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Whispering the Word: Hearing Women's Stories in the Old Testament
Many Christian feminists wonder if they can simultaneously maintain their commitment to principles of gender equality and their faith in the Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament. Writing in response to feminist biblical scholars who approach the Old Testament with a hermeneutic of suspicion, Jacqueline Lapsley offers Christian feminists strategies to hear the subtle ideas and voices of the less powerful within the Old Testament texts. Reading and interpreting a number of Old Testament narratives in which women are prominent, Lapsley considers how these stories may reflect God's word for us. In doing so, she demonstrates how the narrative often attempts to shape the moral response of the reader by revealing the intricacy and complexity of the moral world evoked. In this gentle shaping of the reader's ethical sensibilities, she argues, is where God may be whispering a word for us.
176 pages, Paperback
First published November 3, 2005
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October 17, 2022
In Whispering the Word: Hearing Women’s Stories in the Old Testament, Jacqueline Lapsley seeks to bring a fresh and nuanced perspective to the field of feminist biblical studies by tuning reader’s ears to the subtle whispers that frequently go unheard in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible. After a brief survey of the spectrum of feminist biblical scholarship unfolding at the time she was writing, Lapsley begins to develop her own three-pronged approach, which involves attending to women’s speech explicitly included in the text, the narrational perspective, and the values implicitly relayed by the passage. In the chapters that follow, she utilizes one method each to three Old Testament narratives before concluding with a demonstration of their overlapping application onto one text for an even richer reading. After an overview of Lapsley’s scholarship here, it is possible to evaluate the strengths and shortcomings of her work.
Lapsley begins Whispering in the Word by orienting readers to the broader landscape of feminist biblical scholarship of her time. She differentiates her approach from both the “loyalists” who locate anti-feminist issues with the text exclusively with its interpretation as well as the “rejectionists” who, in light of the patriarchal overtones of the Bible and its subsequent ramifications, have rescinded its authoritativeness altogether (3). Instead, she identifies herself within the broader “revisionist” category; those who prioritize “counter-traditions” in the text, defined as “muted traditions and voices that offer alternatives to the dominant biblical strains, but that must be teased out to be heard” (3). Although Lapsley is sympathetic to the frustrations of more rejectionist critique, she ultimately remains grounded in a hermeneutic of informed trust that, while still critical of patriarchal elements in the text, maintains a high regard for Scripture as a sacred word from God for the Church. Of course, Lapsley does not encourage averting our eyes from the challenging depictions of women in the text, but she sets out to aid readers in also turning their ears towards the less blatant authorial intentions. These can be heard, she suggests, through a close, empathetic reading of Scripture as an Other to be encountered rather than simply an object to be evaluated. With her ideological convictions on the table, Lapsley devotes the remainder of the book to demonstrating three interrelated strategies for hearing these feminist whispers amidst the cacophony of biblical voices.
The first ––and seemingly the simplest–– involves attending to the language from female characters that is explicitly featured in the text. However, Lapsley’s rigorous exegesis of Rachel’s sly response to her father about being unable to rise before him because she has the way of women after stealing his teraphim is a rather complicated affair. The statement is a blatantly deceptive lie that nonetheless reveals a truth about their society and, simultaneously, expresses a “hidden polemic” that allows her to subtly and safely give voice to her resistance against the patriarchal social customs and legal norms of the time (26-27). While this is not the central action of the story, it reveals the “polyphony of voices” that are inevitably interwoven within a given narrative, should we heed Lapsley’s inkling to listen for those beneath the loudest din (30).
From there, Lapsley turns her attention to the gruesome story of the woman married to the Levite man who is brutalized and left to die in Gibeah, this time with careful consideration of the narration. Despite the lack of an explicit rebuke against the Levite man’s treatment of his wife, Lapsley’s thorough exegesis demonstrates how the third-person narration ––often taken for granted as a neutral observer–– makes consistent literary choices that cast judgement upon the Levite man’s selfish, neglectful attitude towards his wife and honoring sympathy towards the young woman. Furthermore, read within unfolding narrative, this moment is construed as one of many escalating signs of Israel’s brutal waywardness in Judges. Rather than passively reporting the sequence of events, let alone endorsing them, the narrator is challenging readers to confront hard truths about their social world and the human condition, all the while eliciting empathy for the woman whose death catalyzes such demanding reflection.
