Saturday, January 6, 2018

Book Review: The Most Important Women of the Bible

The Most Important Women of the Bible: Remarkable Stories of God's Love and Redemption

I love studying women of the Bible.  Some of my favorite women's Bible studies have been when we take a woman each week and look at her role in scripture, what we can learn from her, what she learned about God, or how the Lord used her for His glory, and how her story fits into God's plan for redemption or show's His love. So when this book was listed as an option to review, it was an easy choice for me. 

I'm not sure what I expected, but this was very different. Different doesn't mean bad, it just was not what I expected.  I think I was imaging story telling, bringing to life the setting and time of each woman, and their role in their 'story' or book of the Bible.  That's not what this is.  This is a non-fiction commentary of each of the women researched. 

The common theme of the 31 women featured is that each character in the Bible has either looks for God's plan of redemption as prophesied that Jesus was coming or looks back to how Jesus work on the Cross redeemed each of us.  The authors want to make these women come alive and not just two dimensional women in the Bible. 

The approach I appreciated, and will keep this book on my shelf, as a tool when I study the Bible. 

Each woman is named, and then given a title to help clarify her role in the Bible.  So Eve, the first sinner, Mary, the Mother of the Messiah, ... then there are some less obvious, but helpful titles, the woman of Nain, the recipient of Compassion.  I loved this.  And it makes me think, if I were to be talked about and summarized for my view of eternity, and God's redemption and love, what would my subtitle be? 

Then each woman is logically described with the following format:
  • a quote from a commentator or preacher about her.
  • Scripture Reference
  • Biography
  • Her role in redemption
  • By the numbers (and this to the Mom of math loving, statistic kids is neat!) it might tell you how many husbands, children, or it might share how many miles from city to city in the story, or how long she suffered, how many unclean people like her, or a rule from the law, but these really enhance the concepts and role of redemption.
  • Things we wonder (higher level thinking- what we don't know...) 
I did the suggested plan and read about one woman for 31 days. Another suggestion is to use these women for a Bible study group and I think it would bring about great discussion, and help seeing how intricate God's plan of redemption is, even to some lesser named people in the Bible, God's plan is always there.  

This book is fact based with the narration of the authors thinking aloud as to how the facts of each woman show God's redemptive plan, or how Jesus would have approached her with the customs or teaching of the law, and some personal connections as to how the authors apply their knowledge to their own faith and living.  

It's an easy read, but by no means lacking descriptive imagery in the detailed setting, history, analysis of the emotions, character development and relationships, etc.  It would be a fun book to help teaching about these passages, and I can see tween on up being able to appreciate the insight and grasp the model of interpreting what the Bible shares and how that demonstrates God's plan of redemption for all man kind. It's a great meta-cognitive work of bringing to life each of these 31 women's roles for us.  And the teacher in me, would find it fun to ask others to take people not mentioned here, and write our own stories for them mirrored after this book. 

Thank you Bethany House for introducing me to a new way to study the Bible and a model of thinking about these women.  It encouraged my heart and mind beyond my expectations and I love that I learned a new perspective of God.  

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