How (Not) to Read the Bible: Making Sense of the Anti-women, Anti-science, Pro-violence, Pro-slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture

by Dan Kimball

The overwhelming majority of the disturbing Bible verses that we read or see on memes are being read incorrectly. Yes, these verses are actually in the Bible. They are strange and difficult to understand. Absolutely. But we aren’t taking into consideration how to read the Bible to understand their meaning. Applying some basic principles for reading any verse in the Bible makes a drastic difference. The key to making sense of crazy and disturbing passages is to understand how not to read the Bible.

Here is the good news. There are ways to better understand these crazy-sounding Bible verses. We must learn how to, and how not to, read the Bible. Most of the examples we’ve seen so far are a result of people who are not reading the Bible correctly. If you are willing to look beyond the visual image and explore beyond a literal, out-of-context reading of a verse, you’ll discover the Bible is not “sheer nonsense.” There are many strange things in it, but when we study what it really says, the Bible is an amazing, life-changing book written by people who were directed by God through God’s Spirit. As we take a closer look at these and other Bible passages, my hope is that you will have your questions and concerns answered, and you will come to better know the author of the Bible.

However, you can still find the word “unicorn” in the King James Version of the Bible (KJV), a translation from the year 1611. That translation was authorized by King James I of England and utilized the best Greek and Hebrew texts (the languages in which the Bible was originally written) along with several other Bible translations they had access to at the time. When you read translations from that time period, you’ll also encounter unfamiliar words like “thee” and “thou,” which were common words at that time. Today we use “you” or “him” or “her” for “thee,” and “my,” “your,” “his,” or “hers” for “thy.” Contemporary Bible translations use words that make sense to the readers they are translating for. So

where do you find references to unicorns? The word translated “unicorn” in the King James translation is the Hebrew word re’em. This word refers to an animal the original audience of the Bible would have been familiar with, and the best estimate of when that word was written is between 1400 and 700 BC. Scholars who study the Hebrew language and its usage at those times tell us it likely was referring to an animal of great strength that had a prominent horn. In 1611, when the King James Bible was translated, the scholars translating this Hebrew didn’t know the specific animal the Hebrew word re’em was referring to, so they looked at an older translation for help. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek (an older translation called the Septuagint) sometime in the second or third century BC, those translators chose the Greek word monokeros, which, when translated to English literally means “one horn.” When the King James translators encountered this unfamiliar word, they looked to the Greek translation for help and chose the English word “unicorn” (meaning one horn) to represent what they felt the original word meant, an animal with a prominent horn. To be clear, they did not choose it to represent the mythical, magical, one-horned horse we think of today. If you were to think of a “one-horned animal” or “an animal with a prominent horn” today, you would likely think of the rhinoceros

Today, the English word “unicorn” refers to a mythical one-horned horse, but back when the Bible was written, no one would have put those two things together. So were there unicorns in the Bible? The answer is yes, there were one-horned animals, a variety of oxen, an animal the people would have been familiar with. But were these animals the white magical, mythological horses with one horn that we think of today? No, of course not. Here is why this matters. Today there are memes, graphics, and stories that make their way into online discussions—and even into conversations with barbers—that convince people that the Bible is filled with nonsense. These images and verses build a case that the Bible is crazy, and anyone who believes the Bible is crazy. All of this may look convincing, but after you research the original usage of the word in the Bible, the context, and where the English translation first appeared, it’s easy to see that the Bible does not teach that mythical unicorns existed.

Here are the four facts about how to and how not to read the Bible: 1. The Bible is a library, not a book. 2. The Bible is written for us, but not to us. 3. Never read a Bible verse. 4. All of the Bible points to Jesus.

The Bible Is a Library, Not a Book Although the Bible often comes in print form as a single bound book, it is actually a collection of sixty-six books printed in one volume, a library of books. This library is diverse, containing writings of history, poetry, prophecy, and law. This library of diverse books was written in three different languages over a 1,500-year period by a whole bunch of different people from different cultures. Some books in this library were written more than a thousand years before the other books.

