What are young women especially good at? Nowadays, texting, chatting, DM’ing their friends. Am I right? Young women have a great natural-born talent for communication, excitement, and even for stirring up a bit of chaos.
God made women’s brains to excel in social-emotional areas. This can be a result of the influence of hormones like estrogen and progesterone influencing how the brain works. If we compare this to men’s brains, we see the influence of testosterone influences men to be less involved with the social-emotional and more driven toward protect, provide, and examine the facts.
Who we are as women gives us a drive to connect, to heal, to bring together. It is organically wired into us. So when the people of Israel are threatened, their sanctuary is to be invaded by profaners, and the temple area that it is said God lives, and only one time a year the high priest can enter, is now threatened with a clear and present danger of defilement, it is the young women who first spring into action!
18 Young women who had been secluded in their chambers rushed out with their mothers, sprinkled their hair with dust, and filled the streets with groans and lamentations.
19 Those women who had recently been arrayed for marriage abandoned the bridal chambers prepared for wedded union, and, neglecting proper modesty, in a disorderly rush flocked together in the city.
20 Mothers and nurses abandoned even newborn children here and there, some in houses and some in the streets, and without a backward look they crowded together at the most high temple.
21 Various were the supplications of those gathered there because of what the king was profanely plotting. From the 3rd Book of Maccabees, Chapter 1.
Within moments, there was the call made by the young women in the streets, and the people alerted came running to the temple to offer prayers and support. It was the gift of the young women, the girls, who are so amazing with communication, to call all to aid in the prevention of the defiling of the temple.
This goes so hand in hand with the prayer groups, phone trees of the recent past, and now the group chats and organizing that girls and women do to aid the causes that touch their hearts.
While here discussing the role of women, I wanted also to share a hidden look at the young, soon-to-be bride: young women who had just entered the bridal chamber to share married life….. their myrrh-perfumed hair, veiled, raising their joyous wedding song
I pull this out of the 4th chapter to glance at a few small details of the young bride.
These pieces of information are separated from the brutal story of being rounded up for slaughter. Times in the Old Testament were often brutal and barbaric. I do find it fascinating the author of this book takes the time to separate out and, in detail, describe the different groups afflicted by this evil king.