Women of the Bible - Abigail

Women mentioned in the Bible: Abigail: This blog, God willing, will muse about important women mentioned in the Bible, over the next several posts. Scripture quoted will be from the World English Bible, public domain, and is in this color.

Even though the culture generally relegated women to a subservient role, and they seem to have seldom been consulted about important decisions, there are a number of Bible women who did take various leading roles.

I am not going to mention any woman from Revelation, or Song of Solomon, because they may not have been actual historical women.

In English alphabetical order, the first such woman is Abigail. Most of her story is in 1 Samuel 25. Abigail was married to a fool, but a rich one. Her husband, Nabal, refused to show common courtesy to David and his men. Abigail found out about this, and took it upon herself to calm David down, by bringing food to his band. She told David that he shouldn't attack Nabal, because that would harm David's reputation. When Nabal learned about this, he got sick (a stroke?) and died. David took Abigail as his own wife, one of a few such, at that time. There were more later.

Years later, a couple of David's sons by other wives rebelled, and tried to take over the kingdom from David. It doesn't seem that Abigail's son, by David, Chileab, tried to do this, even though some of his half-brothers did. Perhaps the wisdom of Abigail, who defused the situation with Nabal, trained her son to also be a peacemaker.

On the day I began this, the weather person on a TV station we watched was named Abigail. Many of the names of important Bible women are in use today. Some, like Jezebel's name, are seldom or ever used. Abigail is used frequently.

Thanks for reading.

Female Headship: Biblical Examples

Although Ephesians 5:22 is often quoted as proof that the husband is to be the head of the house, there are some examples of female spiritual leadership in families in the Bible. One such is the wife of Manoah, who was Samson's mother. Another is Hannah, who seems to have taken the lead, rather than her husband doing so, in praying and acting in the matter of having a child, in 1 Samuel 1. Abigail, in 1 Samuel 25, acted without her first husband's knowledge, and was apparently blessed and scripturally commended for doing so. (She later married David.) In Exodus 4, Zipporah, Moses' wife, took action in relation to the circumcision of their sons,when Moses hadn't, and, in doing so, apparently kept God from killing Moses. In Exodus 2, it was the mother of Moses who was responsible for his escape from the command of Pharaoh that all male Hebrew babies should be killed. The Virtuous Woman/Excellent Wife, idealized in Proverbs 31, is described as making business decisions (perhaps not spiritual ones) on her own, and, also, as having a husband at the time.

I am not including all of the women of faith from the Bible in this brief discussion. Rahab and Naomi may not have taken spiritual leadership while they had a husband, but they took it when they were single. Deborah acted in leadership of Israel. We don't know whether she also acted as spiritual leader in her home. A church was begun in Lydia's home. She may not have had a husband. Dorcas may not have, either. There are other examples, in both the Old and New Testaments, of godly female leaders. Some of them may have been the spiritual leader of their husband. We don't know. 2 Timothy 1:5 says that Timothy's mother and grandmother were the spiritual leaders in Timothy's family. His father is mentioned in Acts 16:3. It is possible that that father died early in Timothy's life. Priscilla and Aquila seem to have been equals in ministry. I submit that most likely at least some of the women in this paragraph were spiritual leaders in their home, and had a husband at the time.

My conclusion is that wives and mothers, at least some of the time, took spiritual leadership in Biblical homes, and, therefore, God may expect many wives and mothers to do this now, in the twenty-first century.

Thanks for reading. This is an excerpt from a previous post.

Added June 21, 2012: See this post. Mary, Christ's mother, seems to have exercised spiritual leadership.