I wrapped up the summer seminary quarter last week: hallelujah. Seminary in the summer is different than the rest of year. Not because seminary is different, it’s not; but my life sure is. I had gotten used to regular, scheduled time to do my work and that was gone. Instead, I crammed work into the cracks1 and kept moving.
(I schemed about a berry patch in my backyard and a break from classes allowed me to put this project to bed.2)
When I started working on a smaller paper that was due toward the end of class, I went back through each week’s work and made a list of themes that we had discussed. Some of the material we have discussed here and some of it we won’t have time for, but, toward the end, we spent a week talking about women in prophetic literature and it’s worth a mention.
If you read much of the prophets, you’ll notice that sometimes they reference women and it appears very negative. Some of it is even shocking and offensive.3 My professor carefully pointed out that none of these stories are about actual women (except for Hosea and Gomer) but are instead carefully designed metaphors where the women represent society as a whole: men, women, and children. These metaphors aren’t an attack on women, but are instead a shocking and vivid picture of how betrayed God felt by the behavior of His people. Everyone was implicated, not just women. If you don’t know that when you read the prophets, it’s easy to leave with a bad taste in your mouth. How we read Scripture matters.4
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