To the We Are More Pod cast. My name

is Alyssa. And my name is Bree.

We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word. And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy. Hello, world.

Welcome to We Are More Live on Location. Live on location, but not live. We're live right now, though. We're really not at that exciting of the location either.

We're in our parents' bedroom.

So if you hear cars racing by, that's not

our fault. No. We could pretend that we're at, like where do they have race car that races? The racetrack.

We're at the racetrack. We were gonna honestly, we probably should have taken this week off, if I'm being Rebel, lay down.

We're gonna have to let her out.

Yeah. But then she's gonna pace outside.

We've got a demon dog. This isn't going very well. Hey. No, mom. Okay.

Rebecca's not a prostitute anymore.

We're live on location at the racetrack. Do

you hear that?

Not yet. So we probably should have taken this week off, if I'm being totally honest, because this is our spring break week. Brie actually gets a spring break from work. Yeah, it is nice. And it's my daughter's spring break though I still have to work, which is unfair.

You should quit that. Take a week off. Join me.

But we are headed to our cousin's house tomorrow to take just like a fun little trip, a fun little sister trip. Fun little sister and nephew trip. Yep. But we love you so so much. Though we couldn't let you go a whole week without hearing our beautiful melodious voices.

Melodious. Yes. I meant to make it

funnier, but it just came out too fast. You just repeated the same word. Yes. Melodious. Melodious.

You could have sung it.

There were so many options for you.

It came out too fast out of my mouth.

But you should, be really thankful is what I'm saying.

Yes. You're welcome. Listen to the sweet sultry sound of our voices. I don't think we have good sultry voices. No.

We don't. I can't even

I can't even pretend. Do you remember that episode? I think of Friends where Phoebe gets sick and she sings and she has that like really deep voice and then she licks somebody's cup so she can get sick again.

Maybe we should do that. I don't sound good when I'm sick though.

I sound like Brian. You do. You sound like a man without question.

Yeah. My voice drops like 10 octaves and something else happens to me. I become Brian.

I don't think I sound that much different when I get sick. I don't know.

I can't hear myself. It's hard to say.

Frankly, I need you guys to understand the deep horror of having to listen to yourself. Because when we go back and edit this podcast, I have to listen to the sweet sultry sounds of my voice for an hour Yeah.

Every week. And also something weird that happens is you realize just how painfully yourself you are. Like, I will be going through an editing and I will make and then listen to myself make that same exact joke and laugh at myself.

It's ridiculous. Will laugh at the same exact moment with the same tone. It's weird. Because by the time we go

back and edit, I've forgotten everything I've said. Oh, yeah. So it's I'm just as surprised as I was back then with what came out

of my mouth. It is it's a wild ride. If you've never had to listen to yourself for extensive amounts of time, I don't recommend it. It'll make you self conscious. Yeah.

You'll realize how many times you say the word, and like, how many awkward pauses you do in a day. Alyssa does a thing where she says the same word twice a lot. Like, it it I do. I know. It's very strange.

And I just say, mhmm. Mhmm. We both do that. Mhmm.

I think we're both very active listeners in real life. And we try to do that here, but

they can't see us. No. Because this is a podcast and not the visual kind. Nope. We don't do that yet.

Maybe someday. Not today. I look like

a troll. That's my biggest worry about if we were to ever film this and, like, put it on YouTube or something. I would have to actually, like, prepare. I'd have to do my hair, do my makeup. I don't want that.

And I get, like, I'm all about you don't always need makeup. You don't need all of that to, you know, have self respect Mhmm. To have value. But it's a lot harder when you put yourself out in front of the world.

It is. And, honestly, like, as sad as it is, because I've been posting live not live, but liver real content on TikTok and Instagram lately, like, with me as talking. And I've done ones with no makeup on, and I've done ones with makeup on. And the videos that I have makeup on do significantly better. It's awful.

I hate this world. Yeah. Let's move to Lichtenstein. Ah. Lichtenstein.

Or where else did we decide?

I don't think we did. Do we have any Lichtenstein listeners? I don't think I've seen that one pop up.

Hey. If you know anybody in Lichtenstein, and if we're saying Lichtenstein right

I don't think we are.

Send this their way. Anyway,

so this week, we're gonna be talking a little bit more about lesser known women of the bible. Gonna say

that again.

Lesser known women of the bible. We talked last week about Hagar, who I think is an a name most of us as Protestant Christians have heard, but hadn't really heard her story. So today, we've got two women that we're gonna talk about because their stories are relatively short in the Bible. Yeah. Not super long.

So we decided to divide and conquer. Bree researched one and I researched another. So we'll surprise each other with Surprise. The

I will say something frustrating. I did a lot of research on this. I'm talking about Tamar. But I hand wrote like four and a half pages of notes because I like doing that. It helps me remember things.

