Women appear at critical times in the life of their worship communities. Acting as prayer leaders, prophetesses, sages, or apostles, they perform deeds that embody the spirit and life of their community. To read their stories is to discover how this people experienced God and lived in fidelity to that relationship. Their communities remembered them and retold their stories, giving them honored place in the community’s oral and written memory. Their leadership continues to be handed on to renew life and spirit in communities faithful to their tradition. The importance of women in the worship life of biblical times may be seen in the stories of Miriam, Huldah, and the woman who anointed Jesus, as well as in the biblical personification of wisdom as a woman.
Miriam, Leader of Thanksgiving and Worship
In Exodus 20:15–21, at a sanctuary in the wilderness, Miriam leads the people of Israel in a celebration of the miraculous act that formed them. They had been slaves in Egypt and no people at all. Now, at Yahweh’s hand, they had come through the deathly waters of the sea to life as a united people.
Miriam takes up the timbrel, a tambourine-like percussion instrument, and begins a dance and song of thanksgiving and victory. The women follow her, dancing and chanting, “Sing to Yahweh, gloriously triumphant! Horse and rider are cast into the sea!” Her shout becomes their refrain. Her movements and instrument imitate the actions and sounds of Yahweh in the winds and the sea, parting the waters and swallowing the Egyptians. She plays the part of the victorious divine warrior, Yahweh, the One who has saved Israel, the One who is alone among the gods, “magnificent in holiness,” making known his presence in Israel’s midst.
Such dramatic thanksgiving feasts became the very hallmark of Israel’s covenant life with Yahweh. Miriam’s song was like the psalms families later sang at Passover in homes and villages, like those that priests and all the people sang when they gathered for great pilgrimage feasts in the courts of the temple. In the ritual sharing of song, food, and life, young Israel, weary of what seemed to be an endless journey in harsh lands and battling unwelcoming peoples, remembered and renewed the covenant with Yahweh and their bonds as a people.
In a speech indicting the people for their faithlessness Micah the prophet remembers Miriam, with Moses and Aaron, as a leader of the wilderness community, and associates her leadership with divine commissioning (Mic. 6:2–5). Like Moses and Aaron before the days of the temple and priesthood in Israel, Miriam served as leader of the community at prayer, expressing their faith that Yahweh had saved them and continued to be with them. In thanksgiving, they renewed the covenant and committed themselves as a people.
Huldah, Prophet and Interpreter of Yahweh’s Word
Later in Israel, kings came to rule and represent Yahweh’s leadership among them. They became the leaders of worship, calling all Israel together to renew the covenant by reciting, singing, and dancing Yahweh’s deeds. In establishing their rule, Israel’s kings made alliances with neighboring rulers, sometimes through marriage and sometimes by taking in foreign “gods” and customs. Solomon and the kings following him established heavy taxes and large armies to support cities and temples. Gradually they rendered the rural villagers poor, subject to the international economy of the great city Jerusalem. It was then that prophets emerged, in court and village, to recall covenant relationships among the people and with Yahweh and to call those in power, even kings, to reform and fidelity.
When Josiah was king of Judah, his ministers found a book that told of the covenant in the temple. Was this book true to Yahweh? What did it mean for Josiah and the people? Josiah sent his ministers to Huldah, who, by her credentials, was probably a prophet active in his court and well known among the people.
Huldah spoke with authority. The book was true for Judah that very day. The people had turned to other gods and forsaken Yahweh. Yahweh’s anger would blaze against them. And it did, as Josiah burned the sanctuaries of Judah and tried to purify the Jerusalem temple and center Israel’s worship there among a reunited people.
Josiah heard Yahweh’s word through Huldah and, in heartfelt repentance, acted to restore relationships among people and with Yahweh. The word of Yahweh was alive; Huldah had proclaimed Yahweh’s deeds and called king and people to reform, renewing the covenant in their relationships. Yahweh honored Josiah’s courageous leadership, and although the king died in battle at the hand of an Egyptian king, his eyes did not witness the sad march to Babylon, as Huldah had also foretold.
Woman Wisdom, Rebuilding the House of Israel
Wisdom had always been a part of Israel’s experience of Yahweh. The wise were regarded as Yahweh’s messengers, showing by their lives and teaching the Yahweh-fearing way to live as members of the family, clan, and covenant people. In “winged word,” (proverbial sayings that were easy to remember) sages captured the experience of Israel’s faith in action. These proverbs provided models, or morals and cues for action, rooted in the past to renew and shape life in the present.
As Israel returned from exile without the strong national leadership of king and temple, wisdom in daily work—making families and rebuilding homes and villages—was needed more than ever. Israel had lost land and people. Women assumed a larger share in generating family life and managing households and fields. Their wisdom in refashioning home life, households, and communities came to be recognized as the word and work of Yahweh among them. Perhaps in recognition of women’s importance and increased contribution to Israel’s life, this wisdom was even embodied and personified in the female figure of woman Wisdom.
Wisdom was she who, begotten and “given birth” from Yahweh, played before him in the creation of the world and took special delight in human deeds and relationships (Prov. 8:22–31). She spoke with the voice of Yahweh, calling from the gates of the city into the home. She called to all who would listen. Her word was to forsake foolish, foreign, and unfaithful alliances, to come to her table and feast on her food and wine, and there to be filled with her wisdom and knowledge, the fear of the Lord, which characterized the covenant way of old.
