The Bible Story and Ancient Sexual Script Behind the Handmaid’s Tale

HandmaidAt the heart of Hulu’s series and Atwood’s book lies an ancient story about two slave women.

If The Handmaid’s Tale offers any sign, Margaret Atwood has read more of her Bible than many Christians. Superficially, Atwood’s dystopian novel is littered with biblical names and phrases: Gilead, Mary and Martha, Jezebel, Milk and Honey, All Flesh, Loaves and Fishes, Lilies of the Field, the Eye of the Lord, Behemoth, and many more.

At a deeper level, Atwood grounds her plot in gender scripts that pervade Abrahamic scriptures. One story in particular brings the pieces together: a tale of two sisters named Rachel and Leah, who marry the same man (Genesis 29-31).

As the story begins, their husband-to-be, Jacob, falls in love with the young Rachel but gets tricked by their father (also his own uncle) Laban into marrying the elder Leah. Jacob isn’t thrilled when he discovers he has consummated his wedding night with the wrong sister because, as the writer puts it, “Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful of form and face.” Laban promises Jacob his second daughter in exchange for seven years of labor, and a second round of nuptials ensues. It’s a recipe for resentment, but Leah redeems herself in the most potent way possible for an Iron Age female born into the nomadic herding cultures of the Ancient Near East: She pumps out four sons.

Rachel, though better loved, remains barren.

“Now!” Leah thinks, “Now my husband will become attached to me.” Rachel, bitter and jealous, is thinking the same thing. She demands of their husband, “Give me children, or else I die!” Because of her infertility, she offers him a proxy, Bilhah, her female slave or “handmaid.” Bilhah gets pregnant and produces a son, Rachel’s son by the rules governing their lives. After Bilhah bears a second baby—as you may have guessed, also a son—Rachel crows, “With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and I have indeed prevailed!”

But things aren’t over yet. Not to be outdone, Leah sends in her handmaid, Zilpah, who also bears two sons. The competition continues until Jacob has 12 sons—a number which has magical significance probably tracing roots back to the 12 signs of the Zodiac—and one daughter. And they all live happily ever after. Or not.

So, let’s unpack some of the elements of this story, because they reflect broader biblical views on women and reproduction that will be familiar to anyone who has read Attwood’s novel or derivative media.

  1. Men properly hold the highest positions of authority in society and the family. Laban and then Jacob are patriarchs, each ruling the kin unit that consists of his own household, including women, children, slaves and livestock. From Chapter 2 of Genesis onward, the Bible teaches that man was made in the image of God while woman was created to be his helper (Genesis 2:18). Conservative Christians call this idea male headship, and it is imbedded throughout the Old Testament, and down through Christian history. The New Testament writer of 1 Corinthians spells it out. “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor 11:3). As in Islam, female head covering provides an outward marker of submission: “A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man” (1 Corinthians 11:2-10). Violation of this hierarchy may be experienced as a threat to the whole social order.
  2. Women are assets that belong to men. Laban gives his daughters to his nephew in exchange for Jacob’s labor as a shepherd. In like manner, women throughout the Bible are owned by their fathers until they are “given in marriage” (typically in exchange for goods or services or political alliance) to another man. The ownership status of women is visible in the Exodus chapter 20 version of the 10 Commandments, which says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17).
  3. Slavery, including sexual slavery, is morally acceptable, regulated, and sometimes commanded. Through both stories and laws, the Bible provides a strong endorsement of slavery. One sign of King Solomon’s status is the 700 wives and 300 concubines (ie. sex slaves) in his harem (1 Kings 11:3). In the Rachel and Leah tale, the handmaids are gifted to the daughters by Laban. In tales of conquest, young virgins are counted as war booty, and God’s commander provides explicit instructions on how to ritually purify a virgin war captive before “knowing” her. Rules for buying and selling slaves vary based on whether the person is a Hebrew or a foreigner, male or female. “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do” (Exodus 21:7).
  4. The primary identity and value of women lies in their reproductive capacity. With some few exceptions, named female characters in the Bible are individually identified because they are the mothers of famous sons. This includes, of course, the most famous woman of them all, Mary. One New Testament writer points to childbearing as the woman’s path to spiritual salvation, the way to redeem Eve’s original sin. “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (1 Timothy 2:14-15).
  5. Sons are more valuable than daughters. Throughout the Bible, God rewards his chosen ones with male offspring, even, for example, when Lot’s daughters get their father drunk in order to have sex with him and generate heirs who will be the fathers of great nations (Genesis 19:32-38). In the Hebrew law, a woman is spiritually unclean for twice as long after giving birth to a girl baby as a boy (Leviticus 12:1-8). It goes without saying that God himself is depicted as male, as are his chosen patriarchs and prophets, as is his incarnation, Jesus, who—in the canonical gospels—chooses 12 male disciples.
  6. When it comes to breeding, paternity is what matters. In the story of Jacob and his wives, we see that the writer is fairly indifferent to which woman produced a child, as long as Jacob was the father and the child a son. Similarly, in the New Testament gospels, Jesus is a God and the son of God despite the fact that his mother is fully human. By contrast, because paternity is so important in this cultural context, anything that might call into question the paternity of a woman’s offspring is harshly penalized. A raped woman, as damaged goods, can be sold to her rapist who is obliged to keep her (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), and a woman who has reduced her value by having sex voluntarily can be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 22:20-21). If a married man suspects that his wife may be pregnant by someone else, he can take her to the priest who will give her a magical abortion potion that will work only if the pregnancy isn’t his (Numbers 5:11-31).
  7. Infertility is a female issue. Since the role of women is childbearing, infertility is typically treated like a female issue in the Bible as it is in Atwood’s Republic of Gilead. Toward the end of Rachel and Leah’s story, God finally comforts Rachel by allowing her to bear a son from her own body, who will go on to be favored above his brothers by both his father and God himself (Genesis 29:31). This trope repeats itself, and infertile women throughout the Bible often, in the end, give birth to significant characters: the patriarchs Isaac, Esau and Jacob; the supernaturally strong warrior Samson; the prophet Samuel; and John the Baptist, who will baptize Jesus.
  8. Female consent is not a thing. The texts gathered in the Christian Bible were written over the course of several centuries, and in them we find a cultural trajectory away from polygamy and outright sexual slavery. Nonetheless, the concept of human chattel is never explicitly eschewed, even in the New Testament, nor are older practices condemned. Slaves are advised to submit to their masters. Nowhere is there any indication that female consent is needed or even desired before sex. Consider even the pregnancy that produces Jesus. In a situation of extreme power imbalance, Mary is told that she will be impregnated by God and she responds with words that assent to her role as a handmaid. “Behold the bond-slave of the Lord: be it done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Behold The Handmaid’s Tale.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org.  Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including AlterNet, Salon, the Huffington Post, Grist, and Jezebel.  Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.

