Are Women Treated Badly in the Bible?
The next chapter in the series "The Bible Is for Feminists"
It all started with Eve and that dumb apple. If she hadn’t listened to the serpent and taken a bite, we’d all be naked, free and immortal. Instead, because of her disobedience, God tells her that she and every woman after her will endure painful childbirth and be subject to their husbands. “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (Genesis 3:16)
It doesn’t get any better for women in the New Testament, at least as far as the Apostle Paul is concerned. In Ephesians, he puts women in their subordinate place. “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.” (Ephesians 5:22-24)
Are women treated poorly in the Bible? Are we looking at a misogynistic tome that reduces women to chattel?
Let’s look at the story of the Fall of Man first. Whether you view it as factual or allegorical, it’s important to look at it in its entirety before deciding if it’s misogynistic or not. Eve gets the first dose of punishment from God, and Adam blames her for his own error. But Adam doesn’t get away unscathed. "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, `You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.” (Genesis 3:17)
What if you looked at this story through a unique feminist lens? You could argue that God puts Eve and future women in charge of His most precious creation: human beings. While men have a role, it’s women who carry the children, nurturing and caring for them in utero and post-birth. It’s women who will further God’s kingdom on earth. That’s a pretty awesome responsibility.
Is that a stretch? Perhaps. But if we dwell on anti-female dialog in the Bible, we will search for it in every passage and end up feeling disappointed.
Now let’s take a look at what Paul has to say in Ephesians. Much emphasis is placed on the verses where he tells wives to be submissive to their husbands. As theology expert Andy Patton explains in this article for Truth Over Tribe, verses 22-24 of Ephisians chapter 5 are often read on their own, when in fact the verses before and after those should also be read for full context and to understand the culture at the time they were written.
Here’s the full text of Ephesians 5:21-29:
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29
Patton points out: “In Roman society, husbands had complete authority over their wives, even the power of life and death. Women only had legal status through their husbands. Female submission was backed by the power of law. Men reigned supreme in their households as a king reigns in his country.
“In that context, the sentence in Ephesians 5 about women submitting to their husbands would have been entirely expected by the culture of the day. The things that follow that sentence would have been revolutionary.
“Paul goes on to tell Christian husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church. How did Christ love the church? He served her. He died for her. He submitted himself to death for her sake. Not only that, Paul went on to teach husbands that, rather than having the power of life and death over their wives, their very bodies belonged to their wives….
Rather than being misogynistic, Patton concludes, Paul’s words form “a resistance movement against Roman patriarchy—each Christian home a subversive cell of another way of living, a lived allegiance to another king than Caesar.”
Sure, you can look for signs that a patriarchal group controlled the narrative in the Bible. Even so, you can’t escape the beautiful moments when women are revealed as special beings with different but very important roles to play.