Women's voices in the Bible

The short answer

Women speak all through the Bible, from Eve's answer to the serpent (Genesis 3:2) to the last chapters of Acts, but only a small share of its speech is theirs. Of the 14,479 verses in which anyone is heard speaking, a woman is heard in 488, or 3.4%. God speaks in 5,034 of those verses; leaving them aside, a woman is heard in 5.1% of the rest. Eighty-six women are heard: 46 whom the Bible names and 40 whose names it does not give. Seven groups of women speak as well.

The woman heard most is the bride of the Song of Solomon, in 68 verses. Among the women the Bible names, Deborah is heard in 34, thirty of them in the song she sings with Barak (Judges 5). Hannah is heard in 19, every one of them on her own, and Rebekah and Naomi in 18 each. Twenty-three women are heard in a single verse.

The women heard most

Every verse in which she speaks counts, whether she speaks alone or with others.

The bride of the Song of Solomon, which calls itself the Song of Songs, is heard in more verses than any other woman: 68 of the Song's 117. The Song names no speakers in its text. The Berean Standard Bible prints labels for them, which its note says translators assign by the gender and number of the Hebrew words, and the page counts the Song by those labels. Without the Song, Deborah would be the woman heard most.

Deborah's thirty shared verses are the song she and Barak sing after Sisera's defeat (Judges 5); on her own she is heard in four. Counting only words spoken alone, Hannah is heard most among the women the Bible names, then Rebekah and Naomi.

Book by book

Women are heard in 23 of the 47 books in which anyone speaks. In two, most of the speech is theirs: the Song of Solomon, and Ruth, where Naomi, Ruth and the women of Bethlehem are heard in 31 of the 59 verses with speech. Esther follows, at about one verse in four. Genesis has the most verses of women's speech, 73, from Eve to Potiphar's wife.

No woman is heard in 24 of the books in which someone speaks: Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Ezra, the Psalms, Proverbs, every book of the prophets but Jeremiah and Daniel, and Romans, 1 Corinthians, Hebrews and Revelation. In Proverbs and Lamentations the only women's voices are figures, counted apart below. In the Old Testament a woman is heard in 3.7% of the verses with speech, in the New in 2.2%.

Women whose names are not given

Forty of the women heard are not named where they speak. Some are known by a place, like the wise women of Tekoa and Abel, the Shunammite and the Samaritan woman at the well; some by a husband, a father or a son; some by what they did. The wise woman of Tekoa, who came to David with words Joab gave her, is heard in fifteen verses, as many as Mary, and more than any named woman but Deborah, Hannah, Rebekah and Naomi.

A woman is counted under her name where the passage names her, or where the Bible makes plain who she is, as with the mother of Jesus at Cana (John 2:3), who is Mary. Where it leaves that to inference, she is counted under a description: Moses' sister at the river (Exodus 2:7), taken to be Miriam, whom Numbers 26:59 names as his sister; the mother of James and John (Matthew 20:21), whom some take to be Salome; and Herodias' daughter (Matthew 14:8), named Salome only outside the Bible. If the first two readings are right, two women are counted twice.

