{"id":165,"date":"2022-06-23T23:31:15","date_gmt":"2022-06-23T23:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/?p=165"},"modified":"2022-06-23T23:33:52","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T23:33:52","slug":"woman-ezer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/index.php\/2022\/06\/23\/woman-ezer\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman-ezer"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"165\" class=\"elementor elementor-165\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-759aa36 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"759aa36\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-7c3a75a\" data-id=\"7c3a75a\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-3bb3c79 elementor-align-center elementor-widget elementor-widget-embedpres_elementor\" data-id=\"3bb3c79\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"embedpres_elementor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t        <div class=\"embedpress-elements-wrapper \">\n            <div class=\"ose-spotify ose-uid-d84570d697062bd0c2eb5cb74b91d914 ose-embedpress-responsive\" style=\"width:770px; max-width:100%; height: auto; display:inline-block;\"><iframe allowFullScreen=\"true\" title=\"Spotify Embed: Woman-ezer\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/07fTLLacbckYQCHk2Y0LXu?si=f9633e5513ec4efd&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe><\/div>        <\/div>\n        \t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-e54ea26 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"e54ea26\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.6.6 - 08-06-2022 *\/\n.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:#818a91;color:#fff}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap{color:#818a91;border:3px solid;background-color:transparent}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap{margin-top:8px}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap-letter{width:1em;height:1em}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap{float:left;text-align:center;line-height:1;font-size:50px}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap-letter{display:inline-block}<\/style>\t\t\t\t<p>There are 783,137 words in the King James version of the Bible. The majority of those words are about men, but not all. Some of these words tell the stories women, stories that are just as varied as those about men. These stories are distributed regularly throughout both the Old and New There\u2019s stories of Eve, of course, and Miriam, and Sarah, and Rachel, and Deborah, and Bathsheba, and Jezebel, and Naomi, and Ruth, and Hannah, and Tamar, and Tamar again, and Esther, and Joanna, and Junia, and Priscilla, and Martha, and Mary, and Mary, and Mary, and, well, Mary. Some women don\u2019t even have names, like Lot\u2019s wife or the Samarian woman at the well, but all play an important part in the development of God\u2019s plans across the centuries.<\/p><p>But often the revealed wisdom of God concerning women is boiled down to four verses \u2013 48 words, to be exact \u2013 from Paul\u2019s first letter to Timothy: \u201cLet a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.\u201d (1 Timothy 2:11-14)<\/p><p>This passage may be little more than a call to female modesty in church, but it has become a touchstone for defining woman\u2019s role as subservient to man\u2019s. Like all passages in the Bible, we need to wrestle with this one, but on the surface at least it seems to be at odds with other depictions of the role of women, both in the Old and the New Testaments. It seems at odds with Paul\u2019s acceptance of women, like Priscilla, in leadership roles. And, based on the arc of women\u2019s stories throughout the Bible, at odds with the purpose of woman within God\u2019s purposes.<\/p><p>Consider the following verse from Leviticus: \u201cThe hare, for even though it chews the cud, it does not have divided hoofs; it is unclean for you.\u201d No one accepts this passage as being a definitive, not to mention accurate, portrayal of rabbits, yet the passage from Timothy has been used as such for women for centuries, helping to keep women in a subservient position in both church and society. This is not at all what the Bible, taken as both a narrative arc and the revealed Word of God, has to say about woman. In order to live into a Biblical worldview, we need to understand the real story. What substantively is woman in the framework of the Judeo-Christian worldview as put forth in the Bible?