On Prophetesses and Vice Presidents

 

Of Prophetesses and Vice Presidents

November 10, 2020

 

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

People who are at all familiar with the Bible know that there are people called prophets in the Old Testament. Several of them have their names on books of the Bible—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, Micah, and others. They are of course all men. There are only two books of the Bible named for woman, Esther and Ruth. One of the great flaws of the Judeo-Christian tradition is its androcentrism. Christianity’s images and language for God are rooted in the ancient Jewish images and language for God. Those images are almost exclusively male, and in the Bible God is always “he.” The ancient Hebrew god Yahweh began in the people’s consciousness as a male war god. See Exodus 15:20, which also refers to Miriam as a prophetess. The ancient Hebrew’s understanding of God evolved way beyond that primitive conception. See for example Isaiah 44:6. In verses like that one ancient Israel gave the world true monotheism, thanks be to God. Yet ancient Israel’s God always remained “he.” He never lost the name of that ancient war god Yahweh, rendered in the New Revised Standard Version and other English translations as “the Lord” printed that way in small caps. There are a few places in the Old Testament (and more of them in the Roman Catholic Old Testament than in the Protestant one) where a female figure very nearly becomes an image of God. In Proverbs, for example, the female figure Wisdom describes herself in terms that could apply equally well to God. See especially Proverbs, Chapter 8. Some feminist theologians, including the great Elizabeth Johnson, consider Lady Wisdom to be a female image of God. Yet in Proverbs at least Wisdom refers to God as a figure other than herself and as “he.” So unfortunately the exclusivity of male images in Hebrew references to God remains.

Christianity inherited ancient Judaism’s androcentrism. Yes, there is the very feminine figure of the Virgin Mary, more important in Catholic and Orthodox Christianity than in Protestant. Yet Jesus called God “Father” not “Mother.” God remained “he” throughout the New Testament. Led by feminist theologians like Johnson and others many of us today work to correct Christianity’s exclusively male images of and language for God, but it isn’t easy. “Mother” may work as well and as badly as an image of God as “Father” as Elizabeth Johnson says, but we’ve been so conditioned by our faith’s male language for God that we must constantly guard against falling back into it.

It may therefore surprise some people to learn that the Old Testament has in it both prophets and prophetesses. There aren’t many, but there are a few. Miriam, to whom I referred above, was one. A couple of them receive only a passing reference. One of them doesn’t even have a name. At Isaiah 8:3 we read, “And I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and had a son.” I’ve seen one reference  to this prophetess as Isaiah’s wife, but it isn’t clear what that characterization of her is based on other than the fact that she had sexual relations with Isaiah. We know nothing else about her.

Another prophetess  receives equally brief treatment, but at least she has a name. At Nehemiah 6:14 we read, “Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, O my God, according to these things that they did, and also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who want to make me afraid.” The events involving “the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets” are unknown.

Two other prophetesses receive more attention than the three we’ve encountered so far. They are Huldah and Deborah. We meet Huldah in Chapter 22 of 2 Kings. There we read that the king has become greatly distresses after hearing a newly found book of the law read to him. So he sends a delegation to the prophetess Huldah “to inquire of the Lord for me, for the people, concerning the words of this book….” 2 Kings 22:13. Huldah delivers to them a rather typical prophetic judgment oracle similar to other such oracles delivered by male prophets. She begins by saying “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Tell the man who sent you to me, Thus says the Lord, I will indeed bring disaster on this place and on all its inhabitants….” 2 Kings 22:15-16. She goes on to say, in typical prophetic fashion, that the Lord is angry because the people have worshipped other gods. She adds however that the Lord will let the king die in peace before the disaster comes because the king has repented. 2 Kings 22:18-20. The king here treats Huldah as he would any male prophet, and she speaks as any male prophet would.

The prophetess who receives the most attention in the Old Testament is Deborah. We meet her at Judges 4:4, where we read, “At that time Deborah, a prophetess,…was judging Israel.” We see right at the start of her story that she is more than a prophetess, not that being a prophetess was a small thing. She was also one of the judges of Israel. At her time in the history of Israel as told in the Bible Israel had no king. The kingdom of Saul, David, and Solomon had not been created yet. Instead of kings Israel had people called judges. Their primary function was to resolve disputes, as we see in the Bible’s account of Deborah where we read, “She used to sit under the palm of Deborah…and the Israelites came up to her for judgment.” Judges 4:5. The judges would also on occasion summon the people for war as Deborah does in her story. She summons a man named Barak and tells him to gather an army to fight the oppressive non-Israelite king Jabin of Canaan and Jabin’s military commander Sisera. In typical prophetic fashion she says that it is not she who issues this command but the Lord. After Deborah promises to go with him Barak does as she told him to do. As the battle begins Deborah says to Barak, “Up! For this is the day on which the Lord has given Sisera into your hand. The Lord is indeed going out before you.” Judges 4:14. Barak’s army wipes out Sisera’s army. Sisera flees and is killed in his sleep by a woman named Jael with whom he had sought refuge. Whereupon the prose portion of the story of Deborah ends. Chapter 5 of Judges is known as the Song of Deborah. It retells the story of Deborah in verse form with a lot of added details.

