Is the Old Testament Oppressive to Women

Read the Old Testament with women in mind and two things are hard to miss. Its laws route inheritance through sons, and its stories include women who are abused, traded and silenced. Many readers conclude that the book is against women. The work below lets you test that conclusion for yourself: two passages read slowly, then the hardest stories set beside them.

Here is a working hypothesis to test, not a verdict to accept. The Old Testament describes a patriarchal society and records real crimes against women, and it also contains passages where God takes the side of women, sometimes against the custom of the day. By the end you will decide whether the text bears that out. You can work alone in about an hour, or with a group over one or two sessions. Each section begins with something to observe before anyone interprets it.

Before you go on: write one sentence describing what you expect the Old Testament to say about women. Put it aside. You will come back to it at the end.

Start with how you read

The guest in this Jude 3 Project conversation, Quonekuia Day, teaches Old Testament and Hebrew at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. She told Lisa Fields that her own first reading of the Bible, before she knew God, left her thinking it did not seem friendly to women. Her diagnosis is about expectation. When readers treat Scripture as only a male-written text, she says, “we sort of come to the text already biased, already expecting not to see much.” Then she adds, “But if we read a text carefully, we’ll see a whole lot that God’s saying about women and how he feels about them.”

Her remedy is a set of habits anyone can practice. She recommends a keyword study Bible used with an Englishman’s Hebrew concordance, so that a reader without Hebrew can trace where a word appears and how it is used. She also calls for “being careful with the text, not being in such a hurry to say, oh, I know this.” And she warns that “people want to fit the text into their life.” Keep that warning in view. A word can be translated correctly and still be misapplied. A story can be recorded accurately and still not be a command.

First passage: what kind of help is an ezer?

Read Genesis 2:18-25. The key verse is Genesis 2:18: “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”

• Who identifies the problem in this verse, and what exactly is the problem?
• Is the need described as a need for labor, or as a need created by being alone?
• In older English, “meet” means suitable or fitting. Read the phrase again with that in mind. Does “help meet” describe a rank, or a fit?

The Hebrew word behind “help” is ezer. Day explains that it describes a person who helps in distressing situations, and that it appears where someone is in great distress or at war. Her key observation is about who else receives this word: “That’s an attribute that God uses to describe himself, that he is man’s helper.”

Test this yourself. Each of these verses uses the same Hebrew word. Note who the helper is and what kind of trouble the person is in.

• Exodus 18:4, where Moses names his son Eliezer: “for the God of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.”
• Psalm 33:20: “Our soul waiteth for the LORD: he is our help and our shield.”
• Psalm 121:2: “My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.”

A concordance will also show places where the word describes human allies in war. Ask whether any use describes someone weak or merely useful. From this pattern Day concludes that being created a helper does not mean being reduced to cooking and cleaning. Instead, she says, “her role is supposed to provide life changing, critical assistance to man.”

Be precise about what this proves. It refutes one inference: that calling the woman a helper makes her lesser. If the word implied inferiority, it would make God inferior to the people he rescues. It does not settle later questions about roles in marriage or the church. Faithful Christians who love Scripture land on different sides of women in church leadership, which is why Jude 3 Project deliberately takes no house position there. A good word study narrows an argument. It does not end every argument.

For facilitators: some participants will want to jump from ezer straight to church leadership. Hold them to what Genesis 2 itself is addressing, and save the later questions for another study.

Second passage: five daughters and a ruling from God

Lisa Fields put a sharp form of the objection to Day. Some readers argue that the Old Testament denies women property and inheritance, so that, in Fields’s words, “They’re kind of at the mercy of their father or their husband.” That is a challenge about the structure of the law, and Day answers it with a legal case.

Read Numbers 27:1-11 twice. On the first reading, track the movement. Who comes forward? Before whom do they stand? What do they ask for, and on what grounds? On the second reading, look at verse 5: “And Moses brought their cause before the LORD.” The leader of Israel does not settle the matter on his own authority.

The verdict comes in Numbers 27:7: “The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brethren; and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them.” Day puts it simply: “He goes to God and outta God’s mouth, he says that the women are right.”

The ruling does not stay a single exception. Verse 8 makes it a standing law: “If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter.” Day draws the implication that “they don’t have to be married to receive land.”

The story continues, so keep reading.

• Numbers 36:1-12. Leaders of the daughters’ tribe worry about land leaving the tribe through marriage. Verse 6 answers: “Let them marry to whom they think best; only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they marry.” Does this take back what chapter 27 gave, or limit how it works?
• Joshua 17:3-6. Do the daughters actually receive what was promised?
• Job 42:15. What do you notice about Job’s daughters and their inheritance?