<\/p><p>Let\u2019s start with what is not woman. We live in an age where, at least in the western world, men are claiming to be women, so it would be interesting to discern just what, precisely, it is they think they are becoming. Biology is out \u2013 there\u2019s that pesky Y chromosome which causes a host of other biological realities in the male body that don\u2019t go away. Psychology seems at best iffy: after all, there are effeminate men who never claim to be women, so where, exactly, is that line drawn? The Bible is no help either, since it states definitively in the first chapter of Genesis that there are two sexes, a proclamation that is never, ever, questioned or challenged in all 783,137 words. All that\u2019s left for a man to do is take on the fa\u00e7ade of a woman, the appearance of a woman. While this might be therapeutic in some instances of gender dysphoria, it nevertheless reveals nothing about the substance of being a woman. The Bible is completely uninterested in fa\u00e7ades and appearances and instead is designed to reveal the deepest truths about God and humanity.<\/p><p>Does the Bible \u2013 within its long narrative arc \u2013 confirm the subservience of woman to man as suggested in 1 Timothy? From day one \u2013 well, actually, day six \u2013 it does not. In Genesis 2:18, God states \u201c\u2018It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.\u201d The word \u201chelper\u201d has been frequently taken to mean \u201cassistant,\u201d like an assistant plumber who hands the main guy the wrench he needs. But the Hebrew word used to describe Eve in this passage is <em>ezer<\/em>. According to Philip Payne, in his book <em>Man and Woman: One in Christ<\/em>, &#8220;The noun used here [ezer] throughout the Old Testament does not suggest &#8216;helper&#8217; as in &#8216;servant,&#8217; but help, savior, rescuer, protector as in &#8216;God is our help.&#8217; In no other occurrence in the Old Testament does this refer to an inferior, but always to a superior or an equal&#8230;&#8217;help&#8217; expresses that the woman is a help\/strength who rescues or saves man.&#8221; Eve was specifically introduced into creation to be Adam\u2019s ally, not his servant.<\/p><p>Originally without woman, the proto-male, Adam, is lost and lonely, so God wisely provides the proto-female, Eve, to rescue him. They clearly are designed to work in tandem, with complementary skills and abilities that produce strength greater than the sum of their two individual beings. This theme of the complementary necessity of man and woman is not confined to Genesis. In the Old Testament, relationships like that of Jacob and Rachel, or Ruth and Boaz, suggest that while the woman\u2019s role may be different than the man\u2019s, it is not an inferior role. Esther demands that she be considered an <em>ezer<\/em> by the king, the king accepts her as such, and she becomes a hero of the Jewish people. In the New Testament we see Priscilla and Aquilla working side by side, as equals with Paul, in establishing the church in Corinth. To be honest, I don\u2019t know precisely what was going on in the church of Timothy, but whatever lesson it is teaching us, it is not one of subservience when compared to the whole arc of the story of women in the Bible.<\/p><p>Another trope often given about Biblical women is that they are either sexual temptresses or chaste saints. Again, this seems more like men projecting their fantasies about women onto the Biblical narrative than an accurate reflection of God\u2019s purposes for women as revealed in the Bible. Eve is usually the first suspect. There they are, in the Garden, when the serpent \u2013 the real seducer \u2013 convinces Eve to eat the apple. She then gives some to Adam, and both their eyes are opened to good and evil. It is only at that point that they become aware that they are naked, not before. Eve didn\u2019t use sex to bring Adam on board, but she has been accused of it ever since. Eve\u2019s sin comes not from being in seductive collusion with the serpent, but from her foolishness \u2013 or perhaps, simple innocence \u2013 in believing him, which ultimately leads her to disobey God. Not really much of a temptress.<\/p><p>Then there is Mary, the mother of Jesus, traditionally so wrapped up in chastity that it must have been hard for her to breathe. Or be a mother, which was precisely why God chose her: to be the perfect mother for his son. Traditionally, Mary has been stripped of all sexuality, furthering the biblically false notion that sex is bad, and sex for women is really bad. Why would God pour himself into a human body and put Mary through Eve\u2019s punishment of a painful childbirth if he didn\u2019t want to embody the complete human experience, including having a real mother? The Biblical narrative certainly paints Mary as such. She does motherly things, she appears to have had children with Joseph, and she knows exactly who Jesus is and treats him like a son. Why would God want this woman to be perpetually chaste? Why would it be important that Mary herself be immaculately conceived so that Jesus could be immaculately conceived? The Bible is silent on both of these points, which were created and emphasized only in tradition.