Walk over to the law section of the library. Here you find the thick law books lawyers use to research their cases, detailing the laws from different periods of history. As you read a law book, you pay attention to when it was written and where, as many of the laws change over time, and there may be different laws for different geographic areas (countries, states, cities, etc.). A law book from Germany in 1580 AD contains laws that applied at that time and in that culture, but they may not be applicable or even understandable for us today.

Leviticus

The Old Covenant (or testament) is the agreement God made with the people of Israel (ethnically Jewish people) outlining in detail how they would relate to God and know him. The New Covenant (or testament) is the agreement God made with all people through Jesus, and in making this agreement, he did away with the Old Covenant (more on this later). The New Covenant outlines how all people today of every ethnic background (not just the Jewish people) can relate to God and worship him.

The Bible was written beginning around 1400 BC (the time of Moses) through around 100 AD (the time following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the birth of the early church). That’s a time span of more than 1500 years! You would never read and interpret something written 3,400 years ago in the same way you would read a book written last week.

The library of books in the Bible was and still is a primary way God communicates with us, giving us guidance. God wants us to know him, to know our origins and future, and to have guidance for life. So God intentionally and purposely oversaw the process of what was written, using the different personalities and life experiences and situations of each human author to communicate what he wished to say. Every word in the original writings of Scripture was the exact word that God wanted people to have.† So we say there were many authors of the Bible, but only one “Author.”3

The second of the four facts you need to know to interpret the Bible correctly is that the Bible was written for us, but not to us. When the brilliant and highly respected Old Testament scholar John Walton spoke at my church, he repeated this phrase multiple times: “The Bible was written for us, but not to us.” He explained that the Bible is 100 percent inspired by God, and we can have confidence that every word in the original documents of the Bible is exactly what God wanted it to say. We believe in God’s full inspiration and the total trustworthiness of the Bible. The books in the library of the Bible are for all people at all times and places to read and gain wisdom from. But the Bible wasn’t originally written to us. It wasn’t written in any modern language, and it wasn’t written with our contemporary culture and its assumptions and values in mind. To get the most benefit from what God was communicating when he inspired the authors of the Bible to write, we need to enter their world to hear the words as the original audience would have heard them and as the author would have meant them to be understood. We must read the words on those terms.

There are even warnings in the Bible itself that some of the New Testament books “contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”‡ I actually find this encouraging. I love that the Bible itself says that some of the Bible will be hard to understand.

Most people, when they start reading the Bible, want to immediately know “what does this mean to me and my life?” This assumes that when we read the Bible, we should read it as if what God was writing is specifically and directly written to us today. We may not even realize we do this, but we do it all the time. And sadly, even the preaching and teaching in some churches unintentionally does this, and it doesn’t help people to understand the Bible. When we read the Bible in this way, we read into it our presuppositions—what we believe and understand based on our experience, worldview, culture, and knowledge. Our contemporary values and way of life are also part of the lens through which we read the Bible. And while there is much it can say to help us, if we view the Bible as mainly a “message for me,” we will be in great trouble. We will end up picking and choosing the things we like reading and want to apply to our lives.

But not every promise or blessing is something we can directly apply to our lives today. We might take Bible verses and promises that are not meant for us and then be disappointed in God when they don’t happen.

All too often, we take a nice-sounding Bible verse and apply it directly to our life. For instance, Isaiah 12:2 says, “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD himself, is my strength and my defense.” We like to claim that Bible verse and own it. We take comfort in it personally, which is a good thing to do, as God is our strength and defense. That verse is truth for all times because it reflects the unchanging character and nature of God. But we avoid claiming two verses later in the same book. Isaiah 34:2–3 says, “He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter. Their slain will be thrown out, their dead bodies will stink; the mountains will be soaked with their blood.” Can you picture that Bible promise as the theme verse for the annual women’s retreat, with a coffee mug gift for each woman who attends? Not all verses are written to us and apply to us. And we often pick and choose by taking the nice-sounding Bible verses and claiming they are true and applying them to our lives, while skipping past the negative crazy-sounding ones. We need to stop and ask: who was the Bible verse originally written to and why? As we will discover, many of the Bible verses that don’t make sense to us today usually made sense to the original readers.