In the fourth chapter, Lapsley showcases her third exegetical method by reading the first four chapters of Exodus with an emphasis on the actions of the women depicted and what that implies about their values. She juxtaposes the boundary-crossing cooperation and effective nonviolent strategies of resistance employed by women against the ineffective violence enacted by Moses, surmising that this intentionally suggests an affirmation of women’s values that ultimately aligns them with YHWH’s character revealed soon after. In this way, Lapsley suggests that the significance of the women and the ideals they represent retain a certain prominence even if they mostly go unnamed and their roles fade to the background as the story unfolds. And, having now illustrated each of her exegetical strategies, Lapsley concludes the book with a robust application of each approach used in tangent to read Naomi’s story in Ruth. While this does not necessarily lead to new conclusions from what came before, it further reifies her methodology and once again amplifies the whispers of women’s stories that are embedded within the Old Testament, helping readers to hear anew what the Spirit is speaking through the texts.
In considering the effectiveness of Whispering the Word, it is noteworthy that Lapsley has intentionally catered her arguments towards an “in-house” community of readers who presumably share her hermeneutic of informed trust. From the onset, she abdicates any prolonged wrestling with feminist voices contrary to her own, ceding that “the nature of the authority of Scripture for Christian feminists is too large and too contested a topic to be adequately addressed here” (18). This type of disclaimer is, of course, a fair position to take and one that allows for Lapsley’s focused attention on her chosen exegetical approach, but it inevitably leaves her overall premise vulnerable to critique from rejectionist-leaning readers holding to hermeneutic of suspicion.
Using Lapsley’s own words, she writes that “the double-voiced character of Rachel’s speech suggests that in order to read Scripture faithfully we must attend not only to what the text says in a loud voice…but also to their more subtle meanings” (34). Immediately after this, she aligns those whispered words with David as a shepherd boy, the enslaved Israelites in Egypt, and Jesus on the cross, which implies that the more explicit voices in the text are associated with the destructive powers of Goliath, Pharoah, and Rome (34). This statement functions as a rhetorical flourish at the conclusion of her second chapter, perhaps not meriting extensive consideration, but it still carries concerning ramifications worth naming. If, as Lapsley writes, a hermeneutic of informed trust “frees us to encounter God in Scripture––frees us to expect that God is telling us something significant, even revelatory, about ourselves, about who God is, and about our life together”…why must it be so difficult to hear? (19). If Scripture is to serve as the bedrock for contemporary theology and ethics, how do we reckon with the reality that the very premise of Whispering the Word arises out of the sense that the loudest, most obvious and blatant readings of the text often abet oppressive attitudes, understandings, and actions?
To her credit, we can reaffirm that Lapsley alludes to awareness of these larger debates and intentionally side-steps them early on. Though this leaves the aforementioned foundational concerns unanswered, that is not to say that her exegesis lacks willingness to take the patriarchal overtones to task. As described earlier, her revisionist stance is not stubbornly naïve to the problematic elements of the Bible, but neither is it willing to relinquish the narratives altogether. And so, bypassing any robust apologetic for why it is important to seek out liberatory readings of Scripture, Lapsley instead proceeds to thoroughly demonstrate how to do so. Interestingly, and perhaps intentionally, this strategy of showing rather than telling may prove more compelling than any theoretical argument could have been.
This is most successful in the third chapter, in which Lapsley tackles one of the infamous “texts of terror” head on. There is no denying that the violence depicted against the young woman in Judges 19-21 is egregious and devastating, but early on the point is made that simply featuring these events does not endorse them. Lapsley writes: “The shocking stories of women who are abused, raped, and killed to not appear here because these texts unreflectively mimic cultural attitudes toward women. While the stories in Judges are indisputably products of patriarchal culture, they do not merely parrot that culture” (36). Within the context of Judges, they actually serve the exact opposite purpose, intending to disturb and scandalize readers into seeing Israel’s need for a king amidst such atrocious lawlessness. And even without that specific intention, it is true that women were (and still are) victimized in patriarchal societies; the recognition of this in the text is no more an endorsement of this than a reporting on the evening news.
