Women at the well

1 Samuel 9:11-17
As they went up the hill to the town, they met some girls coming out to draw water, and said to them, “Is the seer here?” They answered, “Yes, there he is just ahead of you. Hurry; he has come just now to the town, because the people have a sacrifice today at the shrine. As soon as you enter the town, you will find him, before he goes up to the shrine to eat. For the people will not eat until he comes, since he must bless the sacrifice; afterward those eat who are invited. Now go up, for you will meet him immediately.” So they went up to the town. As they were entering the town, they saw Samuel coming out toward them on his way up to the shrine.
Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel: “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be ruler over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines; for I have seen the suffering of my people, because their outcry has come to me.” When Samuel saw Saul, the Lord told him, “Here is the man of whom I spoke to you. He it is who shall rule over my people.”

In every age 

in every place 

women gather

collecting water

sharing wisdom

greeting friends

and strangers

building community 

Unnamed women

gathered around a well

directed a future king

to the prophet who would anoint him

participating in changing the covenant

of God with the people.

And still today

wherever women gather

stories are shared

friends and strangers are welcomed

and the threads of a community

are woven

into a common strand 

that forges connection

and growth

as a new chapter is written

by the women at the well.

A vocation less celebrated

Ruth 1:7-16
So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah. But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.” Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. They said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” But Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.” Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
So she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.”
But Ruth said,
“Do not press me to leave you
or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.

There are three women in the story

Three who set out

when the famine becomes too much

A famine of food

A famine of men.

They set out

for a land where there is promise

A land where there is food

A land where their emptiness

might be filled

Naomi

Ruth

and

Orpah

But at the moment Orpah

chooses another way

her story ends.

Naomi’s kiss

might just as well

be the kiss of death

For somehow Orpah’s choice

is considered less noble

than her sister Ruth’s

Somehow the path Orpah takes

is deemed unworthy

of narration

and her character is written out

of the story.

Or, worse,

conjecture and condemnation

are woven around the silence.

And so Orpah’s  exit

becomes another opportunity

for patriarchal norms 

to be established

and for she who dares

to choose another way

to be obliterated

lest others should follow.

And a legitimate choice,

a vocation every bit as compelling

as her sister’s

is vilified by silence.

Three women 

in the story.

Only two

remain 

a part

of the plot

when the redactor

is done.

So here’s to Orpah

who dared to follow

another way

and to the women today

who do not live up to

expectations imposed

and whose stories

are still not told.

May our curiosity enable us

to see beyond the words we read

and beneath the stories that we hear

to wonder at what is missing

and to facilitate

freedom of choice.

Trail of Destruction

Judges 19:22-24
Gibeah’s Crime
While they were enjoying themselves, the men of the city, a perverse lot, surrounded the house, and started pounding on the door. They said to the old man, the master of the house, “Bring out the man who came into your house, so that we may have intercourse with him.” And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing. Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them; but against this man do not do such a vile thing.”

And there’s more...

Rape became murder...

And, even in death,

the concubine’s body was brutalised 

to send a warning to the tribes of Israel.

A tale too brutal to tell

that echoes patterns repeated

generation after generation

of crimes perpetrated against woman

crimes of violence

that are “normalised”

in cultures where women

are treated as chattel and goods

at the disposal of their male guardians 

When reputations

are valued more highly

than relationships

that’s when women

become collateral 

All that was requested

and required by the culture

to satisfy custom

was a simple act of hospitality,

welcoming the stranger,

providing food and lodging

Instead, the stranger was demonised

and his concubine savaged.

It would be easy

to write this off

as a story

from a different age and culture.

Sadly, it has echoes

in our treatment

of strangers today

and in our scapegoating

of all who are different.

Lord, have mercy...

Woman of means

Judges 16:15-22

Then she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me three times now and have not told me what makes your strength so great.” Finally, after she had nagged him with her words day after day, and pestered him, he was tired to death. So he told her his whole secret, and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head; for I have been a nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If my head were shaved, then my strength would leave me; I would become weak, and be like anyone else.”

When Delilah realized that he had told her his whole secret, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, “This time come up, for he has told his whole secret to me.” Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her, and brought the money in their hands. She let him fall asleep on her lap; and she called a man, and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. He began to weaken, and his strength left him. Then she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” When he awoke from his sleep, he thought, “I will go out as at other times, and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. So the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles; and he ground at the mill in the prison. But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

Delilah

A woman of means

A woman of mystery

A woman loved

A woman who persisted

until she found the way

to undermine the power

of the man who loved her

A woman who disappeared

as stealthily as she entered

with her haul of silver

and a challenge completed.