I share this to show how easy it can be to take our worldview and then press it into something we read or hear, interpreting it through our lens. We can look at specific words and dissect them and use complicated contemporary analysis to do all this. Eventually, though, we need to step back and look at the more fundamental question: What was the author originally saying? We cannot simply read our own understandings into the meaning of a word or statement someone else wrote or said. And when we look at some of the bizarre-sounding parts of the Bible, we have to try to discover who the original audience was and view the text through their lens, not ours. If we don’t, the possibilities for confusion are endless.

If there was one bit of wisdom, one rule of thumb, one single skill I could impart, one useful tip I could leave that would serve you well the rest of your life, what would it be? What is the single most important practical skill I’ve ever learned as a Christian? Here it is: Never read a Bible verse. That’s right, never read a Bible verse. Instead, always read a paragraph at least. —GREG KOUKL, AUTHOR AND APOLOGIST, STAND TO REASON

Some of you might object that we do see Jesus and other New Testament authors quoting single verses. But back in that day, whenever you would quote a verse, it was understood that this was a shorthand way of referencing the larger section of Scripture from which that verse was taken. The Jewish people saturated their minds and hearts with the Scriptures in such a way that one verse was a trigger to help them remember the other passages surrounding it. They would know where a specific verse fit within the context of surrounding verses, the whole book, and the storyline of the current Bible they had. Quoting a Bible verse was different. They were quoting it with an awareness of the context. Today when people quote a Bible verse they often are not aware of the context.

Every Bible verse fits within a larger story, and whenever we read any verse, we want to: • Look at the specific Bible verse (many people stop here). • Look at the paragraph the verse is in. • Look at the chapter the Bible verse is in. • Look at the book of the Bible that the chapter and verse are in. • Look at where the book of the Bible the verse is in fits in the Bible’s whole storyline.

Whenever we open up the Bible, we need a little Star Wars–like backstory. As you turn to a passage of the Bible, picture that opening scroll giving you the broader context of what you are about to read.

When you read about Jesus in the Bible, you need to understand that Jesus doesn’t just appear one day out of nowhere. He has a backstory that begins long before his birth in Bethlehem. There are hints of him in the book of Genesis as far back as the garden of Eden* and in a promise made about him to Abraham.† The hints about Jesus become more clear in the writings of the prophet Isaiah,‡ leading right up to his birth in the New Testament. There is an entire story that precedes his birth, giving all that he says and does additional meaning.

The Old Testament was written to specific people groups in specific time periods for specific reasons. Many of the laws we read in the Old Testament no longer directly apply to us because they were made under the “old covenant,” an agreement that outlined how certain people related to God at that time. Today, those who are Christians belong to the “new covenant” made possible through Jesus. This doesn’t mean the Old Testament is useless or unimportant. As we’ve seen, we need to know the full story because it points us to the significance of Jesus and the New Testament he established.

The story continues as God raises up a descendant of Abraham named Moses and defeats Egypt’s evil, rescuing his people and bringing them to Mount Sinai. God uses Moses to lead Israel and enters into a covenant (a formal agreement, like a contract) with the Israelites. They are invited to obey the terms of the covenant, which start with the Ten Commandments and include several hundred other ways God sets in place for Israel to remain distinct from their neighbors who worship false gods. By being faithful to these commands, the people will become God’s priestly representatives to the nations. This is where we find many of the very crazy-sounding laws and practices that confuse people today. These laws were given to Israel, commands about not eating shrimp or not having tattoos. They seem odd and strange to us today, but to Israel at that time these laws made sense. And they were what was needed at this time in their history and their relationship to God.

