FREE ESSAY ON WOMEN IN GENESIS

WOMEN IN GENESIS

As a collective human element, women in Genesis often appear as obstacles to God's broad
overriding goals through noncompletion of their particular roles in the divine scheme.
From the Garden of Eden right through to the story of Joseph, women, as wives, mothers,
and daughters, are typically unreliable, inadequate, deceitful or, simply by virtue of
their womanhood, an outright liability, and they frequently threaten to undermine God's
will as it is expressed in the opening book of the Bible. 
God's first instruction to a human being occurs during the initial telling of the
creation story in Genesis. Adam and Eve have the mutual responsibility to be fruitful and
multiply, fill the earth and subdue it(1:28). However, it is really the second narrative,
detailing the creation of man and woman that establishes God's structure of the world. In
this structure, Eden is created for the first man, Adam, who has one basic function, to
work and guard Eden (2:15), and only one prohibition, to abstain from the fruit of the
Tree of Knowledge (2:16). Starting right from Genesis, in this additional description of
the Eden story, tension already arises between Eve, the first biblical woman, and the
divine process. Duped by the serpent, she not only succumbs and eats the forbidden fruit,
but also encourages Adam to join her, thereby causing their expulsion. Thus, God is
forces to confront human intractability from the very beginning of his quest, and the
first instance comes from a woman, the very creature created to solidify Edenic
perfection. God had intended Eden to be a self-contained universe, a paradise for Adam
where he would live comfortably without toil or hardship. By disobeying, and then
including Adam in her crime, Eve indirectly causes his punishment: a life that requires
him to labor for his sustenance. Eve was created to be her husband's helpmate (2:20);
instead she turns out to be a catalyst for his demise and the cause of humankind's
expulsion from the Utopia. In the creation story, the satisfaction of both God and human
are at stake. God aims to realize his will in the world, and the happiness and the
content of humanity hinge on God's ability to realize his plan. Eve is created to
complete Eden. But, instead of conforming to God's plan, she is a stumbling block to the
construction of the divinely conceived universe. 
The idea that God is striving to create an ideal world recurs in Genesis. And in many
instances, as in the case of Eve, it is a woman who impedes the fulfillment of God's
vision. However, disobedient actions are not always the mode of obstruction. Sara and
Rachel threaten God's plan with their infertility. Although the text does not explicitly
blame the matriarchs for their inability to conceive, they are involuntarily liable for
not propagating. In every instance, it is the women, rather than their husbands or God,
who are passively the physical barriers to conception. God, the narrative explains opens
wombs when he so chooses. But closed wombs are never stated to be the result of God's
initiative. And, even if conception is perceived as God's intervention, it is significant
that infertility in the text is always a result of women's, rather than men's, faulty
anatomical equipment, making infertility an inescapable female problem. Propagation is a
central these in Genesis. 
In the Noah story, which is God's attempt to reconstruct the world after the first few
generations of humankind have proven incorrigible, God commands Noah to be fruitful and
multiply (9:1) immediately after Noah emerges from the ark. Clearly, the production of
offspring is integral to the divine conception of this world, just as it was in Genesis
1. And later in Genesis, when God sets out to build his chosen people, part of his
blessing to Abraham is to make his offspring as abundant as the dust of the earth
(13:16). Women are the obvious vessels necessary for the realization of the blessing.
Thus, any women who does not conceive is in direct opposition to both God's desire to
populate the world in general through Noah and his descendants, and his aspiration to see
his select nation flourish. And culpability is not an issue. The narrative voice in
Genesis is objective. The biblical tone ascribes neither guilt nor vindication, despite
the desperate pleas of many of these women for children. Fertility is the divine right of
the male establishment, and barren women are the material obstacles to the acquisition of
this divine inheritance. The text does not dwell explicitly on the significance of
barrenness. Instead, barrenness is presented as a straightforward problem, much like a
technical glitch that requires either a major or a minor repair. In the case of God's
specific goals for a select nation headed by the patriarch Abraham, Sara's infertility
most severely jeopardizes God's plan. Not only does she impede the perpetuation of the
Abraham line; her infertility also prevents the possibility of any progeny inheriting her
husband's legacy and breeds dissension in the House of Abraham. Sara, with her
infertility, also falls short of her marital duties and belittles the blessing. It is
very difficult for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham if Abraham's wife does not
become pregnant. Sara tries to compensate for her inadequacy with a gesture that seems
altruistic. She gives her maidservant, Hagar, to Abraham. But all that does is circumvent
her obligation, create rivalry, and produce and Abram line that is divided and at war
throughout the remainder of the book of Genesis. 
