The Eight Women Who Literally Saved the Cosmos

I have to admit, the title isn’t entirely mine.  I was listening to a teaching by Tim Mackie of ‘The Bible Project’, and he said something like, “Well, there were seven women that saved the cosmos.”

His co-host had to stop him and ask him to explain.  Mackie then briefly listed the seven women and their contributions to the very salvation of the universe.  He then moved on to the subject matter that he was teaching at the time.

I was stunned.  How had I never thought about this at all, much less in this way?  I am forever extolling the benefits that God has bestowed on women: first evangelist (woman at the well), first witness of the resurrection (Mary Magdalene), Deborah (judge of Israel), the list goes on.

My friends and I were recently discussing the possibility that the shepherds, the first witnesses of Jesus’ birth, might have been women.  After all, Zipporah and her sisters were watering their flocks when they met Moses.  Rachel was also a shepherdess. Shepherding was a common task assigned to women.

It is not hard to imagine the task of tending sheep would be given to those considered less important than others, as women most certainly were at the time.  Men were necessary for weightier matters, like planning wars and such.  Please forgive my snark.  On we go.

“What about David?” you may ask.  “Isn’t he the most famous shepherd of all?”

Surely, David may be the first shepherd you think of when asked to recall one, but why was he a shepherd at all?  Well, on reason is that he was the youngest and therefore less qualified for the running of things than his older brothers.

There is also a possibility (I repeat, possibility) that he may have been Jesse’s illegitimate son.  I won’t go into it.  I’ve gone into detail about this in other posts, but a simple google search will attest to this.  And, if he was a bastard, of course there would be no standing in the family, and he would have been given the most demeaning of tasks, shepherding.

Stop and think about it.  Why does the Bible spend so much time on the fact that David was a shepherd at all?  Because, the fact that someone as lowly, solitary, and even smelly as a shepherd was raised up by God to be a giant slaying, Philistine conquering king was almost unbelievable by all concerned.

So, no.  It is not out of the realm of possibility that the first witnesses to the birth of the King of the Universe, shepherdesses, would have been in the company of all the other firsts God gave women.

It is amazing to me though that right after this conversation, Tim Mackie blew my mind with his little sideline about the seven women, women who saved the cosmos.

The first two women on the list were Shiphrah and Puah.  We just don’t get how important it was in those days to include the names of women in anything, much less the story of Moses.  Yes, these were the midwives who, at the risk of their lives, refused to kill Hebrew babies when ordered to do so by Pharaoh, a man who considered himself to be a god.  They lied to Pharaoh and told him that the Hebrew women were heartier than Egyptian women and their babies were already born by the time they arrived.

I looked up the meanings of their names.  Shiphrah means fair or adorned, as in: Job 26:13a which says: 

By His Spirit the heavens are made fair.

  Puah means 'splendid.'  It is from an unused root that means ‘to glitter, brilliance.’  We see the value God placed on these two women, not only by their names, but by the fact that their names are included at all.

The next woman on the list was Jochebed, mother of Moses.  She is the subject of another conversation my friends and I had recently.  We were reading the ‘Hall of Faith’ in Hebrews where Moses’ parents are given an honored spot.  But the Book of Exodus gives us his mother’s name and tells us that it was she who saw something special in Moses.  By the way, her name means ‘Jehovah is glory.’

Remember, when Pharaoh failed to stop the multiplication of the Hebrews by the midwives, he just ordered all the baby boys born to be thrown into the Nile.  Jochebed saw something special in her baby and hid him from the Egyptians. Of course, Jochebed couldn’t have hidden Moses without the help and consent of her husband, but the Bible makes it clear that it was her bravery that started the process of the salvation of her people from the slavery of Egypt.

The next woman, or at least girl, on the list is Moses’ sister, Miriam.  I must say, I have considered the bravery of this young lady on more than one occasion.  When Moses was around three months old and could no longer be hidden, Jochebed made a basket, covered it in pitch, and put Moses in the tiny ark.  She believed God and sent her baby adrift on the river.  The Bible says that Miriam stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

Here is where her bravery comes in.  The Nile is known, even to this day, for crocodiles.  Consider also that they had been dining on Israelite babies for a while, gruesome I know, but true.  I believe those crocks were conditioned and anywhere Miriam stood that was close enough to see that basket, she was in danger of being eaten herself.

Not only that, but when Pharaoh’s daughter drew Moses from the water, she stepped right up like she owned the place and offered to bring the princess a wetnurse from among the Hebrews.  That wetnurse would be Moses’ own mother, Jochebed. 

Of course, we have to include Pharaoh’s daughter as a hero in our story.  She knew her father’s decree.  She recognized the baby as a Hebrew, yet she drew him out of the water and raised him as her own son, giving him the finest Egypt had to offer.

The seventh woman is also a part of the Moses story, but I’ll bet you wouldn’t be able to guess her identity maybe even after rereading the passage in Exodus.  That would be the maidservant of Pharaoh’s daughter.  She had to wade into the crocodile infested reeds to fetch baby Moses.  God included her in the story so she is important. 

So, that is seven women who, without any foreknowledge of the impact of their actions, saved the cosmos.  Without Moses, there would be no Exodus.  Without the Exodus, there would be no Sinai.  Without Sinai, there would be no Covenant.  Without the Sinai Covenant, there would be no Old Testament because all of it proceeds from the first five Covenant books, one of which is Exodus.  Without the Sinai Covenant and the Old Testament, we wouldn’t have the promise of a savior and our hope for eternity.

This brings us to woman number eight, Mother Mary.  She was a young woman, likely a teenager, when she said, “Yes,” to God.  She faced shame and even the death penalty for being pregnant out of wedlock.  She would have been seen as an adulteress because she was betrothed to Joseph and betrothal was a binding contract, the same as being married without the consummation.  Thank God she said, “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

One of these days I’m sure I will write about the impact Christianity has had on the freedom of women.  I’ll include the brave acts and prophetic utterances of women in the Bible.  I’ll even write about women teachers and apostles.  But for today, I just want to remember that women weren’t just elevated positionally in the Bible, but the bravery and sacrifice of eight of them literally saved the Cosmos.