Jesus proclaimed that he was bringing God’s kingdom back to the earth, and he would confront the tragic effects of evil and sin. But Jesus’ plan to defeat humanity’s evil and sin was unexpected. He would first let it defeat him. Jesus stirred up trouble by teaching things that upset the religious leaders of his day. He was arrested and killed by the common form of execution for criminals at that time, being crucified, or hung on a cross. We learn that this death was also not an ordinary death. Though Jesus suffered the physical pain of crucifixion like anyone else, he was also suffering the punishment for all human sin, dying for the sins of the world. His resurrection from death sealed his victory over human evil and the curse of death. All who put their faith in him and trust Jesus and his promises are now forgiven by God of their sin against him and belong to God again. The proof that they belong to God is that God’s Spirit comes to dwell in them in a mysterious way, helping them to fight against their evil desires and to live a life of purpose and mission on the earth. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead confirms his identity and is God’s stamp of approval on him as the appointed ruler of God’s creation. Act 4 ends with the resurrection of Jesus and his ascension to heaven, where we are told he now rules the world from God’s throne. He is the Promised One, the King whose death forgives the sins of all those who place their faith and trust in him.

Have you ever looked into some of the strange and unusual state laws in the United States? Several of these are still in the law books today and have never been repealed. In Arizona: It is illegal for a donkey to sleep in a bathtub. In Kentucky: It is illegal to carry ice cream in your back pocket. In Connecticut: It is illegal for any beautician or barber to whistle, hum, or sing while working on a customer. Reading these nonsensical laws makes you wonder why they were ever passed in the first place. Who needs a law about carrying ice cream in your back pocket? Bizarre laws about donkeys sleeping in bathtubs seem pretty ridiculous to us. But when you look into the history behind them, there is always a backstory, and that backstory provides us with meaning. Knowing why they were originally put in place and when is the key to understanding.

For example, the law about not allowing a donkey to sleep in a bathtub was put into effect in 1924. The story is that a rancher had a donkey that frequently slept in an abandoned bathtub on the rancher’s property. One day, a local dam broke, and the water from the reservoir washed the bathtub and the donkey into a basin. Local authorities were called to help rescue the donkey, but it was not easy to do. It required a lot of effort and manpower to finally rescue the animal. To prevent such a thing from ever happening again, they passed a law that prohibited donkeys from sleeping in bathtubs. At that time, for those involved, it made sense to have that law. It was likely never prosecuted, but it was put in place for a reason at a certain time for a certain purpose, a purpose most of us cannot relate to today, since few of us own a donkey. The

In the first five books of the Bible, God instructed Moses to write down the history of the origin of the Israelite people to teach them it was God who created everything, not the gods of Egypt or other gods. He was making it clear that he is the one true God, and the other gods and goddesses of Egypt were not to be believed or worshiped. He was giving the Israelites instruction for how to relate to each other and how to worship and relate to him. God wanted them to be holy, distinct from the people groups who lived around them. The word “holy” means set apart, separated, and kept away from the evil and false worship of the neighboring nations. God was concerned that they would be too easily influenced by the surrounding people groups and turn away from him to worship and follow other gods (which, sadly, they did at times despite God’s warnings). However, all these laws that God gave the Israelites were not intended to simply establish an ideal social system. It was God speaking into their ancient world and instructing them with codes of wisdom for them to know what living in the presence of God is like. So he used many things familiar to them in the ancient world, which are unfamiliar to us today.

There is a strong likelihood that the prohibitions against mixing different kinds of seeds, animals, and materials together were designed to discourage and prevent the Israelites from imitating the fertility cult practices of the Canaanites.

When you look at the restrictions about not mixing fabrics for clothing, you find that the priests’ garments and the fabrics used in the tabernacle of that time (the tabernacle was the place of worship prior to the temple) were made of wool and linen—two different types of material. Only priests could wear this type of blended fabric for clothing. This may sound strange to us today, but think of someone who isn’t a police officer making and wearing a police uniform, pretending to be a police officer. The restrictions regarding clothing weren’t just fashion preferences or style choices. They were requirements distinguishing what a priest would wear when leading the people in worship of their holy God.