Much of contemporary media adopts a clearer articulation of its moral and ethical stances ––at times verging into the territory of virtue signaling–– and, in comparison, readers may find the lack of obvious denouncement problematic. But this is where Lapsley’s comprehensive exegetical work of the passages is most effective, as her attention to the narrational voice and choices dismisses charges of a neutral, indifferent telling. At every step in the narrative, Lapsley details ways that “the narrator gently guides the reader to see the Levite’s behavior and language as reprehensible and to pay attention to the absence of the woman [and] to make her present through her absence” (44). And Lapsley’s reading benefits from the intuitive quality of the points she makes, which are, if not immediately obvious, likely to cohere into a consistent pattern with her helpful promptings. As we come to see the narrator not as an enemy or observer of the woman but as an ally who is thoughtfully crafting her story in a way that casts judgement on her offenders and offers care to her, Lapsley’s core argument shines through the brightest: Even in the darkest of moments for women in the Old Testament, there is an audible thrum of compassion and love being whispered in the text.
As is often the case in more academic engagement with Scripture, some of Lapsley’s other examples can be faulted for the level of exegetical rigor and extensive background knowledge that is required to reach them. It is difficult to imagine, for example, that a group of lay Christians reading Genesis in their weekly Bible study would be aware of the legal norms that Rachel is posing a veiled critique against in her statement towards her father. Of course, this does not disprove Lapsley’s reading ––in fact, it further reinforces the purpose of the book as a means of equipping people to learn to read these texts anew–– but it does return us to that central, unanswered question of what it means for the Church that these threads are whispered in the first place, and often far too “quiet” for the average contemporary reader’s ears to hear.
Readers looking for guidance on making sense of that troubling tension are likely to find Whispering the Word underwhelming, but by and large they were not Lapsley’s intended audience. Instead, this text is written for those who share in her hermeneutic of informed trust and have already arrived at a deep conviction that God uses Scripture to communicate generative truth to those who read it, including women, should we learn to strain our ears to hear it. From there, she demonstrates strategies of varying accessibility and effectiveness to showcase how there are a myriad of traditions ––both counter- and dominant–– embedded within any given text, and whispers abound with words of empowerment, affirmation, and compassion for women, should they gain ears to hear them.
Lapsley begins Whispering in the Word by orienting readers to the broader landscape of feminist biblical scholarship of her time. She differentiates her approach from both the “loyalists” who locate anti-feminist issues with the text exclusively with its interpretation as well as the “rejectionists” who, in light of the patriarchal overtones of the Bible and its subsequent ramifications, have rescinded its authoritativeness altogether (3). Instead, she identifies herself within the broader “revisionist” category; those who prioritize “counter-traditions” in the text, defined as “muted traditions and voices that offer alternatives to the dominant biblical strains, but that must be teased out to be heard” (3). Although Lapsley is sympathetic to the frustrations of more rejectionist critique, she ultimately remains grounded in a hermeneutic of informed trust that, while still critical of patriarchal elements in the text, maintains a high regard for Scripture as a sacred word from God for the Church. Of course, Lapsley does not encourage averting our eyes from the challenging depictions of women in the text, but she sets out to aid readers in also turning their ears towards the less blatant authorial intentions. These can be heard, she suggests, through a close, empathetic reading of Scripture as an Other to be encountered rather than simply an object to be evaluated. With her ideological convictions on the table, Lapsley devotes the remainder of the book to demonstrating three interrelated strategies for hearing these feminist whispers amidst the cacophony of biblical voices.
The first ––and seemingly the simplest–– involves attending to the language from female characters that is explicitly featured in the text. However, Lapsley’s rigorous exegesis of Rachel’s sly response to her father about being unable to rise before him because she has the way of women after stealing his teraphim is a rather complicated affair. The statement is a blatantly deceptive lie that nonetheless reveals a truth about their society and, simultaneously, expresses a “hidden polemic” that allows her to subtly and safely give voice to her resistance against the patriarchal social customs and legal norms of the time (26-27). While this is not the central action of the story, it reveals the “polyphony of voices” that are inevitably interwoven within a given narrative, should we heed Lapsley’s inkling to listen for those beneath the loudest din (30).
From there, Lapsley turns her attention to the gruesome story of the woman married to the Levite man who is brutalized and left to die in Gibeah, this time with careful consideration of the narration. Despite the lack of an explicit rebuke against the Levite man’s treatment of his wife, Lapsley’s thorough exegesis demonstrates how the third-person narration ––often taken for granted as a neutral observer–– makes consistent literary choices that cast judgement upon the Levite man’s selfish, neglectful attitude towards his wife and honoring sympathy towards the young woman. Furthermore, read within unfolding narrative, this moment is construed as one of many escalating signs of Israel’s brutal waywardness in Judges. Rather than passively reporting the sequence of events, let alone endorsing them, the narrator is challenging readers to confront hard truths about their social world and the human condition, all the while eliciting empathy for the woman whose death catalyzes such demanding reflection.
