Why Couldn’t Women Offer Sacrifices? The theological reason the second author gives for the exclusion of women from the priesthood is "because of the sacrificial function, the only priestly act denied to women."⁴⁹ Women could not offer priestly sacrifices, he writes, because of "the incompatibility of the sacrifice, normally associated with death and sin, and the physiological nature of the woman traditionally associated in the Bible with life and messianic pregnancy."⁵⁰

The notion that women were precluded from the sacrificial function of the priesthood because physiologically their nature is "associated in the Bible with life and messianic pregnancy," sounds more like an ingenious rabbinical speculation than a biblical reason. Nowhere does the Bible suggest such a reason.

Our second author seeks support for his view in the command, "You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk" (Ex 23:19), but it doesn’t fit. First, the primary reason for this injunction is generally recognized to be God’s concern to prevent the Israelites from adopting a common Canaanite ritual practice. Second, boiling a kid in its mother’s milk was not the same as a woman’s offering an animal sacrifice. The former was prohibited, he speculates, "because it would be incongruous to associate the milk of the mother, carrier of life to the kid, with the death of the very kid."⁵¹ But this hardly applies to a woman sacrificing an animal, because she would not be sacrificing her own offspring. In fact, sacrificing an animal would not have contradicted a woman’s capacity to give life, because God promised to restore life through the death of the offspring of the woman (Gen 3:15). Typologically speaking, a woman could have offered sacrifices more fittingly than a man, because the animal she would sacrifice could represent her Messianic offspring, who would be sacrificed for the salvation of His people.

The Representative Role of a Priest. The true reason for the exclusion of women from the priesthood is to be found in the unique biblical view of the priest as representative of God to the people. This second author himself acknowledges this to be the "essential concept underlying the priesthood," namely, that "the priest was considered as God’s representative."⁵² He also correctly points out that in both the Old and New Testaments "the Messiah is consistently identified as a priest."⁵³ It was because of this headship role of a priest as representative of God and of the Messiah to come that women were excluded from the priesthood.

The priesthood developed through several stages in the Old Testament. During patriarchal times the head of the household or of the tribe fulfilled the priestly function of representing his household to God. Thus Noah (Gen 8:20), Abraham (Gen 22:13), Jacob (Gen 35:3), and Job (Job 1:5) each served as the representative priest of his family. With the establishment of the theocracy at Sinai and the erection of the tabernacle, God appointed the tribe of Levi to serve as priests in place of the firstborn or head of each family. "Behold, I have taken the Levites from among the people of Israel instead of every firstborn that opens the womb among the people of Israel. The Levites shall be mine, for all the firstborn are mine" (Num 3:12-13). We noted earlier that the notion of the firstborn derives from Adam, the first created, and is even applied to Christ, "the firstborn of all creation" (Col 1:15). The firstborn was the head of the family, and the priests served as the spiritual heads of Israel.

While God called all the people of Israel, male and female, to be "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex 19:5-6; cf. Is 61:6), after the Sinai apostasy the Levites were chosen to serve as the representative heads of the whole nation because of their allegiance to God (Ex 32:26-29). When the priests ministered they acted as the representatives of God to the people.

Because of this representative role which the priests fulfilled as heads of the household of Israel, women were excluded from the priesthood. A woman could minister as a prophet, because a prophet was primarily a communicator of God’s will and God communicates His will through men and women, irrespective of gender. But a woman could not function as a priest, because a priest was appointed to act as the representative of the people to God and of God to the people. As James B. Hurley correctly observes, "The Mosaic provision [for an exclusively male priesthood] stands in a historical continuum and continues the practice of having representative males serve to officiate in public worship functions."⁵⁴

"The fact that most pagan religions of the time did have priestesses, as well as priests," notes John Meyendorff, "shows that a male priesthood was the sign of a specifically biblical, i.e. Jewish and Christian, identity."⁵⁵ This unique, counter-cultural Jewish and Christian practice stems not from the religious genius of either Judaism or Christianity but from divine revelation which at creation established a functional headship role for man to fulfill in the home and in the household of faith.

Did God Dress Eve as a Priestess? The second author’s most imaginative attempt to find "biblical" support for a priestly role for women in the Old Testament is his interpretation of the garment of skins God made for Adam and Eve (Gen 3:21). "God chose animal skin. This specification not only implies the killing of an animal, the first sacrifice in history, but by the same token, confirms the identification of Adam and Eve as priests, for the skin of the atonement sacrifice was specifically set apart for the officiating priests (Lev 7:8). By bestowing on Adam and Eve the skin of the sin offering, a gift reserved for priests, the Genesis story implicitly recognizes Eve as priest alongside Adam."⁵⁶

This claim that "Adam and Eve were, indeed, dressed as priests" cannot be supported biblically. The Bible gives no indication that priests wore garments made from the skins of the animals they sacrificed. The priests wore fine linen garments (Ex 28:29), which were often called garments of "salvation" (2 Chron 6:41; Ps 132:16) because they typified the purity and salvation that God offered through the ministry of the priests. No such typological significance is attached to any skin garment in the Bible. We are on much firmer ground if we interpret the text at its face value as meaning, to use the words of Ellen G. White, that "the Lord mercifully provided them with a garment of skins as a protection from the extremes of heat and cold."⁵⁷ While the slaying of animals for man’s needs may suggest the idea of sacrifice, the text per se, as Leupold points out, "does not teach that, nor is it an allegory conveying a lesson to that effect. The meaning is what the letter of the statement says–no more."⁵⁸

Had God dressed Eve as a priest at the time of the Fall, it would be surprising that we do not find a single clear example of a "female priest" in the Bible. The reason is not cultural but theological, namely, the biblical teaching that only men could serve in the headship roles of priest in the Old Testament and of apostles, elders, and pastors in the New Testament.

Conclusion. Women played a most vital role both in the private and public religious life of ancient Israel. As full members of the covenant community, women participated in studying the law and teaching it to their children (Prov 1:8; Deut 31:12; Neh 8:2), in offering prayers and vows to God (1 Sam 1:10; Gen 25:22; 30:6, 22; 21:6-7), in ministering at the entrance of the sanctuary (1 Sam 2:22), in singing, and in the prophetic ministry of exhortation and guidance (Ezra 2:65; 1 Chron 25:5-6; Jud 4:4-6; 2 Kings 22:13-14).

But, in spite of the first author’s attempts to prove the contrary, the religious roles of women in ancient Israel were different from those of men. Women served in accordance with the principles of equality of being and submission of function that are implicit in the creation story. The principle of male headship in the home and in public worship is recognized even by Clarence J. Vos, an Evangelical feminist, who writes: "It was not her [the woman’s] task to lead the family or tribe in worship; normally this was done by the patriarch or the eldest male member. That a male was appointed to this function no doubt rested on the idea that the male was considered the ‘firstborn’ of the human family–a motif discernible in the creation story of Genesis 2."⁵⁹