapters of the book by the end of the month, so I don’t think I’m going to have her do it.

  Americans are obsessed with polygamy. My one-year stretch of biblical womanhood saw both the series premiere of TLC’s Sister Wives and the series finale of HBO’s Big Love. Over the last decade, Warren Jeffs has become a household name, and Oprah’s interview with the women of his polygamist ranch remains one of her most popular of all time. What was once a curious phenomenon at the fringes of fundamentalist Mormon culture has become a staple in the American entertainment diet.

  Despite what some may think, the Bible never condemns polygamy. In fact, the reality of plural marriage in Ancient Near Eastern culture is implicit in many Old Testament laws concerning slaves, concubines, and levirate marriage. Some of the Bible’s greatest heroes boasted multiple wives and handmaidens. Abraham had three. Jacob had four. David had eight wives and at least ten concubines, and according to 2 Samuel 12:8, these wives were given to him by God. Gideon had enough wives to produce seventy sons, and Solomon kept himself busy with a harem that included seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines.

  In many of these cases, the man’s consequent procreative prowess is listed by the writers of Scripture as one of his most worthy virtues. While the New Testament speaks little of plural marriage, 1 Timothy 3:2 includes the apostle Paul’s requirement that a church leader be “the husband of one wife” (NKJV) suggesting that, by that point in history, polygamy was not considered the ideal.

  I wanted to track down a modern-day polygamist family to see what they had to say about the Bible and plural marriage. Given the nature of this lifestyle (illegal in all fifty states), I figured this would be a challenge, but as it turns out, the internet makes it pretty easy to find people. After a few days of searching, I happened upon BiblicalFamilies.org.

  Run by a group of “Bible-believing Christians” who share “a deep burden for strengthening families who accept or practice plural marriage,” BiblicalFamilies.org provides support and information to men and women engaged in or interested in pursuing polygamy.

  But what surprised me the most about this Biblical Families organization was that the people running it are not Mormon, but evangelical. The group identifies themselves as “Berean” in their approach, meaning they emphasize the primacy of Scripture, “taking at face value God’s Word, and not depending so much on the traditions, and additions, of man . . . which of course is how we came to recognize the Biblical soundness of plural marriage.”

  I contacted Biblical Families about the possibility of an interview and immediately heard back from a man named Eric, who said his first wife, Lynn, felt comfortable sharing their story in more detail.5 So for the next few months, Lynn and I corresponded via e-mail about her “biblical” lifestyle, which included a husband, a sister wife, and four children, ages ten to fifteen.

  The daughter of a Baptist minister, Lynn grew up in Florida in the seventies. Her parents divorced when she was seven, a disruptive jolt in Lynn’s childhood. While studying music at a community college in Florida, Lynn got involved in a nondenominational evangelical church, where she met Eric. “I decided about that time that what I really wanted to do was stay home and raise a family,” says Lynn. “I love being a homemaker. I love being a mom. My family is my job, and I feel I do it well.”

  The two married, and about eight years later had a son together. Unbeknownst to Lynn, during her pregnancy, Eric developed feelings for a single woman at the church, named Rose—a new believer and herself a child of divorce. Still in love with Lynn and determined to avoid an affair, Eric turned to the Bible (and an internet search for “Christian polygamy”) for guidance. After some research and prayer, Eric told Rose about his feelings and his newfound interest in plural marriage. Rose confessed that she cared for Eric, and told him she would consider his proposed solution to their quandary.

  “Well, now Eric had some hard decisions to make,” Lynn recalled. “He decided it was time to tell me about his new belief and about his growing feelings for
Rose. It did not go over very well with me, as you might expect, but he was patient and tried his best to lovingly explain things. He gave me websites to look at and other material he had collected during his research. I knew I had to decide to either leave my marriage or learn what Christian plural marriage was all about. It took time, but God was with us, and eventually, about a year later, Rose joined our family.”

