We Who Thirst
Delve into the captivating tales of women from the Bible, exploring their lives within ancient cultures and historical contexts. These narratives reveal not only their stories but also the profound love and beauty of the God we worship.
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We Who Thirst
015: Proverbs 31 & Homemaking
This episode dives into God's heart for women, juxtaposing traditional views of homemaking with modern perspectives drawn from cultural variances and biblical teachings. Discussing the Proverbs 31 woman, the hosts emphasize the significance of collaboration, community, and the recognition of women's roles not limited to homemaking alone.
• Exploring historical and cultural contexts around homemaking
• Survey results reveal women's feelings of inadequacy and guilt
• Misconceptions about the Proverbs 31 woman as a checklist
• The collaboration of women in ancient cultural homemaking
• Addressing patriarchal pressures on women's roles today
• Advocating for women's economic agency
• Highlighting the importance of community in women's lives
• A call to redefine womanhood without guilt or limits
May God bless your pursuits as you engage with these topics and the conversations they inspire!
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Welcome back to the we who Thirst podcast. I took a few weeks off from podcasting over the Christmas break and I am so excited to be back with you Today. We are jumping right back into our Proverbs 31 series that we had to pause back in September. So if you're just tuning into the podcast now, you may want to go back and listen to episodes five through seven of the podcast, where we laid the groundwork for how to read and understand Proverbs 31 and who the woman of valor is.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Today we are going to be specifically talking about God's heart for women, the woman of valor in her home, and how that relates to the modern idea of homemaker or trad wife. With me today is my dear friend, elise Kilko. She is a stay-at-home mom of two beautiful kids who also volunteers at a Bible school, helping behind the scenes with childcare and reception. She's also a foreign worker who has lived in three different countries for extended periods of time, interfacing with a variety of cultures. Elise, our topic today is about the woman of valor and her home. Whenever we talk about the home, the topic of homemaking and evangelical complementarian expectations for women comes up. What is your experience with teachings on homemaking?
Elice Kilko:Oh, that's such a good question. I think, having been in so many different cultures. I grew up in Brazil and they're really, unless you're quite, you know, upper middle class, you will probably have a job outside the home. And if you are upper middle class, that means you had the means to get an education and so you might still work outside the home. Frequent professions for women are dentists, lawyers, really anything but teachers. You know some of the same ones that often women gravitate to here in the States as well. But I think growing up I understood that the woman might need to be you know she's working at home. Her value is to be helping at home and kind of be in charge of who's doing what at home, but that she might still be outside working a profession outside the home as well, because it just it needs to happen if the bills are going to get paid.
Jessica LM Jenkins:And so then, coming to college in the Midwest in the United States and getting into all the very complementarian, very Baptist teaching, you went to a fundamentalist adjacent college, yeah, yes, very much so.
Elice Kilko:Then having kind of to like rewire, like weights, but like what if you have to work outside the home, like it was almost like a culture shock, um and so um, I just I think I've seen a lot of different perspectives, um, of what homemaking could be. I'm thankful that I've seen so many perspectives.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Yeah, I think what you you bring up with the different cultures, is really important and we're not going to get into that real deeply this episode, though I would like to on an episode at some point, but I've heard, like I know, jasmine Holmes talks about this as well just the different cultures, even within inside the United States. Like, historically, black women have had to work outside the home for many of the same reasons that Brazilian women have to work outside the home, many of the same reasons that Brazilian women have to work outside the home and how. So much of the homemaking as a woman's role. Culture really is white, fundamentalist, adjacent fundamentalist, evangelical culture. It is very middle class, it is very white. This expectation, but for those of us who have engaged that culture or who come out of that culture, this expectation that women be a homemaker is like the status quo in the church. Yeah, that makes sense.
Jessica LM Jenkins:In preparation for this episode the last couple days, I did some informal polling on my social media platforms, so the results are very much. Whoever was on yesterday, whoever either follows me on Instagram or randomly came across the posts on threads, so, but the results were really interesting 50 to 61% of the women who were polled were taught in their churches that a woman's role, as ordained by God, is to be a homemaker. So 50% or more women have been taught that a woman's role is to be the homemaker. I believe about 13%. 10 to 13%. Their church didn't even talk about it at all what a woman's role was. So you either have you're to be a homemaker, or silence is kind of, and then about 30% no, that's not her role.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Interestingly, though, even though the churches are teaching seemingly overwhelmingly that a woman's role is to be a homemaker, very little specific instruction was given on how to be a homemaker in the church. The majority of women were just left to figure that out on their own or talk amongst themselves or read books, blogs, etc. The church itself didn't give them help on how to do that. They were just left to figure it out or told that they needed to focus on their husband and kids. A theme that I know I was taught, and I was hearing from women who were DMing me or answering my polls, was that they were taught their job is to make their husband a success, and they can only do anything outside of making him a success or taking care of their house if they have accomplished, making him a success and taking perfect care of their house. Only then can they follow any of their own interests or passions or callings. That's so much pressure.
Elice Kilko:Yeah, so much pressure.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Yeah, oh, wow, and so they didn't get a lot of specifics. It's kind of vague, but they're told to focus relentlessly here but not really told how Did you, what was? Have you experienced any of these kind of firm but vague teachings?
