WOMANHOOD

By Adesoji Aderemi

Greetings to you dearly beloved,

As I woke from bed this morning, I heard the Lord whisper to my heart; “write a piece about women on this day”.

As the world celebrates womanhood today, it has become increasingly clear that biblical womanhood must be rediscovered. Before someone attempts to cringe because of their idiosyncratic views of biblical womanhood, let me say that by definition, biblical womanhood is not cultural womanhood, it is not the woman’s view that ancient cultures have posited or crafted; neither is it the woman’s opinion that our own contemporary culture or history has fabricated. Feminism is simply an extremist fight against cultural womanhood. And if anything is clear, it is that every attempt to rediscover divine perspective must be void of emotionalism, sensationalism, and subjectivism, it must be rooted in objective truth as we can distill from the revealed word of God.

I must say at this junction, feminism in whatever form is not the solution to the repression and oppression that has faced the female gender over the centuries. Recent events have even revealed that feminism is a selfish attempt and it rides on the emotions of the depraved and oppressed.

So what then is the way out?

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female, he created them. — Genesis 1:27

This scripture must be grammatically comprehended if we must gain a mental assent on the subject of womanhood.

The word translated as “man” is ʾādām in Hebrew and can also be translated as “mankind”. God created “mankind” in his own image. Then it says, “In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.”

Genesis 1:27 in the original Hebrew, as found in the Masoretic Text, is:

וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ, בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים בָּרָא אֹתוֹ; זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה, בָּרָא אֹתָם.

Translated into English, it means:

“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

The second phrase in the text is:

בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים בָּרָא אֹתוֹ

(Be-tzelem Elohim bara oto)

בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים (Be-tzelem Elohim) — “ in the image of God”

• בָּרָא (bara) — ”He created”
• - אֹתוֹ (oto) — ”him”

The word אֹתוֹ (oto) is a direct object pronoun in Hebrew that specifically means “him.” It is a masculine singular form, referring back to הָאָדָם (ha-adam), “the man” or “the human,” mentioned earlier in the verse. In Hebrew grammar, this pronoun explicitly indicates that the object of the creation is singular and masculine at this point in the sentence.

Later in the same verse, the text shifts to אֹתָם (otam), meaning “them” (masculine plural), when it says זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה בָּרָא אֹתָם (zachar u-nekevah bara otam) — ”male and female He created them.” This reflects a transition from focusing on the singular “him” (the human as an entity) to the plural “them” (male and female).

This has been a point of interest in biblical scholarship, often interpreted as a poetic or theological progression from the creation of humanity as a singular concept to its differentiation into male and female.

This theological progression is important for the case I’m making in this article. Hebraic poetic literature has a literary device called parallelism and expansion where the next line parallels the first line and also explains the first line more clearly. So the word “them” explains the word “him” better. It goes to show that male is a complete human but as an imager of God, male and female must co-image God if the image of God must be revealed adequately.

This is why attempting to lift the male figure without the female figure will jeopardize the assignment of imaging God adequately. The same is also true when we attempt to elevate the female gender at the expense of the male gender (the very heart of feminism).

This is why on this International Women’s Day, it becomes imperative to cheer womanhood and not demean or devalue the male gender. It is important to talk about womanhood in this light especially because many see today as an opportunity to devalue the male gender.

This isn’t an attempt to steal the celebration from women but to help us see biblical propositions on the subject matter. I’d have loved to take examples from scripture to illustrate this point but for time.

However remember this, until males and females cooperate in unity, mankind can’t be a successful imager of God.

Shalom!