'Woman' in the Bible

She said, "I will indeed go with you. But you will not gain fame on the expedition you are undertaking, for the Lord will turn Sisera over to a woman." Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh.

a woman threw an upper millstone down on his head and shattered his skull.

He quickly called to the young man who carried his weapons, "Draw your sword and kill me, so they will not say, 'A woman killed him.'" So the young man stabbed him and he died.

The Lord's angelic messenger appeared to the woman and said to her, "You are infertile and childless, but you will conceive and have a son.

The woman went and said to her husband, "A man sent from God came to me! He looked like God's angelic messenger -- he was very awesome. I did not ask him where he came from, and he did not tell me his name.

God answered Manoah's prayer. God's angelic messenger visited the woman again while she was sitting in the field. But her husband Manoah was not with her.

The woman ran at once and told her husband, "Come quickly, the man who visited me the other day has appeared to me!"

After this Samson fell in love with a woman named Delilah, who lived in the Sorek Valley.

The woman arrived back at daybreak and was sprawled out on the doorstep of the house where her master was staying until it became light.

When her master got up in the morning, opened the doors of the house, and went outside to start on his journey, there was the woman, his concubine, sprawled out on the doorstep of the house with her hands on the threshold.

The Levite, the husband of the murdered woman, spoke up, "I and my concubine stopped in Gibeah in the territory of Benjamin to spend the night.

Do this: exterminate every male, as well as every woman who has had sexual relations with a male. But spare the lives of any virgins." So they did as instructed.

But we can't allow our daughters to marry them, for the Israelites took an oath, saying, 'Whoever gives a woman to a Benjaminite will be destroyed!'

Then Naomi's two sons, Mahlon and Kilion, also died. So the woman was left all alone -- bereaved of her two children as well as her husband!

Boaz asked his servant in charge of the harvesters, "To whom does this young woman belong?"

The servant in charge of the harvesters replied, "She's the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the region of Moab.

In the middle of the night he was startled and turned over. Now he saw a woman lying beside him!

Now, my dear, don't worry! I intend to do for you everything you propose, for everyone in the village knows that you are a worthy woman.

So she slept beside him until morning. She woke up while it was still dark. Boaz thought, "No one must know that a woman visited the threshing floor."

All the people who were at the gate and the elders replied, "We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is entering your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built up the house of Israel! May you prosper in Ephrathah and become famous in Bethlehem.

May your family become like the family of Perez -- whom Tamar bore to Judah -- through the descendants the Lord gives you by this young woman."

Don't consider your servant a wicked woman, for until now I have spoken from my deep pain and anguish."

She said, "May I, your servant, find favor in your sight." So the woman went her way and got something to eat. Her face no longer looked sad.

So her husband Elkanah said to her, "Do what you think best. Stay until you have weaned him. May the Lord fulfill his promise." So the woman stayed and nursed her son until she had weaned him.

She said, "Just as surely as you are alive, my lord, I am the woman who previously stood here with you in order to pray to the Lord.

Those who are well-fed hire themselves out to earn food, but the hungry no longer lack. Even the barren woman gives birth to seven, but the one with many children withers away.

Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife saying, "May the Lord raise up for you descendants from this woman to replace the one that she dedicated to the Lord." Then they would go to their home.

So go now and strike down the Amalekites. Destroy everything that they have. Don't spare them. Put them to death -- man, woman, child, infant, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey alike.'"

When David would attack a district, he would leave neither man nor woman alive. He would take sheep, cattle, donkeys, camels, and clothing and would then go back to Achish.

Neither man nor woman would David leave alive so as to bring them back to Gath. He was thinking, "This way they can't tell on us, saying, 'This is what David did.'" Such was his practice the entire time that he lived in the country of the Philistines.

So Saul instructed his servants, "Find me a woman who is a medium, so that I may go to her and inquire of her." His servants replied to him, "There is a woman who is a medium in Endor."

So Saul disguised himself and put on other clothing and left, accompanied by two of his men. They came to the woman at night and said, "Use your ritual pit to conjure up for me the one I tell you."

But the woman said to him, "Look, you are aware of what Saul has done; he has removed the mediums and magicians from the land! Why are you trapping me so you can put me to death?"

The woman replied, "Who is it that I should bring up for you?" He said, "Bring up for me Samuel."