And I promptly forgot them. All of those beautiful handwritten notes, gone. Worthless. Piece of garbage. There's your car.

There is. But I shall start today. Alright, Brie. Alright. We're talking Genesis.

We're talking old time bible. Woman, Tamar. We're not starting with her story right now. We're gonna rewind even further. How many further back can we go?

Here we go. Listen. We're talking Joseph. Okay. You remember Joseph?

No. I totally And

forgot his multicolored dream coat. His beautiful coat. Got it. He had brothers who hated him because Joseph was very obviously his dad's favorite. Mhmm.

Now, Joseph didn't have the best, I would say, people skills? Tact. Yeah. He went around saying, listen, I had dreams that I'd be a king and you all would bow down to me and I'm the best and I'm dad's favorite. Kiss my butt.

Look at this really cool coat. So,

like, in today's world, I would probably,

you know, lose touch with my brother Mhmm. If he was acting like that. I might not communicate with him as much. I might say, stop it. You are being a butt hole.

His brother said, let's

kill him.

Obviously. So they take him away, dig a ditch, and throw him in there. And their intention was to kill him. But one of his brothers stood up, not necessarily in defense of Joseph, but instead said, hey, if we're going to kill him, we should get something out of it anyways. Obviously.

What's in it for us? Yeah. So let's sell him instead into slavery. And I think they got, like, I don't know, 20 pieces of silver. I forget what it was.

Mhmm. So they sold him. And the guy who the brother that said that was Judah. Now they took Joseph's coat and they went back to their father and showed him the coat that they had covered in like lamb's blood or something to and said like, look what we found. Mhmm.

And the language, the original Hebrew that they use is, I think it's hikarnah. Hang on. Let me double check that and don't trust my pronunciation because it's not going to be good.

Because you didn't even say pronunciation. Right?

Hicker na. Okay. H a k e r dash nah.

I never know how to say anything.

Which means recognize, please. Okay. Keep that in mind

I'm ready. For later.

Okay. Fast forward. We're fast forwarding. Judah has three sons. He has Er, e r, Onan, and Shelah.

These are some exciting names.

I know. Now, Er was married to Tamar, a woman. Now keep in mind, at this time, women were married once they were of childbearing age. So that could be starting at like 10, 12. It just depends on when Right.

Started your period. So they get married. And the bible basically says that Er was a wicked man. And so he died and left Tamar as a widow. Now, a lot of times, storytellers will say, like, this was a wicked person and God took him out of the world because they died young.

Mhmm. So think like Job in the in the Bible when Job was doing nothing wrong, people still thought that, like, God must be cursing you for something. Right.

So think they still do that now.

Yeah. Like, if something's going really wrong in your life, they're like, okay, what have you done to provoke this? And it sometimes things just happen. Mhmm. But Er is described as a wicked man, and so he dies.

Now, according to that Bible time, there was this thing called elaborate law, which

am I being boring? No. Okay. But you did make a weird sound.

I did. Did. Hang on. Let me have a little sippy of coffee.

Oh, yes. Our ASMR moment.

Levirate law. Got it. Which was to protect widows because the only protection women had at this time was through marriage and having children, specifically sons. Women don't really matter for anything other than that. And they're really not respected unless you're married.

Mhmm. So often true of today as well. The Levitt law says that if a man dies and leaves a widow without any children Mhmm. That then her brother-in-law or her husband's brother would I don't normally hear this much sound. I don't know.

Would get together with her, get her pregnant Get together. Get together. Get together. Gotcha. Get her pregnant so that that way the biology would be the same as if it were her husband

Mhmm.

So that she could have children, and they would have heirs. Mhmm. And that baby wouldn't be considered the brothers. It would be considered the dead guys. Does that

make sense? It makes sense. It's alarming.

Yes. So under this law, Tamar should have had a baby with Onan, who was the second brother. And that baby would have been considered still heirs. Okay. Or Ers.

I don't know. Ur was the firstborn. So he would have gotten Right. Double portion of inheritance. So there were three sons.

They would technically split up the inheritance into four. Okay. Eir would have or or Eir or Eir would have gotten two portions Mhmm. Of that inheritance, then Onan would have gotten 25% and his brother Sheila would have gotten 25% as well. Onan didn't want to get her pregnant Mhmm.

Because then he wouldn't have gotten as much inheritance. Right. Now he's getting two thirds of it instead if he doesn't get her pregnant. So in the Bible, what he does is he sleeps with her Mhmm. But doesn't Finish.

Finish. Yeah.

We're not shy here. Don't give me that look. The Bible says he doesn't spill inside her. The bible is wild. Okay.

I don't wanna hear about Bridgerton.

The bible isn't the wild. The is wild. It's insane. So unfortunately, what's happening is he's using her for his pleasure. Right.

He's raping her

Yeah.