Inviting people to find Yahweh in daily experience; in faithful human relationships between husband and wife, children and parents; in family life and public service, she was rebuilding the house of Israel. Wisdom again became the pattern of life, recognized among the people as the “order” in creation itself. Later wisdom writings identified her with Torah (Sirach 190 b.c.). In the earlier poems of Proverbs 1–9 and Proverbs 31:10–31, Wisdom and her counterpart of the faithful wife, speaks in the very “I am” voice of Yahweh and is hymned by husband, family, and people for bearing the very life-giving qualities of Yahweh, the qualities women and men needed to reclaim their lives as family and people. In this way, woman Wisdom embodied the very life of Israel and came to prominence in the rebuilding of Israel as a godly people.
Mary, the Anointing Woman
The community for which Mark wrote understood themselves as Jews who were called to become a new community, bearing “good news” intended to include Gentiles and to reach the whole world as well. The gospel proclamation of Mark’s community is a narrative of the great trial of Jesus and the disciples. Their story is one of struggle to accept a suffering Messiah and to accept their own suffering as the way of discipleship and life in the new community of Jesus, the Christ.
After Rome destroyed the temple and Jerusalem, these Christians were no longer welcome in the synagogues as the Jews struggled to unite and survive. Following Jesus meant leaving family members and official Judaism, the family of their faith. It meant enduring betrayal as Jesus had, welcoming strangers and Gentiles as Jesus did, and finding in this struggling community of believers new family and kin.
During Jesus’ trial, the Jewish high priest had asked, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus had acknowledged his identity with God and had confessed, “I am” (Mark 14:61–62). In the same way, disciples faced questioning by members of their own community and betrayal and suffering as they followed Jesus.
The story of this trial begins with a scene in which Jesus was at the table among friends (Mark 14:3–10). An unidentified woman came carrying an alabaster jar of expensive aromatic perfume. She broke the jar and began to pour the perfume on his head. In Israel of old, such an outpouring of oil on the head was an act of anointing, the deed by which a prophet recognized and proclaimed a new king for Israel. It was the act by which the Spirit was outpoured, filling God’s servant, the king. When the woman’s action was criticized by some at the table, Jesus defended her, identified her deed with preparation for his burial, and solemnly announced that wherever the Good News was proclaimed throughout the world, what she had done would be told in her memory (Mark 14:9).
The anointing woman’s deed was questioned by some who were at the table, members of her own community. Those at the table were divided. As the author tells it, Jesus himself interpreted her deed. Her anointing embodies both recognition and proclamation. She is the disciple, the one who recognizes this suffering servant-king, the One sent by God, and bears this as good news to others. Jesus continues to be present in the community in its telling of the gospel and in the kinship of his suffering. By her deed, the woman shows who an apostle is and what an apostle does.
In John’s Gospel and for John’s community, Jesus is the one in whom God dwells fully in human flesh and who makes life, the life of self-giving love that is God’s, known. In John’s Gospel, as Jesus’ public ministry is ending and the “hour” of his glory begins, a woman anoints Jesus at the table (John 12:1–11). The woman is identified as Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, a family “loved” by Jesus (John 11:5). Jesus has raised Lazarus in “the village of Mary and her sister Martha,” and as his “hour” is beginning, Jesus is the honored guest at their table again. Martha is serving the meal, and Lazarus is among those at the table. Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with a pound of perfume of genuine aromatic nard, then dries his feet with her hair. The whole house is filled with the ointment’s fragrance, the perfume of her deed.
The extravagance, faithfulness, and hospitality of her deed are contrasted with the response of Judas, who questions her action and suggests that the ointment ought rather to be sold and the profit given to the poor. He is keeper of the common purse, and we are told that he used to help himself to what was deposited there (John 12:6). Jesus himself answers Judas and defends Mary’s action, relating it to the death to which he is about to give himself.
Mary’s deed is cast in eucharistic overtones. The anointing and then drying calls attention to her act. Jesus himself is soon to perform a similar act. In the Gospel of John, the account of the Eucharist is supplanted by Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet (John 13:1–20). He tells them this is an example for them of the love they are to have for one another. It is the act of one laying down his life for his friends, as he does in his death and resurrection. This is the service of love by which others will recognize them as his disciples.
This action by Jesus helps to interpret further Mary’s service to him and puts it in even greater contrast with Judas’s self-serving attitude. Jesus concludes his discussion of washing the feet of the disciples with the solemn assurance that what he has done they must do: “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them” (John 13:17).
Beatitude, blessing, and discipleship are bound with doing as Jesus does. The anointing woman, Mary, gives herself bodily in a simple act of love that foreshadows Jesus’ own self-giving. That the fragrance of the ointment filled the whole house suggests that her deed carries the possibility of bringing others to “come and see” and to recognize Jesus for themselves. Her deed of loving service speaks louder than words. She embodies the meaning of discipleship and, in so doing, bears life for her community.
Conclusion
Examining the deeds of these women in the context of their community’s life and ministry shows them to be leaders of faith in groups that struggled to live their faith. Miriam, Huldah, woman Wisdom, and Mary, by their deeds even more than by their words, manifest God’s life and love and what relationship with God means. Thankful prayer, prophetic proclamation, home-building wisdom, and public service in the face of criticism are the daily ways these women lived their faith and led others to it. While their acts were in some cases questioned, the written record of their deeds tells us that in their communities their service was beloved, public, and indeed divinely commissioned and inspired if not officially recognized or appreciated. Their faith continues to invite men and women to communities that bear the good news of God’s love to the world.