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{"id":16913,"date":"2014-12-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1728"},"modified":"2014-12-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T00:00:00","slug":"wives-and-daughters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/12\/wives-and-daughters\/","title":{"rendered":"Wives and Daughters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

It\u2019s true. Women are pretty much invisible after Eve is named \u201cLiving one\u201d and bears sons in 4:1-2. She bears again in 4:25-267, but is unnamed.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a pattern that Jay doesn\u2019t notice, two patterns. The first has to do with the important difference in the presence of women in the genealogies of Cain and Seth. Cain\u2019s line rapidly moves through several generations to Lamech, no women mentioned. The first women in the line are Lamech\u2019s wives, the first two named wives after Even, Adah and Zillah (4:19).\u00a0The line of Seth, though, has women in every generation, as each of Seth\u2019s descendants fathers \u201csons and daughters\u201d (5:10, 13, 16, 19, 22). The first time we hear of \u201cdaughters\u201d from the line of Cain, they are intermarrying with the \u201csons of God\u201d and giving birth to brutal Nephilim (5:1-4). The line of Seth is far more feminized than the line of Cain. After the flood, Shem\u2019s line is the same (11:11, 13, 15; etc.).<\/p>\n

Second, the next wife named after Lamech\u2019s is Abram\u2019s wife, Sarai, and Milcah, the wife of Abram\u2019s brother Nahor (11:29-30). Sarai of course becomes a major character in the Abraham narratives, and the entire plot-line turns on her pregnancy: It\u2019s not enough for Abraham to have a son, the son of the covenant must come from Abraham and Sarah<\/em>. In the next generation, Rebekah is a more important figure than her husband, and much of the drama of Jacob\u2019s life is about the tension between his sister-wives, Leah and Rachel.<\/p>\n

So, yes, Jay is right: Those early genealogies are masculine, but the story eventually yields to something else \u2013 not feminism or egalitarianism, but not patriarchalism either.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"