Most scholars agree that God gave the dietary laws to reinforce the same concept we discussed before—keeping the people distinct and separate from the other people groups. One of the most practical ways to make this distinction is by making their diet—the food they could and could not eat—distinct. The reason is the same: God wants his people to remain loyal to him, the one true God. Every time we read about God giving a strange instruction about refraining from something, a command that sounds bizarre to us today, we need to remember that it wouldn’t have sounded bizarre to the people at that time. These restrictions were common ways of identifying your ethnicity and religious affiliation. The restrictions may not make sense to us, but they were normal for the Israelites at that time in history.

When someone quotes Leviticus to say that Christians shouldn’t eat shrimp, or when we see “God hates shrimp” memes, or someone questions why Christians wear polyester blends, what should be obvious is a lack of understanding of the Bible. Using these verses to mock the Bible’s validity simply shows that the person doing the mocking doesn’t understand what the Bible is saying. The truth is that Christians today can enjoy shrimp all they want. They can wear all types of mixed fabrics. They can play football. Why? Because those Bible verses were written to a specific people group, in a specific place, for a specific time period, and for a specific purpose. When you study the entire Bible (rather than picking and choosing individual verses), you see that many of these verses don’t apply to followers of Jesus today. Using them in the way these memes do or as an attempt to discredit the Bible simply shows us how not to read the Bible.

Leviticus wasn’t talking about tattoos like these. Instead—no surprise here—God was keeping his people from participating in the religious practices of the neighboring Canaanites. They would slash their bodies and mark them with branding or ink for ritualistic purposes related to the worship of their gods. Tattooing and the marking of the body was a rite for honoring their gods and the dead. God was prohibiting worship practices related to false deities. Today’s tattoos are nothing like the practices being prohibited in Leviticus, so there is no restriction on getting a tattoo today. That said, the larger story of the Bible teaches us that we should not find our personal sense of worth from our appearance or achievements, so if this is why we are getting tattoos, it would go against Jesus and his teachings.

If we believe some laws were specific for Israel and they made sense back then, why do we not still follow them today? Many of the verses we studied in the last chapter are found in the same books where it says “You shall not murder” and “You shall not steal.”* How do we know what is valid for today and what isn’t? The answer to these questions takes us back to the Bible storyline.

The New Testament writings tell us that the strange-sounding verses we’ve read—and all the rest of the 613 different Old Testament laws—were given to convict people everywhere of our inability to follow all that God requires for us to worship him and live in perfect harmony with him and one another. This inability is due to our imperfection and the fallout of sin, and it points us to our need for a Savior. We all fail trying to please God on our own, and this becomes clear as we look at his guidelines. We will never be able to be perfect or to remain constantly holy and set apart from the values of the world. Because of this, we ultimately need a way of being clean before God and forgiven for our shortcomings. This is why Jesus came. The Old Testament and all the things written in this first section of the Bible point us to our full need for Jesus (Romans 7:7–9; Galatians 3:24). When Jesus came and died on the cross and rose again, it revealed a major shift in how we relate to God, and we see this change reflected in the teachings of the New Testament, which give us new guidelines. A new covenant, or arrangement between God and people, began. This new covenant is not limited to a particular people group. Now all can have forgiveness and be seen as holy and set apart by God, not through what we do, but through what Jesus did. We are set apart by putting our faith in Jesus, and this changes how the laws of the Old Testament function for those who follow Jesus.

In short, the coming of Christ changed how we worship, but not how we live. The moral law outlines God’s own character—his integrity, love, and faithfulness. And so everything the Old Testament says about loving our neighbor, caring for the poor, generosity with our possessions, social relationships, and commitment to our family is still in force. The New Testament continues to forbid killing or committing adultery, and all the sex ethic of the Old Testament is re-stated throughout the New Testament (Matt. 5:27–30; 1 Cor. 6:9–20; 1 Tim. 1:8–11). If the New Testament has reaffirmed a commandment, then it is still in force for us today.1

God Gave Regulations to an Existing Condition People Created According to both the Old Testament and the New Testament, slavery is wrong. This is very important to pay attention to. We see in Exodus 21:16 a clear condemnation of anyone who steals someone to make them a slave: “Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession.” And in the New Testament, in 1 Timothy 1:9–10, it says, “The law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers . . . for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine.”

