Haughty and Entitled, Yet Thwarted at Every Turn
This series of Bible studies seeks to retell the stories of women who were divinely called and empowered to do great things. Many of them rose to the occasion, and a few very famously did not. Often, the tragedies and triumphs in their lives are missed, and their stories are told from perspectives other than with the honor and dignity they deserve.
After excavating their narratives from millennia of obfuscation, now meet the freshly restored, valiant, vivid (and sometimes villainous) women of the Bible.
Herodias, Ambition to be Queen
Herodias used everyone in her life—including her young daughter—to further her own agenda. Yet God’s stance towards Herodias reveals a refreshing perspective on a woman otherwise so vilified in the retellings of her story.
This thirty-page book includes the retelling of Herodias’s story, a fifteen-question Bible study, and link to a twenty-minute multi-media presentation of Herodias’s account in which God is amazingly slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, always ready to restore.
She Resorted to Libertine Manipulation and Murder
… to achieve her own ends.
Herodias’s story is introduced in the Gospels of both Matthew and Mark with Herod Antipas hearing reports about Jesus’s astonishing miraculous powers.
Some were saying, “John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” But others said, “It is Elijah.” And others said, “It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”
Mark 6:14-16
Despite others’ reassurances to him about Jesus, Herod was sure it was John the Baptist risen from the dead—the implication being that John had returned in sepulchral form as haunting judgment of having been executed by Herod.
The Gospel of Luke gives Herod’s wife Herodias only a brief and passing mention, but the sentence is loaded with censure.
… Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by [John the Baptist] because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done …
Luke 3:19 (emphases added)
And so the dark and dreadful tale begins of intrigue, seduction, manipulation, and murder, all swirling around the Hasmonean princess and Judean noblewoman, Herodias.
Nearly forty free Bible studies on a woman in the scriptures are available through signing up to the newsletter below. What’s included:
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