The Lost Women of the Old Testament (June 13-19)

 The title is a little tongue-in-cheek. The women are there. Just not in the Come Follow Me curriculum. But that's okay! Because it isn't the end-all-be-all of gospel study. It is meant to be a unifying curriculum, which is awesome, but sometimes we need a little more. So here we go.

Tonight I am going to be studying:

• Phinehas's Wife
• Michal

Phinehas's Wife

When I skimmed the scriptures at the beginning of Heather's chapter on his particular woman, I knew I had zero context for the story, so I headed over to 1 Samuel 4 to figure out what was going on when this woman was mentioned. Turns out the Israelites were at war with the Philistines, and the Philistines won and captured the ark of the covenant (you know, that super important sacred symbol from the tabernacle that represents the throne of God? Yeah, the same one). Eli (the priest who raised Samuel the boy prophet) and his sons die (in fulfillment of a prophecy from a few chapters previous), and then Phinehas's wife dies in childbirth. (Phinehas is one of the sons of Eli). This is a pretty tragic story, but we can learn a lot from it.

When Phinehas's wife dies in childbirth, she names her son "Ichabod" or "Where is the glory?" because she is so weighed down by the grief of her husband's and father-in-law's deaths, and the capture of the ark of the covenant. This was a really rocky time for the Israelites, and I can imagine birthing a child during this madness was probably a little overwhelming. Heather points out that not too far in the future, if Phinehas's wife hadn't died in childbirth, she would have seen the great prophet Samuel, King David, King Solomon, and the beautiful temple being built.

Heather points out "We can trust that when the Lord begins a 'birthing' in our life, when we feel the pangs of travail in our minds, our souls, and our bodies, that there will also one day be a deliverance - a day when our pain will cease, our souls will rejoice, and we will hold new life in our arms." I recently bore my testimony about this concept. I have been through some really dark times in the past several years. The scripture that has kept me going has been Psalms 30:5 "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."  I know that is true - even if the joy doesn't come in this life, it will come. Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ joy will always come. His sacrifice swallows up all suffering and pain. He is the true Comforter.

President Spencer W. Kimball wisely taught, "If we were to close the doors upon sorrow and distress, we might be excluding our greatest friends and benefactors." There has to be opposition in this life. It is what we chose in the pre-existence. We knew there would be pain. I don't know that we fully understood what that meant, but we chose it. We wanted to be like our Father and Mother in heaven and we knew that we would have to endure suffering to obtain that.

Michal

This is a fascinating story that I honestly had never heard before. Michal was the first wife of David, before he was king. It sounds like she was young and probably pretty smitten with David, and even helped him escape from her father, Saul, who wanted to kill him (David). However, once David escaped it appears that he disappeared and never really came back for Michal. So Saul married Michal to another man, and it appears that she lived happily with her second husband. But then David came back as the king, and ordered Michal to come back to be his wife.

Thinking about what that might feel like gives me all sorts of feelings. To think your husband was dead, or had abandoned you, then find happiness with another marriage, and then have that husband come back as a king and order you to move in with him again. I would feel pretty used and abused. It sounds like they didn't have a good relationship when she came to live with him as his queen. I can't really blame her. What a rough situation!

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I wanted to study a few more women tonight, but it's getting late, so I'll probably study them this weekend (Abigail and Ahinoam of Jezreel).