Hi everyone, it’s Jo Dykes, here, making plans to begin teaching/facilitating an adult education class on Women of the Bible, beginning September 4. ( In Estill House at 9:30am, in case you missed last week’s Glad Tidings.)
As I sat here, wondering how I could get you interested in coming to this class, suddenly I was visiting the marketplaces of the Middle East in ancient times. And you would not believe what I heard there!
Overheard in the marketplace. . . “Well, everyone knows she got to be Queen by winning a beauty contest! Humph! No one will ever hear of HER again!” “What do you mean, she conspired with her younger son to cheat her older son out of his inheritance? What kind of woman would do that?”
” My husband said he heard it with his own ears: General Barak told her he would Not go into battle without her! I wonder what that’s all about.”
“Do you mean she actually went right up to Moses and questioned him about the law? And he said he didn’t know and went up on
the mountain to get an answer? Well, I never. . .!”
” Did you hear that Sarah was pregnant? Why, she’s got to be a hundred if she’s a day!”
“. . .and she poured perfume on his feet and dried them with her hair, and Judas was mad about it and said that money could have been spent on the poor, and He said. . .”
” I knew Laban was tricky, but that boy worked like a dog for seven years to get to marry his younger daughter, and for him to send her older, veiled sister down the aisle was just wrong. Of course, we all know she’d been in love with him for years!”
” Well, you know that prophet, Elijah, said the dogs would eat her bones. I guess no one will ever question HIM again.”
“Did you hear about poor Naomi? Her husband and both her sons, dead. And she’s got those two daughters-in-law, too. I guess they’ll all have to go on Welfare.”
“What do you mean, he saw her bathing on her rooftop and sent his servants to get her? I mean, I know he’s the KING, but. . .’
“I heard she drove a tent peg right through his temple while he was asleep! Ugh! Wouldn’t poison have been a lot neater?”
Don’t you want to meet these women? Of course NOT the Gossipers!! I mean the GOSSIP-EES! They sound fascinating!*
* (And they Are!) Come to class and learn their stories.