Elice Kilko:Yes, yeah for sure, growing up, our kind of niche Baptist group had a women's meeting every year, and so there would often be breakout sessions and sometimes those breakout sessions would be a lot more practical. So kind of some of these how can you get an actual thing done? But a lot of times they were very vague, it was a mixed bag, you know, a mixed bag of like this is what you need to do, without any concrete steps. But I do remember sometimes having very concrete, you know, breakout sessions of like here's how you could do a specific thing. But then here in the States, I mean, I was a biblical counseling major 10. So that gave me a whole bunch to think about and baggage that I'm now trying to sort through, I guess.
Jessica LM Jenkins:I find it really interesting how the local churches didn't do a whole, whole lot of direct teaching, especially from like the pulpit, but women were encouraged to go into all of these books and blogs and side teachings, typically from other women. That often ended up being very unhealthy and I think sometimes from conversations I've had with like my dad who's a pastor, or other pastors, they're not even aware fully of what some of these women are being taught because it's outside. The pastors aren't really paying attention to what the women are doing, and that's a whole side conversation that we're not going to get into. But back to the poll.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Unsurprisingly, the majority of the women I polled struggled in their homemaking.
Jessica LM Jenkins:About a quarter of those said they didn't feel like they did well or felt well as a homemaker. A majority of women felt like they did not live up to the expectations that their communities and churches had for them as homemakers, leaving over half the women feeling like a failure or perpetually guilty for their performance that they just weren't measuring up. It's like this rat race where they could never do good enough. A very small percentage, like 14%, felt like they thrived as homemakers. About a quarter of the women didn't even try to be homemakers, but the rest of them either struggled but did okay, or just did not feel like they did well as homemakers at all. And what I found most interesting is that even women who no longer believe that God commands women to be homemakers because that's a strong teaching you have to be a homemaker. This is God's will for your life Even women who do not believe that God commands them to be homemakers still feel either high to extremely high levels of guilt about their homemaking. Oh yeah.
Elice Kilko:Yeah, the shame we carry from the things that we were taught or we picked up. Yeah, your polling sounds I mean it, just really it's. I can definitely see that in my own life and in those of my friends. Homemaking in the, you know, white, American evangelical fundamental framework is very isolating. It can be really hard unless you are one of the few that thrives on, you know, making all the lists and being the one that's writing the blog and teaching other people how to do it. And even those people I imagine if you had an honest conversation with them, not every day would be rosy. So that's so. It's really hard, just the pressure that we feel to live up to this expectation without clear directions. You have this huge expectation with no clear direction on how to meet the standard, which is so, so hard, and then you read Proverbs 31 and you are taught that it's a checklist and you're just destined to like fail. You're just you're going to fail, yeah.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Yeah, and it's so like, and even when you are given a checklist, those checklists don't necessarily fit your family or your family dynamics, and then you're again back to the idea that you have to be totally consumed with your family. Dorothy Patterson, who was the wife of the president of the seminary I attended, told me once that a married woman has to be a stay-at-home homemaker, trying to have children Even if she can't. That needs to be her goal, and if she is working outside the home, it is because she and her husband have a lack of faith.
Jessica LM Jenkins:So basically, if a woman who is married of childbearing age is working outside the home. She is in sin and has a lack of faith.
Elice Kilko:Where does that leave all the single women, all the women who struggle with infertility or any kind of health issue, those women?
Jessica LM Jenkins:get a pass because they don't have kids. I was recently married. At the time expected to start popping out babies, but you're allowed to work if you don't have kids. But if you are fertile and able to have children, you better get to it.
Elice Kilko:Oh, so hard.
Jessica LM Jenkins:But the other women are still expected single women, women without kids they're still expected to be homemakers while they're working a job. They're now expected to do both simultaneously and they would often frame homemaking a lot around hospitality, especially for the working women like the single women and those without children, like Dorothy was working because her children were all grown. But for me, as I think about that, when you start making homemaking about hospitality, why don't we just call it hospitality that both men and women are responsible for? But there was just this expectation. Let me read to you what Dorothy Patterson wrote in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, because I think this kind of encapsulates some of the teaching many women have received. She says these characteristics describe God's ideal woman in Proverbs 31. She is a committed homemaker, a chaste helpmate, upright and God-fearing woman of strength. There is no hint in the passage that this woman has any other purpose than to meet the needs of her family in the best possible way. Okay.
Elice Kilko:So I'm just a baby-making machine who is a servant.
Jessica LM Jenkins:For your family, and that is not to denigrate homemaking or taking care of your family. Every woman I know, whether she's working in or outside the home, is trying to take care of her family in the best possible way. There's this. The homemaking discussions in the white, evangelical, fundamentalist fundamentalist adjacent circles centers on the woman only and primarily doing homemaking and they root that in passages like Proverbs 31 and Titus 2, so that authors like Debbie Pearl say young women are to be keepers of the home. This is the sixth of eight mandates for young women in Titus 2. It is not a suggestion, it is God's will for wives, she says. She says in her book Created to Be to Help Me, and so you have extreme pressure that you have to do this. God created you in the womb. If you have the privilege of marriage to be a homemaker, there is no other option.
Jessica LM Jenkins:And this is a theme that comes up in all sorts of books for women, which are the primary teaching women are getting on. This topic is from books. I've seen themes like this echoed in Rebecca Merkel's Even Exile. I saw even the Kostenbergers alluded to some of this in their book on men and women. I don't want to focus on all those teachings. But I do want to lay a framework for our discussion that a lot of us are coming out of circles that emphasized those teachings very strongly.
