Post #10 of my critique of the Women's Ordination video

Post #10 of my critique of the Women's Ordination video listed below: POINT #7 from the video – The seventy elders appointed by Moses were all male. 

This story comes from Numbers 11.  The Israelites, tired of manna, were longing for the food from Egypt.  Moses is fed up with the people and tells God that the burden He has given him is too much for Moses to bear.  God tells him to bring “70 men, part of the elders.”  The way that this sentence is worded and the fact that the elders of Israel are mentioned quite a few times in the Exodus narrative already, Ex. 3:16, Ex. 17:5, Ex. 18:2, Ex. 24:1 just to name a few, makes me believe that these elders were a group of people already established.  They were already leaders among the people when God sent Moses to deliver them.  God is asking Moses to choose from a group of people who are already male.  Moses didn’t choose 70 men excluding females.  He chooses 70 men from a group of men.  So why does matter?  It doesn’t change the fact that God AND Moses chose 70 men.

I think it does matter and this is why.  God recognizes that we are human and it takes time for us to slowly accustom ourselves to his patterns.  For example Jacob marries two sisters, later on in Torah God makes a law against this practice. Leviticus 18:18.  In Deuteronomy 24:1-3 Moses tells the men who want to divorce their wives that they must give their spouses a divorce document, when they got divorced.  However in Matthew 19:3-9 Jesus explains that this was because their hearts were hard.  Divorce really is not what God desires. These two examples are just a sampling, there are many more examples of the law not being loosened, but tightened as time went on. 

Women were not highly regarded in many cultures of this time period and it doesn’t appear that young nation of Israel was any exception.  Take a look at Israel’s past and you don’t have to look very hard to find crimes against women that horrify us.  Abraham TWICE allows his wife to be taken as the wife of someone else, seemingly to save his life, although I think you could say it wasn’t just his life at stake, but perhaps his whole clan, Genesis 12 & 20.  Lot offers his virgin daughters to the men of Sodom to rape as they please if the Sodomites will just leave his guests alone, Genesis 19. Laban uses his daughters as pawns in a game of chess with Jacob, Genesis 29-31. Simeon and Levi slaughter all the men of Shechem and take all the women and children for themselves, Genesis 34.  Judah vows to burn Tamar at the rumor she is pregnant, when it was he, all along, who was in the wrong, Genesis 38.

My point however, is not to castigate these men, but instead to point out that of course the chosen leaders by the Israelites at this time were all men. That is just the way things worked in that culture. Remember that God does point out that He appointed Miriam as one of the three leaders to bring Israel out of Egypt, Micah 6:4. We might get a clue about how the nation of Israel felt about this fact in this verse, “The people of Isra’el, the whole community, entered the Tzin Desert in the first month, and they stayed in Kadesh. THERE MIRYAM DIED, AND THERE WAS SHE WAS BURIED” Numbers 20:1.  Now compare that epithet to these 2 verses. “When the entire community saw that Aharon was dead, THEY MOURNED AHARON THRITY DAYS, THE WHOLE HOUSE OF ISRA’ EL” Numbers 20:29.  And ⁷ Moshe was 120 years old when he died, with eyes undimmed and vigor undiminished. ⁸ THE PEOPLE OF ISRA’EL MOURNED MOSHE ON THE PLAINS OF MOAB FOR THIRTY DAYS; after this, the days of crying and mourning for Moshe ended. Do you notice anything different between these three deaths?  Now truthfully I have no idea why the Israelites didn’t mourn for Miriam, but it is interesting that they don’t seem to care that she is gone.

So the question is… Was God setting down a foundational principle when He and Moses chose these 70 men?  Or was he just accepting that the nation’s hearts were hard and would have to change slowly?  Since God never outlawed women in leadership positions and all through the bible we see Him choosing them for many different positions, I think it at least a good possibility that women were not a part of this group, because the nation was not yet ready for women to be leaders on a large scale.