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

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.