Patriarchy | Wayfarer

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3DIRUPkGM4nK1I3TpLfaSC?si=cmXuNMP5TKS4iWCFp9YBWw

They said, “When the Lord commanded my lord to give the land as an inheritance to the Israelites by lot, he ordered you to give the inheritance of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters. Now suppose they marry men from other Israelite tribes; then their inheritance will be taken from our ancestral inheritance and added to that of the tribe they marry into. And so part of the inheritance allotted to us will be taken away.”
Numbers 36:2-3 (NIV)

When I present customer service training I’ve learned that every customer service skill is likely going to be challenged. A hand will go up in the air. When I call on my class member I typically year, “Yeah, but Tom…”

Now I simply call them, “Yeah, buts.” They are the typical excuses or exceptions to the general customer rule that cause people not to want to follow the rule.

The book of Numbers ends with a “Yeah, but….”

Just a few chapters ago God instructed Moses to allow Zelophahad’s daughters to inherit their father’s allotment of the Promised Land. It was a radical and revolutionary moment in history when women were suddenly given a level of equality no one could have expected.

In today’s final chapter, the men of the tribe approach Moses and say, “Yeah, but Mo, what if Zelo’s daughters marry into another tribe? By law their land would then get absorbed into the ownership of their husband’s family and now our tribe’s land becomes part of another tribe’s allotment. Doesn’t seem fair.”

Moses went before God and God provided a compromise. God did not want land being exchanged between tribes. Every tribe was to get their equitable and divinely appointed allotment of land to divide between the families of that tribe, and the land must stay with the tribe. So, Zelo’s daughters were required to marry a man from a family within their tribe if they wanted to retain ownership.

In the quiet this morning, my heart is split in two directions of thought and emotion.

I love that God has radically broken normal human protocol to divinely advance the female cause. The “Yeah, but…” that is raised is a legitimate legal question. Jewish rabbinical thought through history views God’s response as a balance of the individual rights of the daughters and the community rights of their tribe. The marriage requirement for the daughters was not seen as punishment but as a balance of justice for the daughters and order in the integrity of the tribe and its allotment. God’s divine decree is dynamic as it engages human concerns and balances the competing “good” of individuals and groups.

At the same time, as a student of history, I’m well aware that today’s chapter reflects a well-worn pattern in which men fight female rights and equality. Today’s chapter was just the first “Yeah, but…” to God’s divine decree of female land ownership. Through history, patriarchal male lawyers continued to chip away at it with their legal judgments. They increased the primacy of male heirs. They created marriage and dowry systems that channeled legal ownership to the control of male family members and circumvented the Zelophahad’s Daughter’s rule. They narrowed the circumstances in which the rule was applied and created legal loopholes by which the rule could be effectively bypassed.

The further I get in my journey the more appreciation I have for the women in my life. I love the radical move God made in naming and giving rights to Zelophahad’s daughters. I love that Jesus repeatedly broke patriarchal cultural convention to have relationship with women, even unacceptable women. Mary Magdalene, the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman who’d been bleeding for 12 years, and the woman caught in adultery to name a few. I love that Jesus made way for women to have a seat at the table and that in Christ there is no male and female.

In the long arc of the Great Story I see the Kingdom of God perpetually pushing against the curse of sin and the patriarchal nature of humanity that flows from that curse. Over my journey, my desire had continued to grow to do all I can to push into the equality of God’s Kingdom and impede the flow of sin’s curse and the inequality that it has shackled humanity with since the Garden.

Taking a little vacation through next week. Monday September 29th: 1 Timothy

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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[Ephraim’s] daughter was Sheerah, who built Lower and Upper Beth Horon as well as Uzzen Sheerah.
1 Chronicles 7:24 (NIV)

One of my favorite classes throughout all of my education was high school World History. We had a great teacher, which I discovered makes all the difference in any history class. As we marched through history through the ages, we explored the same themes in each culture and period including the status of women.

This is the first time that I remember being presented with the realities of how unfairly women have been treated through the ages in cultures around the globe.

As I continued in my life journey, I confess that I discovered that I had to confront my own thoughts and unconscious beliefs about women. I don’t think that it’s any mistake that God surrounded me with strong women and gave me two daughters to raise. There were some deep-seated assumptions about women, both culturally and religiously, that I was forced to confront along the way, and for that I’m grateful. I shared some of these thoughts in my post First Words to My Grandson a few years ago.

As we embarked on these opening nine chapters of genealogy in 1 Chronicles, I mentioned that one of the things I look for when reading the genealogical records of the Great Story are things that stand out in contrast. Among them is the mention of women in what is obviously a patriarchal lineage. There are not one, but two of these in today’s chapter. This is highly unusual.

First the Chronicler goes out of his way to mention a specific member of the tribe of Manasseh in what is essentially a footnote or parenthetical addition. The man mentioned is Zelophehad “who had only daughters.” This reference points back to the days of Moses and Joshua when Zelophehad’s daughters rose up and argued that it was unfair for them to lose their father’s land and inheritance simply because he had no sons. Their standing up and speaking out prompted a ruling on the inheritance rights of women in a time and culture when women had no rights.

The second mention of a female in today’s chapter is that of Sheerah (not to be confused with the comic book hero Sheena, Queen of the Jungle). The Chronicler mentions that she “built” three towns. One of them, Uzzen Sheerah, even bears her name.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself meditating on women in history and women in my life. I can’t imagine how circumstances and personal strength had to align for the daughters of Zelophehad and Sheerah to accomplish the things that they did. Props to the Chronicler for mentioning them in a culture and time when no one would have questioned him for simply leaving these details out of the record. For almost all of recorded history, this has been the paradigm. Circumstances and strength of character had to align for a woman to make it into the historical record. It’s only in the last century that this has begun to change.

Which makes me think of my own wife, daughters, and granddaughters. They have given me a priceless gift as they have helped me see the world from their female perspectives. In doing so, they have continued to challenge and change my male perspective in many ways. I want them to continue to be strong women and accomplish all the purposes God has for them on their own respective journeys.

Which leads me back to this faith journey. Women played a significant, if largely unheralded, place in Jesus’ ministry. The Jesus Movement in the first century honored women in culture-changing ways just as Paul wrote to the Galatians: There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Unfortunately, when the Jesus Movement transformed into an Empirical Institution the leaders suppressed those changes. It would be 1500 years before the institutional church began reclaiming the status and spiritual giftedness of women in the mission.

I honor this reclamation.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.