About Valerie Tarico

Seattle psychologist and writer. Author - Trusting Doubt; Deas and Other Imaginings.
This entry was posted in Musings & Rants: Christianity, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

15 Responses to The Bible Story and Ancient Sexual Script Behind the Handmaid’s Tale

  1. Carmen says:

    Valerie, It’s Margaret Atwood. :)

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  2. annesspirit says:

    I agree completely. Patriarchy stems from the Bible and the Bible stems from men.

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  3. rorys2013 says:

    I think God was introduced into society by the then power people, most certainly men, as an additional weapon in their power armory and as a consequence God and God’s injunctions were quite simply shaped to their own needs and their needs certainly did not cater for human rights or for the equality of the sexes.

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  4. Paul says:

    The patriarchal construct is still strong today. Here in Alabama, during the months before the presidential election, preachers actively put out the message: Man can not be ruled by woman.

    Liked by 2 people

  5. Thank you for this thorough exposition. As Paul points out in the previous comment, the patriarchy is still alive and well.

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  6. metalnun says:

    How utterly horrible. I can’t even imagine living as a woman back then, to be a slave and broodmare; but, if that’s all they knew, if it were “normal,” I suppose one wouldn’t realize what a wretched existence it was…?! Growing up in the 1970s, with the dawning of the Aquarian Age, I believed in my lifetime we would finally put all this misogyny behind us. Now it appears that the current administration wants to drag us backwards into the iron age. I recently had some conversations with people (including women!) at an alt-right website who seriously insisted that the ONLY thing women are good for is making babies, that motherhood is the one vocation that can ever bring us happiness, that we are mentally and professionally inferior to men, and men ought to be in charge. When I challenged those opinions, they responded by saying that feminists are women who have “low sexual market value.” What is additionally disturbing is that many of these folks are not even fundie Christians, but pagans or atheists who advance this agenda based on its alleged “real world practicality,” i.e. the need to make more [white] babies and higher-paying jobs for men, versus any kind of fundie religious indoctrination. And now they are running our country and if they have their way, the Handmaid’s Tale won’t be fiction.

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  7. davidchumney says:

    We’re watching the series and noting the biblical parallels. It’s troubling to realize that some people in this country would be happy to change our democratic republic into a Bible-based theocracy.

    Liked by 2 people

  8. Steve Ruis says:

    God, this was good. Cogent analysis. Truth telling. Beautiful. Thank you.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Sandduffer says:

    This is also how a country under Islamic Theocracy would look. Much like many of the Middle Eastern Countries who put Gays to death and rob women of almost all of their rights!

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  10. kategladstone says:

    Re the Bible’s “magical abortion potion that will work only if the pregnancy isn’t his (Numbers 5:11-31)” — since its ingredients were only water and dust (verse 18) plus a trace amount of dissolved ink (verse 23), the potion would not have actually caused an abortion or anything else except possibly a mild stomach-ache. Result: any ancient Israelite who suspected that his wife’s pregnancy was the result of sex with another man would have to live with having the priest “magically” demonstrate that the woman had been faithful after all!

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  11. Bruce says:

    Will her next religious sex related novel be based on Islam honor killing their women for being seen in public without a male relative? Or throwing acid on them? Maybe the female genital mutalation. What about how the Koran allows rape when Jihad has been declared? I mean…why use archaic 3k year old narratives when Islam sees women as trash not just property!

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  12. Woodrow Nichols says:

    My view of the Bible is that “the simple believeth every word.” Proverbs 14:15. There is neither male nor female when it comes to the Holy Spirit. The Gospel frees people from bondage. Thank you for the article; I was trying to find something that would help me better understand the book of Ruth, especially when she tells Boaz, “I am your handmaid,” with full sexual connotation. She was offering herself for barley. In other words, “I am your sex slave.” This makes sense to me now.

    Woodrow Nichols
    antinomianuniversalism.com

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