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Imagine, if you can, that you are a Hittite… All right, you can be an Assyrian or a Babylonian, if you prefer. Now, recall your creation myth…
No?
I agree, it’s very hard to imagine what it would have felt like to live in such an ancient culture. So let me help you. You (the ancient Hittite, Assyrian or Babylonian) know quite well how the world was made. You have stories that teach you that. They involve gods, monsters, and lots of fighting. The earth is a by-product of cosmic battle. And humans were created to be the slaves of the gods. Oh, and depending on which particular myth your culture believes, the world might have been made out of the half-carcass of a sea-monster.
So if you (the Hittite, Assyrian or Babylonian) happened to run into someone from ancient Israel—someone who has the creation stories that we have in our Bible today—and if you had happened to compare creation stories with them, you’d have fallen off your chair in shock. Because the story they would tell you involves only one God, no fighting, and humans made to rule not to be slaves.
Okay, you can stop pretending that you’re pretending to be a Hittite now. What relevance does all this have to our question about women and leadership? Well, one of the most surprising things about the creation accounts that we have in our Bibles in Genesis 1, 2 and 3, is what they teach us about men and women. And we understand that better if we can, briefly, look at them through the eyes of the majority culture of the world that they were written in.
So here’s a brief tour of some of the things that God tells us through these chapters. Oh, and along the way we might debunk some modern myths as well.
In Genesis 1 we read these words:
God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them. (Gen 1:27-28, NRSV)
In Assyria, Babylon, and most of the other ancient cultures of Old Testament times, if you asked who bore the image of their god, they’d point to their king. It was the monarch who claimed to be the living representation of the deity. (And can you imagine the power and control that follows such a claim?) By contrast, Genesis tells us that humankind is in the image of God.
But it’s not just men who are described here. That in itself would have been a pretty radical move – that the ploughboy, the peasant farmer are made in the image of God. In fact, though, the text is much more radical. In a world where women didn’t really count, where they were commonly just chattels, and where texts usually employed masculine language, here we see something astonishing. Women as well as men are made in the image of God.
Quite honestly, left to his own devices, our author would never have written these words. For this remarkable statement to have been written into the text required the very deliberate and intentional intervention of the God who did indeed make women in his image.
Flanking this remarkable verse we find an equally surprising idea, stated twice. Let humankind have dominion (vv. 26 and 28). Sadly, this is sometimes mistaken for a mandate to dominate—to hunt animals to extinction, pollute the rivers or exploitatively extract minerals from the earth. But seen rightly, it is about caring for God’s world in his way, after his loving pattern. It is a ‘vice-regency’, a position of dignity and trust. Oh, and because verse 27 has spelled it out for us, we know that it’s a position given to women as well as men.
Now, we all know that this isn’t the pattern that follows. In Genesis 3, after the moment of disobedience that we often refer to as ‘the Fall’, God sadly describes how—along with all the other good gifts of God that are now unravelling—relations between men and women are going to be marked by the will to dominate. His words are often mischaracterised as a curse rather than a sad lament over the consequences of humanity’s refusal to live in God’s good ways. (Note that the ‘curse’ word is not used here, contrary to popular belief.) Probably the best translation is this:
You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you. (Gen 3:16, NET)
This is the consequence of the Fall. Just as the human body will now constantly tend towards death, so all our relationships will tend to be marred by a constant will to power. And because men are physically stronger, by and large there will be male dominance.
And this, indeed, is the pattern that we see going forward. In the very next chapter of Genesis we encounter a vengeful man who threatens his wives (plural) with his violent boasts (Gen 4:23-24). Read on into the Old Testament and it is unafraid to highlight to us just how badly men can treat women. (Note that the text doesn’t glory in this violence, but honestly represents it to us.) But this was never in God’s good design, and we know this because of what we read in Genesis 1.
But what about Genesis 2? This is often characterised as setting out a very different perspective on men and women. Isn’t Eve created from a ‘spare-rib’ to be a ‘helper’ to Adam? Isn’t the ‘default human’ a man? Isn’t gender hierarchy baked in from the very beginning, according to this chapter?
No.
This idea comes from a misunderstanding about two important Hebrew words in the chapter. The two words are ezer and tsela. Bear with me.
In Genesis 2:18, God identifies that the human needs a ‘helper’ – an ezer. Now, we often imagine that this means something like a PA. Or a housekeeper. Someone who keeps things running smoothly while the Great Man does his Important Work. But the word ezer is used more often of God than of anyone else in Scripture. So it can’t mean that, can it?
The reason it’s used of God is because, at its core, the word ezer refers to military assistance—the arrival of reinforcements. (The warfare metaphor is commonly used of God in the Old Testament.) This is why, for example, the psalmist prays,
I lift my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come?
My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. (Ps 121:1, NRSV)
So an ezer is not a housekeeper or a PA. (This is not to denigrate those who are called to such a service. It’s just that it’s important we don’t identify such roles as ‘women’s work’.) An ezer is someone who lends a strong right arm to a shared task. An ezer is a partner in the struggle.
But how does that fit with the ‘spare-rib’ idea? Because we often tend to read this as if the default human is male, and Eve is sort of ‘cloned’ from a bit of his body that he didn’t need. Once again, this stems from a misunderstanding of the Hebrew. The word often translated ‘rib’ is tsela, and it doesn’t really mean ‘rib’. In fact, the only place in the Old Testament where this gets translated ‘rib’ is in Gen 2:21. Which rather suggests that it’s a bit of an idiosyncratic translation.
Now, it’s true, you will have seen ‘tsela’s in a butcher’s shop. But they aren’t sitting in a tray along with the cutlets and bits of offal. They are hanging up in the back room, awaiting further attention. Because a tsela is used to refer to the whole side of an animal.
The word can also be used for other things that are composed of two symmetrical sides. The Tabernacle, for example (Exod 26:20), or the ark of the covenant (Exod 25:12). Or even, the parallel sides of a valley (e.g. 2 Sam 16:13).
So what are we to envisage, as the author of Genesis 2 describes this moment? We are supposed to see a proto-human creature cleaved in half by the loving hand of the creator, making two new equal and corresponding individuals. Male and female. A perfect fit, a perfect match. This is why, as Adam wakes up and beholds his helper, he declares, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh’ (v.23).
So there you have it. There is nothing in these primal stories that demeans women—that characterises them as weak, inferior, or intended to be subordinated to men. Quite the opposite. The Creator of the world and divine Author of the text has wrestled the hand of the human writer to overcome his cultural instincts, in order to make this clear.
So hold your head up high, friend. You are made in the image of the Living God.
About Helen
Helen Paynter PhD is a Baptist minister who serves as tutor in biblical studies at the Bristol Baptist College. She is the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence (csbvbristol.org.uk). She is author of a number of books and articles, including ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers: A biblical theology of human violence’, and ‘The Bible Doesn’t Tell Me So: Why you don’t have to submit to domestic abuse and coercive control’. She lives in Bristol with her husband, and they have three adult daughters.