It is of course remarkable in the context of ancient Israel that a woman appears not only as a prophetess but as a judge. She is the only Hebrew woman to hold such a high political office. In her interaction with Barak she functions as a typical Hebrew prophet. Hebrew prophets and prophetesses were people with special access to the desires of Yahweh, here “the Lord,” the God of Israel. Like a typical prophet Deborah speaks a word of the Lord to the people or in Deborah’s case to a particular person. She is remarkable as a prophet only because she is a woman. We see in her story that, although it happened only with her, it was possible for a woman to assume a role of authority in ancient Israel.

The United States of America has never had a woman president or vice president. We lag years behind a great many other nations in that regard. Angela Merkel has been Chancellor of Germany for many years. Great Britain has had a woman prime minister. Golda Meir once led the modern state of Israel. Even Muslim Pakistan has had a woman at the head of its government as has Pakistan’s neighbor and rival India. We haven’t. Geraldine Ferraro was the Democratic nominee for vice president back in 1984, but the Democrats lost that election to Ronald Reagan. We have had a Black president. We have never had a woman, much less a woman of color, as either president or vice president.

That is, we haven’t until now. On November 3, 2020, we elected Senator Kamala Harris as the next Vice President of the United States. Vice President-elect Harris is a woman of color, the daughter of immigrants. Her father was from Jamaica, her mother from India. She is only the second person of color to be elected to either of the two highest offices in our country. She is the first woman. This country has operated under its current constitution since 1789, some 231 years ago. In all those years we have never elected a woman as president or vice president, not, that is, until last week.

Why has it taken this long for us to elect a woman as president or vice president? I’m sure the reasons are complex. Political scientists can make most anything complex. Yet I am also sure that all of the reasons relate to a fundamental element of the dominant American culture. We have always been an overwhelmingly sexist country. We have always been ruled by men. Men have dominated all aspects of American life throughout our history. One of the historical roots of American sexism is the radical androcentrism of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s not that the US is a “Christian nation” in the mistaken sense of claims made by the Christian right. Most of our founders were only nominal Christians, believing instead in a rationalistic reduction of Christianity called Deism. They were, however, all sexists. They didn’t give women the vote, for example. They all came out of European culture, and they all reflected traditional European, Judeo-Christian sexism.

Our nation was founded as a western European nation in a new world. The history of western Europe is our history. It isn’t our history in the sense that all Americans descend from Europe, which of course they don’t, but in the sense that the dominant thinking and institutions of the United States all derive from western Europe. The culture of western Europe was shaped by and in the Judeo-Christian tradition. That culture was radically sexist. Western culture formed in the tradition of Judeo-Christian androcentrism and even misogyny. Towering figures of western European culture like Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther said horrible things about women, who they considered in no way to be the equals of men. European culture was sexist. Therefore the dominant American culture became sexist too.

From the beginning the human norm in Euro-American culture has been the male human being. When we look at photographs of American political, business, and religious leaders before the last fifty years or so they are all or nearly all men. The woman’s movement that began in the 1960s has changed that reality to some extent, but in virtually all aspects of American life the glass ceiling that effectively stops women from rising to the highest levels of authority and responsibility in nearly every aspect of American life remains intact. The androcentric nature of Christianity bears much of the blame for that deplorable American reality.

That’s why the election of Senator Harris as Vice President is so important. She has broken through the glass ceiling of American politics. The importance of her achievement is immense. I’ve seen it expressed in images on the Internet. A young Black girl wearing a shirt with the words “My vice president looks like me” was one of them. An image of shattered glass with the words “Women, put on your shoes. There’s glass everywhere” was another. The election of Senator Harris as vice president has immense significance.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Senator Harris is a Deborah among us. I don’t mean that she is a prophetess. I mean that she is an exception to a sexist societal norm. A couple of prophetesses with short stories in the Bible don’t offset ancient Hebrew androcentrism. One Vice President-elect, as important as she is, doesn’t offset American sexism. In all three cases the cultural norms of the societies that produced them didn’t change. Ancient Israel’s never changed. America’s are changing, but they are changing only very slowly. The issues of injustice remain. The work of justice remains. So let us celebrate the election of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Her election is indeed something to celebrate. Let us not, however, forget that there is still work to do. So congratulations Vice President-elect Harris. Now let’s get back to work.