What Does the Bible Say to Abuse Survivors?

I lift up my eyes to the hills-- where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 121

This is an excerpt from my paper on Genesis 34 and 2 Samuel 11. The paper focuses on the stories of Dinah and Bathsheba and is my attempt to offer a sensitive exegesis of these passages for abuse survivors. This excerpt is the last section of my paper which focuses on God's character and the gospel of Jesus Christ in relation to the issue of abuse, both in the Bible and today. 

God’s revelation throughout history discloses many aspects of God’s character. Especially comforting for abuse survivors is God's particular love for the afflicted and oppressed. Especially in the psalms, the psalmists describe God as a Helper and Comforter to the oppressed and downcast. The psalmist’s comfort in times of affliction springs from his knowledge of the character of God.

"Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; Who executes justice for the oppressed; Who gives food to the hungry.

"O LORD, You have heard the desire of the humble; You will strengthen their heart, You will incline Your ear To vindicate the orphan and the oppressed, So that man who is of the earth will no longer cause terror. (Psalm 10:17-18)

"Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;

    forget not the afflicted.

Why does the wicked renounce God

    and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?

But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,

    that you may take it into your hands;

to you the helpless commits himself;

    you have been the helper of the fatherless.

Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;

    call his wickedness to account till you find none.

The Lord is king forever and ever;

    the nations perish from his land.

O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;

    you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear

to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,

    so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more." (Psalm 10:13-18)

"Because of the devastation of the afflicted, because of the groaning of the needy,

Now I will arise," says the LORD;

"I will set him in the safety for which he longs." (Psalm 12:5)

Safety is a huge issue for abuse survivors. It is easy to imagine Dinah and Bathsheba wondering, where would be safe? Bathsheba was at home in her own house, abused by her own king. The man of God and protector of Israel was not a “safe” man to be around. Perhaps many abuse survivors today wonder whether God is safe? Many wonder whether God cares or sees their suffering. Psalm 10 reminds us that although the wicked think God does not see their abuse, God does see and does hold them accountable according to his perfect justice. The vulnerable can turn to God for help confident that he takes note of their suffering. These Psalms teach us that for those who trust in him, God will be their strength and hiding place. 

Notice the words used to describe those God helps: prisoners, the bowed down, the widow, the afflicted, the needy, the oppressed. God’s character never changes. He is the God of the afflicted. God’s promise of protection to Jacob (see Genesis 35) was also a promise of protection and faithfulness to Dinah in her affliction. She is spared from further humiliation at the hands of other foreign peoples like Shechem, her abuser. God continues his promise to send a Savior, given to Eve in Genesis 3, by being merciful to Dinah’s father because, despite his selfishness and silence after his daughter's abuse, God chose Jacob to be part of the line of the Messiah. 

It is only the fool who says God does not see wickedness (Psalm 14:1; Psalm 10). God does see and his plan to conquer all evil cannot be thwarted by any evil done on this earth. God is untouchable, his power greater than any man. God's power is so great that he uses even evils for his good purposes. Dinah's rape is horrific and wrong, yet the narrative never once blames her nor dishonors her. She is an afflicted woman yet God remains her God and her abusers have seen his justice. He sees Dinah’s affliction and pushes forward with his plan to lift her up out of her dishonor through the One who would also experience affliction and through it bring redemption and an end to all evil. 

JESUS

Because male characters are often featured more prominently in biblical narratives than female characters, many women who suffer under a twisted use of Scripture may wonder, is Christ the hope and salvation of Dinah? How does the promise of a Messiah bring hope and comfort to Dinah and Bathsheba? What does God want us to learn from their stories? 

Sometimes, the male-centered narrative is the only narrative women hear from male clergy and lay leaders. I think there is an important “other” strain that is not often found in sermons but must be added. That is, that Christ is for women as well as men. More than that, Christ is just as much for abuse survivors as he is for everyone else. Christ knows what it’s like to live a life where most people don’t value you, to suffer as an innocent. He knows what it is to be sinned against. He knows the hideousness of sin and the depth of pain and suffering that sin brings. Dinah's and Bathsheba's stories and the stories of many others in the Bible are put there for you. These women have been remembered through centuries so that you can read them and see that God sees and hears your pain and has done something about it. There is an opportunity through stories like Dinah’s and Bathsheba’s to bring Christ to those today who are like Dinah and these other women. God's righteous anger is directed towards all sin, sexual abuse included. So many churches today treat sexual abuse as a "light" sin, or blame the women involved. The narratives of Dinah and Bathsheba and many other women never once do either of these things. The anger is first in the heart of God as Jen Pollock Michel writes,