Elice Kilko:Yeah, it definitely sets us up for failure and for a lot of pressure to be put on us, which then, in turn, gives us shame when we can't attain the standard that's been set.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Yeah, and a lot of the standard that's been set also revolves around the people in your life, and your children have to behave a certain way. Your husband has to view you a certain way. So for many and I'm not going to say all, and this is not taught explicitly as much as implicitly, but for many homemakers they can only feel like a success when the people around them in their home are happy, well-behaved and fulfilled, leaving homemakers with an intrinsic need to control all the people in their lives, because their success depends on everybody around them. Looking just so, yeah, yeah, that's so hard. And then when you're dealing with families that have trauma, neurodivergence, all medical yeah, yeah, that's so hard.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Neurodivergent women or women with neurodivergent kids and when you start dealing with these extra things medical neurodivergence, trauma, all of that you suddenly the ideal of children who obey the very first time and husbands who lead and are happy to see you and all of this it starts kind of splintering. But you're supposed to be the homemaker, You're to make the home, and that includes the people being happy, and you can't do that. And so that's why I think my polls reveal such immense levels of guilt. These women just carry all the time. Yeah, yeah.
Elice Kilko:That makes total sense, oh that's so hard sense.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Oh, that's so hard, yeah, it really is. So there are some teachers and Kostenbergers fall under this that do give some leeway for women to work outside the home. Not every teacher in these circles says women have to work completely inside the home. Some say they can work outside the home, but it's kind of a she's supposed to work inside the home but if she has to she can work outside the home. But it's kind of this muddy position Like at what point am I okay to work outside the home, or I need to, or what point not? Have you run across that position? How have you processed it?
Elice Kilko:Yeah, it's like, okay, do I stay at home and take care of my family and go on food stamps, or do I get a job outside the house? You know, like I know, for a lot of people that was like a decision they had to make and then you put in. You know, if you're in a specific group of people who are going to look down on people who have to go on food stamps, then all of a sudden you're trying to keep that a secret. You know, um, and that adds more shame to the system, um. So yeah, I definitely saw it was like working outside the home was like this loophole if you need it for finances, but at what point is it a need and at what time is it a want? So definitely, and different people measure that at a different way.
Jessica LM Jenkins:I got a DM from one woman who had a very interesting insight. She said that in her church, if a woman wasn't a homemaker, that opened up her life to be scrutinized. And now everybody's like nitpicking her life, either to justify her needing to work out the home oh, her husband just doesn't have a very good job or he's disabled. So now they're nitpicking her husband or they're scrutinizing her family for being too worldly in their spending habits oh, they just want to. She wants to work outside the home because they have cars. They don't need two cars that are that nice. They could have less nice cars and she could stay home. And so the whole homemaking thing leads to a lot of scrutiny, not around things like the fruits of the spirit in a first Corinthians 13 love, but around like just nitpicky life things where people are judging. I think that can become, unfortunately, a huge part of this culture of nitpicking women's choices and trying to judge motives, which also adds to all that guilt and shame.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Part of what I really want to do in this series, though, is lift some of that guilt and shame off. I want to look at how God views women and what God is calling women to do and to be looking specifically at the passages that in some ways have been used to bludgeon women in the past. We are focusing on Proverbs 31 in this series. I will probably at some point do an episode or two on Titus 2. So we're going to leave Titus 2 for another time, but I do want to talk in detail about Proverbs 31, this woman and her home. So for today, we need to back up a little bit before we get into Proverbs 31 proper and talk about a woman's role in the Old Testament For a full, huge discussion on that.
Jessica LM Jenkins:I have a lecture on gender roles and patricentric heterarchy on my YouTube channel. You can search for we who Thirst podcast on YouTube. You can watch that That'll with pictures and diagrams and the whole nine yard walk you through and it's so good, it's so helpful Feeling social structures in the Bible, not just the Old Testament, but we'll summarize that here today. So, Elise, what were you taught about the family structures and roles of women in the Old Testament growing up?
Elice Kilko:That's such a good question. I was thinking about it, uh, earlier today I was actually talking with my sister, because how we were taught about it as kids and then, um, changing countries and um, uh, and then how you view it as an adult is so different. Um, and I think, growing up, uh, my dad has six sisters. He's the only boy and then he got married and had four daughters and, praise the Lord, he values women. We wouldn't really really be in a bad place if he didn't. But I definitely think that that carried over into how he taught us about women in the Bible, because it was important to him that we were valued and that we saw our place in God's story and that definitely came through growing up.
Elice Kilko:So growing up, I didn't just learn about, you know, the meek and timid women of the Bible. I learned about the warriors, you know. I learned about JL and Deborah Abigail, who saved her whole household from slaughter, and those were my heroines. Like I learned about the value of a woman's place who could make judgment calls and go to battle and be strong and follow God, not just because her husband was going to the temple and making sacrifices, but because she in her own home, was welcoming in angels and making meals for them and all of that, and so I'm so thankful that I caught that vision very early from my parents, and I realize now as an adult just how unusual that was.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Yeah, because some of those women you're rattling off women, and I remember teachings about them from a very firmly complementarian space, where the wife is to submit to the husband, he is the boss, he is the military commander. When he says jump, she says how high A wife is only as obedient to God as she is as obedient to her husband. Those are the types of things that we're taught, and so women like Abigail, who went around her husband to feed, give David the food, was actually kind of looked down on. She wasn't a heroine. We're all like how could she be that disobedient? And so it's beautiful that you were taught the beauty of these strong women, but it doesn't sound like you were taught a lot specifically about how these women functioned in family structures and roles.
