What does the Bible say about women?
Of course, you can focus on the beautifully progressive passages about heroic women, Jesus befriending women, and women prophesying. We commend your spiritual sensitivity in gravitating to those passages - it's the same approach that Progressive theologians take. And it works for them because they assume that the Bible is fallible, written by bronze and iron-age men, and demonstrates the evolving spiritual consciousness of humanity.
But if you believe that the Bible is the inherent words of the Creator, then you must seriously consider what the whole Bible says. Surely, if a being who designed atoms and DNA were to give us “His” exact words (and our eternal lives depended on understanding His words), He would be able to communicate clearly. Surely He wouldn’t intend to communicate one thing and accidentally communicate the exact opposite message. Yes, there are exceptionally beautiful stories about women peppered throughout the Bible, but what does the God of the Bible actually say?
What does the God of the Bible SAY about women?
The “God” of the Bible speaks primarily to men and assumes that women are the PROPERTY of men. Biblical language even suggests that women are not even people at all (e.g. “Jeremiah said to all the people AND all the women…” -Jeremiah 44:24. Notice the distinction between “people” and “women”. “Moses said to the people, ‘Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman’. Exodus 19:15). Even the Ten Commandments are written to men and assume that women are the property of men: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house or his wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor’s”. (In other words, God is saying that a woman is not your neighbor; she BELONGS to your (male) neighbor…just as slaves and animals belong to him. Apparently God doesn’t even see women as worth speaking to here - He says nothing about coveting another woman’s husband!)
God’s misogyny is woven throughout Scripture and can be seen clearly in:
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birth records - Females are rarely worth mentioning.
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the monetary value of a person - Women are worth roughly half the value of a man.
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laws about female slaves - Yes, God assumes that you’ll occasionally sell your daughters as sex slaves and says that they shall never be freed unless their men lose pleasure in them (Ex 21:7-11 "WHEN a man sells his daughter as a slave..." - clearly a sex slave from the context).
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marriage practices - A woman’s owners (her father and her brothers) decide who she will marry OR a man “goes into a woman” (rape is assumed by God and is alright by God unless the woman belongs to another man and that man is dishonored in the process) and after she is raped, she belongs to the rapist.
And God doubles down in the New Testament, forbidding women from even speaking (1 Timothy 2:8-15 NRSV). Women aren’t allowed to speak??!! This prohibition must surely just apply in church settings, right? No. If the Bible is the infallible words of God, then you can’t get around it: “In EVERY place…I do not permit a woman to teach, nor have authority over a man, but she must remain silent.” (This is totally consistent with other New Testament teachings about the required submission and property status of women.) You might respond that God didn't really mean that women shouldn't speak... Well, if he didn't mean it, why did He say it? It's common for humans to say things they don't really mean. But for a being sophisticated enough to create supernovas and hummingbirds, we could expect him to be able to say what He means...or, at least, not to say exactly the opposite of what He means.
Discussion Questions
Do you think the misogynistic ethos of the Bible is justified because it's speaking to people in a specific cultural context? If so, is that an argument for Biblical inherency or is it an argument for Progressive theology? Do you think a God who is capable of creating human beings would be able to communicate clearly if He chose to write books TO human beings? If He knew the horrific atrocities that misogyny would cause throughout human history, do you think He would be generous enough, somewhere in His sixty-six books of the Bible, to tell us explicitly that women are NOT the property of men?