“When women suffer violence in the Scriptures, we see God’s own righteous—if also oblique—anger. Sometimes we see divine outrage in the demise of a character, as in the case of King David. I’m not thinking of the way he forcibly took Bathsheba into his bed, although that story, ending in the death of the baby, draws its own conclusions. Instead, I’m thinking of his daughter, Tamar, who is raped by his son, Amnon (2 Sam 13). David’s anger is impotent and weak, and he visits no judgment on Amnon. Because of his father’s inaction, another son, Absalom, avenges his sister’s humiliation by murder. An entire family splinters because of a father’s failure to show outrage. The story very clearly illustrates that this—and by this, I mean both the violence and the muteness—must never be done. Another way that Scripture communicates God’s outrage over violence against women is through the words of various people in the narrative. In Genesis 20, for example, Abraham has lied to Abimelek and claimed that Sarah is his sister rather than his wife, a lie that permits Abimelek to take Sarah into his harem and have her at his will. However, before he touches her, God visits Abimelek in a dream, warning him that under penalty of death, he’s taken another man’s wife. When Abimelek confronts Abraham with his “great sin,” he accuses, “You have done to me things that ought not to be done” (Gen. 20:9). God speaks his own anger through Abimelek…In sum, the Scriptures inspire trust that God’s righteousness will necessarily involve the righteous judgment of evil, and this message culminates in the Cross. The Cross stands over and against impunity, as Fleming Rutledge argues in The Crucifixion: “The biblical message is that the outrage is first of all in the heart of God”(emphasis mine)(1).

It is important to note that in each of the narratives Michel cites, the text, either explicitly or obliquely, gives us a clear message that God is against the abuse and humiliation of women. We can see God’s outrage at evil not only reflected in the narratives but most clearly in Jesus Christ hanging upon the torturous cross. All throughout history, God was leading up to sending his Son to show the world just how angry God is at sin. Through his prophet Isaiah, God tells us that the Messiah would be someone who intimately knows the sufferings of this world, the pangs of death, the crushing darkness of sin, and God's full just anger at it all. The Messiah bore all of this because only He would be able to bear God's wrath and bring about God's love and favor. The Messiah knew the affliction of suffering as an innocent victim at the hands of evil men. 

"He was oppressed and afflicted,

    yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

    so he did not open his mouth." (Is. 53:7). 

The same Hebrew word used to describe Dinah’s ordeal (anah) describes the suffering Messiah. The Septuagint translates “anah” into “ταπεινόω” which means “to bring low, to humble, humiliate, or to violate.” This same Greek word is used by Paul in his letter to the Philippians to describe what Jesus willingly took upon himself by coming to earth,

"Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing

    by taking the very nature of a servant,

    being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

    he humbled himself

    by becoming obedient to death—

        even death on a cross!" (Phil. 2:6-8)

Jesus himself was a man of sorrows (Is. 53), and we see through the pages of scripture that he comes from a long line of women of sorrows. Women who have gone unloved, unnoticed, taken advantage of, who know loss and sorrow, women who know shame and dishonor. Women whose pains the world will never hear of and whose family may never care about. Women who share in the afflictions Christ would later bear. 

Christ not only shared in the affliction of women, but he shared in their silence as well. It is not a coincidence that many abused women throughout Scripture have no voice in the narrative. Their silence carries throughout the centuries to the very silence of Jesus himself before his abusers. Yet, out of that silence, God speaks. The silence is not eternal for God spoke on the third day and raised Jesus from the silence of death. God spoke salvation and freedom into being through Christ’s resurrection as prophesied by Isaiah. 

"Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

    make many to be accounted righteous,

    and he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,

    and he shall divide the spoil with the strong."

Isaiah is prophesying that Christ’s death will not be permanent. God would raise him up to be like a victorious king, who, having conquered, now enjoys the riches from his victory. And this victory would bring great joy to all who also have suffered and been oppressed.

“Sing, O barren one, who did not bear;

    break forth into singing and cry aloud,

    you who have not been in labor!

For the children of the desolate one will be more

    than the children of her who is married,” says the Lord.