Elice Kilko:No, not necessarily roles. No, not necessarily. No, not as you teach it from historical context.
Jessica LM Jenkins:And this is kind of a side note, but I think a lot of what you were taught is kind of the Jewish perspective. They have a slightly different. The Jewish perspective of women is very different than the complementarian perspective of women.
Jessica LM Jenkins:And so I think you were able to absorb more of the Jewish perspective looking up at and honoring these women than the complementarian. She needs to submit and obey her husband period, end of the road. If the lights get turned off in the house because he's not paying the bills, she just needs to pray and let God handle it and submit. So social structure in the Old Testament. One thing I want to talk about that I think we deal with when we're talking about homemaking specifically, is the idea of public versus private space and what space women occupy, and a lot of this comes down to how the ancient people viewed public versus private space and the modern ideas of public and private space. When you think about public and private space, Elise, what aspects of life would you put in each today for modern sake?
Elice Kilko:Today. Yeah, for most modern families, jobs would be outside the house and cooking, cleaning, laundry would be inside the house. If you're on a committee or volunteering or you do some sort of job, that would be outside, whereas if you're, you know, doing other things, that would be inside the house.
Jessica LM Jenkins:So really public private spaces, private spaces inside your personal domicile, your house. Public space is everything out there, Outside.
Elice Kilko:Yeah, yeah, which is? Not how it was Not how it was. Can you break that down for us? How it's different then?
Jessica LM Jenkins:So in the ancient world religion was kind of considered both public and private. Certain parts of the religious in Israel were certain. Part of the religious observance were public, like going to the temple, those sorts of things. A lot of religious observance were private and they were actually things that women did in the home. So religion is kind of both and which is really important to understand when we get to talking about the New Testament, which we're not doing today. So I will not digress, I will stay on topic. So religion is both public and private. But really for the ancient peoples, and especially the Old Testament, the only things that were considered public space were politics and the judiciary. Everything else was considered private space. So politics, who the king is, the leader of the tribe, all of that that's kind of public space. Think the meeting at the gate. We hear in the Old Testament they would meet at the gate. That is like public space. The political judgment areas, judiciary that's public space. Private space is everything else commerce, production, markets, economy, social relationships. That is considered private space.
Jessica LM Jenkins:In the Old Testament the home was the economic center. So our modern idea of a separation of you immediately said work, going to your job, is outside the home. That's public space. In the ancient world there's no separation between your home and your vocation, your work. So your vocation, your production, your economy, you earning they didn't necessarily, especially in the Old Testament, worry about like earning money per se. They were less of a money-based society and more of a good trading type society, but your economy is all centered in the home. There is no separation of oh, she works outside the home public space versus working in the home private space. Work is private space in the ancient mindset. So our idea of a homemaker as a adult human who limits themselves primarily, though they do obviously venture out into public space, but they limit themselves and their focus primarily to private space, which is the house itself. In the ancient world, a woman though most women did function in private space. Their private space was much larger.
Elice Kilko:Yeah, and you can kind of see this throughout history, I mean basically up until the Industrial Revolution, exactly. You know, if your family were farmers, you were farmers. If you were shopkeepers, your house was above the shop or very close by. If your family was shoemakers, you were shoemakers. So it's not so. I mean it's still there, not so far back.
Jessica LM Jenkins:It's not that far back, but in the homemaking circles that really push this idea of homemaking, they had this huge split. They're very much the man is the provider. His God has called him to provide and he has called the woman to be the homemaker, which is splitting the economic and the homeward function in a way that the ancient peoples in either the New Testament or the Old Testament, they would have been like. What are you talking about? These are like. Everybody in the family does both. We take care of the house, the household, all of that stuff, and the economy.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Women didn't frequent public spaces that often. Most rulers and judges were men, but we do have examples of women in the Old Testament, like Deborah and Jezebel, and there was other queens as well, whose names I'm forgetting Bathsheba. They also were in public spaces. So there was a time and place for women to be in the public spaces, though most of their daily life, especially when you're just dealing with the average woman was in the private space. And when we talk about the average person, most of the average men are functioning completely in private spaces as well, because they didn't necessarily have ruling or judicial functions in their community.
Elice Kilko:They might be representing their family, but they didn't have those high up positions representing their family, but they didn't have those high up positions, unless they're going to go get their exchange of land switched through the chamber of commerce, quote, unquote. You know things like that, most of them are outside as well.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Yeah, that's so interesting. And so this is what I find super interesting about modern complementarian writings about homemaking, because, as I've read Debbie Pearl, rebecca Merkel, these sorts of authors they really consider homemaking to be a position that chiefly occupies the modern idea of private space and they are very strong in their expectations for a homemaker to primarily stay in the home itself, which is, as we talked about briefly earlier, extremely isolating. The women women are encouraged. Authors like Merkel and Pearl strongly discourage women from socializing with other women or being on their phones or joining community causes or anything that takes them away from focusing purely on their nuclear families. It is you, your husband and your kids that is to be 100% of your focus and a lot of these complementarian teachings. When in the Old Testament we see, women had a much broader focus. Unlike what Dorothy Patterson said, the Proverbs 31 woman wasn't only concerned about the needs of her nuclear family.
