The Bible itself…has largely been viewed as a predominantly male textual document, read for centuries as if it had been mostly composed and edited by males. It has been interpreted and transmitted as such within male-centered communities for thousands of years, and has been enlisted to promote and justify the social order it by and large reflects. Its interpretation and teaching have been performed almost exclusively by males, and exploited to further the gender-specific interests of their dominant social group. Retrieving a Biblical text by and for a woman reader is therefore a formidable task.
Atalya Brenner
(26) And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.” (27) And God created man in God's own image, in the Divine image God created him; male and female God created them.
Ultimately, the gap between societal structure and the gender neutral ideology grew too wide and the practicality of patriarchy, as it was lived at the time, outweighed the idealistic approach of the creation story.
(15) Adonai took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it.
(16) And Adonai commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; (17) but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die.” (18) Adonai said, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.” (19) And Adonai formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name.
(20) And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts; but for Adam no fitting helper was found.
(21) So Adonai cast a deep sleep upon the man; and, while he slept, He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot. (22) And Adonai fashioned the rib that God had taken from the man into a woman; and God brought her to the man. (23) Then the man said, “This one at last Is bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called Woman, For from man was she taken.”
Ancient Israel, like all other great historical civilizations, was a patriarchy. Men owned almost all the land, which was passed on from father to son. The legal tribunals consisted of men: the judges at the central courts and the elders in their local councils. The army was composed of men, as was the administrative bureaucracy. Men also dominated public religious life, serving as officiants in local and national rituals and holding all the positions in the temple hierarchy. Women, while not physically confined to the home, expended most of their energies there. Economically dependent on the head of their households, they had a limited ability to determine events beyond their own families, and even within the family they ultimately had to conform to the wishes of the father or husband.
Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Reading the Women of the Bible. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
[In] Genesis 26:24-26…the lineage of Jacob’s wives Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah is listed not merely in birth order but in birth order by mother. (e.g. the songs of Leah, sons of Rachel, and so on.) Jacob’s daughter Dinah is notably left out of this list altogether, though she is mentioned at other points in the story. This demonstrates that a woman’s status is intrinsically linked to her husband and her ability to provide him a son. This extends even to the children whose status is further determined hierarchically by their mother. Thus, we learn that status as wife and mother affects not only the individual woman but the progeny she produces for her husband.
This also explains the dismay we see repeatedly from women in the Bible who are barren or have difficulty getting pregnant due to infertility such as Sarah and Hannah or their status as a widow such as Tamar and Ruth. Without the ability to provide their husband a son, women are rendered peripheral; and, therefore, will go to great lengths to ensure their ability to reproduce or remain within the fold.
Fishbein, Lucy, HaTishma Koli: Voices of Biblical Women in Israeli Popular Music