In the fourth chapter, Lapsley showcases her third exegetical method by reading the first four chapters of Exodus with an emphasis on the actions of the women depicted and what that implies about their values. She juxtaposes the boundary-crossing cooperation and effective nonviolent strategies of resistance employed by women against the ineffective violence enacted by Moses, surmising that this intentionally suggests an affirmation of women’s values that ultimately aligns them with YHWH’s character revealed soon after. In this way, Lapsley suggests that the significance of the women and the ideals they represent retain a certain prominence even if they mostly go unnamed and their roles fade to the background as the story unfolds. And, having now illustrated each of her exegetical strategies, Lapsley concludes the book with a robust application of each approach used in tangent to read Naomi’s story in Ruth. While this does not necessarily lead to new conclusions from what came before, it further reifies her methodology and once again amplifies the whispers of women’s stories that are embedded within the Old Testament, helping readers to hear anew what the Spirit is speaking through the texts.
In considering the effectiveness of Whispering the Word, it is noteworthy that Lapsley has intentionally catered her arguments towards an “in-house” community of readers who presumably share her hermeneutic of informed trust. From the onset, she abdicates any prolonged wrestling with feminist voices contrary to her own, ceding that “the nature of the authority of Scripture for Christian feminists is too large and too contested a topic to be adequately addressed here” (18). This type of disclaimer is, of course, a fair position to take and one that allows for Lapsley’s focused attention on her chosen exegetical approach, but it inevitably leaves her overall premise vulnerable to critique from rejectionist-leaning readers holding to hermeneutic of suspicion.
Using Lapsley’s own words, she writes that “the double-voiced character of Rachel’s speech suggests that in order to read Scripture faithfully we must attend not only to what the text says in a loud voice…but also to their more subtle meanings” (34). Immediately after this, she aligns those whispered words with David as a shepherd boy, the enslaved Israelites in Egypt, and Jesus on the cross, which implies that the more explicit voices in the text are associated with the destructive powers of Goliath, Pharoah, and Rome (34). This statement functions as a rhetorical flourish at the conclusion of her second chapter, perhaps not meriting extensive consideration, but it still carries concerning ramifications worth naming. If, as Lapsley writes, a hermeneutic of informed trust “frees us to encounter God in Scripture––frees us to expect that God is telling us something significant, even revelatory, about ourselves, about who God is, and about our life together”…why must it be so difficult to hear? (19). If Scripture is to serve as the bedrock for contemporary theology and ethics, how do we reckon with the reality that the very premise of Whispering the Word arises out of the sense that the loudest, most obvious and blatant readings of the text often abet oppressive attitudes, understandings, and actions?
To her credit, we can reaffirm that Lapsley alludes to awareness of these larger debates and intentionally side-steps them early on. Though this leaves the aforementioned foundational concerns unanswered, that is not to say that her exegesis lacks willingness to take the patriarchal overtones to task. As described earlier, her revisionist stance is not stubbornly naïve to the problematic elements of the Bible, but neither is it willing to relinquish the narratives altogether. And so, bypassing any robust apologetic for why it is important to seek out liberatory readings of Scripture, Lapsley instead proceeds to thoroughly demonstrate how to do so. Interestingly, and perhaps intentionally, this strategy of showing rather than telling may prove more compelling than any theoretical argument could have been.
This is most successful in the third chapter, in which Lapsley tackles one of the infamous “texts of terror” head on. There is no denying that the violence depicted against the young woman in Judges 19-21 is egregious and devastating, but early on the point is made that simply featuring these events does not endorse them. Lapsley writes: “The shocking stories of women who are abused, raped, and killed to not appear here because these texts unreflectively mimic cultural attitudes toward women. While the stories in Judges are indisputably products of patriarchal culture, they do not merely parrot that culture” (36). Within the context of Judges, they actually serve the exact opposite purpose, intending to disturb and scandalize readers into seeing Israel’s need for a king amidst such atrocious lawlessness. And even without that specific intention, it is true that women were (and still are) victimized in patriarchal societies; the recognition of this in the text is no more an endorsement of this than a reporting on the evening news.
