The Scandalous Women Around Jesus
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Did these women have some sort of premonition or revelation that the Lord's promise to Abraham to bless all mankind would be fulfilled through the line of Judah? This was a belief of ancient Syrian Christians - see Treasure-house of Mysteries, pp. 90-104. In 2 Samuel ch. 11 we read how King David got Bathsheba pregnant, then conspired to murder her husband Uriah the Hittite. And of course, the Virgin Mary's predicament is described in Matthew 1:18-21 and Luke 1:26-38. The Scribes and Pharisees didn't buy the story of the virgin birth: referring snidely to His parentage, "They said to Him, 'We were not born of fornication. We have one Father, God'" (John 8:41), thus impugning Mary's chastity and accusing Him of being an illegitimate child.
Just think of it! How scandalous this must have seemed to people of the first century! A new religious leader appears on the scene and His followers brag about His ancestry that includes several quite violent men and some rather risque women! What's going on here, anyway? What do we notice about all these ancestresses of Jesus? Judah's son Er "was wicked in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord killed him" and Judah's daughter-in-law Tamar was a pagan. After Moses formed the Israelite nation through the Exodus from Egypt, one of Judah's descendants married the pagan Rahab, a former prostitute. Ruth, who became King David's grandmother, was a pagan from Moab. Uriah the Hittite, a pagan, was the former husband of Bathsheba who thus was almost certainly a pagan. So the Virgin Mary had four foreign, pagan women of questionable repute as her ancestresses, and thus also did Jesus Christ! Why does the Gospel writer Matthew make a point of mentioning precisely these women in Christ's genealogy? Let's listen to King David's final words to his son Solomon -
"I am going the way of all the earth: therefore be strong, and show yourself a man; and keep the charge of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His ordinances, and His testimonies, according to that which is written in the law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do, and wherever you turn yourself. That the Lord may establish His word which He spoke concerning me, saying, If your children take heed to their way, to walk before Me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul, there shall not fail you, He said, a man on the throne of Israel" (1 Kings 2:2-4).
So God's covenant promise to David and his son was conditional: "If" Solomon and his descendants would keep Yahweh's statutes and commandments, including not taking pagan wives and worshipping pagan gods, they would continue to reign over the Twelve Tribes of Israel forever. But what happened almost immediately?
"Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and married Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had finished building his own house, and the house of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem. However the people sacrificed in the high places, because there was not yet a house built for the name of the Lord. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father: except that he sacrificed and burned incense in the high places" (1 Kings 3:1-3).
This is exactly what Yahweh through David had told Solomon not to do! Diplomatic alliances by marrying daughters of foreign rulers was forbidden, as also was worshipping on the "high places" - pagan sex-cult worship in sacred groves on hilltops. Even though Solomon pulled off some fantastic construction projects - the Temple, his own house, a house for his Egyptian wife, as well as many other cities and fortifications - he wasn't faithful to the spirit of the Lord's commands concerning worship. Here is Solomon's prayer dedicating the Temple -
"Moreover concerning the foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, when he shall come out of a far country for Your name's sake (for they shall hear of Your great name, and of Your mighty hand, and of Your outstretched arm); when he shall come and pray toward this house; hear in heaven, Your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to You for; that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name, to fear You, as does Your people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have built is called by Your name" (1 Kings 8:41-43).
So the Temple was to be a place that welcomed foreigners to adopt the worship of Yahweh, the one true God. But what actually happened was just the opposite: Solomon welcomed foreigners but he adopted their pagan worship -
"Now king Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites; of the nations concerning which the Lord said to the people of Israel, You shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you; for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon joined to these in love. He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. Solomon did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and didn't go fully after the Lord, as did David his father. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, on the mountain that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech the abomination of the children of Ammon. So he did for all his foreign wives, who burnt incense and sacrificed to their gods" (1 Kings 11:1-8).
Notice his marrying women from the Moabites and the Hittites: remember Ruth and Bathsheba? Notice also the pagan gods and goddesses Ashtoreth, Milcom, and Molech: these involved sex-cult practices and infant sacrifices of the "unintended consequences" of temple prostitution. Today young people often ask - "What's so wrong with polygamy or serial divorces and remarriages?" Don't you see what happens in the above Scriptures? Pagan polytheism is closely linked with polygamy, abortion and infanticide; just as monotheism is closely linked with monogamy, lifelong faithfulness and the sanctity of human life. What we worship or set up as our ideals is how we will behave.