When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out loudly. The woman said to Saul, "Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!"

The king said to her, "Don't be afraid! What have you seen?" The woman replied to Saul, "I have seen one like a god coming up from the ground!"

When the woman came to Saul and saw how terrified he was, she said to him, "Your servant has done what you asked. I took my life into my own hands and did what you told me.

But he refused, saying, "I won't eat!" Both his servants and the woman urged him to eat, so he gave in. He got up from the ground and sat down on the bed.

Now the woman had a well-fed calf at her home that she quickly slaughtered. Taking some flour, she kneaded bread and baked it without leaven.

These words of Ish-bosheth really angered Abner and he said, "Am I the head of a dog that belongs to Judah? This very day I am demonstrating loyalty to the house of Saul your father and to his relatives and his friends! I have not betrayed you into the hand of David. Yet you have accused me of sinning with this woman today!

One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of his palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. Now this woman was very attractive.

So David sent someone to inquire about the woman. The messenger said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"

The woman conceived and then sent word to David saying, "I'm pregnant."

Who struck down Abimelech the son of Jerub-Besheth? Didn't a woman throw an upper millstone down on him from the wall so that he died in Thebez? Why did you go so close to the wall?' just say to him, 'Your servant Uriah the Hittite is also dead.'"

He called his personal attendant and said to him, "Take this woman out of my sight and lock the door behind her!"

So Joab sent to Tekoa and brought from there a wise woman. He told her, "Pretend to be in mourning and put on garments for mourning. Don't anoint yourself with oil. Instead, act like a woman who has been mourning for the dead for some time.

So the Tekoan woman went to the king. She bowed down with her face to the ground in deference to him and said, "Please help me, O king!"

Then the king told the woman, "Go to your home. I will give instructions concerning your situation."

The Tekoan woman said to the king, "My lord the king, let any blame fall on me and on the house of my father. But let the king and his throne be innocent!"

Then the woman said, "Please permit your servant to speak to my lord the king about another matter." He replied, "Tell me."

The woman said, "Why have you devised something like this against God's people? When the king speaks in this fashion, he makes himself guilty, for the king has not brought back the one he has banished.

Then the king replied to the woman, "Don't hide any information from me when I question you." The woman said, "Let my lord the king speak!"

The king said, "Did Joab put you up to all of this?" The woman answered, "As surely as you live, my lord the king, there is no deviation to the right or to the left from all that my lord the king has said. For your servant Joab gave me instructions. He has put all these words in your servant's mouth.

Absalom had three sons and one daughter, whose name was Tamar. She was a very attractive woman.

When the servants of Absalom approached the woman at her home, they asked, "Where are Ahimaaz and Jonathan?" The woman replied to them, "They crossed over the stream." Absalom's men searched but did not find them, so they returned to Jerusalem.

a wise woman called out from the city, "Listen up! Listen up! Tell Joab, 'Come near so that I may speak to you.'"

When he approached her, the woman asked, "Are you Joab?" He replied, "I am." She said to him, "Listen to the words of your servant." He said, "Go ahead. I'm listening."

That's not the way things are. There is a man from the hill country of Ephraim named Sheba son of Bicri. He has rebelled against King David. Give me just this one man, and I will leave the city." The woman said to Joab, "This very minute his head will be thrown over the wall to you!"

Then the woman went to all the people with her wise advice and they cut off Sheba's head and threw it out to Joab. Joab blew the trumpet, and his men dispersed from the city, each going to his own home. Joab returned to the king in Jerusalem.

So they looked through all Israel for a beautiful young woman and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the king.

The young woman was very beautiful; she became the king's nurse and served him, but the king did not have sexual relations with her.

One of the women said, "My master, this woman and I live in the same house. I had a baby while she was with me in the house.

Then three days after I had my baby, this woman also had a baby. We were alone; there was no one else in the house except the two of us.

The other woman said, "No! My son is alive; your son is dead!" But the first woman replied, "No, your son is dead; my son is alive." Each presented her case before the king.

The real mother spoke up to the king, for her motherly instincts were aroused. She said, "My master, give her the living child! Whatever you do, don't kill him!" But the other woman said, "Neither one of us will have him! Let them cut him in two!"

The king responded, "Give the first woman the living child; don't kill him. She is the mother."