Day goes on to make a historical judgment, and it should be held as hers: “So I think if we look carefully at the text, we’ll see that women had the right, but somehow along the way that it was taken from them, but God wanted them to be able to inherit.” She also notes that some interpreters dismiss the story as a later insertion. If her main reading holds, then where Israel’s later practice departed from God’s ruling, the departure belongs to Israel and not to the ruling.

The column readers would rather skip

A study that only collects encouraging verses would make Day’s mistake in reverse. So read the hard texts too: Judges 19, the concubine handed over to a mob and killed; 2 Samuel 13:1-22, where Tamar is raped by her half-brother; and 2 Samuel 11. Nothing in this guide should make them less painful. Ask the same three questions of each.

• What does the narrator report, and does the text say what God thinks of it?
• How does the surrounding book frame the period or the person?
• Does anyone in the story speak or act against the wrong?

Here is one worked example, using Tamar. First, what is reported: Amnon schemes, Tamar refuses, he overpowers her, then he hates her and throws her out. The narrator never states God’s verdict in this scene. Second, the frame: the chapter sits inside the long aftermath of David’s sin, and the violence spreads through his household. Third, who resists: Tamar herself. In 2 Samuel 13:12 she says, “Nay, my brother, do not force me; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel: do not thou this folly.” Her words, preserved by the narrator, name the act as a violation of what Israel should be. Yet David is angry and does nothing, and verse 20 ends her part of the story: “So Tamar remained desolate in her brother Absalom’s house.” The text gives her protest full weight and leaves the injustice unresolved. That silence is part of what you are reading.

Now compare 2 Samuel 11:27, where the narrator does give a verdict on the king: “But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.” Day points to this ending as evidence that God is grieved by the injustice done to Bathsheba.

Day makes a separate point from the law. She describes a provision letting a concubine who is not treated fairly leave her husband, and notes that a concubine held lower standing than a wife. That law appears in Exodus 21:10-11. If the man takes another wife, he may not reduce the first woman’s food, clothing or marital rights. Then verse 11: “And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.” Her freedom costs her nothing, and the failure belongs to him. The protection reaches the woman with the least social power in the household.

For facilitators: these passages describe sexual violence. Tell the group beforehand which texts you will read, make clear that no one needs to share personal experience, and allow anyone to step out. If the reading brings up harm someone is facing at home now, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.

Testing the reading against its strongest challenge

Here is the best objection. Numbers 27:8 gives daughters an inheritance only when there is no son. Numbers 36 limits whom they may marry. The law still assumes a male line. A skeptic may call this a patch on a patriarchal system, not a rejection of it.

That objection is right about the facts. The Old Testament does not lay out a modern egalitarian legal code. The open question is what the law does within its ancient setting, and you can weigh the evidence from this study. On one side sit Numbers 27:7-8, Exodus 21:10-11 and 2 Samuel 11:27, where a ruling, a protection or a verdict favors a woman. On the other sit the male-line condition in Numbers 27:8, the marriage limits of Numbers 36, and the unanswered silence after Tamar. Decide which pattern carries more weight, and why. Fields offered one more angle in the conversation: “Even in the law there’s grace.”

Exercise: in two or three sentences, write the skeptic’s objection strongly enough that a skeptic would sign it. Then write your response using only passages from this study. In a group, swap papers and check whether your partner stated the objection fairly.

Questions for discussion

1. In Genesis 2:18, the problem is that the man is alone. How does naming the problem that way change what the help is for?
2. After your concordance work, what can the ezer study responsibly establish, and what would be overreaching?
3. Read Numbers 27:1-4 again. What do the daughters argue, and what does their argument assume about the law and the God who gave it?
4. Does Numbers 36 read to you as a limit on the daughters or a protection of their inheritance? What in the text supports your reading, and what would change your mind?
5. Day believes Israel’s practice drifted away from God’s ruling. Others might say the ruling was later reinterpreted or was narrower than she thinks. What evidence in the text would help you tell those two explanations apart?
6. Choose Judges 19 or 2 Samuel 13. Where does the narrative signal judgment, and where is it silent? How should a reader handle the silence?
7. Where in this study were you tempted to fit the text to a conclusion you already held?

A practice for the week: two columns

Draw a line down the middle of a sheet of paper. Over the next week, read Genesis 2, Numbers 27, Numbers 36, Exodus 21:10-11, Judges 19 and 2 Samuel 11-13. In the left column, write every place where a woman is harmed, silenced or limited. In the right column, write every place where God, the law or the narrator acts for her, protects her or judges the man who wronged her. For each entry, note the verse and whether the text is describing, commanding or evaluating.

Do not try to make the columns balance. At the end of the week, take out the sentence you wrote at the start. Read it beside your two columns. Which parts did the text confirm, which did it correct, and what would you write now?