Bible Dictionary

FEMALE

Jewish Life & Customs • Both

Female is the biblical designation for the sex corresponding to male. Scripture presents women as accountable persons made by God, and the New Testament emphasizes the unity of male and female in Christ.

Definition

Female is the designation of the sex corresponding to male. In biblical terminology it can be a physiological description, the feminine counterpart of man, or a reference to a woman. The word is also associated with the nursing or suckling one in Greek usage.

Biblical Usage

The Old Testament uses female in descriptions of human beings and animals and in language corresponding to male. Though Israelite law is described as containing social and religious disabilities affecting women, the New Testament declares that there is no religious distinction between male and female in Christ and emphasizes their unity before God.

Historical Background

The supplied material notes that social conditions at the time of Israelite legislation help explain legal disabilities affecting women, which were also found in contemporary Gentile religions. It identifies Hebrew terms corresponding to physiological sex and to woman or wife, together with a Greek term meaning the nursing one.

Historical Bible Dictionaries

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)

fe'-mal: Two Hebrew words are thus translated:(1) neqebhah, which is merely a physiological description of the sexual characteristic (from naqabh, "to perforate"), and which corresponds to zakhar, "male" (see under the word).(2) 'ishshah, with the irregular plural nashim (only Ge 7:2, in all other places "wife," "woman"), the feminine form of 'ish, "man."The Greek word is thelus, literally, "the nursing one," "the one giving suck" (from thelazo, "to suckle").Israelitic law seems frequently guilty of unjust partiality in favor of the male sex, but we have to consider that most of these legal and religious disabilities of women can be explained from the social conditions prevailing at the time of legislation. They are therefore found also in contemporaneous Gentilereligions. Though traces of this prejudice against the weaker sex are found in the New Testament, the religious discrimination between the sexes has practically ceased, as is evident from Ga 3:28: "There can be no male and female; for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus"; compare also 1Pe 3:7.H. L. E. Luering

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