Elice Kilko:So bring us back to Proverbs 31. What does that have to do with the homemaker, the woman of valor as a homemaker?
Jessica LM Jenkins:Yes. Well, when we get into Proverbs 31 itself just to review for those who are just tuning into the series and haven't had a chance to go back and listen to episode five yet we are reading in this series on Proverbs 31, the passage to see various things that God delights in in women. We are not reading Proverbs 31 as a checklist for the ideal women. I got several comments that I was always taught Proverbs 31 as a checklist, a list of to-dos for the modern homemaker. That is not how God designed Proverbs 31. This proverb was probably written by a mother as advice for her son on what to look for in a queen. Her son was a king. This is what you look for in your wife. So the activities shown in Proverbs 31 are not the average day-to-day activities for the normal peasant woman. That's really important to understand, super important, yes.
Jessica LM Jenkins:This is not what the average Jane was doing every day. This passage describes the life, and it's more, whole life, not like her day-to-day but like a holistic look of 30 to 80 years of living, to describe the life of a godly, wealthy woman with incredible privilege. She is a privileged woman. This passage praises the good qualities of the woman of valor, the Proverbs 31 woman, and that praise reveals some of the aspects God delights in in women, but it is not an exhaustive list.
Elice Kilko:Which is so important and takes so much pressure off.
Jessica LM Jenkins:It does, because it's not a to-do list. These aren't things we have to emulate. It's saying in this culture. These are things this type of woman did. A wealthy, aristocratic, privileged woman did these sorts of things, and those show us some things that God delights in. It's not an exhaustive list, though, but let's look at some of the things this wealthy, aristocratic, privileged woman did in Proverbs 31. Elise, would you read verse 27 for us?
Elice Kilko:Yes, she watches over the activities of her household and is never idle.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Okay, what translation is that? Csb, csb, perfect. So the question here is what does it mean to examine or watch over the activities of her household? How have you heard this verse interpreted, elise?
Elice Kilko:Again it goes back to where I was when I was being taught this verse, I think as a kid I was very much taught that it was like an overseer, so kind of the one that's making sure that all the balls stay in the air and kind of directing the activities, whereas then as a student under complementarian teaching, it was very much. She takes whatever her husband gives her and then is responsible for those little moving pieces, but only under the direction of her husband.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Okay. And household, especially with the complementarian teaching was focused on, like the nuclear family, yes, husband, wife, laundry, that's it. So this verse for complementarians was often interpreted she's examining the activities of her household. She is up on her dusting and her laundry and her cooking and her homemade bread and her babies and homeschooling and all of those nuclear family household caretaking things. In the ancient world, since the home was the economic center, it is business and house and living space all intertwined. There was zero business outside the household.
Jessica LM Jenkins:So the woman of valor's role here is that of chief operating officer, kind of like you were taught as a kid. She is looking over the affairs of those working in her domain. So in my lecture on YouTube I break this down in more detail. But the patriarch of the family would be over the men in the family and that could be sons, that could be maybe some unmarried brothers, that could be servants. He would be over the men directing what they do and then the matriarch would be over the women. So as the woman of valor is examining the activities of her household, she's paying attention to her domain. There were gendered activities. The men typically did a certain type of work and the women typically did a certain type of work and each of them would kind of watch over the people in their gender category to help make sure. So she's not necessarily doing all of the labor herself. She's watching and making sure everything's running smoothly like a business manager. Because a house was a household, was business. You can't separate it. My household is not a business, it is a house. It is a place of safety and leisure and eating. Their household was business.
Jessica LM Jenkins:So the woman of valor's role is to watch over and make sure everybody's doing what they need to do and some of what her specific categories that a woman would often be in charge of in a household in the Old Testament, and she had authority over these. It was not delegated to her by her husband. The culture said the matriarch has authority over these things, even against her husband sometimes. If there was a disagreement, her word was often law on any of these areas, and so those areas are food. She could even decide whether her husband got seconds or thirds at a meal If she said that is the rations for today, even if he wanted more. Tough luck, dude, she's in charge.
Jessica LM Jenkins:So she had authority over food light when they lit the lamps at night. Imagine, elise, that you get to decide every time somebody in your house flips a light switch on or off, or what time we turn off all the lights at night, and that's just it. The lights are off, now we're not turning them back on. So she has authority over food, light, medicine, reproduction and textiles, clothes everything people wear. Those are her areas. So this passage of examining the activities of her household is not talking about just running your kids to soccer practice or dusting or vacuuming. The view here is not managing a home like we think of it. It's overseeing her responsibilities in the family business, which is intertwined with day-to-day living which changes the view so much.
Elice Kilko:I mean it just. It opens it up to so much more.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Yeah, and many of the tasks we associate with homemaking, such as cleaning, child care and homeschooling, were not necessarily divided down gender lines in the Old Testament, Unless the child was nursing, which obviously only its mother could do, which obviously only its mother could do, then older kids were, with their gendered parent, learning A lot of the things that we say. This is what a homemaker does cleaning, childcare, homeschool, education was actually split between the genders in the ancient world.