  Eric and Rose had three children together—a boy and twin girls. For the first seven years, the entire family lived in the same home (Lynn and Rose had separate bedrooms), but now they live in two houses within walking distance of one another. Eric, a computer programmer, usually spends three nights a week at Lynn’s house and three nights at Rose’s, with the seventh night flexible. Everyone gathers together for dinner at the end of each day.

  “We never take the schedule too seriously,” Lynn said. “We change it depending on what is going on in our lives. I usually cook Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Rose cooks Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Sunday is whoever feels like cooking, or whoever has food in the fridge!”

  Rose’s kids often spend the night at Lynn’s, especially on weekends and during the summer.

  “Rose and I are both involved in our children’s schools,” said Lynn. “When the kids were all in the same school for a year, we had a few funny moments of ‘who is with whom?’ but for the most part, people don’t take the time to think much about it. The family in general has been so redefined in the last fifty years—divorce, single parents needing help from grandparents, gay unions—that people don’t ask too many questions. We don’t try to purposefully hide our family, but we don’t share every detail with people who are just acquaintances . . . We just let people think what they think—that we are friends, we are step-parents who get along with each other well, etc.”

  I asked Lynn if she ever felt misunderstood.

  “Most people think it’s all about sex,” she said. “That is like saying every man, and woman for that matter, only gets married for sex. Yes, sex is part of marriage, but it is by no means the sole reason for marriage or the most important opinion. And then there’s the idea that only weak, stupid, or brainwashed women would choose plural marriage. I find this opinion very offensive, as you might guess, and completely false.”

  While the polygamists featured in Sister Wives and Biblical Families say that their intentions are to try and normalize plural marriage, biblical accounts of polygamy provide the kind of dramatic reality-TV fodder that would make even The Donald drool. For a man to love one wife more than another was so common in biblical times that laws had to be made to protect the rights of the unloved wife’s offspring (Deuteronomy 21:15–17). Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah (Genesis 30), and Elkanah loved Hannah more than Peninnah (1 Samuel 1). King Ahasuerus ditched Vashti before he made Esther queen. Competition between wives to produce sons for their husbands led to fights over mandrakes, the use of surrogates as pawns, provocation, banishment, and a few epic meltdowns that included outbursts like “Give me children, or I’ll die!” (Genesis 30:1); “Get rid of [her!]” (Genesis 21:10); and “Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?” (1 Samuel 1:8). It seems that even the writers of the Torah found some entertainment value in polygamy. I suspect it is no accident that the Bible never uses the phrase “sister wife” when referring to a female members of a polygamous household. Instead, the author of 1 Samuel chose the word “rival” (1:6–7).

  There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.

  —MAYA ANGELOU

  I’m glad I have a biblical name. It’s a name as old as the storied shepherdess of Paddan Aram—a woman so captivating her husband pledged seven years of service in exchange for her hand, a woman whose determination to bear children sent her digging for mandrakes and bargaining with God, a woman brazen enough to steal her father’s idols and hide them in a camel saddle, a woman who took her last breath on the side of the road, giving birth, a woman whose tomb survived obscurity, conquest, earthquakes, and riots to become one of the most venerated and contested sites of the Holy Land.

  Beautiful, impetuous, jealous Rachel. Rachel who fought to legitimize her existence the only way she knew how. Rachel who, though it killed her, won.

  With Rachel, I notice the details. I absorb her stories as a child does, wide-eyed and attentive, the distance between long ago and yesterday as close as a memory. And like a child, I long for more, wishing at times that I could sit beneath Anita Diamant’s fictionalized Red Tent, where Dinah learned the history of her family from four mothers—Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah—who Dinah says “held my face between their hands and made me swear to remember.”

  We recall with ease the narratives of Scripture that include a triumphant climax—a battle won, a giant slain, chariots swallowed by the sea. But for all of its glory and grandeur, the Bible contains a darkness you will only notice if you pay attention, for it is hidden in the details, whispered in the stories of women.

