Let the Women Speak
Silence. It is an unfortunate reality of digging through the records of women past. As we try to shed our 21st century perspective to listen to and understand what it was like to be a woman in ancient Israel, Greece, or Rome, we are confronted with this frustrating result of patriarchy. Like many other historical records, there is but a small body of scripture devoted to the words and stories of women. For so many generations of our world's history, these voices were largely considered unimportant.
But the experience of women is NOT insignificant to our God. He has much to teach us about His design for women if we are willing to lean in to hear what the women in the Bible have to say. Last week I examined one of the strategies presented in Jacqueline E. Lapsley's Whispering the Word, to help inform the way we read the Bible: how are women described by the narrator? Today, I want to look at another strategy. What do the women say? In many of the Bible's stories about women, the female characters are completely silent like the woman in Judges, so when a woman does speak in scripture, our ears should perk up.
To illustrate her point, Lapsley looks at the story of Rachel in Genesis 31. You may remember Rachel from the tale of the Israelite patriarch, Jacob. She is his second wife, only because her father, after promising Rachel to Jacob in return for seven years' work, tricks Jacob into marrying Rachel's older sister, Leah. Jacob works for another seven years to secure Rachel. Then, a strange battle-of-the-babies ensues between the two sisters, and we pick up on the story as Leah and Rachel unite in opposition to their father. After essentially depriving them of the inheritance that cultural expectations dictate, the women feel ostracized like foreigners, not family.
The women's complaint echoes that of their husband Jacob, who has determined to return to his homeland on instruction from the Lord. Jacob has worked for a total of 20 years for Rachel's father, Laban. Laban has cheated him at nearly every turn. During Jacob's flight with his family, Laban pursues the escaping party and the two men have the opportunity to settle their dispute, man to man.
Rachel's story is a distinct foil to that of her husband. She, too, is angry with her father, but as a person of secondary status (a woman), Rachel has no opportunity to resolve her conflict with her father. Instead, she resorts to stealing his valuable household gods. When Laban upends the campsite to look for his missing valuables, Rachel hides them in a bag and sits on top of them. Laban enters her tent, presumably tossing everything asunder to find his property, and Rachel says her her father, "I cannot rise before you, for I have the way of women." Traditionally interpreted, Rachel is saying that she is on her period and therefore cannot stand up or be near her father, lest she make him unclean according to Jewish purity laws. But as Lapsley looks closely at the specific language Rachel uses, she uncovers subversive double meanings to this phrase:
Three distinct meanings emerge from Rachel's speech. First, Rachel is using these words to deceive her father by telling him that she is having her period. Susan Niditch insightfully suggests that, in doing this, Rachel ironically transforms the menstrual purity laws (understood as constraining to women) into a weapon against her father. Second...Rachel is asserting a fact about the world in which she exists: she, as a woman, does not have access to the same legal process that Jacob and Laban do. An alternative translation underscores this meaning: the Hebrew words may accurately be translated, "the way of women is upon me" (NRSV), a turn of phrase that suggests the onus of bearing this condition of women in a male-dominated society. On this level, she is saying, "I have the condition of women in this society; I cannot dispute you publicly and legally."
Third, she is saying something about the options available to her to rectify the injustice done to her. Rachel herself has chosen extralegal means to get justice, stealing the teraphim, her inheritance. The intimation here is that women must find other ways of securing justice: "I cannot get justice through your legal means, but I have the way of women, that is, I have unofficial, unsanctioned means of getting justice" (29).
While we may be tempted to rush to make a judgement on Rachel's character (Bad witch, stealing is always wrong; or Good witch, civil disobedience against a corrupt system is ultimately good), this story begs a bigger question. How can a person ever hope for justice in the midst of a systemically biased society? Is there any way to achieve true justice when the cultural cards are stacked against you?
Instead of leaving us arguing over the character of Rachel, this line of questioning leads us to nature of Christ. No matter what you think of Rachel's actions, or whether you would emulate her or not, her story reveals a deeper need and desire we all have to see perfect justice realized. The through line of the Bible reveals that only a perfect Savior can redeem our broken systems and usher forth a new society characterized by equality, fairness, and peace.
For Further Reading
This strategy of looking closely at women's voices invites a number of questions for me as I re-read the stories of women in the Bible:
- How does Deborah's language in Judges 4 compare to the speech patterns of other military voices in scripture?
- What is the cultural significance of women's songs, like that of Mary (Luke 1), Deborah (Judges 5), and Hannah (1 Samuel 2)? Do they follow linguistic patterns of songs by men or are they distinct in some way? Are they viewed differently by the listener because they come from the mouths of women?
- Is there a difference between how Esther speaks to her Uncle Mordecai versus King Ahasuerus or the official, Haman? What about the way Ruth speaks to Naomi versus Boaz?
- Rahab, the prostitute, seems to know quite a lot about Israel and their God (Joshua 2). How is she so well educated? And why, in light of her vocation, do both the king of Jericho and the Israelite spies trust her words?
Read Part 3.