Elice Kilko:Yeah, and we can totally see that in verse 14 and 15 of Proverbs, 31 and verse 21. I'll read those. I'll do 14 and 15. She is like the merchant ships bringing her food from far away. She rises while it is still night and provides food for her household and portions for her female servants. And then verse 21, she says she's not afraid for her household when it snows, for all in her household are doubly clothed.
Jessica LM Jenkins:So the woman of valor is making sure everyone in the household had what they need. After studying the lives of the average peasant Old Testament woman, what I find really interesting in this passage is that she does not participate in food production at all. The Proverbs 31 woman. The average peasant woman would spend I forget the exact figure, but it's like two to four hours a day grinding grain.
Elice Kilko:This is crazy. I know this is crazy.
Jessica LM Jenkins:I know that's. I mean two to four hours a day grinding grain. The Proverbs 31 woman isn't doing that. She is sourcing her bread externally. This is like a huge flag of like privilege, massive wealth and privilege here. She may be overseeing some of the food preparation, but she is not personally participating in it. She sources and manages the food to make sure the people in her household have food and that it's being proportioned and everything appropriately, but she's not doing the labor. She's managing and she's overseeing the other women and servants doing these tasks. So it's not a mom with five little elementary school age kids. She is a grown woman and by the time this was written we might be thinking an elderly woman overseeing her daughters, her daughters-in-law and her servants to do the food production of the house, to do the storage, to do the maintenance of the food and all of those things.
Elice Kilko:Mm-hmm, yeah, and for peasant women they would be doing this as a community often, so you wouldn't be grinding your wheat by yourself with your kids going crazy. You might be able to go grind your wheat with your friend and take turns and be building community, or with your sister, even within your home, you know because they lived in larger home things. So you might be working with your sister or sister-in-law to get this stuff done, so your youngest sister might be watching the kids while you do all of this together. Which goes back to how parenting and being a stay-at-home mom is isolating your informal polls. Can you remind us of that?
Jessica LM Jenkins:Yes, a while back this is quite a while back I did a poll about whether women feel like being a stay-at-home mom was isolating. 63% of the participants voted that they found being a stay-at-home mom today in modern society extremely isolating. 20% said they felt like they actually had more community as a stay-at-home mom, which makes sense because there's some homeschooling groups and whatnot. Makes sense because there's some like homeschooling groups and whatnot. 12% were pretty sure that if they were a stay-at-home mom, they weren't, but if they were, that it would be isolating, which is one thing that really struck me as I studied women of the Old Testament, because I had heard so many voices like Patterson and Merkel and Pearl saying a woman needs to be in her home. Beware of other women. You don't want to be gossiping. You don't want to be hanging out with other women. Don't go join those liberal community feminist groups Like you need to be at home with your kids. That is your job. That is what God designed for you to do. To be home alone with multiple children all day, every day. That is God's plan for your life. Oh, my goodness, that's what these women are teaching. Yeah, for your life. Oh, my goodness, that's what these women are teaching, yeah, and to study through Proverbs 31 and the life of Old Testament women and realize these women were never doing any of this alone by themselves, never by themselves. They were constantly grinding grain together, baking bread together, doing weaving or anything related to yarn production. Together they were constantly building community and the Proverbs 31 woman is overseeing and helping and creating beautiful communities.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Carol Meyer in her book, in her chapter in the book Biblical World of Gender, talks about the relationships these women would build during work and how significant they are. A lot of the women's books that I have read recently from complementarian perspective really downplay women in communities. They say women are just gossips, that they can't be trusted with each other or that they will be tempted into liberal feminist causes. But in the ancient world women being together was exceptionally important. Carol Myler says these relationships among women at work were hardly casual or frivolous. Women's familiarity with each other builds solidarity. Women who work together typically rally to each other's assistance. They formed what we might call mutual aid societies. Their work together served an important social function in ancient Israel by contributing to the well-being and survival of their communities as well as their families. And she talks further. I don't know if it's in that book or one of her plethora of other writings about how just important the women's community building in the ancient world was.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Because a lot of the tasks that men did were isolated. They would be out in the field fixing a fence or taking care of the sheep or going out by themselves. Because they're men, they're a little safer to do that in a culture where you have no police, no standing army. Raiders can come through at any point. You need your women to stay physically safe. The men are a little safer to go by themselves. Some hotshot teenager isn't going to come upon you by yourself and do something you don't want them to do. But women stay together. So in the ancient world men often would go off by themselves to do their work. Women would work in groups. So it was the women's social relationships that were really in many ways the bedrock of the communities. Because it was the women's who knew that the Smiths their crops weren't doing well and they were going to need some extra help. Or that the Thompsons the husband, is sick and so our teenage boy can go over and help them. And it's the women who kept tabs on all of this.
Elice Kilko:And now it's almost flipped my husband the network work that allowed all these transactions that needed to happen happen.
Jessica LM Jenkins:And I just found it interesting as I was analyzing culture. Now my husband has all of these social relationships at work. He's really well known, he's really well liked people. You know he has all of these relationships at work. And then me, as a stay at home mom, it was me and the kids all day and I would try to get together with friends, but that wouldn't always work. And you're trying to talk and all of the, and even if you're trying to talk, there's no one to watch the kids. So you're having to like watch the kids the whole time.
