Women and Religion in Israel
Posted by Bronwen Manning on September 17, 2008 under Biblical Hebrew | 
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The Difference between King David and his great-grandmother Ruth
It is true to say the two subjects, women and religion, do not hold a central role in the religious history of the Israelites. Israel was a patrilineal society were men made the rules and wrote the history of their nation. In this history and especially in the Psalms, we have a great deal of insight into the character of King David; his inner-struggles, feeling of failure, his heights of joy and his ultimate faith in God. However, we do not have the same revelation into the character of King David’s great grandmother for example, the young Moabite women Ruth who forsook all she knew and adopted her mother-in-law’s traditions and religion. Surely her thoughts and fears were as noteworthy?
Negative Picture of Women in Worship
The silence in the book of Ruth for a female voice is prevalent throughout the entire Bible. In fact, there is evidence that women and worship were viewed in a negative light. We hear of the women who wail over the death of Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14) and who weave goods for the Asherah (2 Kings 23:7). The women who bake cakes for the Queen of Heaven (Jeremiah 7:17) and infamous characters like the soothsayer known as the Witch of Endor (1 Sam 28). All these activities are framed as illegal in the eyes of the Bible writers, who emphasised the prohibition of idol worship which was a later idea that developed in Israelite thought.
Refocus the Lens
Seeing that this religious history was penned by men (who had grave misgivings of women’s menstruation for example), it is necessary to refocus the lens and try to assess the role of women in religion on its true merits.
Let us take, for example, the first example given above – the illegal activity of wailing for the god Tammuz. Firstly note that Ezekiel 8 records that the women are in the Temple. They are, in fact, performing a religious mourning ceremony that is not only considered acceptable to them but also to those who pass them by in the Temple precinct. Their function plays a large role in the agricultural cycle and the desire for new rain. It can be assumed since this group of women was organized inside the Temple to ensure success for the next agricultural season, that what they were doing was no mystery and was not met with disbelief on the part of the people. Neither the women, nor the general populace wrote this passage. It was written by a man who felt it illegal.
Temple and War in a Woman’s World
Temple and War may seem to be two areas were we can safely say women had no part – but this would not be true. Not only do we have passages that relate of the consecrated women working and worshipping in the Jerusalem Temple (often mistranslated as temple-prostitutes!) but we also see them functioning in the sanctuary at Shiloh and the tent of the Tabernacle in the desert (Hosea 4:13-15, 1 Sam 2.22, Exodus 38:8).
Women also played a huge psychological part in war. It was their role to go out and encourage the men with singing and clapping. We have Miriam and Deborah leading triumphant victory dances (Exodus 15:20-2; Judges 5:12) and history of past cultures shows us how women even followed men to the Battlefields to care and encourage.
Women participated mostly in what can be classified as domestic religion, those issues that touch their lives, reproduction, health and illness, the changing seasons, worship and the affects of war. Unfortunately, these issues never became mainstream and were largely ignored by the writers of the Bible who became concerned with the new One God Alone movement. The writers thus sought to pass judgment on the activities of the past, in light of the new revelation of the oneness of God. The small voice in the Bible of women in religion thus took on its detrimental character and the creative and varied role of women in Israelite religion was forgotten.
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