The Other Women

A page of biblical women that only lists the admirable ones is not honest, and neither is a page that treats the wicked ones as a lesson about women. Scripture's villains are not disproportionately female, and in almost every account below a man is standing next to her with equal or greater guilt. What follows is what the text says, including the parts that complicate the label.

Four letters, and this is the order they are meant to be read in. They are not parts of one letter; each stands alone. But they build, from the women themselves to the text most quoted about them, then to the hard cases, then to the argument.
1. The Women of Scripture — seventeen of them, one at a time
2. A Woman of Valour — Proverbs 31 and 1 Peter 3, read whole
3. The Other Women — the ones who did damage, and the ones Scripture will not sort (you are here)
4. Women in the Bible and the Early Church — the ministry question and the restriction passages

The destroyers

Jezebel

A Phoenician princess married to Ahab as a political alliance, who imported Baal worship into Israel and had the prophets of the LORD hunted. When Ahab sulks because a man will not sell him a vineyard, she takes over:

1 Kings 21:7

Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? arise, and eat bread, and let thine heart be merry: I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.

She forges letters in her husband's name, arranges false witnesses, and has Naboth stoned on a fabricated charge of blasphemy. It is judicial murder using the machinery of the law.

And the text will not let Ahab off. "But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the LORD, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up" (1 Kings 21:25). She stirred him up; he sold himself. The verse manages to condemn them both without letting either use the other as an excuse.

One detail that is usually read backwards. When Jehu comes to kill her, "she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window" (2 Kings 9:30). This is often preached as vanity to the last. She knew he was coming and she knew what for. A queen who paints her face and dresses her head to meet the man who has come to kill her is not primping. She is going out as a queen. It is the one moment in her story with anything like courage in it, and Scripture reports it without comment.

Her name becomes a byword. Christ uses it in Revelation for a woman at Thyatira "which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants" (Revelation 2:20), which is how the name entered English as an insult.

Athaliah

Jezebel's daughter, and the more dangerous of the two. When her son the king dies, she does something no one else in the Old Testament does:

2 Kings 11:1

And when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal.

She murders her own grandchildren to take the throne, and rules Judah for six years, the only woman to do so. One baby survives, and Scripture names the woman who did it: "But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons which were slain" (2 Kings 11:2). She hides him in the temple for six years. The line of David, and with it the promise the whole Bible is built on, comes within one infant of ending, and it is a woman who nearly ends it and a woman who saves it.

Delilah

She is paid by the Philistine lords to find the secret of Samson's strength, and she does not hide that she is trying. He lies to her three times, watches her use each answer against him, and stays. Then: "when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death" (Judges 16:16), he tells her everything. Her own words when she sends for the money are exact about what she took: "he hath shewed me all his heart" (Judges 16:18).

She is not the reason Samson falls. He had already broken every part of his vow before he met her, and the narrative has spent three chapters showing it. She is the last in a sequence, and the only one he tells the truth to.

Potiphar's wife

"Lie with me" (Genesis 39:7), day after day, to a slave who has no way to refuse safely. When he runs she keeps his garment and accuses him of assault, and he goes to prison for years. She is the only person in the Joseph story who never gets a name, and she is one of the few in Scripture who does evil for no gain at all, only for being refused.

Herodias and her daughter

John the Baptist tells Herod his marriage is unlawful, and "Herodias had a quarrel against him, and would have killed him; but she could not" (Mark 6:19). She waits, uses her daughter at a birthday feast, and when the girl is offered anything she asks: "And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist" (Mark 6:24).

Notice the daughter goes out and asks. She is a girl being used, and Mark records that Herod himself was "exceeding sorry" and did it anyway to save face in front of his guests. Three people are in that room and the one with the power is the one who kills.

Sapphira

The first recorded sin inside the church, and it is a couple's. They sell land, keep part, and present the part as the whole. Luke's phrasing is precise: "his wife also being privy to it" (Acts 5:2). Peter's charge to her is not that she followed her husband but that she chose with him: "How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?" (Acts 5:9). She is given her own chance to tell the truth, alone, and lies. Scripture treats her as a full agent, which is a grim kind of dignity.

The ones Scripture will not sort

Jael

This is the hardest case in the Bible on this subject, and it is often told wrong. Jael did not kill her husband. Sisera, the enemy general, fled on foot from a lost battle to the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite, and the text explains why he thought he was safe: "for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite" (Judges 4:17). He was under a treaty and under the protection of hospitality, which in that world was close to sacred. She gave him milk and covered him.

