Womanist Midrash 2-Genesis

Wow!  Mind blown!

I thought I had at least a general grasp of Genesis and the stories it contains.  After reading Wil Gafney's translation and interpretation and explanation (Midrash) I really feel as if I knew next to nothing about the Genesis stories or the women who lived them.

There is a lot of information in this first section of the book.  Looking at the stories of women from the womanist perspective with all the knowledge and experience that Gafney brings to this text is amazing.

Even the first two chapters of Genesis held surprises.  By looking at the Hebrew, which specifies gender with at least some verbs - God is presented as creating (using the male tense) and hovering/pulsing over the waters (using the female tense).  The earthling which God created in chapter 2 is neither male nor female until God takes a side (not a rib) from it. Then the sides of the one being become male and female so they can help each other.  The text translated to refer to woman as the helper of the man uses the same word used to refer to God helping Israel.  People have used this to belittle the woman's role - but that was not the original meaning.  Translators in the past have been fairly loose with when they used the name Adam and when the text may have been referring to adamah - or the earth creature(s), and that, too, can change the whole feel of the story. Even the whole temptation story  is different when the snake remains a snake (not being the devil in disguise) and the "you" the snake questions is the plural you.  God's response to the temptation and disobedience is to 'reconfigure creation' so that snakes now have to crawl in the dirt and can no longer speak. This is not the same as a curse. Gafney presents many ideas new to me and definitely worth pondering.

I would love to go through all the female characters found in Genesis and share at least some of the insights from this book - but that would be much too long. I have included some insights below.  Gafney points out that, in a culture so dominated by patriarchy, it is amazing how many named women there are in the Pentateuch.  She also brings to the reader's attention how many of women, and even men, are listed by their mother's name not their father's.  Our views of ancient Israel as patriarchal, monogamous, monotheist etc. are not necessarily found in the text itself.  Our esteeming of some of the earliest "heroes" of the first testament (as she calls it) is not because they were, necessarily, morally strong nor pure. Many religions tell stories of the greatness of their founders, eliminating stories that show any frailty or fault; but our Bible is full of fully flawed humans, making mistakes and poor choices, and being used by God anyway.  I think this allows us to enter more fully into the story of God's work with humanity, but I digress.

The thirteen named women from Genesis that Gafney discusses include the familiar, Eve, Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah. They also include some I have never heard of before, Like Adah, Zillah, Keturah, and Asenath.  There are also others, like "Abraham's lesser wives", who are not named but still came as a surprise.

In general it is fascinating to see the movement from one couple, made from one creature, in the garden of Eden, through Adah and Zillah and their husband Lamech who instituted polygamy, to the stories of the women surrounding Abraham.  I did not realize he had six children with another woman, Keturah, after Sarah died. The story then goes on to Isaac and Rebekah where she seems to "rule the roost" and deception seems to become quite normal. Jacob deceives Esau.  Rebekah helps Jacob deceive Isaac. Rachel and Leah's father, Laban, deceives Jacob.  Jacob deceives him and so on. Then of course are all the stories of the women who were not given any choice, like Hagar/Hajar, Bilhah, and Zilpah who were used as "womb-slaves" - forced to have intercourse with their mistress' husband and bear children that would not be called their own. Think of  Bilhah, first sexually enslaved to Laban and forced to do his will, then given to Rachel who makes her sleep with, and have children with, Jacob. Another name, unfamiliar to me, is Asenath. This is the daughter of a priest of On, given to Joseph by the Pharoah in appreciation for his loyalty and service to Egypt during the famine. Here we have a woman of status and of African origin who mothered two of the twelve tribes of Israel yet is a lesser known Biblical character.

Throughout all these stories we see power and powerlessness.  We see and hear sexual servitude and forced surrogacy over and over again.  We see incestuous relationships.  We see regular, flawed, people living sometimes extremely difficult lives.  What a fascinating new look at an old book.

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I couldn't resist adding some bits of info from some of the stories as a kind of epilogue:

After Eve, the next women mentioned in Genesis are  Adah and Zillah.  I have to admit I had never heard of these two wives of Lamech. They begin an era of polygamy.  Prior to this there wasn't even a term for marriage - and now it is marriage to more than one woman. It sounds like Lamech was not a nice person - identifying with and justifying Cain as murderer as well as implementing and justifying polygamy.  I guess this is why he hasn't made it into the usual Sunday School lessons.