Over and over again and not getting her pregnant. So she's not having that protection. Mhmm. That's the reason the law is there so that she's protected, so that she can have those children and And they can take care of her. Yeah.

Yeah. So she's just being used and abused. Right. And the bible says that because Onan was wicked and he didn't fulfill what his duty was, God killed him. So now she's a widow twice.

And Judah's thinking, what's wrong with Tamar? She's killing all my sons.

I mean, which is maybe fair. Which is maybe fair.

He has one son left. Which is Shelah. So Judah says, listen, Shelia's not old enough yet. So like, according to the law, yes, he's gonna get you pregnant. He he he'll fulfill his duty when he's old enough.

Mhmm. And you should just go back and live with your family.

Now let's make a note. Tamar was probably old enough to get married when she was 11 or 12.

Mhmm. So how old was

she, you know?

Yeah. So people are saying that it's like a teenager or whatever. I don't know. So he sends her back to live with her family, but she has nothing there. She's unprotected.

She's now a widow twice. She has nothing. She has no protection. The law is failing her. The law that is put there to protect her Mhmm.

Is failing her. So she's waiting around. And the Bible doesn't seem like this is like far spaces of time. This isn't like years and years and years. This is like kind of a sequence of events.

Okay. So she's been waiting a while for Sheila. And she finds out that he actually is old enough to be with her

Mhmm.

Get her pregnant. So she finds out that she's been lied to. Mhmm. She's frustrated. She's upset with this whole system that's absolutely failed her.

She's upset with Judah because Judah promised her that he would fulfill his duty and give her Shelah and he didn't. So she finds out that Judah's coming to town. He's coming to market.

Coming to market, man. With his sheep or goats, I don't know what.

There's another part of the law, the liberate law, that says if a woman is left widowed without any, children, and her husband doesn't have any brothers, that

the father-in-law can get her pregnant. I don't like this law. It's not ideal. The Bible is really difficult. These are hard stories.

Like, just even that law in and of itself, while, yes, I can understand why culturally it's there to protect women. It also hurts women at the same time. It it hurts

men too. Like, it's not good. Because women were not respected. Like, now we say women aren't respected, but they were not respected in the same way back then. Right.

They were really seen as property, the same as kind of like cattle. Yeah. And as women in that time, had like two paths to choose. You could either get married or you could be a prostitute. And those were really your only two choices.

And women were not respected if they were not married.

Mhmm.

Anyways. So she hears that Judah's coming to town. Yeah. And she puts on a veil. So she puts on, like, the outfit of a prostitute.

Mhmm. And she goes and hangs out near the temple where she knows that Judah's gonna pass by. And he passes by. And he doesn't recognize her.

Mhmm.

And he says, hey. The exact words are a little explicit. Okay.

We're not shy here.

Audience. The exact words were he says, let me come inside you. Oh. My gosh. Yeah.

Oh, sorry, parents. But I mean, this is Genesis. This is, like, just beginning. We're reading the Bible.

Imagine you have no exposure to the Bible whatsoever and you start at Genesis. Mhmm. And here you are. I know.

It's awful. It's awful. This is like Genesis 38. If you wanna go have a wild ride. If you're looking for a weird romance novel, try Genesis.

Couldn't put that on a t shirt. Move over Julia Quinn. So he does not recognize her. He tries to sleep with her and she says, okay, well, what are you gonna give me? How are you gonna compensate me Right.

For this? Because this is my job. Mhmm. I'm a prostitute. And he said, when I get back home, I'll send someone to give you a kid, which is a baby goat.

And she said, okay, well since I don't have it right now, how about a down payment Or a, deposit.

She says, give me your cord, your seal, and your

One moment. I don't like whatever you're doing. What are you doing? Okay. Your seal, your cord, and your staff, which is in Genesis thirty eight sixteen through 18, if you really wanted to know.

But these are things that, like, signified who you were. It's like your license. Mhmm. It shows exactly who this person is, who their family is. Mhmm.

These can only belong to Judah.

Which is quite a choice then for him to give them up.

Mhmm. And he's like, okay. I'll I'll get them back anyways because I'm gonna send you this baby goat. So he gives these things to her.

He sleeps with her. He

ends up getting her pregnant. Mhmm. Now, he gets back home, he sends his person back to deliver this baby goat. And this person, his staff member, I'm assuming, can't find her. Mhmm.

And he goes around asking where is the temple prostitute? I need to give her this baby goat.

The temple prostitute.

Yeah. Oof. Yeah. And they're like, there has never been one here. Mhmm.

What are you talking about? This is ridiculous. There is no one by that name. So Guy goes back with the baby goat says, I can't find her. And he Judo's like, well, I guess I lost those things.

Well, dang it. Word gets out that Tamar is prego.

Mhmm.

She's about like three months along. And Judah says, holy cow, let's burn her.

My gosh. This is not a good man.

