Female In Genesis Essay Example For Students

Female In Genesis Essay The Intimidating Female in GenesisIn the narrative in the book of Genesis, there are two main objectives. The first is a general goal to create a complex world designed for ideal human existence according to divinely legislated principles. The second is Gods desire to establish a great nation within this world. According to the narrative, God aims to achieve these goals by constructing frameworks for his goals and then enlisting carious humans to help see them to fruition. However, as amply demonstrated in Genesis, the human variable is volatile and frequently confronts God with instances of insubordination. As a Collective human element, women in Genesis often appear as obstacles to these broad-overriding goals through nonfulfillment 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 Gods will as it is expressed in the opening book of the Bible. Gods 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 Gods 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 (ironically, created specifically to complete the Eden habitat for Adam), 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 husbands helpmate (2:20); instead she turns out to be a catalyst for his demise and the cause of humankinds expulsion from the Edenic 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 Gods ability to realize his plan. Eve is created to complete Eden. But, instead of conforming to Gods 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 Gods vision. However, disobedient actions are not always the mode of obstruction. Sara and Rachel threaten Gods 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 matriarchs, 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 Gods initiative. And, even if conception is perceived as Gods intervention, it is significant that infertility in the text is always a result of womens, rather than mens, faulty anatomical equipment, making infertility an inescapable female problem. Propagation is a central these in Genesis. In the Noah story, which is Gods 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). In fact, the blessing of fruitfulness was given to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Calloway 15). 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 Gods desire to populate the world in general through Noah and his descendants, and his aspiration to see his select nation proliferate. And culpability is not an issue. The narrative voic e 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 Gods specific goals for a select nation headed by the patriarch Abraham, Saras infertility most severely jeopardizes Gods plan. Not only does she impede the perpetuation of the Abrahamic line, her infertility also prevents the possibility of any progeny inheriting her husbands legacy and breeds dissension in the House of Abraham. In Ancient Israel?the primary obligation of a married woman was to bear children for her husband, particularly male children (Calloway 13). 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 Abrahams 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 Abramic line that is divided and at war throughout the remainder of the book of Genesis. The dynasties of Isaac, the son of Sara eventually does produce, and Ishmael, the son of Hagar, are warring parties not only in Genesis but throughout the entirety of biblical history. Porter's 5 Force Indian Automobile Industry EssayWhile 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 womans worth in Genesis is measured by her subservience to her husband and her fertility. Dina acts contrary to the role expected of her (Graetz 306). She is neither a wife nor a mother, only a daughter and sister. In patriarchal societies, like the society of Abraham and his descendants, daughters have value primarily on the marriage market and in their potential to bear children (Graetz 306). Therefore, 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 females 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 fathers or husbands 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 Dinas 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 Dinas 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 Gods intentions, circumvents societal demands, and throws her family, the family chosen by God to be a blessed nation, into precarious flight. The text of Genesis is s relentless struggle to establish a world in which Gods ideals are realized and fulfilled through his blessed nation. And women, time and again, are a threat to the essential and interwoven values that are always at stake, those that concern God and his plan, and those that are meant to produce an ordained human destiny. Potiphars wife is the last woman in Genesis to cast an ominous shadow over the concerns at stake in the text. With her licentious intentions (albeit, failed intentions) and dishonesty, she defies the primary function the text has set out for her as a female. When she attempts to seduce Joseph, she contradicts patriarchal standards by taking morally, illicit, overt, and decisive action. After her attempts fail, she proves herself even more untrustworthy when she slanders the innocent Joseph and causes his imprisonment. Furthermore, Joseph is the last of Abrahams descendents to directly receive the divine blessing. So, her attack on him is also an attack on Gods select people, the people that is supposed to be the origin of a great, prosperous, and abundant nation. Instead of being a helpmate to her husband, or to Joseph, Potiphars wife brings both men strife. AS a result of her actions, her husband has Joseph, his most trusted and valued servant, imprisoned and wrongly declared a criminal. Rather than acting as an aid or, or facilitator of, Gods will, or of the patriarchal society that will fosters, she is an obstacle that God has to overcome in order for the divine will to prevail. In Genesis, there is a consistent evolution of what is at stake. In the beginning, God invests in an idyllic 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 Abrahams family, the representatives of Gods 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 texts values may be actualized. They destroy paradise, delay the propagation of the human species, defy the patriarchal structure, and endanger the proliferation of Gods 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 Gods 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. ReferncesCalloway, Mary. Sing O Barren One: A Study in Comparative Midrash. New York: Society of Biblical Literature. 1986. Graetz, Naomi. Dinah the Daughter in A feminist Companion to Genesis. Ed. Athalia Brenner. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic press, 1993. BibliographyReferncesCalloway, Mary. Sing O Barren One: A Study in Comparative Midrash. New York: Society of Biblical Literature. 1986. Graetz, Naomi. Dinah the Daughter in A feminist Companion to Genesis. Ed. Athalia Brenner. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic press, 1993. Religion Essays