<\/p><p>It was, in fact, while pondering these peculiar circumstances attributed to Mary that I began to think that she holds another key to that which is distinctively female. I was struck by a vision of Mary kneeling at the foot of the cross, an agony for all humanity but a very peculiar, personal and unique agony for Mary. She suffered as no woman ever has, watching the Son of God whom she bore in her own body, fading to a slow and tortured death on the scrabbled rock of Golgotha. It is a suffering that only a woman who has lost a child can understand. No man, no matter how moved by the loss of a child, can know this kind of grief.<\/p><p>I am hesitant to ascribe ultimate meaning in suffering, but women, who share the bond of suffering placed on Eve at her exit from the Garden, also share other forms of suffering. There is the monthly menstrual cycle \u2013 for some women simply annoying and for others quite painful \u2013 that has no male equivalent. For most there is the painful birth of a child, for some, the loss of a child who is stillborn or dies as an infant. Certainly God must have chosen Mary to be far more than a convenient womb. There is a spiritual bond with the unborn child that is interwoven with the physical necessity of gestation that men do not and cannot share, making the loss of a child both a spiritual and physical suffering unique to woman. For a man to claim he is, substantively, a woman, he would need to not only acquire the benefits, such as physical appearance and mannerisms, but also the suffering linked equally to body and spirit, inherent in womanhood \u2013 something a man cannot do.<\/p><p>Of the twenty-one occurrences of the word <em>ezer <\/em>in the Old Testament, two refer to Eve; three refer to powerful kingdoms that Israel calls on for help; and sixteen times the word refers to God as our help. Eve and God are described by the same word, which makes it as difficult to think of Eve \u2013 woman \u2013 as subservient, as it does to think of God as subservient. In the New Testament, the Greek word for the Holy Spirit \u2013 paraclete \u2013 has much the same meaning as <em>ezer: <\/em>a help or strong aid. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Holy Spirit is often referred to in the feminine.<\/p><p>Although Eve, upon expulsion from the Garden, is punished by painful childbirth, she is also rewarded by having children; children who not only have to be birthed but then raised up to be faithful followers of God. But some women are unable to bear children \u2013 does that make them unworthy? Is a barren woman a worthless non-contributor to the process of kingdom building? It is on points like this that we run up against the problem of using attributes only, such as fertility, to define what is substantively female. In the Bible, the barrenness of women like Sarah or Hannah is viewed as a sorrow that is relieved when they both miraculously bear children. But prior to becoming pregnant, they were women faithful both to their husbands and to God. The Biblical narrative seems to suggest that while a culture may decide infertility makes a lesser woman, God\u2019s ultimate qualifier is faith. Obedience to God. After all, it was disobedience that got Eve and Adam kicked out of the Garden, so surely obedience must be the best way back in, regardless of life\u2019s circumstances. Faith is not an attribute that is distinctively female, but it is a gift that is distinctively human.<\/p><p>While child-bearing and rearing are central components of the Biblical worldview, the Bible is also clear that women can do many other things. Women like Deborah are prophets and judges, Esther becomes a queen. Mary Magdalene becomes a leader in the early church, followed by Paul\u2019s disciples Priscilla and Junia. Woman is not one-dimensional, and actively participates in numerous other ways to further God\u2019s kingdom. But, co-equal with man, their primary responsibility is to raise children who will follow God\u2019s path.<\/p><p>Like two allies, man and woman could operate successfully on their own, but in our Biblical worldview they weren\u2019t designed to work optimally in that way. God\u2019s purposes \u2013 specifically new life that is growing toward God\u2019s kingdom \u2013 are most directly and fundamentally fulfilled in the family, and a family is strongest when led by partners &#8211; allies. The distinctive physiology of woman, so biologically crucial to the species, is intertwined with the embedded <em>imago dei<\/em> \u2013 the image of God \u2013 that is so crucial to God\u2019s forward looking, transformative purposes. In this the Biblical arc of the story of woman \u2013 just as varied, diverse and important as man\u2019s \u2013 is abundantly clear.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-2b02336 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"2b02336\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-224bf56\" data-id=\"224bf56\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Biblical woman is much more than just an adjunct to man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":51,"href":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingchristianity.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}