Yeah. No. Which like, when in the Bible are you hearing of people being burned? That's very brutal. Mhmm.

Now people say that that was his excuse to get rid of her. Like, this is a problem. Yeah. I don't really want to give her Sheila because I don't want her to kill my other son. Let's just kill her now.

She messed up. So they haul her out, intending to burn her. And she sends his cord, his stele. His stele and his staff and says, Hey, Karna. Which is, recognize please.

Mhmm.

The same language that you hear when he says, look at Joseph's robes, they're covered in blood. It's just so poetic. Yeah. And so good. And Judah says, yep.

She is a better person than I am. Mhmm. Because she's absolutely right. These are mine. They can only be mine.

And she says, the father of my child, these are his things. Mhmm. Well, yeah. Oops. Forget Q.

Oops. So that's where her story kinda ends. She ends up having two sons named Does she have twins or does she get pregnant again? She has twins. Okay.

That's funny. The juxtaposition of two of his sons died

Mhmm.

And then she has two sons.

Mhmm. And she has twins. They are named Perez and Zerah. Perez becomes an ancestor of Jesus. Mhmm.

Tamar ends up being the first woman listed in the New Testament. When it goes down Matthew one, where it talks about the lineage of Jesus. Mhmm. And it names Tamar. Mhmm.

Now, it's very rare

that women are named in lineages Right. At all because they don't hold the same importance as men. Mhmm. So that's significant. Through all her suffering, the system that was set up to protect her failed.

She sought justice. Now it's a little uncomfy. We're not hearing about this in church.

Right. I mean, I think this is a name that Christians, if you've been around church for a long time, you probably have heard. But they really soften the story.

They really soften it. Like, you're not hearing about she was raped by Onan. The system that was set up to protect her failed. And then her father-in-law Mhmm. Didn't recognize her, treated her like a prostitute, got her pregnant.

Yeah. It speaks a lot to the value that they ever placed on her because really, like, she was a problem in Judah's life Mhmm. For a while, and yet he didn't recognize her. Like, he slept with her. There's no way the veil stayed on the whole time.

Yeah. So I got a lot of my information from this, Presbyterian pastor. I think he's Presbyterian. I loved it. Mhmm.

I loved that he's taking time to talk about little known women of the Bible and he's like, yeah, this is an uncomfortable story to tell. This is not something that you're hearing every day in church. Like when Noah got drunk and danced around naked. They're not really talking about this. But this is a really important story about justice because I think it is uncomfortable.

Like, did she deceive Judah and take advantage of him in some way? Mhmm. I don't know that I see it that way. I see it as like, she was she was like, yeah. Mhmm.

Well, our mom and I were talking about this earlier. And I think this story really proves how much nuance there is in the bible. I've been getting into arguments with people on the Internet recently. And one of the things that I noticed that people really don't understand is that the bible is not often black and white. No.

There are a few things. Don't get me wrong. But more often than not, it's gray areas. The story of Tamar, technically, if you look at, like, the list of sins Mhmm. Technically, there are a lot of sins there.

She lied. She slept with a man who was not her husband. There's, like, many things. Right? And yet, in the end, she's because the Bible doesn't give out a lot of honors quite as extreme as you're in the lineage of Jesus.

Mhmm.

So maybe the things that we think are black and white are not so black and white. Maybe this story proves the nuance of the Bible, and that we need to take everything in context.

It also shows Jesus's love and protection for women. Mhmm. If you look through the Bible, it's rare that a woman's story is really drawn out this much unless it's in relation to a man Mhmm. As a detail in a man's story. But this is very much her story.

And it talks about the power that these men had and how that power is not the most important thing. It's she sought justification for herself because how would you feel? Like she did not have any other options. She's waiting for Judah to send her Sheila, which is quite possibly never going to happen. She's living with her family.

She's a widow twice now. No one's looking to marry her again.

Right. Well, in long term, what happens to her when her father dies and all of his assets pass to whatever brothers she has? There's no there's no money there for her. Like, it it wasn't even an option for her father to say, alright. I've set aside this money for Tamar.

Everything had to go through the boys. So she would like, maybe ten years down the line, she's in big trouble. There's nowhere for her to go.

Well, you have one option. Mhmm. You become a prostitute. Right. And that only really works for so long.

Mhmm.

And then what? Yeah.

You're desperate.

Mhmm.

You're desperate to seek justification because you know these laws are set up to protect you. Right.

And they're failing you. I think it's interesting to to ask with a story like this. Why is it in the Bible? There are things happening every day in this culture, right, that we're not hearing about. So why did we hear about Tamar specifically?

Why did we hear about Tamar? Why did we hear twice about Judah? Like, that I think is important to dig into and ask if God didn't value women as much as He valued men. If because He created men first, that meant that they were the most important. Then why did He make a point to tell us from early early on in Genesis, I am going to protect women even if you don't.