Na'amah is the daughter of Zillah, but that is all we know about her.  Her brothers and half brothers are known as the fathers of : All tent-dwelling women and man and all shepherding women and men (through Jabal); All women and men who take up the lyre and/or the flute (through Jubal); All bronze-workers and iron workers (through Tubal-Cain); but even though she has no such heritage, her name is preserved in this "paradigm-shifting family." Curious.

We then move on to Sarah (formerly know as Sarai).  This woman married her brother, Abram (who became Abraham). It never says that Abram/Abraham loved her. Just that they were married and she was very beautiful, and she was barren. Their married life involved a lot of travelling, first at the decision of their father, Terah, then later because Abram felt the call.  During this time Sarai, presented as Abram's sister, not his woman, was taken into servitude by foreign kings, and they paid the price when the truth was revealed.  The sexual nature of the servitude has been glossed over in the  past, as has the financial profit Abraham probably made from the transactions. Sarah's story continues, but while she is often heralded as a mother of faith, we would question her treatment of Hagar.

Hagar is a Hebrew masculine, derogatory term meaning something like foreign thing. This was probably not her given name.  Hajar, in the Islamic tradition, has a wide range of possible meanings including "Splendid" and "Nourishing". Some even think she was the daughter of the pharaoh, who mistakenly bought Sarah from Abraham, not knowing she was his wife.  This story has the princess given to Sarah as compensation for the Pharoah's error.  What a difference in perception - princess or slave - or the movement from one to the other.  Unfortunately this selling/giving of women was not uncommon nor frowned upon in the culture of the day.  Selling daughters or sisters was an acceptable way for a man to get himself out of financial trouble. What a weird juxtoposition - on one hand we see families where the women were the head, where they made the decisions and their name was the one carried by their sons and daughters.as identifiers.  On the other hand girls were easily sold as sex slaves, womb slaves (to carry children who would be claimed as those of their mistress) or just slaves.  If they were sold, they did not get the same right as male slaves to liberation in the year of Jubilee. This all boggles my mind. The culture of that time is beyond my comprehension.  How did these women survive?

Then we meet Rebekah (Rivqah).  In my mind she was the young woman convinced by a servant to travel to marry Isaac.  With her research and studies of ancient texts and language, Gafney presents Rebekah as "one of the most dominant matriarchs in the Israelite story". Rebekah comes from a line of matriarchs - her father is identified as the son of Milcah, Abraham & Sarah's niece (and sister-in-law).  She is given the choice as to whether or not she wants to go and marry this unknown relative and live in a place and way determined by her new husband. She is seen as barren, until, finally, she gives birth to twins. She does not approve of her son, Esau's, choice of Hittite wives.  She prefers her younger son and contrives a way to get him the blessing owed his older brother. She is an active mover in the Israelite story.

I had not heard of Qeturah(Keturah).  She was another woman Abraham took to mother children for him. Gafney posits that Keturah may be the one woman that Abraham picked for himself. Maybe this, at last, was relationship where they could relax and enjoy each other's company.  We really don't know. Abraham and Keturah had six children together, some of whom became nations in their own right, nations that had "complicated relationships" with the nation of Israel throughout history. It is strange to me that I had not heard her name before this book.

"Abraham's lesser wives" received nothing as inheritance - but received gifts while he was still alive.  I did not know about "lesser wives".  How many wives did Abraham have? I wonder about their stories.

Rachel is beautiful and conniving and the chosen beloved of Jacob. She is smart and knows traditional (herbal) medicine. Unfortunately she also has trouble conceiving. Genesis holds a story  of Rachel that parallels Sarah's story - of her being mistakenly taken by the head of state who believed her available. She is the one who steals her father's idols. She forces her slave, Bilhah, who had been her father's slave, to bear children for her.  Interestingly, Gafney wonders if the first "switch" at the altar was actually Rachel's idea - Inspired imagination at work.  Would Rachel have wanted to stay in her father's house? Interesting possibility.

Leah is not beautiful or brilliant but she is loving and loyal.  She keeps bearing children for Jacob even when it is obvious he prefers her sister. When even this doesn't bring Jacob's love, she offers her slave, Zilpah, to give him more children.

Asenath, the Egyptian woman married to Joseph, has children claimed as Israelite, even though the matriarchal line would make them Egyptian.She is "one of a number of non-Israelite women to partner with significant patriarchs in the Israelite ancestry."

There is so much more to these stories - life was definitely not easy or straight forward for women back then.  There is so much for us to learn - but this at least introduces some of the Genesis women.