Sarah is absent from the biblical account of Isaac’s binding, and there’s no indication that Abraham even discussed God’s command with her. Would she have been an active participant, a faithful supporter, or a grief-stricken mother? Later interpreters filled in her role according to their religious and cultural contexts.
Read in light of the Sumerian King List, Adam’s genealogy (Genesis 5) reveals a gender-neutral line, conceived without a female counterpart. Noah, like the Mesopotamian flood survivor Ziusudra, emerges as the first “son,” inaugurating a new line of gendered humanity.
The young women in the Song of Songs (2:15) repurpose a bucolic ditty to suggestively beckon young men. The key to their entendre is in the Arabic cognate for the verb לְחַבֵּל.
When Boaz sees Ruth gleaning in the field, and learns who she is, he offers her protection from his own workers’ predatory behavior, giving us a glimpse at what poor women, gleaning in the field, had to contend with.
“Now Joseph was well-built and handsome”—Genesis 39:7
Eve was created as Adam’s עֵזֶר כְּנֶגְדֹּו ʿezer ke-negdo (Genesis 2:18). What is the meaning of this enigmatic phrase?
Israelite women are conspicuously absent from the Decalogue’s Shabbat law. Three stories in the Prophets featuring female characters—Rahab the prostitute, the great woman of Shunem, and Queen Athaliah—each tie to Shabbat in some unconventional way.
Moses extends the covenant to all of Israel, “from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water” (Deuteronomy 29). The midrash connects this group with the Gibeonites of Joshua 9, creating an anachronism which later rabbinic commentators try to resolve.
If an Israelite wishes to marry a woman taken captive in war, she becomes part of the Israelite community and is protected from future re-enslavement. Uncomfortable with the Torah’s permission of this marriage, the rabbis declare it to be a concession to man’s “evil impulse,” an idea reminiscent of Jesus’ assertion that the Torah allows divorce as a concession to humanity’s “hard heart.”
A wife who intervenes in a fight to save her husband by grabbing his opponent’s testicles is punished by having her hand cut off (Deut 25:11–12). What is the nature of her offense? Why isn’t her intent to save her husband a mitigating factor? What is the relationship between the punishment and the crime?
The Mishnah adds further humiliation to the biblical sotah ritual for a suspected adulteress. Other rabbinic texts from the same period critique this expansion, as well as the gender inequality inherent in the ritual itself.
After giving birth to a male, the mother is impure for 7 days, followed by 33 days of purification. However, with a female, the mother is impure for 14 days, followed by 66 days of purification.
A child’s mother remains impure for forty days after the birth of a boy and eighty days after a girl. A comparison of this procedure with similar ones in Hittite birth rituals suggests that this gender-based differentiation serves as a kind of ritual announcement of the child’s gender.
Virtually all biblical scholars—even feminist biblical scholars—consider the Bible and ancient Israelite society patriarchal. But is that a valid designation?
Men and women are prohibited from wearing each other’s clothes (Deuteronomy 22:5). What is the motivation behind this law, and why is this behavior “abhorrent to YHWH”?
The Canaanite general Sisera is killed by Yael in her tent but in an older version of the story, he died in battle at the hands of the Israelite general, Barak. The story was revised as part of a broader theme in Judges, to weaken the image of male military heroes through women and give the power to God.
Abimelech, Michal, Sisera’s mother, and Jezebel all look through a window, but their experience is not the same.
What is the gender of the God of creation? Of YHWH in general?
Finding gender equality in the Song of Songs without compromising God and meaning.
The biblical portrait of Miriam can leave the modern reader with a lingering bitterness, but a closer reading highlights her prophetic role, and her willingness to challenge the social norms and pursue an alternative, redemptive course.
Hittite texts show us that in the ancient Near East, women, including the queen, served as priestesses. The biblical authors, in their fervor for YHWH, monotheism, and centralization of worship through one Temple and one priesthood, strongly objected.
A methodologically rigorous reading of the account of the Woman's creation reveals a fundamentally egalitarian view of the sexes that is both nuanced and psychologically sensitive.