Even if you think you're superior, I am going to show you that you're not.

Mhmm. I think it's also important to put yourself in that situation. And we like to make these women of the Bible seem real. Like, this happened in today's situation, what would like, what would you do? What would you do?

You have nothing. Your life is heading towards disaster. You have no other options. You have no power. Right.

You're a woman in this day and age. You're as good as like an animal. Mhmm. Men did not respect women in the same way. Mhmm.

Like, they they used their wives for to pass on their to make their families so that they could have as many sons as possible. Right? They used prostitutes for sex and pleasure. Mhmm. Do you

want me to go on to mine? Or do we have more?

That's it. Okay. That's Tamar's story. Beautiful. Beautiful.

Okay. So I am gonna talk about

a large bit in the future. So let's pretty fast forward for me. Beautiful. Alright.

Would you like

that? I it sounded like your butt exploded, but sure.

Maybe it did.

Hold on. Just wanna look up one. Okay. So this story is of the woman who touched Jesus's garments. And it's in Mark.

Actually, I think it's in all the gospels, but mostly we're looking in Mark right now. And her story sits in the midst of a bigger story. So like you said before, how like women's stories are kind of often side notes in a man's story. Mhmm. That's kind of what's happening here.

And if you wonder why that happens so often in the Bible, it's because the Bible was written by men. And culturally, women were not considered as important. So their stories often were footnotes. But her story happens within the story of Jairus. And he is the man you've probably heard this story in church.

This one is one I hear a lot. He had a 12 year old daughter who I think was dying. I don't think she had died. And he went and found Jesus and said, I need you to come heal my daughter. He was a big deal.

He was like a high up in the temple. He was someone that the community respected. So when he called upon you, you answered. What's up? And so he goes, he personally gets Jesus, says come on.

So Jesus is walking through town. Right? There are crowds around him because at this point in Jesus's ministry, people know that he has done miracles before. They know that Jairus's daughter is dying. She, I believe, is dead before Jesus gets there.

But she's dying. And so they're following along. They wanna see the miracle. There's not a movie out. They're bored.

We need something to do. Let's just follow them. And so as they're walking through town, there is a woman. And this woman's story is deeply tragic. And I don't think we hear about how deeply tragic it is very often.

Now she has had a bleeding disorder for twelve years. We aren't told exactly what that is. And even if we were, like, would we understand in medical standards today what it is? Nobody really knows. But something to do with her reproductive system is kind of the general assumption.

Now in culture at this time, when a woman was on her period, according to Levitical law, she was considered impure, which meant a lot of things for her. And they would have been difficult normally. But this woman, because she was bleeding for twelve years, was considered unclean and impure for twelve years. Well, in the Jewish tradition Jewish tradition even now, when a woman's

on her period, don't they, like, sleep in separate beds? Husband and wife will sleep in separate beds, and then a woman has to do, like, a goat like, a ritual ritualistic cleaning, I believe, like

bathing to be considered clean again. Orthodox Jews, specifically. Yeah. So some of the things that would happen when you were considered unclean is that you would you couldn't have sex. You couldn't sleep in the same bed as your partner, which maybe not what was not happening all the time anyway.

But if you sat on anything, nobody else could sit on that thing. So a cushion or whatever. Blame

them though, because they're probably like there was no tampons. There was no tampons. There were no discs. They're free bleeding.

There were rules about touching in general. There's a lot of things that go along with this. Additionally, because she was bleeding for so long, there's the likelihood that she couldn't have children. Mhmm. And we just talked about how important having children was for women at this time.

That's your value and your safety net.

Mhmm.

So she's been bleeding. And it also says that she has been seeing doctors for twelve years. So probably at the point when she started this, she didn't have it her whole life because she wasn't only 12 years old. But whenever this started for her, she started seeing doctors. And it says that she had spent everything she had.

So she probably had money at the beginning, whether that was because she was married. Just going to see a doctor at all. Exactly.

Wouldn't cost you money.

And it said that she was basically tortured by doctors for twelve years. So they're I mean, they don't know a lot about medicine at this point. They're experimenting. Right. So they're using her as a pin cushion, and no one can figure it out.

No one can fix it. So it's just gotten worse and worse and worse for twelve years. So she approaches Jesus thinking this is all I've got. This is my last resort. And she reaches out and touches basically the hem.

I believe it's like some sort of ritual piece of his garment that they had to wear to go into the temple. So it's just like the fringe almost of his garment. And in touching his garment, she's immediately healed. Before Jesus turns around, before he interacts with her in any way, she's healed. I don't know if she knows this.

You know, like, do you feel the blood stop going out? Like, happens there? I almost feel like you would have to feel something,

you know? As a woman who goes through their period, you know that your back hurts, your boobs hurt, your knees hurt, your thighs hurt. Like, your body is in kind of like a constant level of dull pain during your entire life. Feel like she had to feel something. Now,

it says the Bible says that Jesus felt some of his power go out of

him. Mhmm.