Jessica LM Jenkins:And I've just found the shift that with the industrialism shift to nuclear families, that to be very interesting. How it used to be, the women built these solid social relationships that were the bedrock of the community. The Proverbs 31 woman. We see, and we'll talk about it more in a later episode she's really creating these relationships and helping and all of the tasks that the women under her watch, that she is examining the activities of her household, includes watching, facilitating, make sure the women in her community and in her household are able to use the communal oven, grind grain together, use the looms. Who needs what she's managing, potentially working with other women to manage multi-household usage of. It's like if three houses community resources like three.
Jessica LM Jenkins:How, like my mom or my grandma, talk about a time where, like, if you wanted to use the phone you had to go down the hallway in your apartment building to the phone, that, like 50 apartments all used the same phone. Or in an like when I was in college, we had one washing machine for the entire dorm. Or there was like four, but we had one washing room for the entire dorm and everybody. So you had communal resources. And so the woman of valor examining the activities of her household is helping to manage these communal resources for her household and other households, to build these communities of women working together with each other's children to create this beautiful mutual aid society where they are not alone, they are not trying to just figure out their own house and their own kids by themselves.
Elice Kilko:So it talks about. Proverbs 31 talks about feeding and clothing people and sometimes, as a stay at home mom, it feels like that's all I do. I can never catch up on laundry. I am always having to think about what the next meal is. What are some ways that are similar and ways that are different to the woman of valor in Proverbs 31?
Jessica LM Jenkins:So you are right, a lot of in the old ancient world, a woman was still doing clothes and food Like. It seems like women have always been clothes and food, but there's a couple big difference, one of the biggest differences. It's not about the tasks that the women are doing themselves, it's about how those tasks are viewed. In the ancient world, the woman's tasks are necessary for survival and for wealth building. Today, a stay-at-home mom's tasks can be helpful for money management, but they lack the scope and necessity that the ancient women's did. And the ancient women then had more agency and power because their tasks were necessary. Where today, the scope of what a stay-at-home mom does is a lot less, in some ways More narrow. For sure, we've outsourced a lot of the things. Like now, food, like, yes, home-cooked scratch meals are fantastic and healthier, and all the things Not knocking that at all. I cook those meals every day. You do too. Every day, you do too. But if I were to pass away tomorrow, my family would still be fed.
Jessica LM Jenkins:There's grocery stores, there's fast food. Today, if somebody can't feed themselves, it's either a lack of money, but it's not a lack of skill. In the ancient world, food production and textile production, clothing these were very skilled, technologically advanced, proprietary technologies that the women knew. Um, they were. It's like, the women knew how to bake the bread, the women knew how to make the clothes. The men didn't necessarily. So you have this proprietary knowledge around these things that gave them honor, that gave them prestige in their community, because it was necessary and it was highly skilled labor. Today, food production, clothing production is largely outsourced and considered less skilled labor, so it's devalued.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Um, in the ancient world, a woman was the doctor for her family. Today, you take your kids to the doctor, um, and light? We just take light for granted, we don't have to worry about do I have enough oil to burn the lamp? As long as I need to? We just flip on a light switch. And our husband, actually, if he's the provider for the homemaking and you're at home, he manages all of that with the money.
Jessica LM Jenkins:So, though women are doing many of the same things, the necessity and the valuing, culture-wise, is a lot lower for the women today. Wise um is a lot lower for the women today. And even in the complimentary complementarian trad wife circles where they try to build up the woman like yay, being a mom is the most important job in the world. Even then she's supposed to do this job without intrinsic authority because her husband in complementarian circles and hierarchical complementarian circles he Mm-hmm power and so where her work is meaningful and important, there's just some major differences on how it functions.
Jessica LM Jenkins:One thing I also think of is, today a stay-at-home mom doing the homemaking, stay-at-home wife-mom thing is completely dependent on her husband's economic function. In the Old Testament the husband was as dependent on the wife as she is on him. And sure, today husbands really appreciate having their laundry done and food done and they depend on their wives for those things. But there's also fast food and laundromat or and dry cleaners and you can pay somebody to do that task very easily. But in the ancient world if he didn't have her, he's scrounging like how do I even make bread and vice versa.
Elice Kilko:Yeah, they were dependent on each other which gives the woman some powers maybe the wrong word, but it gives her value as a person for what she can do, because he needs her just as much as she needs him, Whereas nowadays it can put women in a very precarious position and we see that a lot with abuse and whatnot, because a lot of women stay in abusive situations because they don't know where else to go and they don't have any financial resources.
Jessica LM Jenkins:In the ancient world, things like dowries, if the wife left or was divorced, she would often take that with her and her economic function gave her value in the home. And so there's this mutual dependence. And I think it was Carol Myers again, or a similar author who talked about how in a lot of early societies because women would take raw materials and turn them into something that you could actually use a sheep into a coat, that's amazing they can turn these hard grains into bread. This is incredible like it was viewed, really like whoa. This is a great, whereas today we're like yawn big whoop, you cooked a meal, where's my next?
Jessica LM Jenkins:you know, because food is so readily available, we just devalue it.
Elice Kilko:So what can we learn then from Proverbs 31 about woman's role in the home and the workplace? If you could kind of concentrate it down, what can we learn for us today?