We may want to condemn her

for her betrayal

for her duplicity 

and deceit

Yet we do not know her story

We cannot grasp the context

in which she operated

or the motives

that drove her actions

We can only marvel

at her resourcefulness

her persistence

and her strength

in the midst of a culture 

whose decline into depravity

is manifest in the treatment

and status of its women

a culture in which women

are usually the victims of violence

rather than the perpetrators.

Delilah - 

A woman who escaped the bondage

of her place in society 

and modelled strength

every bit as powerful

as her lover’s.

Saved by a beauty queen

Esther 2:17
the king loved Esther more than all the other women; of all the virgins she won his favour and devotion, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti. 

Esther 4:13-17
Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.” Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.

Esther 9:19
Therefore the Jews of the villages, who live in the open towns, hold the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day for gladness and feasting, a holiday on which they send gifts of food to one another.

As our Jewish neighbours celebrate Purim, hearing the Megillah (the scroll of Esther) read aloud, making a noise when Haman’s name is mentioned, caring for the needy in community and sharing food, the bravery of Esther is remembered and celebrated.

Esther

Chosen for her beauty

Remembered for her courage

Offering her love

and her vulnerability

putting her life on the line

to save her people.

Risking all that she had

Daring to make her approach

Knowing that her beauty

was not enough to save her

Instead, she harnessed the petitions

of her people to God

and bravely put herself

in harms way

so that evil might be turned around

and justice might prevail.

Wise enough

to be subversive

No head on confrontation 

Instead, she lured her enemy

further and further

into feeling secure

until there was nowhere

for him to run.

She did the ground work

used her wisdom creatively

and won freedom

for all her people.

Esther

Queen of beauty

Wise beyond words

Saviour of the persecuted.

God’s chosen one

For such a time...

Believing women

Throughout the season of Lent, I’m reflecting on women in the Bible - 

named, unnamed, known and hidden...

Judges 13:8-12

Then Manoah entreated the Lord, and said, “O Lord, I pray, let the man of God whom you sent come to us again and teach us what we are to do concerning the boy who will be born.” God listened to Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field; but her husband Manoah was not with her. So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, “The man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.” Manoah got up and followed his wife, and came to the man and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to this woman?” And he said, “I am.” Then Manoah said, “Now when your words come true, what is to be the boy’s rule of life; what is he to do?”

An unnnamed woman

Manoah’s wife

Chosen to mother one

who would deliver the people 

from the hands of oppressors

Approached by an angel

with the joyful tidings

of the birth of hope

and instructed on how

to raise the son she would bear.

But the word of a woman

was not enough

Her husband had to hear for himself

demanding that God’s messenger revisit

and detaining the messenger

until he too, had heard

what the woman had already shared.

Yet she would be the one

adopting the spiritual practices

and teaching them to her son.

She would be the one 

carrying

delivering

and raising

Samson

the one born

to begin the rescue

of the people of God

She would be the one

submitting her life

to the ways directed by God

for the well-being of her child

and the redemption of the people.

Just another woman

whose word was not believed

whose sacrifice

was not acknowledged

whose name we do not know...

What God requires???

Judges 11:29-40
Jephthah’s Vow
Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh. He passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.” So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them; and the Lord gave them into his hand. He inflicted a massive defeat on them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty towns, and as far as Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel.
Jephthah’s Daughter
Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child; he had no son or daughter except her. When he saw her, he tore his clothes, and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.” She said to him, “My father, if you have opened your mouth to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.” And she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: Grant me two months, so that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, my companions and I.” “Go,” he said and sent her away for two months. So she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity on the mountains. At the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to the vow he had made. She had never slept with a man. So there arose an Israelite custom that for four days every year the daughters of Israel would go out to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

The selflessness of a woman

who has not yet lived

who has not yet been given in marriage
(as her patriarchal culture norms demanded)

who has not yet borne a child

and watched her offspring grow

The selflessness of a woman

who considers her father’s promise to God

more important than her own life

The selflessness of a woman

who asks only for time with her friends

before she lays down her life

Time to wander the mountains

and mourn the future

she will never know

We do not know her name

Only her fate

and her selflessness

And the perversity of a culture

who praised her father

who kept his vow

at the cost of his daughter’s life

We do not know her name

but her friends

who wandered the mountains with her

and who gathered in memory

year after year

They knew her name

and they kept her memory alive

remembering her sacrifice

as they gathered in lament

And, though they were powerless

to prevent the death

of the daughter of Jephthah

surely part of their gathering to lament

also involved finding agency

to ensure that the lives of women

would be worth more

than a man’s promise to God?