Female Leadership Is a Divine Punishment?  🔗 **Source:** [Female Leadership Is a Divine Punishment?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggi2P0QjLMU) Isaiah chapter 3 says that one of the signs of God's judgment upon a nation when a nation is cursed for its idolatry and rebellion against God. All right, let's see it is that they would be ruled over by foreigners, children, and women. So, this is pure and utter nonsense. And there are two reasons for this. Because Joel's claim is that what Isaiah 3:12 is sharing is the kind of sign that God would give to indicate that a nation is being condemned, is corrupt. And that's not going on in Isaiah 3 at all. What Isaiah 3 is just talking about is that the nation of Israel is corrupt. And then goes on to say, "These are the things that are going on." So this is not a prescription of the kinds of things that will always attend my judgment of a corrupt nation. This is just describing what's going on with this corrupt nation. So the notion that this is being presented in Isaiah 3 as a sign is entirely false. Absolutely nothing indicates this is a sign that will attend God's judgment of corrupt nations. The other problem is Isaiah 3:12 does not say that. At least it didn't originally say that. Here are some other translations that we can look at. The NRSVE reads, "My people, their oppressors extort them and creditors rule over them." Then we have the New English translation, "Oppressors treat my people cruy, creditors rule over them." And then the Common English Bible, as for my people, oppressors strip them and swindlers rule them. What's going on here? Well, what's going on here is the Hebrew of the Maseretic texts has vanashim, which seems like it means and women. But there are some problems with this. And we can go back to the ancient Greek translation, the Septuagen, and we see that they don't understand it as women. They understand it as based on the Hebrew verbal root nasha, which means to lend or to charge interest or to practice userie or something like that. And the septuagent understands this to be a participle based on that verbal root meaning it is referring to creditors, lenders, user and not to women. And we've got a lot of commentaries that indicate that's the better reading. In fact, that is the majority view of scholars today. We can start with Hugh Williamson's international critical commentary volume on Isaiah 1 through5. And when it comes to Isaiah, without insulting any other scholars there who work on Isaiah, you can't really do better than Hugh Williamson. And you can see the translation of this passage. Williamson renders, "Oh my people, oppressors deal harshly with them and creditors hold sway over them." Let's take a look at the note on Nashim. The vocalization in MT women is supported by Simicus, Vulgates, and Pashida. Not surprisingly, the major rabbitic commentators follow suit. All the other versions, however, read as no shim, creditors from Nasha, and this seems contextually more appropriate, as is now acknowledged by most commentators, especially if the verse was originally written for a different context. The MT may have arisen under the influence of the surrounding context, in particular, the later part of the chapter, which is more misogynistic. We can look at blankensop's anchor Yale Bible commentary volume on Isaiah 1 through39. Blankensop renders for verse 12. As for my people, their oppressors plunder them. Usurers lord it over them. And we've got a note here as well in the upper right. Lxx Aquilla Theodosian Targum read Nosim creditors for MTS Nashim women. Nosim may have been changed to Nashim to align with Mael infant. And then we can look at Tull's Isaiah 1 through39 volume in the Smith and Helis Bible commentary series. And we've got this paragraph. The verse that follows evokes two rather distinct reactions. On the one hand, the plaintiff cry, "My people," which most take as gods rather than the prophet's words, evokes pos. But on the other hand, the lament itself, at least as it reads in the NRSV, the earlier version, and other translations, is startling. Children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. Given the ineptitude already demonstrated among the male elite, which continues to be censured in this verse, your leaders mislead you. Equating female leadership with that of children and perishing the thought seems, at least to modern readers, not only offensive, but singularly shortsighted. LXX however points in a different direction which has been followed by many recent translators. There the second noun is not women nashim but extortioners. Greek aetunes equals Hebrew noshim leading to a much more logical translation of the first unusual noun not children but stripping bear or dealing severely. Oppressors strip them and extortioners rule them. In light of the accusation against the leadership in the second half of the verse, the LXX makes more sense. However, given the misogyny of the chapter's second half, it is not surprising that earlier translators inscribed female leadership as the worst of fates. So, this is a misogynistic corruption of a text that originally referred to creditors and not to women. So if we have any concern for what the author of this passage actually wrote then no it does not say that women are ruling over them. It says that creditors are ruling over them. In other words people are extorting them. People based on their borrowing of money are oppressing them through their charging of interest and through their predatory lending practices. So actually if we want to take Isaiah 3 as somehow prophetic regarding all corrupt nations then it would really be our latestage capitalism that is the problem and not women. Reading this as women is incorrect. Now can Joel engage with any of this scholarship? Of course not. Joel doesn't have the foggiest idea what he's talking about when it comes to scholarship or the Hebrew or the context or the versions or anything at all about the