The barrenness of Rachel similarly jeopardizes God's goals and, more particularly, their
family legacy. She endures an infertility crisis not dissimilar to the former travails of
her husband's grandmother. Like Sara, Rachel tries to overcome her inferiority as a
barren wife by offering her maidservant in her stead. However, this measure does not
alleviate her grief, and the text goes on to describe a transaction wherein Rachel, in
the hope of conceiving, haggles with her sister Leah over a plant thought to be an
aphrodisiac with fertility powers. Rachel, in despair, pleads with Jacob to Give me
children - otherwise I am dead (30:1). Despite her willingness to bear children, Rachel
presents an obstacle to the value of fertility. Although she does not pose the extreme
threat that Sara presented, since Jacob sires children through Leah and his two
concubines, her infertility still represents a serious obstacle to both her universal and
her particular function as child bearer. Hence, the values in Genesis are contravened by
yet another woman who does not conform to the female archetype of fertile mother. While
fertility is an overriding value in God's human construct that women in Genesis threaten
to undermine, women also obstruct the natural course of history which God has set in
motion as part of his ideal world. After God reconstructs the world through Noah and then
Abraham, the divine element recedes from the world slightly, and a natural historical
course begins to play out through the momentum that God has initiated. The first incident
in Genesis in which a woman interferes with this momentum involves Rebecca, who
intervenes on behalf of her second born son, Jacob. The second involves Leah who heavily
veils herself, tricks Jacob, and takes her younger sister's place under the bridal
canopy. As a result of Rebecca's manipulative directives, Jacob, the younger son,
inherits the divine blessing from Isaac, though it is clear from the text that Jacob's
brother, Esau, had been Isaac's favored child. Rebecca's actions are subversive because
they result in the violation of the law of primogeniture that seems to have been the
standard practice of inheritance in the book of Genesis. And by reassigning the
inheritance, Rebecca threatens to destroy the course of event's God has anticipated en
route to the creation of his select nation. While the text shows that Rebecca had
received a prophecy that the older would serve the younger (25:23), whenever women in
Genesis take assertive actions that ramifications, strife always ensues. Just because
Rebecca received a prophecy, there is no indication that she was in any position to
actively seek its fulfillment. Jacob, as a result of his mother's initiative, is forced
to flee his home for fear that Esau will kill him. The enmity between the brothers
endures, and just as Sara's infertility caused familial dissension, Rebecca's actions
likewise cause divisiveness in the House of Isaac and its descendents.
Unlike the instances where the men in Genesis take the fate of their families' lives into
their own hands under explicit direction from God, the rare occasions when women, such as
Sara and Rebecca, take assertive action, the result is battles and feuds. As in the case
of infertility, a woman's inheritance with the divine scheme can be seen as a multiple
threat to the thematic framework of Genesis. Rebecca takes assertive, independent action
with regard to her family's development, and this action clearly crosses over the rigid
boundaries of the prescribed female role. She also threatens to shake the patriarchal
foundations that are so essential to the divine value system in Genesis. Furthermore she
does not act exclusively as a wife or mother, but as an agent of change, an actor in the
course of history. The unfolding of God's plan depends on the male actors. God reveals
himself to humans and shares his vision of the world with humans. Rebecca steps outside
her limited role, becomes a primary actor, manipulates the divinely initiated course of
history, and causes fraternal hostility and the jealousy which becomes one of the ongoing
plagues for her children and their future generations. Passive manipulation is more
ambiguous but similarly problematic in regard to the first marriage of Jacob. The text
explains that it was Laban who took Leah, his daughter (29:23) and put her into the
marital bed instead of Rachel, the bride of Jacob was expecting. However, whether she
willingly, or even complicity, fulfils Laban's plan, Leah is nonetheless the key agent in
a plan to divert the family history as it is anticipated by the text.
