Sunday Sermonette: A surprising anomaly

Female characters so far have been fairly scarce. We all know about Eve and the apple, of course. Sarah is named but we never really learn anything about her except that she ' s apparently sexually attractive and got jealous of Hagar -- a slave who was oppressed and mistreated. God noticed and gave her protection. (Of course, he didn ' t do anything about slavery and concubinage in general, in fact he was all for it.) Jacob ' s wives Rachel and Leah get a fair amount of play. They exert what agency they can within the limitations of their gender role. Rachel resorts to quite a bit of deception and manipulation. Zipporah has a brief appearance in the bizarre interlude in which she throws the bloody foreskin at Moses. Miriam organizes a song and dance party when the people escape Egypt. Rahab, in the book of Joshua, exercises independence and agency as a practitioner of the oldest profession, the course open to a woman. And the story of the daughters of Zelopehad is told twice. The real point of the latter story is to actually to maintain a male line of inheritance -- as is the story of Onan, who refused to impregnate his brother ' s widow as the baby would not be considered his, so God whacked him. In fact, patriarchy is the basic architecture of the entire story up until now. For the most part, women ' s names aren ' t even mentioned in the begats. Patrilineage defines the tribes and clans which are the fundamental structure of society and a major obsession of the Torah ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs