Examples Of Older Women In The Bible

Feature 3 – May 2020 – Grace & Truth Magazine

Examples Of Older Women In The Bible

We are living in a time of corruption and rebellion, but from God’s perspective it is still the age of grace. The Lord has left His people, you and me, in this world to be witnesses of His love and marvelous grace, and to represent and serve Him.

God’s Word gives many examples of older women who demonstrated amazing qualities. The Bible describes them in some detail and often as working together with younger women, teaching and encouraging them. Thus, the older women help the younger women build the next generations – their children and grandchildren – as God’s Word teaches (Ti. 2:3-5).

Let’s consider some of the older women God has used. They are an encouragement to all believers, young and old, as they learned to honor the Lord and become spiritual examples.

Naomi And Ruth
In some cultures older women try to intimidate younger women, especially when these become their daughters-in-law. How sad! Naomi’s example was a happy exception to such practices as she had learned to cling to the LORD in very difficult circumstances. Despite Naomi’s own failures self-will and possibly pride the LORD was dealing with her through the loss of her possessions, her husband and their two sons (Ruth 1:3,5,20-21).

Ruth* learned something very special through Naomi, for she had come to see that Naomi’s God was real to her, despite Naomi’s shortcomings. When news came from Israel that God had visited His people to give them bread, the final decision was to be made. Naomi’s other daughter-in-law, Orpah, decided to stay in Moab. However, after a serious word of caution from her mother-in-law, Ruth said, “Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following after you; for wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God, my God” (Ruth 1:16 NKJV).

Because of her commitment, despite human impossibilities, Ruth was welcomed in her new home country, as Naomi had told her she would. After some time Ruth started to glean in the fields around Bethlehem. Boaz, the farmer who owned those fields, said to her after his servant had reported to him her diligence, “The Lord repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge” (2:12).

Long story short, Boaz married her at the end of the harvest season. The following year the couple had a baby son, and Naomi, the mother-in-law, took good care of him. Ultimately this boy became one of King David’s direct ancestors. Both women – the older Naomi and the younger Ruth – harmoniously worked together for God’s honor and for the benefit of His people.

Sarah And Hagar
Long before Naomi and Ruth we read about Abraham’s wife Sarah, who was a very beautiful woman even at an older age (Gen. 12:10-20, 20:1-18). When the God of glory appeared to Abram (Acts 7:2), his name before He changed it (Gen. 17:5), the LORD instructed him to leave all behind and go to the land He would show them (12:1). After his father died in Haran, halfway between Mesopotamia and Israel, Abram and Sarai, the name Sarah had at first (17:15), traveled to the land God had promised.

By then Abram was 75 years old (12:4-5). However, he believed God’s promise that he would have a son with Sarai, the wife of his youth, and their offspring would be as the stars of heaven (15:5). God reckoned, or counted, this belief to Abram as righteousness (v.6), which means that Abram was declared right with God, justified through faith a theme developed in Romans 4:3-5.

After a wait of ten years Sarai suggested to her husband that he take Hagar, the servant-girl she had gotten in Egypt, as a concubine or wife (Gen. 16:1-4). Her plan was that Abram would father a son by Hagar whom Sarai would then adopt as her own, thinking God would then fulfill His promises through that son. We do not read that they prayed about this arrangement, for they apparently thought it was the right thing to do to help God. However, their plan backfired on all fronts, with human failure on every side. God’s promises and plans could not be fulfilled in this manner, yet He would bless this son, Ishmael, because he was, after all, Abram’s son (Gen. 16–17).

After 13 long years of waiting, God Almighty (El Shaddai) appeared to Abram. First, the LORD changed Abram’s name to Abraham, father of a multitude (17:1-8), after Abraham had passed the age to produce children (18:11-12; Heb. 11:12). God told the patriarch that even at his advanced age he would father a son with his wife Sarai, who was barren and had already passed a woman’s age to conceive (Gen. 18:11-14; see Rom. 4:17-22). God changed Sarai’s name to Sarah, which means “princess” (17:15). To this couple, God Almighty was going to give a son; and nations and kings would come from them (vv.1-6).

God confirmed His promise by making a covenant with Abraham under the condition that he would be circumcised, that is, his foreskin would be removed. This surgery was to be done on all the males in his home and family as a sign of the Almighty’s covenant with Abraham, valid for every generation. Circumcision was a symbol signifying that God’s promises would be fulfilled by His own actions, not through human activity or scheming. Much later the Lord Jesus said, “The flesh profits nothing” (Jn. 6:63), a lesson that every believer needs to learn time and again (Phil. 3:3).

Abraham learned to walk by faith as did his sons (Heb. 11:8-10), and Sarah also believed (vv.11-12). Sarah, the older woman, beyond the age to conceive and lacking faith, put her trust in God when He said she through her husband Abraham would have a son. From a human perspective this was impossible, therefore they called their baby’s name Isaac meaning “laughter” saying that whoever would hear it would laugh with her. Indeed, she would nurse her own child, and that at her advanced age even though, at one time, she had laughed in unbelief (Gen. 21:6-7, 18:12-15). The New Testament does not mention failures of believers reported in the Old Testament, but these are nevertheless recorded for our instruction (Rom. 15:4; 1 Cor. 10:1-13).

The older and more beautiful Sarai became jealous of the younger Hagar, her servant girl she had given to her husband as a wife and who despised her mistress when she conceived. With both was failure, and the two had lessons to learn. God took special interest in one as well as the other. Today we learn lessons from both Hagar and Sarah (Gal. 4:22-31). Who is our real mother? Are we linked to bondage or spiritual liberty? For more details, please read Genesis 17–21. These chapters contain many lessons for us as well as for Israel of the future and for the surrounding nations.

Hannah And Peninnah
In the days of the judges, the Levite Elkanah served God at Shiloh, living close by in the hill-country of Ephraim. Elkanah had two wives, Hannah who was barren and Peninnah who bore him children (1 Sam. 1:1-8). Peninnah made Hannah’s life miserable.

More importantly, as Hannah noticed the moral decay in the priesthood she was not only concerned about her condition of barrenness but also the rights of God, the LORD of Hosts (1:3). In her great distress she wept, prayed and made a special vow to Him: “If You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head” (v.11). He would be a Nazarite, consecrated to God’s service. The LORD remembered her and gave this couple a son, Samuel, because she had “asked for him from the LORD” (v.20).

Hannah trained him from his young age, and after a few years, when he no longer depended on his mother’s immediate care, she was able to bring him to the house of the LORD at Shiloh. Left under Eli’s supervision, young Samuel served and began to worship the LORD there (vv.24-28). Samuel developed into a reliable servant, and both of his parents stayed in contact with him (2:18-19). It is amazing how this godly mother, Hannah a name that means “Yah is gracious” trained her son, and how he kept growing in a perverse and hostile environment. The LORD rewarded her faithfulness and gave her five more children (v.21).

We do not know how Peninnah reacted to all of this, but there are no more negative comments about her. Perhaps she had learned her lesson, which is quite possible because of the good attitude Hannah had shown.

Hannah’s heart is expressed in her beautiful prophetic song (2:1-10). It places Hannah alongside Miriam, Moses’ sister, who was called a prophetess (Ex. 15:20-21). Samuel, Hannah’s son, grew up to be a faithful prophet. What an encouraging story, even in the context of so much that might discourage us.

Elizabeth And Mary The Mother Of Jesus
It is important to see connections with the past. Most of the people we meet in Luke 1–2 were descendants of a remnant that had returned from the Babylonian captivity, about 500 years earlier, to live again in the Promised Land. Others had remained in Babylon and later were scattered throughout the succeeding empires of Media–Persia, Greece and Rome.

Despite failures among those who had returned to Jerusalem and the surrounding area, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah (Ezra 5) encouraged them to continue rebuilding the temple, of which the foundation had been laid about 20 years earlier (Ezra 3). Finally, God’s service was reinstituted and the Passover celebrated (Ezra 6). About 60 years later the priestly service in the temple was improved under Ezra, in whose lifetime Jerusalem’s walls and gates were rebuilt following Nehemiah’s direction, about 450 years before the Lord Jesus was born.

The succeeding generations after Ezra and Nehemiah, sadly, started to rely on their orthodoxy – their own beliefs and practices – more than on the LORD. God sent the prophet Malachi to challenge them and to encourage a small remnant found in his days. However, the people’s leaders taught the Israelites to rely on them and their traditions. During the ensuing 400 “silent years” up to John the Baptist, no prophet spoke on God’s behalf. Yet, throughout that long period with no official prophet, God preserved truthful witnesses. How precious they must have been to God (see Mal. 3:16-18)!