• The bride of the Song of Solomon the Song's chief voice: 68 verses, first in Song of Solomon 1:2
• The wise woman of Tekoa sent by Joab to David: 15 verses, first in 2 Samuel 14:4
• The Shunammite woman who gave Elisha a room: 10 verses, first in 2 Kings 4:9
• The Samaritan woman at Jacob's well: 9 verses, first in John 4:9
• The queen of Sheba who came to test Solomon: 8 verses, first in 1 Kings 10:6
• Potiphar's wife who accused Joseph: 7 verses, first in Genesis 39:7
• The medium at Endor whom Saul consulted: 7 verses, first in 1 Samuel 28:9
• The mother of the living child before Solomon: 7 verses, first in 1 Kings 3:17
• Samson's mother wife of Manoah: 5 verses, first in Judges 13:6
• The wise woman of Abel who saved her city: 5 verses, first in 2 Samuel 20:16
• The servant girl at the courtyard who questioned Peter: 5 verses, first in Matthew 26:69
• Pharaoh's daughter who drew Moses from the water: 4 verses, first in Exodus 2:6
• The Canaanite woman a Syrophoenician, in Mark: 4 verses, first in Matthew 15:22
• Lot's older daughter after the fall of Sodom: 3 verses, first in Genesis 19:31
• Rebekah's mother who speaks with her son Laban: 3 verses, first in Genesis 24:55
• The widow of Zarephath who fed Elijah: 3 verses, first in 1 Kings 17:12
• A prophet's widow whose oil did not run out: 3 verses, first in 2 Kings 4:1
• A mother in the siege of Samaria who cried to the king for help: 3 verses, first in 2 Kings 6:26
• The queen at Belshazzar's feast who remembered Daniel: 3 verses, first in Daniel 5:10
• Herodias' daughter who asked for John's head: 3 verses, first in Matthew 14:8
• Tamar's midwife at the birth of Perez and Zerah: 2 verses, first in Genesis 38:28
• Jephthah's daughter who met her father with tambourines: 2 verses, first in Judges 11:36
• Micah's mother who dedicated her silver to the LORD: 2 verses, first in Judges 17:2
• The wife of Phinehas who named her son Ichabod: 2 verses, first in 1 Samuel 4:21
• The woman whose son died before Solomon: 2 verses, first in 1 Kings 3:22
• The woman who touched Jesus' cloak after twelve years of bleeding: 2 verses, first in Matthew 9:21
• The mother of the man born blind who answers with his father: 2 verses, first in John 9:20
• Rachel's midwife at Benjamin's birth: 1 verse, in Genesis 35:17
• Moses' sister at the river: 1 verse, in Exodus 2:7
• Samson's wife the woman of Timnah: 1 verse, in Judges 14:16
• The woman at Bahurim who hid David's messengers: 1 verse, in 2 Samuel 17:20
• The girl from Israel servant to Naaman's wife: 1 verse, in 2 Kings 5:3
• Jabez's mother who named him for her pain: 1 verse, in 1 Chronicles 4:9
• Job's wife in his suffering: 1 verse, in Job 2:9
• The mother of James and John wife of Zebedee: 1 verse, in Matthew 20:21
• Another servant girl who spoke of Peter at the gateway: 1 verse, in Matthew 26:71
• Pilate's wife who sent word about her dream: 1 verse, in Matthew 27:19
• A woman in the crowd who called out a blessing on Jesus' mother: 1 verse, in Luke 11:27
• The woman caught in adultery brought to Jesus in the temple courts: 1 verse, in John 8:11
• The slave girl at Philippi who followed Paul: 1 verse, in Acts 16:17

Women speaking together

Sometimes women speak as one. The daughters of Zelophehad ask Moses for their father's land (Numbers 27:3–4); the women of Bethlehem welcome Naomi home, and later rejoice with her at her grandson's birth (Ruth 1:19; 4:14–17); the women of Judah in Egypt answer Jeremiah (Jeremiah 44:19). In all, women speak together, or with men, in 68 verses, thirty of them in Deborah and Barak's song.

Groups of women

• The women of Bethlehem who welcome Naomi home: Ruth 1:19; 4:14–15, 17
• Wives in Judah who cried out with their husbands in the famine: Nehemiah 5:2–5
• The women of Judah in Egypt who answered Jeremiah: Jeremiah 44:16–19
• Young women drawing water who directed Saul to Samuel: 1 Samuel 9:12–13
• The daughters of Reuel seven sisters at the well in Midian, Zipporah among them: Exodus 2:19
• The women attending her at the birth of Ichabod: 1 Samuel 4:20
• The women who came out singing Saul has slain his thousands: 1 Samuel 18:7

Women speaking together

• Rachel and Leah: Genesis 31:14–16
• Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah: Numbers 27:3–4; Joshua 17:4
• Shiphrah and Puah: Exodus 1:19
• Orpah and Ruth: Ruth 1:10
• Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome: Mark 16:3
• Mary of Bethany and Martha: John 11:3

Women speaking with men

• Deborah and Barak: Judges 5:2–31
• Wives in Judah and their husbands: Nehemiah 5:2–5
• Rebekah's mother and Laban: Genesis 24:55, 57–58
• The women of Judah in Egypt and the men of Judah: Jeremiah 44:16–18
• Zeresh and Haman's advisers: Esther 5:14; 6:13
• The mother of the man born blind and his father: John 9:20–21
• Miriam and Aaron: Numbers 12:2
• Samson's mother and Manoah: Judges 14:3
• Mary of Bethany and the Jews who had come with her: John 11:34
• Bernice, King Agrippa, Festus and those seated with them: Acts 26:31

First and last words

The first and last words the Bible gives the 25 women heard in seven verses or more. For the 14 of them on First and last words in the Bible, the words are the ones chosen there. For the others the same rules apply: the first and last verses in which she speaks on her own, in the order of the books, unless a later book tells the same moment again.

