Women in the Bible (Part I)

What I would really like to post about is women in the Bible, but to do that subject justice may take a few days’ worth of blogging.
I have posted about Adam and Eve before, but let me just point out quickly that they were in it together. She gets the blame for ‘original sin,’ but he followed right behind her. In First Timothy 2:13-15, Paul makes the point that Adam was formed first, and then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but Eve was. Is that supposed to make me feel better about being a man? She was deceived, she didn’t know that what she was doing was wrong; if Adam wasn’t deceived, then he did know he was doing wrong, but he went ahead and did it anyway! Besides that, where was he when the serpent was talking to Eve? Why was he not there protecting his beloved?
The Bible doesn’t tell us much about Noah’s wife, and even less about Noah’s sons’ wives, but they must have been faithful women to go on board the ark.
Sarah was a faithful woman, although she has been criticized for laughing at the thought of having a child in her old age. Still, I don’t think Abraham believed any more then she did, he just was able to keep from laughing out loud. Of course, that may have had something to do with the fact that Abraham was sitting face to face with God, while Sarah was inside the tent—she may have thought that, in human form, God wouldn’t be able to hear her.
Abraham’s son, Isaac, married a woman named Rebekah. I blogged about her and her sons Jacob and Esau just recently.
Jacob had two wives, Rachel and Leah. The Bible says that Rachel was well favored, but Leah was tender-eyed. I’m not sure what it means to be tender-eyed (my guess would be she had allergies or maybe she just had very expressive eyes and looked at things tenderly), but I’m pretty sure that Rachel was very attractive and Leah, well, maybe Leah had nice eyes (and maybe she didn’t). One thing we know about the two women is that when Jacob took them away from their father’s house, Rachel stole some of her father’s idols. Why we would she do that? She knew that it wasn’t the custom of Jacob’s family to worship idols. Leah didn’t take any. Maybe Rachel just didn’t feel comfortable with only one God, yet. I’m tempted to comment that one should beware pretty women, but that’s not fair. Lot’s of good-looking women have been faithful to God, even though a few have not been; and lots of ugly women have gone very much against the commandments of God. The thing is, that we are naturally biased towards people whom we find attractive. A pretty women (or a handsome man) that wants to create problems can create a lot of problems, especially if she is subtle about it; but one that wants to do good, can do a lot of good, also.
Moses’ sister Miriam was a prophetess, but she got herself into trouble once because she spoke out against Moses’ wife, Zipporah. If that were the worst we have to say against Miriam, though, I would have to say she did pretty good. Very few of the men in the Bible only messed up once…
Rahab was a harlot, but she hid the Israeli spies from the soldiers at Jericho, and she and her family were spared. I would assume that she wasn’t a harlot anymore after that.
Deborah was a prophetess, who led the army of Israel into war, because the general had it in his head that she, being more easily led of God than he was, would be better able to ensure victory. There was a great victory that day, and the enemy of Israel was killed by another woman (not Deborah, a woman named Jael).
--More tomorrow

Zipporah

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been left stranded on the island of misfit toys. Whenever I feel that way, I pray about it, and God reminds me of some of the reasons why I belong on the island of misfit toys. Nobody’s perfect, especially not me. Some of the people in the Bible seem like they shouldn’t have been there at all, and yet, God knew the hearts of these people, and He knew where they belonged.
Zipporah is one of those people. For those of you who don’t know, Zipporah was Moses’ wife. When Moses was forty years old, he came to the realization that he was where he was to deliver the Children of Israel. I’m not sure that he really wanted to, but he knew that was why God put him where he was. To make a long story short, Moses ran away. He went and joined himself to a group of Midianites living in or near Ethiopia. One of these was a wise old man named Jethro who had a daughter named Zipporah. Moses lived with the Midianites for forty years. God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, and sent Moses back to Egypt, and Moses went, taking his wife and children with him. If Moses was reluctant, Zipporah was even more so. These were her people only by marriage; I don’t think she had ever been to Egypt before, and she certainly wasn’t familiar with Hebrews (other than Moses). Somewhere in between Midian and Egypt, God reminded Moses that He had commanded circumcision for all Israeli males, back during Abraham’s time. Moses, living “among the heathen” as it were, had never circumcised his own son. Zipporah really didn’t know anything about this; it was not the custom of her people, and as far as she was concerned, it was just mutilating a baby. And Gershom wasn’t a baby any more. God threatened to kill Moses, and Zipporah performed the circumcision herself. I think it’s safe to say that her religious conversion was complete at this point. She became very angry with Moses at this point, but she stayed with him, and I don’t believe there’s any record of another disagreement between the two of them after that (I’m sure there were some, just not major enough to write down). Later on, Moses’ sister Miriam criticized Moses for marrying Zipporah on the grounds that she was not an Israeli. God struck Miriam with leprosy, but then healed her at Moses’ request.
Of course, the mere fact that God sided with Zipporah against the prophetess Miriam is a good indication of where Zipporah’s heart was. I think it’s also important to look back over her life and see what she had to go through to get to that point. If God had demanded circumcision for Moses’ sons while they were still in Midian, she probably would’ve had a much harder time accepting it. As it was, it seemed that God had to go against Moses to get her to follow the commandments that God had given the Israelites. Could God have used Moses to deliver Israel while Moses had an unbelieving wife? God is God, He can do anything, but Moses was skittish enough about what he had to do with his wife’s support; imagine what it would have been like for Moses if he spent his days arguing with Pharaoh and his nights arguing with Zipporah. Really, God did Moses a favor by almost killing him.
The most important thing that we have to look at in Zipporah’s life is that she started out living one kind of life, and ended up living a completely different lifestyle. There’s no real indication that she even realized that the way she was living wasn’t going to cut it. God had to deal with her pretty strongly to get her attention. She was not as flexible as she really should have been, but it ended up being okay. We need to be flexible, ready to do what God would have us to do, able to change as the need arises. There’s a song that they play on the radio, one of the lyrics is, “The way it always was, is no longer good enough.” It’s important to understand that, you may have been comfortable with your lifestyle for years, but then God has something else in mind for you. But I don’t want to change. Miriam didn’t want to leave Midian; Moses didn’t want to leave Pharaoh’s palace, Lot’s wife didn’t want to leave Sodom (how could you not want to leave Sodom? She had grown comfortable there), but it’s not about being comfortable.