I don't know what that feels like either.

Like the Santa Claus. Yes.

Like the Santa Claus. And Jesus is on his way to save a 12 year old girl. Right? There's a crowd around him. Anybody could be touching him.

He could have said, whatever. Also, he's Jesus. So he knows what's happened.

Mhmm.

He could have said, okay, she's healed. Great. Moving on.

Moving on. But he didn't.

He turned around. He turned to her and

let's see. What does he say? Weren't there people mad that she touched him?

Yes. The religious leaders around him were upset with her for touching him. So he turns around. He says, who touched me? Which is yeah.

A little dramatic.

I say that in the bars all the time.

And it says in, I don't know if that's Mark. I think it's Mark. In fear and trembling, she told him the whole truth. So she told him what was going on. She told him her story.

And to me, when you say the whole truth, that means this took a moment, you know? Like this wasn't like a, oops. Like, this was like a story. It started when I was And imagine, like, rightfully so, you've got this man whose daughter is dying. Like, right now.

She's dying right now.

Yeah. There's a sense of urgency there.

He has somewhere to be. Right. And she's, like, telling her life story. Rightfully, in some way, this person would be frustrated. Now the bible doesn't talk about that.

But I'm imagining if it was me, I'd be, like, yanking on his arm. Like, okay, let's go. You did the thing. Come on. But that's not what happens here.

Jesus pauses and he takes time with her.

Mhmm.

He stops everything else. Something that women did not get back then. Not ever. This was never happening for women. When she was going think of how women are dismissed at the doctor now.

Mhmm. Imagine back then. And yet here's this person whose sole focus is on her. Now he goes on to tell her, daughter, your faith has healed you. That line is really significant.

Not just because he says your faith has healed you. Think that's when we hear this story preached, That's kind of the part of it that we focus on. But I wanna focus on that word daughter. Now Jesus would have been speaking I can't remember if it is Greek or Aramaic. Hold on.

I'll get back to it.

Hold on. There

it is. So Jesus would have likely been speaking Aramaic at this time. So the underlying word and I'm not gonna say this right. But the Aramaic word here is Barta or daughter. The Greek word for it is thigh gator.

What? Just in case you were wondering. T h y g a t e r? Chomp. Chomp.

So we're gonna go with bartop because that makes me feel less uncomfortable. And this word daughter, it in a way, I think we breeze over it as just like a, oh, sweetheart. You know, like just a a nice little compliment. Like, oh, honey. Mhmm.

But this was significant at this time. Calling someone this meant care. Yes. But it also meant family protection. And we just talked about this with Tamar, how important that family protection is.

That's all you have. Especially for a woman within that structure, you are safe. Mhmm. You are known and your future is planned for. This is deeply annoying.

Yeah. Gonna have to cut

out so many cars so much.

And you wouldn't be isolated in the same way that she probably has been. She's not talked about as someone's wife or someone's daughter as many women throughout the bible are. We don't hear that about her. And so we can assume that she was relatively isolated. She also had been considered unclean for so long.

Society may have also rejected her or seen her as different. So for Jesus to say you are to for Jesus to say daughter meant you are safe and you are no longer alone. I've got you. I am here. Not only did I heal you, I've got you.

For that woman specifically Mhmm. Who's been treated as a pariah for years, that's makes me wanna cry. I

love Jesus's interactions with women. Anytime we see him interact with women, it's just a whole different vibe. It's safety. It's belonging. And I think even for us here in 2026, men are often a threat.

We talk about that all the time, right? We have to treat men as a group of people like they're a threat because so many of them are to women. And we don't

know which ones yet. Exactly. And I think just the language, especially the political language right now that's really pushing makes women feel more unsafe. Mhmm. And when people say things like your body, my choice Mhmm.

Just in general, the language towards women in 2026 Mhmm.

Is not kind. It's significant to me that who Jesus is here in this story is radically different from the men even today. Mhmm. You would hope we had moved into a safer space. But even today, Jesus is radical in the way that he loves and cares for women, in the way that he sees them as his equal.

Jairus, the father of this 12 year old girl, is an important leader. Disappointing him is a big deal, potentially. And I know like sitting here, we're like, okay, well Jesus can do anything. But for Jesus's ministry, healing Jairus's daughter could be a big deal. This this is like getting a viral video.

Okay? Like suddenly you have credibility in someone in the religious leadership. Suddenly your miracles aren't just hearsay, they're well known fact because this man is gonna lend you his credibility. It's like

being friends with a mob boss. Yeah. Exactly. That's exactly it.

Yeah. And instead of focusing on that, which arguably would have benefited his ministry more, he said she is just as important. Her status doesn't matter. Her bleeding disorder doesn't matter. Her gender doesn't matter.