Now Rehoboam son of Solomon ruled in Judah. He was forty-one years old when he became king and he ruled for seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city the Lord chose from all the tribes of Israel to be his home. His mother was an Ammonite woman named Naamah.

After this the son of the woman who owned the house got sick. His illness was so severe he could no longer breathe.

The woman said to Elijah, "Now I know that you are a prophet and that the Lord really does speak through you."

One day Elisha traveled to Shunem, where a prominent woman lived. She insisted that he stop for a meal. So whenever he was passing through, he would stop in there for a meal.

He told his servant Gehazi, "Ask the Shunammite woman to come here." So he did so and she came to him.

The woman did conceive, and at the specified time the next year she gave birth to a son, just as Elisha had told her.

So she went to visit the prophet at Mount Carmel. When he saw her at a distance, he said to his servant Gehazi, "Look, it's the Shunammite woman.

Elisha called to Gehazi and said, "Get the Shunammite woman." So he did so and she came to him. He said to her, "Take your son."

While the king of Israel was passing by on the city wall, a woman shouted to him, "Help us, my master, O king!"

Then the king asked her, "What's your problem?" She answered, "This woman said to me, 'Hand over your son; we'll eat him today and then eat my son tomorrow.'

When the king heard what the woman said, he tore his clothes. As he was passing by on the wall, the people could see he was wearing sackcloth under his clothes.

Now Elisha advised the woman whose son he had brought back to life, "You and your family should go and live somewhere else for a while, for the Lord has decreed that a famine will overtake the land for seven years."

So the woman did as the prophet said. She and her family went and lived in the land of the Philistines for seven years.

After seven years the woman returned from the land of the Philistines and went to ask the king to give her back her house and field.

While Gehazi was telling the king how Elisha had brought the dead back to life, the woman whose son he had brought back to life came to ask the king for her house and field. Gehazi said, "My master, O king, this is the very woman and this is her son whom Elisha brought back to life!"

The king asked the woman about it, and she gave him the details. The king assigned a eunuch to take care of her request and ordered him, "Give her back everything she owns, as well as the amount of crops her field produced from the day she left the land until now."

The sons of Judah: Er, Onan, and Shelah. These three were born to him by Bathshua, a Canaanite woman. Er, Judah's firstborn, displeased the Lord, so the Lord killed him.

He then handed out to each Israelite man and woman a loaf of bread, a date cake, and a raisin cake.

The conspirators were Zabad son of Shimeath (an Ammonite woman) and Jehozabad son of Shimrith (a Moabite woman).

And from among the priests: the descendants of Hobaiah, the descendants of Hakkoz, and the descendants of Barzillai (who had married a woman from the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite and was called by that name).

Let the young woman whom the king finds most attractive become queen in place of Vashti." This seemed like a good idea to the king, so he acted accordingly.

Now he was acting as the guardian of Hadassah (that is, Esther), the daughter of his uncle, for neither her father nor her mother was alive. This young woman was very attractive and had a beautiful figure. When her father and mother died, Mordecai had raised her as if she were his own daughter.

This young woman pleased him, and she found favor with him. He quickly provided her with her cosmetics and her rations; he also provided her with the seven specially chosen young women who were from the palace. He then transferred her and her young women to the best quarters in the harem.

At the end of the twelve months that were required for the women, when the turn of each young woman arrived to go to King Ahasuerus -- for in this way they had to fulfill their time of cosmetic treatment: six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with perfume and various ointments used by women --

the woman would go to the king in the following way: Whatever she asked for would be provided for her to take with her from the harem to the royal palace.

"All the servants of the king and the people of the king's provinces know that there is only one law applicable to any man or woman who comes uninvited to the king in the inner court -- that person will be put to death, unless the king extends to him the gold scepter, permitting him to be spared. Now I have not been invited to come to the king for some thirty days!"

"Man, born of woman, lives but a few days, and they are full of trouble.

What is man that he should be pure, or one born of woman, that he should be righteous?

He preys on the barren and childless woman, and does not treat the widow well.

How then can a human being be righteous before God? How can one born of a woman be pure?

If my heart has been enticed by a woman, and I have lain in wait at my neighbor's door,

Look at them shake uncontrollably, like a woman writhing in childbirth.

He makes the barren woman of the family a happy mother of children. Praise the Lord!

to deliver you from the adulteress, from the sexually loose woman who speaks flattering words;