Manoah's Wife

The story of Manoah's wife—and Manoah—ironically features the unnamed spouse as the more central figure.  Found in the 13th chapter of the book of Judges, which addresses the broad historical period after the Israelite relocation to the Promised Land yet before the monarchy, it tells of how the angel of the Lord visits a man's wife (the man is called Manoah) to tell her that she will give birth to a son who is to be a Nazarite (Numbers 6:1-4) from birth (Judges 13:2-7), and thus she is not to drink any wine.  After she is told such things, the woman finds her husband and informs him of what has happened.  Is it the case that the Biblical deity interacts with men over women?  Does he regards women as secondary to men in their spirituality rather than equal (not primary over men, as some pseudo-"egalitarians" might lean towards)?  Absolutely not!

Manoah prays that the stranger will return, and return he does—to Manoah's wife when she is in a field and he is not present (Judges 13:8-9).  If there was some misogynistic bent to Yahweh so that he irrationally treats women as incapable of handling grand philosophical events, it would have been displayed here.  Now, a given case of an angelic being appearing to a man or woman does not mean even in isolation that the Bible teaches that one gender is closer to God, that one is more spiritual or righteous than the other (as opposed to individuals differing here).  However, one example of a visitation to a person does refute the idea that God will only engage with the opposite gender of that figure.  This in combination with how it is the angel of the Lord, more than just a mere angel, who manifests before Manoah's wife more than once refutes any misogynistic complementarian compatibility with this story.

When Manoah does follow his wife to the angel after the second appearance, he asks what he and his wife are to do for the child, and the angel emphasizes that it has already told his wife her instructions (Judges 13:10-14).  Moreover, it is the wife that responds to Manoah's fallacious overreaction with correction when the angel ascends in the flames of the family's sacrifice to Yahweh, insisting that the two of them will die because they have seen God: as she points out, if God wanted to kill them, he could have done so already rather than accepting their offering and sending them the predictions of a future child (Judges 13:22-23).  Manoah's secondary relevance to this story, of course, does not mean that it is really the inverse of American complementarianism that is Biblical, that God relates more to women or esteems them more highly.  It means that God does not show irrationalistic and unjust favoritism, which includes favoritism on the basis of gender (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2, Deuteronomy 10:17, Romans 2:11).

The Torah is not misogynistic—or misandrist.  When people believe or say such things, they are assuming without reading or distorting either the actual content of the text or the ideas that would logically follow if the text is true.  Even then, there is hypocrisy.  There is little to no outrage I have ever encountered at large about the way that Lot's rape by his daughters in Genesis 19 is seldom overtly called rape, but the mere inclusion of a narrative that does not prescribe or in any way moralistically support the murderous rape of the concubine in Judges 19 might be held up as if the Bible is misogynistic just for saying this happened.  As if they are the primary or universally relevant way to tell what Yahweh's moral character is over his actual universal commands in the Torah, stories like that of Manoah's wife, who is treated by God and his angel in Judges 13 as autonomous and capable apart from a husband, contradict complementarian heresies.  They present women and men as people, equal in their humanity and their capacity and need to serve truth and God.