Luke 1–2 provide many details about the godly remnant the Lord had formed and preserved for Himself amid much that was wrong among God’s earthly people at the time Christ was born. Some of these faithful ones devoted to God’s interests were quite young, such as Mary. Others were older, like Elizabeth, and certain ones were already very old – Anna, for example.

Luke presents a number of contrasts. The older priest Zacharias (1:18) and his son John (v.80), a miracle baby, is one. The older man Simeon taking the baby Jesus in his arms is another contrast (2:25-35). Later, we also see the older teachers in the temple and the young boy Jesus, 12 years of age and wiser than all of them (vv.41-47).

The older married woman Elizabeth was a relative of the much younger Mary, a virgin engaged to be married with Joseph. After the message the angel had given to Zacharias her husband when serving in the temple, Elizabeth finally conceived and became the mother of John the Baptist.

Mary, however, would experience the greatest miracle, because she conceived through the Holy Spirit (Mt. 1:20) and the power of the Highest (Lk. 1:35). Nine months later she gave birth to her firstborn Son, Jesus (2:6-7; Mt. 1:20-25). God sent an angel to the shepherds in Bethlehem’s fields with the great news of Messiah’s birth. Besides seeing and hearing the praising angels, the shepherds had the privilege of being first to greet the Newborn, lying in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes (Lk. 2:8-16).

Six months earlier the younger Mary, still a virgin though three months pregnant, had visited her much older relative Elizabeth (1:39-40). As we compare the two women we notice that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit as she said to Mary, “the mother of my Lord,” and spoke beautiful words (vv.41-45). Afterwards, it was Mary’s turn to express a wonderful song. It is called the “Magnificat,” from the words with which she started her praise: “My soul magnifies the Lord” (1:46).

Every time I read it I am amazed how the Spirit of God could prepare a very young woman to compose such a magnificent song. There are elements in it that we find in Hannah’s song (1 Sam. 2), in Moses and Miriam’s song (Ex. 15), in Deborah and Barak’s song (Jud. 5), as well as in the Psalms; but it clearly is her own composition as led by the Holy Spirit. An amazing production, a miracle, yes, because she was holding in her womb the greatest miracle of all – our great Savior!

The younger Mary surpassed in many ways the older Elizabeth even though the latter was a very faithful and committed believer, just like her husband Zacharias. They represented something of the past, still used by God, whereas Mary was on the verge of the totally new order God introduced with the coming of His Son, our Lord Jesus. This great miracle is described in the following words: “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory” (1 Tim. 3:16).

When Mary and Joseph brought the baby Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to present Him to God, they met Simeon, who received the Baby into his arms and blessed God (Lk. 2:28). As he spoke about what would happen to Mary’s Child, they were joined by Anna, whose name represented the grace of God a major theme in Luke’s gospel (v.40). Simeon spoke to God and Mary about the Child, whereas Anna praised the Lord and spoke about Him “to all those who waited for redemption in Jerusalem (v.38).

I am not exaggerating when I say that a whole book could be written concerning the many details we find in Luke 1–2 regarding God’s marvelous grace. The whole passage fits Him whose name is Marvelous, Wonderful (Isa. 9:6), and the chapters show amazing details about the women, older and younger, whom God used in fulfilling His plans.

What about you? Can He count on you today? Can He use you as well?

ENDNOTE
* Naomi’s name means “lovely” and Ruth’s, “satisfied.” Both women displayed the marvelous work of God at the time they lived. They illustrate a work of God’s grace that can be seen multiple times in the age of grace in which we live. They also display aspects of God’s dealings with Israel and the whole world in a future day.

By Alfred Bouter

Typical pictures speak for themselves and are designed to do so. Once we have the key to them, their perfect agreement with the truth can be nothing else than what God designed them to set forth. Abraham’s two sons naturally speak of the two classes of his offspring. There is the seed “after the flesh” and the “seed after the Spirit,” the natural child and the spiritual child of faith (Gal. 4:29 KJV). One son was by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman (v.23). He who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh, in the ordinary course of nature, with nothing necessarily of God in it. On the other hand, he of the free woman “was by promise” (v.23). These two represent the two covenants: “the one from the Mount Sinai,” the law bringing to “bondage,” which is Hagar (v.24); the other, that of promise, “Jerusalem which is above ... which is the mother of us all” (v.26) – our mother (v.31). “Jerusalem which is above” carries our thoughts to what John gave us in Revelation 21. It is the home city, the city of which all the people of God now are children. —Frederick W. Grant (adapted)