ancient world. Does Joel care? Also, of course not. Joel is not concerned for what's actually in the Bible because the Bible is not Joel's ultimate authority. Joel is concerned for how he can wield the Bible as a weapon in the hands of his misogynistic and juvenile identity politics. Joel's ultimate authority is his identity politics and his misogyny and his intuitions over which he can exercise no real control. All this is about is a small man thinking small thoughts and speaking small rhetoric in an effort to try to arrogate to himself more control that he cannot otherwise access because of his profound inadequacies. not only is an offense to God, we're actually using the biblical receipts from Isaiah chapter 3. These are not biblical receipts. This is Joel being misled by a corrupt text that he cannot engage in the original languages and the scholarship of which he does not care to try to engage because again his priority is not actually the biblical text. His priority is his profoundly juvenile misogyny and saying whatever he has to say to try to prop up its rhetorical substructure. It's something that God does in his sovereignty. He actually elevates and and installs women in governing positions of society as a judgment and punishment for it because it Lord knows it's a punishment. It's not a punishment unless you're just a misogynist. As has repeatedly been shown by research, women frequently display better leadership qualities than men. And most recently, we can look at this 2024 study, gender and evaluations of leadership behaviors, a metaanalytic review of 50 years of research published in a journal called the leadership quarterly. And I've underlined in the abstract. The metaanalytic results suggest that women are seen as engaging in more effective agentic and communal leadership behaviors compared to men, while men are seen as engaging in less effective and more passive leadership behavior compared to women. So, this is just Joel being misogynistic. He's not actually saying anything that's supported by any data. There are dead daughters because female liberal judges let out career criminals after being arrested 14 times so they could go and stab your daughter in the neck on a train. So this is a classic example of a fallacy known as the hasty generalization which is where you present one example of an event or a phenomenon as broadly representative of the whole as what happens the majority of the time because Joel wants you to imagine that it is mostly female judges who are releasing prisoners uh from custody who then go on to commit murder specifically murder of women. Now, if we look back through the US justice system, the overwhelming majority of the judges who have released prisoners from custody have been men. And if we look at all of the occurrences of recidivism when it comes to homicide, the judges who release those prisoners from custody overwhelmingly are going to be men as well. So if just the event of a judge releasing a prisoner who then goes on to commit homicide is indicative of something problematic related to the gender of the judge. Men come out much worse than women in this scenario. Joel does not have any data whatsoever, much less any research that demonstrates that female judges make decisions that are more harmful for society or that result in more crime being committed or that result in more men's daughters being killed. This is just Joel appealing to the hasty generalization fallacy and trying to engage in an emotive argument to make other misogynistic and stupid men feel angry about women being in positions of authority and leadership. And Joel needs to grow the hell up. Women in positions, formal positions of civil governing authority are God's judgment on a nation, his punishment on a nation. Because if you think what could hurt a nation, God's rod of discipline, punishment for a nation steeped in idolatry, a nation that's rebelling against him, God looks at a nation like that and says they're disobedient. They must be disciplined. It has to hurt so they might come to their senses and repent. When God thinks, I need discipline that will hurt this nation currently in rebellion. He thinks, I know what will hurt. I know it's giving a microphone and a platform to an emotional and an intellectual adolescent like Joel Webbon so he can regurgitate his mindless misogyny and racism that he has suckled from the fedded and the swollen teat of online right-wing authoritarian and social dominance orientation identity politics that is common right now only because a bunch of other equally thoughtless white cis heterero men put a rapist and a misogynist and a fraud and a person who can barely read and lies about literally everything into the White House. That's our punishment. No doubt. >> Women in leadership. Nothing hurts more than women in formal leadership. >> Nothing hurts the pride of small and pathetic men more than women in leadership. But it's not because there's anything wrong with their leadership abilities. It's because they are small and pathetic men. because they will do exactly the opposite of everything that leads to prosperity and life and blessing. >> Yes. Because electing the rapist who doesn't know how time zones work and told scientists they should look for a way to introduce sunlight or disinfectant into the bodies of people infected with CO is such a capital success. I mean, I hear that we might be able to end the war with Iran at some point and go back to the baseline except for much higher gas prices in perpetuity. So, that was a big win for the guy who stared directly into an eclipse. This is the most pathetic kind of misogyny I've ever seen. These are profoundly stupid men. This is such laughably stupid misogyny. You give misogynists a bad name. Like they used to be more intelligent about this. This is just straight up idiocy. And the fit for this video has been data over dogma., Female Leadership Is a Divine Punishment?, YouTube, 01kszfcg5fk5gxk4kdjxac0909.