Single mothers are divine!

In the Bible, God works through unmarried women

Growing up Evangelical, people seemed to think the phrase “family values” was in the Bible, maybe on every page. They seemed to really think homes with fathers ruling the roost was divine. When I started reading the Bible for myself, I had to laugh.

As far as God is concerned, dads can be kind of dumb.

Jewish spirituality is transmitted through the female, and the narratives are often focused on single mothers battling male powers to raise children into a new, spiritual light.

Even when fathers are present, we find biblical mothers having to act solo. Samson’s mother talks to angel her husband can’t even see! Jacob’s mother realizes they have to trick Isaac to re-direct the blessing to Jacob instead of the idolatrous Esau. In the Bible, fathers are . . . blind.

The prophet Samuel’s trajectory is set by Hannah’s spiritual perceptions (cf. 1 Sam 2:1–10). No great advance happens without a woman deciding, within herself, that it will be so.

And some single-mother narratives are key.

Tamar the founding mother

Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar”—Matthew 1:3