5 Mansplainers in the Bible

Whether you identity as male, female, or somewhere in-between, you’ve probably encountered the dreaded mansplainer. He’s often a cis-hetero man who is white and oozing with privilege. He’s used to telling people what he thinks, whether they seek his opinion or not. He likes offering unsolicited advice and thinks that he is God’s gift to the world. 

Thank goodness for mansplainers. Without them, the rest of us wouldn’t know anything. 

Although mansplaining is a relatively new term, we can look back through history and find lots of mansplainers. After we look at 5 mansplainers from the Bible, we will make a few concluding remarks about how to reconcile these mansplainers with faith that is being crafted. 

Adam*

If you have ever been a part of a more conservative church, you know who was at fault in the apple-eating scene. Hint: it wasn’t Adam. So according to the second creation account from Genesis (post on this coming soon), God creates Adam (lit: earth creature) and tells him that the entire garden is his to live in as he pleases. The only requirement was that he doesn’t eat the fruit from that one tree. Now, let’s pause and think for a moment: What is the most likely thing you do when someone tells you not to do something? Obviously, you do it anyway. 

God told Adam not to eat from that tree. God didn’t tell Eve. In fact, according to the story, Eve had not been created yet. So once Eve is created, she is hanging out under the tree and decides the tree looks like it has pretty delicious fruit. So she eats it. And then hands it to Adam. 

Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened and they now saw in ways that they hadn’t seen before. God came looking for them and they hid, ashamed of what they had done. When God finds them, Adam obviously blames the woman. He mansplains that it was the woman who made him do it. What a guy. 

*It should be noted that the story of Adam and Eve is not believed to be a literal story where they were the first two people. It is intended to be a creation myth, so Adam and Eve were probably not real people. 

Abraham

Abraham began as a man named Abram. Name changes happen throughout the Bible as a way to illustrate identity changes (ponder that for a moment…). Abram had an encounter with God where God told him that he would have lots of children and father a whole nation. There was only one problem: Abram and his wife Sarah were unable to have children (The Bible says that Sarai was barren, but we all know he could have been shooting blanks). 

So Abram, now Abraham, took this to mean that he needed to impregnate Sarah’s servant. Are you seeing all of the problematic things happening here? When he got Hagar pregnant, Sarah became jealous. Hagar had a child, named Ishmael. Years later, Sarah got pregnant. In the mean time, Sarah made Hagar’s life miserable. So, Abraham sent Hagar and her son away. 

Abraham had to explain to Hagar that she didn’t belong in their family and the son that he fathered isn’t actually his child. He mansplains his way out of being a father for Ishmael and treats the mother of his child like she is disposable. What a guy. 

King David

Every king has a weakness and women were King David’s. One day King David noticed a woman who he fancied. She happened to be married to a man in the army. David was a man who got what he wanted, so he had sex with Bathsheba (probably not consensual). The husband’s battalion was away at war and when Bathsheba turned out to be pregnant, David had to make plans so that no one would find out that he was the one who got this woman pregnant. 

So David, as the King, brought the battalion back from war to try to get her husband, Uriah, to have sex with her to cover up the pregnancy. But, it didn’t work. So David then sent the battalion back to war where they would surely be killed so that he could marry Bathsheba. 

It doesn’t get crazier than this. This is the most revered king in the Biblical tradition. This is the king that conservatives want to be like…

You can use your imagination and believe that David probably had to mansplain his way out of that one. He had to mansplain Bathsheba regarding the pregnancy, then mansplain her regarding the death of her husband. What a guy. 

Job’s Friends 

Job was a man in the Old Testament (again, probably a myth) who lost everything. His children, farm, cattle, everything. Everything was tragically taken from him (in some weird scheme between the devil and God). So one would expect Job to curse God in grief. But he doesn’t. 

What is interesting is that Job has friends who come to his aid after they hear about his tragedy. They spend several days in silence and then they make a mistake in opening their mouths. When they decide to talk, Job’s friends begin to mansplain him. They tell him why all of these bad things happened to him. They tell him what God must have been thinking and the role God played in all of it. 

Meanwhile, Job is still deep in grief. What guys. 

Paul

Of course, we had to save the best for last. Paul is attributed more of the books in the Bible than any other author (although there’s much evidence that he did not actually wrote them all). Many people of faith from all stripes view Paul as the end all be all of Christianity. The man is sometimes even viewed as more important that Jesus himself (another post for another day). 

Paul is the worst mansplainer. Not only is he patronizing to communities of people in giving his advice for forming churches, but he is downright chauvinistic! He is attributed sayings about women staying silent in church. He is attributed sayings about women needing to submit to their husbands. Here’s the interesting thing: Paul wasn’t married. Dude is offering up marriage advice but isn’t married. Talk about mansplaining. What a guy. 

These 5 mansplainers are challenging for people of faith. We have to figure out what to do with them in our tradition. Conservatives look at the imperfect people in the Bible and some something to the affect of “Aw. God works through broken people.” And yes, that may be true. But, it verifies their wrongdoings. Mansplaining, privilege, and chauvinism is never okay. 

As progressive people of faith, we have to wrestle with how to hold flaws in tensions with legacies without glossing over major flaws. In our world, it is more needed than ever. How do you do it?