As a man wipeth a dish

I was hand washing some new dishes today and as I dried a plate, I turned it over and dried it on the back. Then I wondered if I usually did that, and what did this tell me about myself, about these dishes or about the situation.

Why would I ask that? Because when I was little I heard someone say that men are more thorough and better at details and that is why God said,

and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.

See, God is like a man who wipes a dish on both sides. God is thorough and careful like a man. God is like a man and not like a woman. And that is why men are in charge, because men are like God. Men are like God and women are not.

If a female is a hen or a bear, then the female is like God, but a human female is only the weaker vessel.

And that is how some women are raised. Everything they do is permeated with the notion that a man can do it better. Because he is a man - like God.

That's one more reason why a gender accurate Bible would be nice. It's important to be aware, of course, that there are lots of things in the Bible that really are there in the original languages that we want to reject anyway, like the she bears who mauled the 42 children who mocked Elisha. There's lots of that stuff too.

But we also want to know, we want to be aware that sometimes people will use anything at all to prove that men are better than women, or that women are better than men. Two can play at this game. But the Bible is more useful for men somehow.

Even though Bibles today do not have the word "man" in this verse, because it wasn't there in Hebrew, the notion that men are better at doing things is alive and well. This is from Bible.org.

Because the wife is physically weaker, she depends on her husband for provision and protection. His task is to provide food, clothing, shelter, and defense, while she is especially adapted by God to bear children and to provide them with the warm affection and tender care which they need. However, the very equipment which God gave her to assume that role is likewise the cause of a second area of weakness—her emotions. A woman must sometimes struggle with sudden and unexplainable changes in mood. These are chemically precipitated by hormones which form part of her reproductive capacity. This emotional vulnerability makes her especially dependent on the man God gives her. It seems to be the underlying idea in God’s words to Eve: “You shall welcome your husband’s affections.”⁷⁹ She looks to him with an inner yearning to meet her basic needs. She was made for him, and so her life centers in him.

In the interests of not completely ruining your dinner, I won't cite more. But - men don't have hormones? Men don't need women?? Men aren't emotionally vulnerable???

Okay I was going to read the rest of the article myself but I had to stop. The thing is that sometimes the Bible is woven into a tissue of misogyny that is enough to strangle a woman.