She is just as important. Because she's my family. Mhmm.

Because she is mine. I will care for her forever for the rest of her life. And when she's up in heaven, like, imagine that hug when she got to heaven and Jesus was there. And just like, daughter, she's my daughter.

Yeah. It's like you never left. Hey, welcome back. Welcome home. It's like when you walk into Disney and they say welcome home.

Wow. We can really pull anything back to Disney. We've got a emotional moment here and now we're in Disney.

There you go. Who knew? Who knew we could get there? Who knew?

Oh, another aspect of this that's really interesting and part of why the religious leaders were upset with her is there was a risk in her touching Jesus because she is ritually unclean. Right? Right. Which means anything that she touches is also ritually unclean. That's why she had spent twelve years not getting a hug.

Now I don't know if hugs are a big deal at this time. But Paul in the bible later says greet each other with a holy kiss. So no kisses for her. But that's the thing is, like, she can't interact because of the traditions of her time. And so in touching Jesus, there is the risk that she makes it unclean, that she makes Jesus unclean.

It's like I feel like they do this in junior churches and stuff where they'll be like, okay. Well, if the germ is on this hand and you touch over here, then the germ's gonna be on that hand. Like, it's

not like, it makes this hand clean. In our version of clean, like, there's a different level of importance for them. It's not just like, gosh, dang it. Go wash your hands. It's like, I am spiritually Right.

Unclean. Right.

And Jesus would have then have to had to go through a ritual to become clean again, to be able to go into the temple, etcetera, etcetera. And that would have been notable, especially to the religious leaders who were already pissed at him. But it's different with Jesus because I I can't remember the science experiment. There's like a science experiment that they do where, like, all the pepper goes to the side of the thing.

I don't know. I'll cut that part out.

There's some experiment that they to exemplify this.

I was an

art major. But instead of her infecting Jesus with her impurity, healing flows out of Jesus. And that's what we can count on with him. That's the faith and hope that we have. And one of the things I've been getting into people into arguments with people online is that Jesus is love.

Healing and love flow out of him. That's what you see in this story and in Tamar's story and in more of the stories that we'll continue to talk about. Love and care flows from him because it's who he is. Whoever you are at your core, that's what flows out of you. And who Jesus is at his core is love and care and kindness and inclusion.

It's kinda like what we say, who you truly are eventually shows up Mhmm. And believe people the first time. Yep. That or when we say this little light of mine, we want to be like Jesus. We want love and healing to flow out of us because if that's who you try to be all the time, that's just gonna be naturally how you interact with people.

With love and care and healing. If at your core you're a scumbag and you try to put on this facade Mhmm. Eventually that facade wears away Mhmm.

And your scum comes out. Wow. Yuck. And we've known a couple scumbags. A couple.

Several. Quite a few. So later on, like, as this story goes on, Jesus does end up going to heal Jairus' daughter. But by the time he gets there, she has died. Imagine being Jairus in this scenario.

I'd be a little bit pissed. This is

a wealthy person with influence who probably doesn't not get he what he wants a whole lot. That's true. And here Jesus is, who is a pretty lowly rabbi. And Jesus did not give him what he wanted and instead delayed until the girl was dead. Jesus could have healed that woman and kept going.

So you're like pissed. Because maybe you didn't believe that Jesus was the son of God to begin with. You weren't sure. You jumped out on faith thinking that maybe this would work. And now you think either he's a liar

Did I spill that all over my Yeah.

It jumped when you grabbed at best, he's a liar. And at worst, he straight up failed you. But Jesus goes into the homo gyrus. And when the daughter is is fully dead, Jesus raises her from the dead. And hopefully, she lives a nice lovely life.

We don't really know anything else about her. But it's just so significant that Jesus stopped for this woman. Jesus knew what was going on in that other house. And I think like there's that aspect of the story too where this girl is suffering and that's sad and hard. But Jesus knew he could still heal that little girl and stopped here and said, no, we're gonna take the time.

We're gonna take the time. I'm gonna call you out in front of society. And that's another aspect of it too. If she had simply been like quiet and hidden and whatever, she would have then had to go through a whole process to be proven clean again. And it probably would have taken a lot of time.

But Jesus stood there in the middle of society and said, no. No. No. She's clean. She's good.

Everybody look at her. See do you see her? Let's point her out. Here's her name. You're right.

We don't

know her name, but still.

Because she could have just touched his garments. He could have been on his way. Mhmm. And she would have been healed either way. But you're right.

He took time, stepped away Mhmm. And made a point of her. And because of that too, it's in the bible. Mhmm.

And she got to go on and live a normal life. Like, from here, after twelve years of suffering, she interacts with Jesus. She interacts with love and kindness. And she gets to live a normal life. Maybe she has children.