  My quest for biblical womanhood led me to these stories late at night, long after Dan had gone to sleep, and I conducted my nightly research by his side in bed, stacks of Bibles and commentaries and legal pads threatening to swallow him should he roll over. The darkest of these stories mingled with my dreams, and I awoke the next morning startled as if I’d been told a terrible secret.

  Perhaps the most troubling of the dark stories comes from the lawless period of Judges.

  Jephthah was a mighty warrior of Gilead and the son of a prostitute. Banished from the city by Gilead’s legitimate sons, he took up with a gang of outlaws in the land of Tob. Jephthah must have earned a reputation as a valiant fighter because, years later, when the Gileadites faced war with the Ammonites, the elders summoned Jephthah and asked him to command their forces.

  When Jephthah reminded them that they had expelled him from the city, they promised to make him their leader if he agreed. The opportunity to rule over those who once despised him proved too much for Jephthah to resist. As Jephthah charged into battle with his countrymen behind him, filled with “the Spirit of the LORD” (Judges 11:29), he made a promise to God: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD’S, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering” (V. 30).

  The text reports that God indeed gave victory to Jephthah. He and his troops devastated twenty Ammonite towns, thus deterring the Ammonite king from further attacks. When Jephthah returned home, glowing with sweat and triumph, “who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of tambourines” (V. 34). She was a virgin and his only child. The Bible never reveals her name.

  When he saw her, Jephthah tore his clothes and wept. Surely he had expected an animal to come wandering out of the first floor of his home where they would have been stabled, not his daughter. He told his daughter of his vow and said he could not break it. The young girl resolutely accepted her fate. She asked only that she be granted two months to roam the hills and weep with her friends over a life cut short.

  Unlike the familiar story of Isaac, this one ends without divine intervention. Jephthah fulfilled his promise and killed his daughter in God’s name. No ram was heard bleating from the thicket. No protest was issued from the clouds. No tomb was erected to mark the place where she lay.

  But the women of Israel remembered.

  Wrote the narrator, “From this comes the Israelite tradition that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah” (VV. 39–40).

  They could not protect her life, but they could protect her dignity by retelling her story—year after year, for four days, in a mysterious and subversive ceremony that perhaps led the women of Israel back to the same hills in which Jephthah’s daughter wandered before her death. It was a tradition that appears to have continued through the writing of the book of Judges. But it is a tradition lost to the waxing and waning of time, no longer marked by the daughters of
the Abrahamic faiths.

  I wanted to do something to bring this ceremony back, so I invited my friend Kristine over to help me honor the victims of the Bible’s “texts of terror.”

  This may sound strange coming from a woman who calls her husband “Master” from time to time, but Kristine is something of an eccentric. Young, dreamy, and fiercely intelligent, she feels everything with such intensity that her laugh will startle you and her sadness frighten you. Having recently emerged from an uncommonly sheltered childhood, Kristine is only now learning how to interpret and respond to social cues, and so she navigates the idiomatic affectations of Southern culture with a sort of clumsy charm that disarms those of us who have grown too accustomed to them.

  Once, when Kristine and I were at our friend Megan’s apartment, wrapping Christmas presents for our church’s angel tree, I complimented Megan on how tidy and inviting she keeps her home.

  “Oh, you should see my bedroom closet,” Megan said. “That’s where I stuff everything before people come over.”

  “Can I?” Kristine asked.

  A little caught off guard, Megan agreed.

  Kristine went into the bedroom, opened the closet, laughed a little bit before returning to the living room to say, “Yeah, it’s a total wreck in there, but I still want to be your friend.”

  That pretty much sums up Kristine.

  We prepared for the ceremony for weeks—Kristine with wood and paint, I with poetry and prose. Finally, just before Christmas, while the tree was lit and paper snowflakes hung from the windows, Kristine came over with a heavy paper bag in her arms. We sat on the living room floor with the coffee table between us and began the ceremony.