What we see in the Bible is God giving instructions to regulate a preexisting way of life that was pervasive at that time. Slavery was everywhere in the ancient world, embedded in the economic and social institutions of those times. God did not affirm or endorse slavery, but worked within the cultural framework of that time to begin a longer process of transformation that would lead to moving people out of slavery in any and every form.

Here is the key point on slavery for our purposes. In general, when we think of slavery, we think of the evils of the New World race-based chattel slavery and the Atlantic slave trade with the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which led to the Civil War. This form of slavery involved kidnapping and forced labor. It was evil. This type of slavery, however, while it did exist in ancient times, was not the common and predominant form of slavery. Knowing this makes a significant difference in how we read the Bible verses about slavery. Here are some of the differences: Slaves Who Lived at the Time of Moses Were More like Servants or Bondservants In modern translations of the Bible, the English word “slave” is not always used. Many translations use the word “servant.” The two situations were very different. In Ancient Israel, It Was Common to Sell Yourself to Pay a Debt or Escape Poverty It is difficult for us to comprehend this way of thinking, but it was quite common back then for the poor to sell themselves to escape poverty or pay a debt. When you sold yourself to someone as a servant, it meant your basic needs would be covered. And while there was an owner-servant relationship, it was not identical with the race-based slavery that began with kidnapping.

In this situation, it is highly likely the father is selling his daughter because he does not want her to starve or to be abandoned. In that day, options were limited, and it was often a choice between life and death. So when the Bible gives guidance to a father about selling his daughter into servitude, the Bible is not saying this is a good thing to do. It is recognizing that if a father were to find himself in a place where this was necessary (for reasons all too common at that time), he should do it in a way that protects her and preserves her dignity. Reading the entire chapter where this verse is found, we see an attempt to flesh out ways of protecting those who were in bondservant arrangements. For a father, if he had to sell his daughter as a slave to protect her or provide for her, he could not sell her to be given as a prostitute for physical pleasure. She could not be disposed of as a piece of property the new owner no longer desired. He must treat her like a family member, and if marriage is not a possibility in the future, she must eventually be set free.

Keep in mind that God commanded the death penalty for those who kidnapped people and made them slaves (read Exodus 21:16 and 1 Timothy 1:10). Although this type of slavery did happen at times, we never see God endorsing it or teaching people to do this. Instead, we see God condemning it. And when we do find slavery being addressed in the Bible, it is generally speaking about the type of slavery that existed to help the poor survive in the ancient world, forms of slavery that were established for people to work off debt (Leviticus 25:39), for example. When we look at slavery in the context of the ancient world, we need to deprogram our normal definition and redefine it according to what it meant in that world.

I understand that slavery in New Testament times is a world we cannot imagine and have trouble understanding. But these slaves could serve as doctors and lawyers, they could go to school and be educated. This was a different cultural context, with more than 30 percent of the population in the New Testament Roman and Greek world living as slaves, or what today we might call servants. When we read Bible verses about slaves or servants in the New Testament, we have to look at what is being said through the lens of the culture at that time—which is not identical with the slavery we think of today.

Leviticus 25:43 says, “Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God.” When we read Bible verses about slavery, they are offering guidance, but this guidance was always intended to improve what already existed. Here are two quick examples: 1. Killing a slave merited punishment (Exodus 21:20). 2. Permanently injured slaves had to be set free (Exodus 21:26–27). These biblical directions deviated significantly from the normal treatment of slaves at that time, part of God’s process of gradually moving people toward a more dignified relationship between a slave and the household the slave served. In the New Testament, We See God Moving the People Away from Slavery We see the seeds of a movement (the church) that would equalize the worth of both slave and free people. Paul the apostle writes a letter to a slave owner named Philemon concerning a slave named Onesimus, who had run away from Philemon. Onesimus met Paul while Paul was in prison and had become a Christian during this time. Paul was sending Onesimus back to Philemon, and in the letter we read some amazing, radically countercultural things. Paul asks Philemon to not just take Onesimus back (after running away and stealing money from his master), but to receive him “no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord.”* What makes this so unusual for that time is that Paul does not want Philemon to punish O...