“Enlarge the place of your tent,

    and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out;

do not hold back; lengthen your cords

    and strengthen your stakes.

For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left,

    and your offspring will possess the nations

    and will people the desolate cities.

“Fear not, for you will not be ashamed;

    be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced;

for you will forget the shame of your youth,

    and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.

For your Maker is your husband,

    the Lord of hosts is his name;

and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer,

    the God of the whole earth he is called.

For the Lord has called you

    like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit,

like a wife of youth when she is cast off,

    says your God.

For a brief moment I deserted you,

    but with great compassion I will gather you.

In overflowing anger for a moment

    I hid my face from you,

but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,”

    says the Lord, your Redeemer." (Isaiah 54: 1-8)

Christ took upon himself the violation of sin and death, the root of all evils, the root of the evil done to Dinah, so that he might conquer it. And in conquering it, he takes a people to be conquerors with him. In taking upon himself the same humiliation, pain, and abuses of life in a sinful world, Jesus took his people’s sin with him to the grave and left it there when he rose from the dead. He did this so that sin and death would not have the last word. Every violation, every evil is sentenced according to God’s perfect justice and righteousness for “The Almighty—we cannot find him; he is great in power; justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate” (Job 37:23).  

Even though Dinah never saw her Savior in her lifetime, his coming fulfilled the promise God made to Eve, which included her. God has included women in salvation from the very beginning. One remarkable place we can see this is in the genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1). Several women are mentioned by name including Bathsheba. In this line of men and women, Bathsheba is explicitly mentioned as being “the wife of Uriah.” She is not described as David’s wife. Her identity is not, “the woman David violated.” Rather, she is described according to her honorable identity of being the wife of her first husband, Uriah. In other words, she is not defined by her abuse. God here honors Bathsheba in a remarkable way. 

I hope that in the narratives about women, you can see how God has seen afflicted women and honored them. He has turned their pain into joy by using many of them to bring forth their Messiah. The grief of barrenness turns to joy in Sarah, in the wife of Zechariah, in Hannah. The afflictions of Leah and Bathsheba and Tamar turned to joy when their offspring led to the very Son of God. In these stories, we get to see that even in the midst of the darkest nights of the soul, the ray of God’s shining favor streaks through the darkness to touch these women. Furthermore, God chose that the Messiah would be born from a woman. The preacher and theologian Augustine wrote a beautiful expression of God’s favor upon women in a sermon on the birth of Christ,

"The human sexes are male and female. Now then, if he, manifesting himself as a man…had not been born of a woman, women might have despaired of themselves: and they would have thought that they had no hope whatever in Christ…It was as though he addressed them and said: that you might know that of itself God’s creature is not bad, but only an evil desire has perverted it, in the beginning when I made man, I made them male and female. I do not condemn my own creation. See, I have been born a man; see I have been born of a woman…let each sex see its own honor, let each confess its own guilt, and let them both hope for salvation. When man was about to be deceived, it was through woman that the potion of destruction was administered to him; so, when man is to be restored, let it be through woman that the cup of salvation is presented to him. Let woman make good the sin of man deceived through her, by giving birth to Christ. Hence, too, women were the first to announce the resurrection of God to the apostles. The woman in paradise announced death to her husband; and so, too, the women in the church announced salvation to the men…therefore, let no one misrepresent the fact that Christ was born of a woman. The Deliverer could not have been defiled by that sex; and as its Creator he could not but show it favor." (pg 25-27) 

God continues to comfort and re-define the afflicted today. I know you long for the day when you enter the kingdom of heaven and see that there is no sun because the whole world is filled with the light that is God himself. His presence will fill every nook and cranny, every last bit of darkness will be gone forever. But even today a ray of that divine light of God’s loving presence is touching us. It is like the ray of light that comes from the end of a tunnel that lets you know there’s a way out. It’s the light that you keep your eye on as you walk. It’s the light you cling to when the walls seem to be closing in. It’s that ray of light that tells you there’s an end up ahead. And as long as you keep moving towards it, you won’t get lost, even in your darkest hours. As it says in the benediction used by many pastors, “may God’s face shine upon you.” God’s face is today shining upon his people with glorious divine favor in Christ Jesus. God’s redemption is for women like Dinah, women like Bathsheba and Tamar and Mary and every woman who flees to Christ for safety and freedom and salvation.

(1) https://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2018/january/gods-message-to-metoo-victims-and-perpetrators.html