Lynn Japinga - From Widows to Warriors: Womens Stories from the Old Testament

From Widows
to Warriors

From Widows
to Warriors

Womens Stories from the Old Testament

Lynn Japinga

2020 Lynn Japinga

Group Discussion Guide 2020 Westminster John Knox Press

Portions of this book were previously published as Preaching the Women of the Old Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017).

First edition

Published by Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

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Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible are copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission.

Book design by Drew Stevens

Cover design by Barbara LeVan Fisher, www.levanfisherdesign.com

Cover art: Zoe de la Mer, 1993 (oil on paper), Hugo, Marie (Contemporary Artist) / Private Collection / Bridgeman Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Japinga, Lynn, 1960- author.

Title: From widows to warriors : womens stories from the Old Testament / Lynn Japinga.

Description: First edition. | Louisville, Kentucky : WJK, Westminster John Knox Press, 2020. | Includes index. | Summary: In this first of two volumes, Lynn Japinga acquaints us with the women of the Old Testament. This Bible study introduces and retells every female character who contributes to one or more Old Testament stories, diving deeply into what each womans story means for us today with questions for reflection and discussionProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020024005 (print) | LCCN 2020024006 (ebook) | ISBN 9780664265694 (paperback) | ISBN 9781611649772 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Women in the Bible. | Bible. Old TestamentBiography.

Classification: LCC BS575 .J375 2020 (print) | LCC BS575 (ebook) | DDC 221.9/22082dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024005

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024006

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Contents

It is All Saints Day at a Roman Catholic elementary school. The students are dressed as saints and biblical characters. The boys dress as the twelve apostles, Joseph, Jesus, and Pontius Pilate. No two boys wear the same costume, because they have learned about so many male religious figures. The girls are all dressed as either Eve or Mary, because these are the only two female religious figures they know. The student who described this event wondered why she had not learned about more women in the Bible who could be role models or examples for her faith.

After reading the story of Deborah, another student wondered why she did not learn about her in Sunday school. It would have made me and other girls grow up so much more determined and powerful. She had been taught that women were either sinful like Eve or pure like Mary. She wondered why neither society nor religion could find a more realistic view, which acknowledged that women could be both virtuous and sinful.

More than a century earlier, Elizabeth Cady Stanton also wondered why preachers did not talk about Deborah. We never hear sermons pointing women to the heroic virtues of Deborah as worthy of their imitation. Nothing is said in the pulpit to rouse them from the apathy of ages, to inspire them to do and dare great things. Oh, no! The lessons doled out to women, from the canon law, the Bible, the prayer-books and the catechisms, are meekness and self-abnegation; ever with covered heads (a badge of servitude) to do some humble service for man.

Every semester in my Christian Feminism course, my students and I spend several class periods talking about women in the Bible. The students are surprised to find stories of rape, incest, prostitution, and murder. They are equally surprised to find positive stories about strong, talented, and faithful women. Some have regularly attended church and Sunday school or religious schools, and they wonder why they have never heard these stories before.

The obvious answer is that the stories are not being told. A quick scan of more than two hundred sermons by twentieth-century preachers found only five that featured a biblical woman. Why dont preachers preach and teachers teach more about biblical women?

Lectionary preachers might claim that women rarely appear in the lectionary. It is true that many stories about women are either omitted or truncated; but it is also true that approximately twenty texts about women are used in the three-year cycle of Old Testament lessons. There are also occasions when the prescribed text could easily be expanded to include a womans story.

Sometimes we bypass the stories about women because we think men will not be interested in them. Ironically, we assume that the women who make up two-thirds of most congregations are endlessly fascinated with yet another sermon on Abraham or Moses. If women can learn from the lives of men, why cant men learn from the lives of women?

People who are unfamiliar with these stories often assume that they are uninteresting and not worth preaching. They might think that all biblical women do is have babies, whine, and manipulate men. My experience with these stories has been just the opposite. Students and parishioners find them fascinating. The stories may be strange and difficult, but they are also surprisingly relevant to contemporary issues of warfare, poverty, and justice. They provide a welcome alternative to yet another sermon on the Prodigal Son or the Good Shepherd.

Another reason for caution is that many of the biblical stories that include women are about sex, violence, or sex and violence. Some texts might not be suitable for Sunday morning, but there are other opportunities to present them, particularly in educational settings where conversation can occur. The rape of Tamar might not be appropriate for first-graders, but it is certainly relevant for everyone older than thirteen. Students of Scripture might ask themselves why they are so reluctant to deal with sex and violence in the Bible. Our culture is permeated with sex and violence, and many of us are eager for some kind of biblical perspective on these issues. If the Bible can talk about sex and violence, perhaps we should be willing to do so as well.

Those who choose to explore these texts face some significant challenges. First, people know very little about women in the Old Testament, and what they think they know is often wrong. The first step in studying them, then, is to reexamine what people think they know about the text, particularly the stories about Eve, Bathsheba, Delilah, and Jezebel.

Second, teachers and commentators throughout history and down to today have read their own assumptions (and, often, their own prejudices) into the text. For example, in his commentary on the story of Sarah and Hagar, John Calvin describes Hagar as a stubborn, rebellious slave girl who did not appreciate the privilege of being pregnant with Abrahams child. Naughty Hagar ran away when she did not get her way. She was the sinner in the story. Yet Old Testament scholar Phyllis Trible finds in the same text a very different story about a young woman who was forced into a sexual relationship with a man old enough to be her grandfather. She ran away because Sarah abused her. Trible recognizes that Hagar was not the sinner but the sinned against.