Christians such as Wilbur Wilberforce and many others fought against slavery. Today many Christian organizations and churches are fighting against modern trafficking. Yes, there were Christians who used the Bible to back slavery—that was clearly wrong and evil. Bible study methods are important. Looking at Bible verses through the lens of the entire storyline of the Bible, you cannot conclude that God endorses slavery.

In general, Jesus did not focus on specific civil laws or governments, but addressed the desires and motives of the human heart.

What we do find in the Bible is the progression of instruction. The Old Testament gave guidance to protect slaves and give them more dignity. This made Israel distinct from other nations. The New Testament moves one step farther, declaring that regardless of whether one is the slave or the one the slave serves, they are equals, brothers and sisters in Jesus.

There is still a great deal of misogyny in our society, and whenever it is pointed out and confronted, we should add our support. But it can be awkward to talk about Bible verses that—at face value—seem to demean and devalue women. These verses have always been in the Bible. They aren’t new. But people are now calling attention to them and asking if Christians really believe them. Have you ever stopped to think, “Do women really have to be silent in church?” That’s what the Scriptures say, and passages like this are being noticed today. If you are a thinking Christian or someone who is considering Christianity, you don’t have a choice—you must explore these verses. If you are a Christian and reading this, I’d like you to think about the Bible study meeting I mentioned earlier. What would you say to those women? Perhaps you are like me, and you’ve never really thought much about this. But that is no longer an option. In our world today, these verses demand an explanation. As a non-Christian friend of mine put it, the Bible seems to teach that the church is a “boys’ club for adults”—and I can understand why she said this. However, as we will soon learn, if we look at how these verses fit into the larger context of the whole Bible story, it significantly changes how we understand them. Notes

God was communicating that in the beginning he created Adam and Eve to be a beautiful image of two equal parts, side by side with no subordination or inequality. They weren’t identical, but they were equal. They are mutually together, serving God in community together with no hierarchy, chauvinism, or polygamy. There are no “female in the kitchen” or “barefoot and pregnant” jokes. In the beginning, they were designed to serve God together as equals, and God even says they are “one flesh.”

But then . . . it happened. Man and woman didn’t trust God. They went against his guidance and everything changed. In the Bible storyline, you’ll recall the nuclear explosion that represents this colossal change (8.2). The sad story unfolds in Genesis chapter 3. God shows how sin entered the world after Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree and disrupted the beautiful way they related to God and to each other. They were instructed not to eat from this tree, but they did. And everything changed. Eve chose to eat of the fruit first. It is implied that Adam was there with her. Genesis 3:6 makes it clear Adam “was with her.” Her action was not a solo act—the woman against God—both man and woman participated in this act of disobedience. The harmony of their relationship changes immediately. Unity is broken and the virus of “sin” is turned loose on the world, beginning in the human heart. The creation they were tasked with ordering and caring for, including human beings, was affected by this “nuclear explosion” and the fallout that resulted. What happens next is sad but almost comical, as God confronts them. There is no longer peace and harmony. We see the first evidence of human selfishness and blame shifting.

We see a shift in their equality here too. We read that the corruption now changes the man and woman’s relationship. God tells the woman, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you,”* thus beginning the messy struggle for power and control. We see the drift from mutuality and equality to a patriarchal culture from here onward. Things change from the original harmony of creation. Humans are now infected with sin, which warps our thinking and our actions. We see the development of a hierarchy of men over women, just as God said would happen. We see a world of pain and mess due to human pride, ego, power, and control—everything that was so beautiful in the original creation is reversed. In this aftermath of sin corrupting human beings, we see polygamy becoming prevalent. This is true even among those who play a major role in God’s story leading up to Jesus. Jacob, who is the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, has twelve sons by four different women, two of whom are his wives and two of whom are servants of his wives. Solomon takes the “many wives” thing to an extreme with seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. This is not God’s desire from the beginning. It is wicked the way women were viewed as property. This time period is filled with great sadness and oppression—none of which was part of the original design.