Judges 4:21

Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary.

Every uncomfortable element is deliberate in the telling: he is asleep, he is exhausted, he is a guest, and there is a treaty. And then Deborah's song, which is among the oldest poetry in Scripture, says this:

Judges 5:24

Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent.

So Scripture calls a woman blessed above women for an assassination that broke a treaty and abused hospitality. This page is not going to resolve that, and the honest thing is to say that the Bible does not resolve it either. It records the deed in full, including the parts that make it ugly, and then records the blessing. Anyone who quotes only the song has not read chapter 4, and anyone who quotes only chapter 4 has not read the song.

Gomer

Hosea's wife is on this page and she does not belong on it in the ordinary way, because the marriage was not his idea:

Hosea 1:2

And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.

God commands the marriage, and says outright what it is for. Gomer is unfaithful, ends up somewhere she has to be bought back from, and then comes the command that makes the book:

Hosea 3:1

Then said the LORD unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods.

According to the love of the LORD. The point of the whole prophecy is that in this marriage Gomer is not the villain, she is us, and Hosea is God. Reading her as a cautionary tale about bad women inverts the book. Anyone tempted to file her under wickedness should notice which character in the analogy they have just been assigned.

Michal

Saul's daughter, who loved David, saved his life by lowering him out of a window, was given away to another man while he was in exile, and taken back when he was king. Years later she watches him dancing before the ark: "she despised him in her heart" (2 Samuel 6:16), mocks him for undignified behaviour, and the chapter ends coldly: "Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death" (2 Samuel 6:23).

She is usually taught as a warning about a scornful wife. Read her whole story and it is also the story of a woman used as a bargaining piece by her father, her husband and a second husband in turn, who is finally contemptuous of the man who took her back. The text gives the verdict and also gives the history, and it does not pretend the second explains away the first.

Job's wife

Seven words, and they have followed her ever since: "Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die" (Job 2:9). Job's answer is a rebuke, and it is a narrow one: "Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh" (Job 2:10). He says she is speaking like a foolish woman. He does not call her one.

And she had lost the same ten children he had. The commentators who are hardest on her tend not to mention that.

Lot's wife

One clause: "But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt" (Genesis 19:26). No name, no words, no explanation. Christ uses her as a warning of exactly two words, "Remember Lot's wife" (Luke 17:32), in a passage about people who try to go back for their belongings when the day comes. That is the sense he gives it: not curiosity, but a heart still in the city.

The woman of Endor

Saul, who had himself expelled the mediums, disguises himself and goes to one because God will not answer him (1 Samuel 28:7). What she does is forbidden and the chapter is a catalogue of Saul's ruin. But the end of it is not what people expect. She sees the king collapse with terror and hunger, and this happens:

1 Samuel 28:21

And the woman came unto Saul, and saw that he was sore troubled, and said unto him, Behold, thine handmaid hath obeyed thy voice, and I have put my life in my hand, and have hearkened unto thy words which thou spakest unto me.

She reminds him she risked her life, then makes him sit down and cooks him a meal before he goes out to die. The narrative that condemns what she does still records that she was the only person that night who was kind to him.

Where this lands

Three things, and the page exists for the third.

Scripture does not flatter anyone. Jezebel arranges a judicial murder, Athaliah kills her grandchildren, Potiphar's wife destroys a man for refusing her. The Bible reports it plainly and never suggests these are what women are.

And it will not let the men hide. Ahab sold himself. Samson had broken his vow long before Delilah. Herod gave the order. Ananias brought the money. In almost every account here, the woman is named and the man is standing beside her with a share he does not get to hand over.

Above all, it refuses to sort them for us. Jael is blessed above women for a killing the text describes in its ugliest detail. Gomer, filed under adultery, is the figure Hosea is told to use for Israel. Job's wife is answered with a comparison rather than a name. The woman of Endor is condemned and then shown feeding the king. Scripture keeps declining to give a clean verdict, and the pressure to supply one anyway is where most bad preaching about these women comes from.

Related: The Women of Scripture, A Woman of Valour, Women in the Bible and the Early Church, Judging. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub. Where this page says a passage is usually read one way, that is our own observation and is marked as such rather than attributed to a commentator.