This article was originally published on Medium.
I recently read an article titled “God Has a Penis—The Bible Says So.” The title was sarcastic. The article argued that since men wrote the Bible, it was men who ascribed gender to God. Therefore, the fact that God shows up as male in the Bible doesn’t tell us about God. It tells us something about the people who wrote the Bible.
I am largely sympathetic to the point of view expressed by the article. But there is more to the topic of how God is gendered in the Bible. And God’s penis, or lack thereof, is a particularly interesting place to start.
The Bible emerged in the ancient Near East surrounded by religions that focused on fertility. Bearing children and obtaining a good harvest were the blessings for which the people of the ancient Near East looked to the gods. Statues depicting the gods emphasized their reproductive functions. Large breasts and hips on the females, and a large phallus on the males. For male gods, the penis was the main event.
The Bible is not shy about ascribing human physical characteristics to God. In the Hebrew Bible, God has a face, back, arms, legs, hands, and feet. But God doesn’t have a phallus. Given the context in which the Bible developed, this absence is remarkable. God may be male, but male without the male sex organ. The main event for the surrounding cultures, God’s penis, is missing.
Bear with me for a brief Hebrew grammar lesson. I promise it will shed light on the topic of God’s gender in the Bible.
Nouns in the Hebrew language are gendered. The genders of nouns appear to be random. The gender of a noun doesn’t mean that the person, place, or thing described by the noun has male or female characteristics.
For example, a chair (kisey) is masculine while a couch (sapa) is feminine. Body parts that come in pairs are feminine. The exception to this rule is the word for breasts—which is masculine. Random.
To keep the grammar lesson short, I’ll add only one piece of information about the gendering of verbs. Verbs conjugated in the first person (I, we) never indicate gender. Verbs conjugated in the second and third person (you, he, she, it) always indicate gender.
Grammar lesson concluded. Back to the Bible.
The Bible’s most commonly used word for God is the plural noun elohim. It’s probably plural because when referring to God, the language of the Bible drew from the surrounding cultures. As a concept, “gods” required a plural noun. Elohim is a sometimes feminine and sometimes masculine noun. It can refer to a single god or goddess, or a collection of gods and goddesses. Individual gods were referred to with their proper names.
We are used to hearing the Biblical God gendered as masculine because God’s proper name, YHWH, is a form of the verb “to be” (hwh) with a prefix indicating “he” (y). Although this prefix can also be translated by the word “it,” this translation would become awkward in English.
While the most common Biblical word for God is the noun elohim, God’s proper name YHWH, is a verb with a third person masculine prefix. This third-person masculine prefix is the main reason we think of the Bible’s God as male.
A primary metaphor used by the Bible for the relationship between God and the people of Israel is that of marriage. The Biblical prophet Hosea makes ample use of this metaphor. In this metaphor, God is the groom of the marriage, and the people Israel are the bride.
Yes, this metaphor is heterosexist, meaning that it assumes a marriage involves a male and female. But it should be noted that by gendering God as male, the Bible genders the people of Israel as female. Assuming that people wrote the Bible, their choice to gender God as male included the choice to gender themselves as female.
What does all this say about the gender of God, and gender in general, in the Hebrew Bible?
God as a concept (elohim) is expressed by a sometimes masculine and sometimes feminine plural noun.
God as a living being (YHWH) is expressed by a masculine form of the verb “to be.”
In the often-used marriage metaphor, God is gendered as male and the people of Israel are gendered as female.
In a radical departure from the surrounding religions, the God of the Bible doesn’t have a penis. What is the meaning of “male” if it doesn’t include a penis?
It’s reasonable to say that the God of the Bible is male. But what “male” means when ascribed to the God of the Bible isn’t at all clear.
The Bible leaves ample room for creativity surrounding gender. Ideas about the social meanings of gender, including ideas of what is meant by God’s gender, are products of human imagination.
If we want to, we can imagine things differently.
Spanish is also a gendered language. Then we use the “universal masculine” to encompass men and women because we do not have an “it” and also plurals are gendered. I really enjoyed your post.