Counted apart: Wisdom, Folly and other figures

Five such voices are counted apart, women's in the text but not women in its story: Wisdom, who calls to the simple in Proverbs 1, 8 and 9, in 48 verses; the daughter of Zion, Jerusalem mourning in Lamentations, in 13; the adulteress of a father's warning in Proverbs 7, in seven; Folly, Wisdom's rival, in two; and the bride of Revelation, who says with the Spirit, “Come!” (Revelation 22:17). Counted with the women, Wisdom would be the second voice heard most, after the bride of the Song.

Cities pictured as women speak too, inside prophecy: Zion (Isaiah 49:14) and Babylon (Isaiah 47:8), among others. The list of who speaks marks those lines as hypothetical, and they are not counted. The women in Jesus' parables, such as the woman who finds her lost coin (Luke 15:9), speak inside the stories he tells. Their words are his, and they are not counted either.

Named, and never heard

Most of the women the Bible names are never heard. Of the 174 women in TIPNR's index of the Bible's names, 47 are heard speaking, counting the queen of Sheba, whom it lists by her title. The most often named of the rest is Zeruiah, David's sister, named in 25 verses, each time through her sons, Joab, Abishai and Asahel. Some below are said to speak, but their words are not given: Priscilla, with Aquila, explains the way of God to Apollos (Acts 18:26), and Anna speaks about the Child (Luke 2:38). Each woman below was checked in every verse where her name comes close to a word of speaking, as on Famous but silent.

The most often named

• Zeruiah David's sister, mother of Joab, Abishai and Asahel: named in 25 verses. Her son Abishai speaks (2 Samuel 16:9; 19:21), and David answers him and his brother (16:10); she is never heard.
• Bilhah Rachel's servant, mother of Dan and Naphtali: named in 10 verses.
• Vashti queen before Esther: named in 10 verses.
• Dinah Jacob's daughter: named in 8 verses. Shechem speaks to her father and brothers, and her brothers answer him; she is never heard.
• Maacah Rehoboam's wife, mother of King Abijah: named in 8 verses.
• Oholibamah Esau's wife: named in 7 verses.
• Zilpah Leah's servant, mother of Gad and Asher: named in 7 verses.
• Adah Esau's wife: named in 6 verses.
• Ahinoam David's wife, mother of Amnon: named in 6 verses.
• Mahalath Esau's wife, Ishmael's daughter: named in 6 verses.
• Milcah Nahor's wife, Rebekah's grandmother: named in 6 verses.
• Priscilla Aquila's wife, who worked with Paul: named in 6 verses.
• Timna concubine of Esau's son Eliphaz: named in 6 verses.

Well known, and seldom named

Chosen by an editor because they are widely known and rarely named; not a measurement.

• Abishag who cared for David in his old age: named in 5 verses.
• Keturah Abraham's later wife: named in 4 verses.
• Rizpah Saul's concubine, who guarded her sons' bodies: named in 4 verses.
• Asenath Joseph's wife: named in 3 verses.
• Tabitha also called Dorcas, raised to life by Peter: named in 3 verses.
• Jehosheba who hid the young Joash: named in 2 verses.
• Joanna who supported Jesus and went to the tomb: named in 2 verses.
• Jochebed mother of Moses, Aaron and Miriam: named in 2 verses.
• Peninnah Elkanah's other wife, Hannah's rival: named in 2 verses.
• Phoebe servant of the church in Cenchrea: named in 2 verses.
• Anna the prophetess in the temple: named in 1 verse.
• Eunice Timothy's mother: named in 1 verse.
• Gomer Hosea's wife: named in 1 verse.
• Lois Timothy's grandmother: named in 1 verse.

Every woman heard

Every woman and group of women heard, in the order they are first heard, with every verse in which she speaks. Choose a book or a kind, or search a name.

How this was made

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