Maybe she gets married if she wasn't married before. Maybe she gets to go in the temple. Although I'm not actually sure if women could go in the temple. Hard to say. But she she has a future now.

She didn't have a future before. She was in pain. She was rejected. And now she has a world that she gets to live in. And that's pretty cool that that comes from our Lord.

And you think of that in comparison to us here today. Whatever you're suffering with, whether it's physical, whether it's emotional, we all go through many, many things in our lives. And no matter what it is, when you meet Jesus, he is gonna stop and take the time with you. Notice you, pay attention to you, and be there for you. I can't tell you he's gonna heal all your disease.

Like, I'm not that kind of Christian. But he is going to be there with you and lend you his credibility and his love. And call you family. Yeah. And that's pretty cool.

If you have nothing else, you have that. And that's why we should not forget the stories women because they give us this. Mhmm. Because they're big. And when we only talk about, for heaven's sake, Paul for the fifty millionth time, and Peter and Abraham and Moses, like, we lose something.

I was talking to someone recently, and I had to point out all of these women of the Bible. Was like, what about Deborah? What about Jael? What about Holda? What about Tamar?

What about all of these people? And these were stories that this person didn't know. Because even if you do read your bible, it's easy to skip over the stuff that you didn't hear a lot about. You kinda just like I mean, it's it's big, man.

It's big, and it's confusing. Like you said before, not all the stories are black and white, good and bad. They're a little weird. Yeah. And if you're going in going to church every Sunday and listening to those stories, they're not highlighting the stories of the women in the Bible because several of them are uncomfortable.

And you're not hearing she and her from the pulpit. We're missing those key stories, those key people that who help build our faith.

Mhmm. And we're missing something that God himself thought was important enough to keep in his word. Like, these are stories that I didn't make up. Brie didn't make them up. These are something that God thought was important.

These are women that Jesus thought was important, And we should be focusing on them. And if your churches and your religious spaces aren't, demand that they do. Demand that they notice those things because they are depriving your community of something, often intentionally. Mhmm. Just saying.

Now next week, I kinda wanted to talk about another woman of the bible that is super villainized. There's more than two women. There are. Weird. I know.

And she is in the story of Esther.

Is it Esther? It's not Esther.

What? There's more than one woman in the story

of Wait. I've seen VeggieTales. I'm pretty sure there was just the one.

No. There's more than one. Bizarre. I know. But it's queen Vashti.

Oh, yeah. Her story fascinates me. Have we talked about her? I think we have talked about her in the past, like, briefly. And probably on our Esther episode.

Probably on our do we do an Esther episode? Yeah. Probably on our Esther episode. But I wanna do a whole episode just focused on her because she is always always portrayed as the villain in Esther's story. If you hear Esther's story at all, you hear about queen Vashti as like the problem.

And I don't see her story in that way at all. I think we have misunderstood that story. I think we've misunderstood what God was saying in that story.

I think it's really easy to villainize women Mhmm. To push forward the story of men Mhmm. Often. They do that with women just throughout time. Yep.

Just in general. Yep. She's crazy. Oh, she's crazy. Mhmm.

She's crazy. As a side note, if you ever date a guy and he's talking about his exes and he says that all of them are crazy, run away. Run away. Leave that man. Yep.

Women are not the villains in all of these stories. Tamar was not the villain in her story. Vashti is not the villain in this story. So your homework for this week. Are you ready?

I'm giving you homework for the first time ever.

Well, I might forget my notes again.

Alright. I actually have two pieces of homework. I lied. The first one, read the story of Vashti. Esther is a really short chapter of the bible, so it's very quick.

Vashti is not mentioned a ton, we're so gonna have to talk about a lot of historical context with her. But I think it's good to start with where the bible is, understand that whole story, and then we can jump back and talk about her. So that's homework number one. Homework number two, follow us on Instagram and TikTok because here's why. We post great stuff.

We're very funny. And, I would love to see you there because I would like to interact with you. I think that's a great way for us to talk to you in a way that we can't just as we podcast, you know?

Mhmm. And you can put in casual requests. Like someone asked for Alyssa to make a video on JL, and she done did.

I absolutely did. And actually, also, there was another one.

Who did she she asked for Buhumamumam. Was it Tabitha? It might have been Tabitha. Tabitha and what's the other one's name? Vermouth?

Yes. It was Tabitha. Yeah. So somebody asked me to do a video on Tabitha and that was not a story that I knew. So it was cool because I got to research it and do a little video on it.

Yeah. Always thought Tabitha was just the name of a cat.

No. It's the name of the daughter on Bewitched. So true. You're right. Yeah.

She tried to wiggle her nose, but she couldn't do it properly. Alright. So we will talk to you guys about that next week. Do your homework or I'll be disappointed. Yep.

I'll know. Me too. Just like Santa.

Santa Cruz. Okay. Well, love you, bye. Love you, bye.