Much of contemporary media adopts a clearer articulation of its moral and ethical stances ––at times verging into the territory of virtue signaling–– and, in comparison, readers may find the lack of obvious denouncement problematic. But this is where Lapsley’s comprehensive exegetical work of the passages is most effective, as her attention to the narrational voice and choices dismisses charges of a neutral, indifferent telling. At every step in the narrative, Lapsley details ways that “the narrator gently guides the reader to see the Levite’s behavior and language as reprehensible and to pay attention to the absence of the woman [and] to make her present through her absence” (44). And Lapsley’s reading benefits from the intuitive quality of the points she makes, which are, if not immediately obvious, likely to cohere into a consistent pattern with her helpful promptings. As we come to see the narrator not as an enemy or observer of the woman but as an ally who is thoughtfully crafting her story in a way that casts judgement on her offenders and offers care to her, Lapsley’s core argument shines through the brightest: Even in the darkest of moments for women in the Old Testament, there is an audible thrum of compassion and love being whispered in the text.
As is often the case in more academic engagement with Scripture, some of Lapsley’s other examples can be faulted for the level of exegetical rigor and extensive background knowledge that is required to reach them. It is difficult to imagine, for example, that a group of lay Christians reading Genesis in their weekly Bible study would be aware of the legal norms that Rachel is posing a veiled critique against in her statement towards her father. Of course, this does not disprove Lapsley’s reading ––in fact, it further reinforces the purpose of the book as a means of equipping people to learn to read these texts anew–– but it does return us to that central, unanswered question of what it means for the Church that these threads are whispered in the first place, and often far too “quiet” for the average contemporary reader’s ears to hear.
Readers looking for guidance on making sense of that troubling tension are likely to find Whispering the Word underwhelming, but by and large they were not Lapsley’s intended audience. Instead, this text is written for those who share in her hermeneutic of informed trust and have already arrived at a deep conviction that God uses Scripture to communicate generative truth to those who read it, including women, should we learn to strain our ears to hear it. From there, she demonstrates strategies of varying accessibility and effectiveness to showcase how there are a myriad of traditions ––both counter- and dominant–– embedded within any given text, and whispers abound with words of empowerment, affirmation, and compassion for women, should they gain ears to hear them.
March 11, 2018
This is such an insightful read that really adds new perspective to some of the most difficult passages for Christian women. Although I don't agree with every point she makes, her arguments are clear and well written. This is a must for anyone who wants to be both Christian and feminist.
April 24, 2023
i deeply enjoyed reading this book. those who are interested in OT studies or feminist hermeneutics of the Bible should definitely read it. Lapsley did really well with both acknowledging the patriarchal context surrounding the texts discussed, but also offered how those stories actually speak against such systems. i would say though that this book is primarily for the academic and not the everyday person, even though that sounds pretentious as fuck.
some fav quotes of mine :
pg. 30 - "...yet Rachel's words of resistance in this story suggest that the Bible is not an "ultimate word" that crushes all ideologically opposing voices, but is, at least in parts, a dialogic, polyphonous text whose competing voices can be discerned, even within the same speech."
pg. 64-65 - "As Dennis Olson observes, the status and treatment of women in Judges indexes the health of Israel's social and religious life in the same book."
pg. 87-88 - "Thus where we really see "women's values" at work in the Old Testament is when women are working together in groups and significantly these groups often do not allow ethnic or class differences to prevent their uniting across traditional boundaries that would normally keep them apart."
some fav quotes of mine :
pg. 30 - "...yet Rachel's words of resistance in this story suggest that the Bible is not an "ultimate word" that crushes all ideologically opposing voices, but is, at least in parts, a dialogic, polyphonous text whose competing voices can be discerned, even within the same speech."
pg. 64-65 - "As Dennis Olson observes, the status and treatment of women in Judges indexes the health of Israel's social and religious life in the same book."
pg. 87-88 - "Thus where we really see "women's values" at work in the Old Testament is when women are working together in groups and significantly these groups often do not allow ethnic or class differences to prevent their uniting across traditional boundaries that would normally keep them apart."
June 9, 2014
I don't remember a lot about this book, but I did like it and learn from it. I'd recommend it for anyone who wants a detailed reading of some Bible stories about women.
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April 4, 2017"To begin reading Ruth after finishing Judges is to gulp fresh air after a long confinement in a dark room. The obvious effects of a deep connection to God, so painfully absent in Judges, reveal themselves to be life and community restored--the antithesis of the violent disarray of Judges 21. The health of the community depends quite directly on the health of people's life with God."
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