This is how God treated women in the Bible, WHY?

Overview

The video examines whether the Old Testament portrays women as inferior, presenting three perspectives through the characters Richard, Lisa, and Joe.

Three Perspectives

Richard’s Criticism

Richard, an atheist, argues that biblical laws and stories treat women as property. He points to bride prices, women’s lower valuations in some religious contexts, rules about sexual conduct and marriage, women taken during war, and New Testament instructions about women’s silence. He concludes that these passages make God appear morally objectionable—or suggest that people authored the laws in God’s name.

Lisa’s Egalitarian Response

Lisa, a Christian who believes men and women have equal status and no built-in hierarchy, draws on Genesis’s shared commission to rule the earth and the description of Eve as a “helper.” She interprets male domination as a consequence of the Fall, rather than God’s original design.

Lisa also cites women leaders in the Old Testament, Jesus welcoming women as disciples, and women’s roles in the early church. She reads some passages restricting women’s speech or authority as addressing specific behavior rather than imposing a universal ban. The video notes that Christians translate and interpret some New Testament passages differently.

Joe’s Complementarian View

Joe concludes that men and women have equal worth but distinct, God-given roles. He argues that some laws Richard cites also constrained or punished men, and that certain biblical provisions offered women protections in their historical setting. Examples include daughters inheriting when there were no sons, protections for women in marriage, and New Testament teachings requiring mutual submission and substantial obligations from husbands.

The video acknowledges that complementarianism has sometimes been used to justify treating women as inferior, while arguing that this is not warranted by the biblical text.

The Narrator’s Conclusion

The narrator argues that the central issue is not only how particular laws functioned, but what they reveal about God’s character. The video presents the Bible as giving women significant dignity, highlighting women as the first witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection.

It then uses the biblical imagery of bride price and marriage to describe Christian salvation as a costly redemption: believers, women and men alike, are “redeemed” through Jesus’s blood and invited to accept a covenant with God.

Presenters and Contributors

• An unnamed narrator and presenter
• Richard, Lisa, and Joe, who represent the video’s three perspectives