Evil Women of the Bible (The Bible in 60 Days Project - Part III)

Several weeks ago we had an article in the Watchtower about excellent women that we should imitate. Many women come to mind, such as Abigail, Sarah, Ruth, etc.

When I was going through a list of different Bible characters names, I quickly realized that the amount of women who were considered bad are relatively few. 

I got in a conversation with some friends the other day, and we attempted to rank the most evil women in the Bible.

The idea itself is a little bit ridiculous I must have to admit. For one, I definitely don't want others to think that I'm just picking on women. The idea just surfaced from thinking about the article where many good women were picked out as examples, and then I got to meditate on which women in the Bible were not good examples. Those that know me well know that most of my favorite characters in the Bible are actually women! My four favorite characters that I can think of off hand are probably Abigail David Ruth and Hannah. 

Also this blog article is not to give unnecessary attention to Bible characters that we don't consider great examples. The main reason is to get people thinking about a few Bible characters that they may have not thought of for a while--in the same spirit of my last post on the kings of Judah.

I chose to rank them, because by ranking them we can get an idea of how we ourselves consider the severity of different evil acts. My rankings will hopefully get you to think about how your ranking would be different. 

Some may rank certain ones higher or lower because they consider their actions to be worse or not as bad as the others. Ultimately I don't take these rankings very seriously, because for Jehovah there is no ranking of evil. There are only two possibilities for him: either you get a resurrection or you don't get a resurrection. Ultimately that's all that matters anyways.

5

Eve

The mother of sin takes my number five spot.
When Daniel, my older brother, first heard this he was very confused, not understanding why she wasn't ranked as number one. 

Maybe he has a really good point. 

All humans have suffered death as a result of her. She is the one that disrespected Jehovah's authority and started a chain reaction of all the problems that were to follow. Also her actions may have even inspired some of the "one third of angels" to leave Jehovah although we can't be sure.

Maybe Daniel is right and she should be considered the most evil woman of all time.

However, she did raise a God-fearing man, Abel, and didn't try to sacrifice him to any idols or something like that afterwards. 

I don't know what it's like to be perfect and then commit a sin, but for some reason I don't think her act was as malicious as others who were in direct opposition to Jehovah for many separate events and over the course of their life and were willingly opposing him very actively. I definitely don't mean to justify her actions, I just mean to say that she isn't the first person I think of as evil when it comes to female Bible characters.

4

Delilah 

Yes she was a Philistine and therefore didn't have the same upbringing that other Israelites benefited from, but let's face it – anyone who is actively, regularly trying to find ways to get her husband killed is just evil. I think that is cross-cultural. Besides her malicious evilness, she was also just awful in an every-day sense. If Eve was the mother of sin, Delilah was the mother of 'the nagging wife.' She is the poster girl for what a bad wife is. She is the anti-Proverbs 31 wife.
Accuracy Update: My friend Elisa has brought to my attention that Delilah may have actually been an Israelite! This is mentioned in the section about her in the Insight book which suggests this based on the fact that she was bribed with money to betray Samson instead of an appeal to nationalistic pride. However, we cannot be exactly sure as to her background. 

3

Cozbi

Cozbi, although mentioned very briefly in the Bible, represents a greater amount of people who are in opposition to Jehovah.
She just happened to be singled out by name. 

In case you don't remember her, she was the one that was killed by Phineas after entering into the camp to engage in immoral relations with one of the Israelites. She represents all who use sexual immorality to corrupt Jehovah's congregation.

When military attacks against the Israelites didn't work, Balaam had the idea to use Jehovah himself to destroy the Israelites by tempting them into sexual relations with the daughters of Moab. When you think of it this way, Cozbi was a military soldier of another type working under her general--Balaam. Really, she is the female Goliath of the Bible.

2

Athaliah

She is known mostly for her two words in the Bible: Conspiracy! Conspiracy!

If you look at my last post on the kings of Judah, you can see more details about the evil acts that she committed, so I will not mention much here.

It's easy to forget that in the six years that she allowed Baal worship to spread in Israel, many hundreds if not thousands of children may have been sacrificed in fire.

1 

Jezebel

Jezebel is the woman whose name itself is synonymous with evil. 

She was a worshiper of Baal, was a woman in direct opposition to Jehovah and was responsible for the murder of many people. 

I don't think evil is measured only in the number of people killed. We get a personal and more detailed account of her maliciousness when we see how she used the court system to have an innocent man killed so that the king could have his land. While this is the account mentioned in the Bible, we can be sure that there are many more malicious acts that she did that weren't mentioned. Years later, in the era of the Christian congregation, her name was used in identification of a spirit against Jehovah – the Jezebel Spirit. In other words during Bible times her wickedness was well known and considered exceptional--they don't call it the "Eve spirit."

There are some in my list that I did not include. For example there is Herodias, the one that was responsible for John the Baptizer's death. Saphira, the wife of Ananias is not mentioned. Also there are other ones such as Penninah and secondary wives that were considered more annoying than evil.

I hope that this list has got you thinking about other characters in the Bible that I didn't think of. Maybe I missed someone. 

It was an interesting spiritual conversation for us.  

Maybe you could consider the question with others as well.

If you do so, i recommend first mentioning the disclaimers I mentioned in the first few paragraphs of this blog.

Maybe some may not like this topic at all.

If that is the case, we can say thanks to Jehovah that we have so many excellent examples of women from the Bible and millions more from the modern age to consider.

Right now I am a little bit behind my schedule for finishing in 60 days but I'm pretty sure that I will catch up and finish on time. The end date is November 15. 20 days left to go.