Jessica LM Jenkins:We can learn that it is scriptural for a woman to have an economic function. We see in the Bible women having economic functions in their homes all the time. There is no shame, zero shame, in a woman making money and having a job of some kind. The idea that the man is to be the breadwinner and the woman should not be a provider is completely inaccurate both to the text and the ancient cultures. Both men and women were economic agents in the ancient culture. The idea that man is to be the provider does not match the Bible, does not match the ancient cultures. The woman was as much a provider as the man was. They both were providers, working together and so to have homes and families and marriages where both the husband and wife provide. However you decide to structure, that is fine.
Jessica LM Jenkins:God is not giving us a decree on what somebody should or should not do. Is not giving us a decree on what somebody should or should not do. Complementarians say the Bible says a woman should not be the primary breadwinner, earning money. She needs to be in the house doing housework. That isn't actually what scripture says A woman having an economic function, working as a team with her husband, whether she earns 5%, 0.1%, 0%, 30%, 80% of their finances. Percentages don't necessarily matter, but they're to work together as a team for the good of their household. And if she chooses, they choose that she's going to stay home and he's going to earn all the money. That's fine. I've done that for years. It's a totally acceptable way to do that if that's what works best for the family. But it is not a decree by God.
Jessica LM Jenkins:So if the husband and wife feel like, hey, she should go out and she should earn most of the money because she has the skills for that and he'll stay home, that's okay too. Or if they both go out and earn about the same amount, or however you do percentages. The scripture's focus for men and women is unity, them working together for the good of the family, and so we are allowed to be creative according to the needs of our family and the gifts and desires of the husband and wife in a married family, to be creative in how they do that and when you're dealing with widows or single women, there is no shame in being a widow or a single woman who's working. A woman having a job and working is not shameful.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Women had economic functions up until I would have to look at all the history. Up until I would have to look at all the history, but until sometimes in the 1900s, when suddenly they wanted women out of the factories so that, I believe, men coming home from World War I or II could take those jobs. So they created this whole housewife idea and tried to get women out of the factories so men could work. And until then women had economic functions, unless you're very, very rich and we're not talking about them.
Elice Kilko:Yeah, that's so good. And then, my favorite part of every podcast what does this text show us, or reveal to us about God's heart? What can we learn?
Jessica LM Jenkins:I feel like there's just so much. I feel like there's just so much. God has created women to be beautiful, creative women who can use their gifts in so many ways to benefit their world and their community outside of their home. Do we benefit our homes Absolutely? Should we work at benefiting our homes Absolutely? Does that mean we can only be in our house?
Jessica LM Jenkins:only benefiting our nuclear family. No, I was thinking recently about how much my family needs working women. If complementarian ideal that women be stay-at-home moms suddenly was national and all the women that I know, law and all the women I know are suddenly stay-at-home moms, my children would have no teachers. They'd have no occupational therapists, they would have no therapists. They would have no speech therapists. They would have no pediatrician. They would have no dentist. Everybody taking care doctors, dentists, therapists, all of it, it's all women. Care doctors, dentists, therapists, all of it. It's all women. And these are incredibly necessary roles and God delights in women using their interests and gifts for the good of their community, not just their home.
Jessica LM Jenkins:And for those of us who were raised, especially those of us who grew up as little girls being told some more blatantly than others your brother can be whatever he wants to be when he grows up within moral boundaries. He can be a doctor, he can be a lawyer, he could be president. You only have one option you get to be a mom. Well, I'm not interested in kids and I don't want to be a mom Too bad. It's God's will for your life that you were a mom, and if you don't want to be a mom. You better pray about that because you are in sin. And I just want, for those who grew up kind of with that idea, that as a woman, you are limited to homemaker and that is your box and you don't have a choice. And you don't have a choice that in our modern society, god is not giving men freedom to follow their gifts, abilities and interests and limiting women. He is saying both men. He is calling both men and women to creatively, cooperatively see how their gifts, abilities and interests can be used first for the kingdom of God, secondly for their family and thirdly for their communities to benefit and serve the people around them. None of us are to be out there with all the ambition just looking to make ourselves great. We're here to serve God and others, but we can do that in so many varieties of ways and we are free to do that while loving our families.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Well, if we have families and if we don't have families, if we are single, that is not shameful, because God did not design you. He did not call all women to be homemakers', moms, so that if you're not a homemaker mom, you're a failure. God called you to be a daughter, to be a son, a legal heir, son of God. That is what we are. We are children of God. That is what we are called to be, whether we get to be a mom, whether we get to be a wife, whether we are single, whether we have a job, whether we are a homemaker, that is lesser. We are called to be daughters of God and we have freedom to live the rest of our life towards that end, with creativity and passion and joy, not cooped up in little boxes or feeling like we're absolute failures because we haven't reached a list of extra biblical checklists on what we're supposed to be doing.
Elice Kilko:I love that that's so encouraging.
Jessica LM Jenkins:Well, thank you so much for tuning in and listening to this episode on the woman of valor's home. Next episode we were going to talk about her businesses, so we're going to talk about her work in more detail and the fact that she had three businesses she was doing. This is a very industrious woman in a multitude of ways. We will be back to talk about that in a couple weeks. Can't wait to discuss that with you more. May God bless.
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