For seven years, Jacob toiled for Sara. She was his intended bride. And, as the text
later demonstrates, it is Rachel who gives birth to the heir of the Abram blessing,
proving that she is the real matriarch destined to produce the next generation of
leadership for God's select people. However, Leah supplants Rachel and becomes a
stumbling block to Jacob's destined union. Though it is her father who is portrayed as
the villain, Leah is not blameless and she receives retribution. She is forever unloved
by her husband, and her children are denied the divine blessing. Her role may only be of
passive conspirator but she is still the faulty link in this ordained history. And, like
Eve, Sara, Rebecca, and Rachel, Leah has the potential to ruin the human universe that
God, in Genesis, is painstakingly trying to build. Leah's trickery might be overlooked as
a daughter's compliance to a cunning father if it did not indirectly produce one of the
most controversial episodes in the book of Genesis: the rape of Dina. 
Of all the mothers of Jacob's children, it is Leah who gives birth to Dina. The text
suggests that complications arise when divinely ordained roles are tampered with. Leah,
the usurper of her sister's nuptials, is not only weak eyed (20:17) and unloved (29:31)
in the text, but also the mother of Jacob's only daughter, the one that turns out to be a
source of family shame and provocation for tribal warfare. These uncomplimentary
attributes and associations negatively characterize Leah and allude to her illegal
manipulation of God's blueprint for the course of human history's development. While Leah
subtly triggers a course of events that threatens the goals and values in Genesis, Dina,
in contrast, directly challenges her society by her unconventional behavior and
troublesome predicament. Firstly, as it has been noted, a woman's worth in Genesis is
measured by her subservience to her husband and her fertility. Dina, a defiled and
unmarried daughter, is not only an affront to the greater divine plan, based on female
subordination and fertility, but also a burden to her family because she subverts
societal expectations. She is reduced to being damaged goods and brings shame to her
entire clan. The behavioral codes and moral principles in Genesis continually reinforce
the patriarchal nature of the society and the carefully defined parameters designated for
a female's contribution. 
Dina represents still another model of a woman who threatens the Genesis community by her
deviant actions. All the women encountered in Genesis are either dwelling or journeying
under their father or husband's jurisdictions. They never travel or venture out by
themselves under any condition. By going out  to look over the land (34:1), Dina, like
Rebecca, violates the female role by taking independent action. She transgresses the norm
of total subjugation to male dominance. This is threatening to the patriarchal structure,
wherein women are restricted to a role of complete subservience. Then to compound her
transgression, she is raped, an incident that not only makes her into a victim, but also
a burden to her family. Once violated, her sexual purity is destroyed, her future is
doomed, and her family is plunged into disaster. Indeed, following the rape, the annals
of Dina's life are totally absent from the remainder of Genesis. She is mentioned only
once more when she enters Egypt with the rest of her family. Whereas her brothers are
discussed at great length right through to the conclusion of Genesis, Dina, after losing
all her potential worth as a bride, and therefore as a wife and mother, is completely
neglected. However, the aftermath of her rape continues to reverberate. When Dina's
brothers slaughter Shechem, the entire house of Jacob is forced to flee and relocate
their encampment. Thus, by rejecting the role of passive female as it is construed in
Genesis, and then suffering the results of her assertive action, Dina defies God's
intentions, circumvents societal demands, and throws her family, the family chosen by God
to be a blessed nation, into precarious flight. 
In the beginning, God invests in a peaceful world governed by a patriarchal hierarchy. It
is a world destined to be a model of harmony and a perfect domestic domain for human
existence. Then, when the Eden experiment fails and God is compelled to recreate the
world through the flood episode, this investment expands into an effort to produce a
populous world for extensive human habitation. In the remainder of genesis, god directs
his efforts toward the development of Abraham's family; the representatives of God's
select nation and an expression of the divine ideal of human existence. Building this
blessed nation is the chief value in the post-Flood Genesis, and this nation, as the
nation devoted to the God of Genesis, is the only value that remains relevant right
through to the end of the text. At every juncture in Genesis, women primarily serve as
hurdles to be negotiated so that the text's values may be actualized. They destroy
paradise, delay the propagation of the human species, defy the patriarchal structure, and
endanger the proliferation of God's blessed nation. Clearly, there are patterns to the
forms of this female subversiveness, such as unreliability, infertility, and
disobedience. But, since there is not one single paradigm for female insubordination, the
problem of women in Genesis is a narrative device that is integrated into the text to
create subversive tension. They are the hurdles that God overcomes in order for the text
to prove God's boundless and all-encompassing power. With their actions, they draw
attention to the Genesis value system, prevent its immediate success, and allow for
eventual divine triumphs that dramatically reinforce those values and their
consequences.