Then Solomon's son Rehoboam followed in his father's footsteps and even worse, causing the ten northern tribes to rebel against him - "Judah did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked Him to jealousy with their sins which they committed, above all that their fathers had done. For they also built themselves high places, and pillars [phallic symbols], and Asherim [idols of a fertility goddess], on every high hill, and under every green tree; and there were also sodomites in the land: they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord drove out before the people of Israel" (1 Kings 14:22-24).
The prophet Ezekiel wrote - "Again the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations; and say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth is of the land of the Canaanite; the Amorite was your father, and your mother was a Hittite" (Ezekiel 16:1-3). Then he goes on to describe how Yahweh had adopted Israel from among the pagan nations and made His covenant with them as a groom with his bride. But they were unfaithful to Him - "You are the daughter of your mother, who loathes her husband and her children; and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and their children: your mother was a Hittite, and your father an Amorite. Your elder sister is Samaria, who dwells at your left hand, she and her daughters; and your younger sister, who dwells at your right hand, is Sodom and her daughters" (verses 45-46).
How does this relate to our title, "The Scandalous Women Around Jesus"? Remember the woman who anointed His feet - "Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him having an alabaster jar of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table" (Matthew 26:6-7). Mark 14:3-4 also places this event at the end of Christ's ministry, at the start of Holy Week. But Luke 7:36-40 places it toward the beginning of Christ's ministry and identifies Simon as a Pharisee, not a leper (although this Simon could be both!) -
"One of the Pharisees invited Him [Jesus] to eat with him. He entered into the Pharisee's house, and sat at the table. Behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that He was reclining in the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of ointment. Standing behind at His feet weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and she wiped them with the hair of her head, kissed His feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw it, he said to himself, 'This man, if He were a prophet, would have perceived who and what kind of woman this is who is touching Him, that she is a sinner.' Jesus answered him, 'Simon, I have something to tell you.' He said, 'Teacher, say on.'"
Now here's a special twist to this tale: the Evangelist John places this event at the start of Holy Week and identifies this woman as Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus! - "It was that Mary who had anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother, Lazarus, was sick" (John 11:2). The story continues - "Then six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, who had been dead, whom He raised from the dead. So they made Him a supper there. Martha served, but Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with Him. Mary, therefore, took a pound of ointment of pure nard, very precious, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment" (John 12:1-3).
Bible scholars can't quite figure this out: many refuse to think these Gospel stories are all one and the same event, but Matthew and Luke both identify the man as "Simon" at whose house it took place. Was he a leper, or a Pharisee, or both? Did it take place at the beginning of Christ's ministry, or at the end? Was Simon the father of Lazarus, Mary and Martha? Was this "sinful woman" Mary Magdalene, as some Bible scholars think? "Magdalene" probably means "from Magdala" - a region of Israel rather distant from Bethany. We simply don't know, and it's not worth arguing and fighting over. These things are not the point. So what's the point?
The point is that Jesus is Yahweh in the flesh, God incarnate, Who became one of us: "For we have a high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus identifies as one of us. He is our Intercessor between us sinners and the Father. He hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors, collaborators with the enemy Roman occupiers - "Jesus said to them [the Pharisees], 'Most assuredly I tell you that the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering into the Kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you didn't believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. When you saw it, you didn't even repent afterward, that you might believe him" (Matthew 21:31b-32).
Jesus welcomed the serial-divorcee Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:4-30) into the Kingdom of Heaven, even though He knew everything she ever did (v. 29). The Pharisees brought to Him another woman caught in adultery, in the very act (John 8:3-11). To her accusers He said - "He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone" and they all went away silently: we all have closets in our past that we'd rather not open up. Then He did not condemn the woman; instead, He told her - "Go your way, and sin no more!" (v. 11).
Instead of assimilating the pagan foreigners into the Temple worship of Yahweh, Solomon let himself and Israel be assimilated into the perverse idolatry and immorality of the surrounding pagan nations. But Christ reversed the curse! He welcomes all nations into His Kingdom - the Church, He took upon Himself the sins of us all, He conquered sin and death, and He tells us - "Go, and sin no more!" It's Resurrection Sunday: Come As You Are! (But don't remain as you were.)
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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