Biblical Women Trivia Quiz

Answer: She does not want to lie beneath him and be treated as an inferior.

Lilith is often seen as the female half of an originally bisexual being. The first human would then have been an androgynous, hermaphroditic 'two-in-one' creature as in the Platonic stories. There remains room for discussion whether this creature was joined back-to-back or side-by-side.
Though largely a character from the Jewish Talmud, Lilith is not absent from Bible. She occurs in Isaiah 34:14. It may be noted that in the Quran-version of the "Genesis" story, even Eve herself is barely mentioned.
In some non-literalist approaches to the Bible text what is supposed to have been filtered out seems to be seen as at least as significant as what was left in. Especially in literature the less well documented characters are an interesting source of inspiration. Lilith is especially popular with modern not-so-very-Christian authors. Goethe's Faust talks about her to Mephisto. Dante Gabriel Rosetti writes about her in 'Eden's Bower'. Anatole France uses her as a symbol in "Lilith's Daughter" (1889). George Bernard Shaw gives her an important role in "Back to Methuselah". More to be found on this topic in "Grosse Frauen der Bibel" by Herbert Haag, Joe H. Kirchberger and Dorothée Sölle. Published by EMB-Service fuer Verleger, Luzern, Switzerland, 1993. First chapter is entitled: Eve and Lilith.
Also at witcombe.sbc.edu/eve-women/7eve-lilith.html
In the Hebrew text Isaiah has: aksam hirgi ah lilit u-masah lah manoh (imperfect transcription). To avoid having to read "lilit" as a reference to the goddess of the night, various solutions have been tried: night-owl; night-monster; night hag; night creatures. The KJV "screech-owl" is probably influenced by the owls that follow in 34:11 "yansup" actually a waterbird and 34:15 "qippoz" often rendered as "great owl" but actually a snake.

Answer: Because he is afraid the Egyptians will physically eliminate the husband of such a pretty woman.

Pharaoh himself falls in love with Sarai. He is furious with Abram for not telling him Sarai was a married woman, as trying to have intercourse with a married woman could have been a blemish on Pharaoh's character. Abraham does not seem to have learned from this incident because later in the Biblical story he repeats this tricky behaviour and again passes off Sarah as his sister when staying with Abimelek, the King of Gerar. Abraham then finds a diplomatic excuse: Sarah is the daughter of his father, but not of his mother.

The least that can be said is that his behaviour was deceitful. Some 'critics' even suspect him of having behaved as a pimp, getting favourable treatment from people hoping to marry his so-called sis.

Answer: Ishmael

Laban is the brother of Rebecca, Isaac's wife. Lot is Abraham's nephew. Isaac is the son Sarah will later have with Abraham, after special 'intervention' by God to give her the power to have babies. In some legends Hagar is supposed to have been an Egyptian princess whom Abraham brought back from his stay in Egypt. Hagar is one of the chosen women in the Bible who is told by an angel that she will have a baby and what the baby's name will have to be.

Answer: Sarah did not like the way Hagar's son laughed.

Hagar's son probably laughed at the aged Sarah breast-feeding her baby. Or at least laughed at them from a feeling of superiority. The basic reason, of course, was that Sarah did not want her slave's son to share Abraham's inheritance with her own son.
Another explanation is that the word in Biblical text derives from the verb metzachek, which means: play, and not tzochek: to laugh. In this reading it is suggested that Ishmael is playing dangerous games using the baby as a target for bow-and-arrow games.

Answer: Fearing they would find no husbands, they made of their own daddy a substitute husband.

The moral judgments in the Bible are often a little surprising, to say the least. Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at the burning towns of Sodom and Gomorrha, an action which might have been understood as simple curiosity or even as commiseration, but anyway, not a crime. Lot's daughters get away with incest without too much of a punishment and obtain what they want to obtain: two sons, Moab and Ben-Ammi. Maybe the punishment was that those sons were to become the progenitors of Israel's enemies the Moabites and the Ammonites. Lot himself escapes punishment too, though after all it was him who offered his daughters for intercourse to his neighbours to pacify them when they wanted to interfere with the angelic young men who had come to visit him.
An excuse for Lot's daughters' behaviour might also be that in their view the destruction of so many people in Sodom (for them "the whole known world") necessitated the repopulation of that world. Having babies was a duty for them.
In KJV see Genesis, Chapter 19:36.

Answer: The one who not only offered water to Eliezer himself but also to his camels

Isaac does not seem to have been eager to find a wife. An explanation might be that he was mourning for the loss of his mother Sarah.
An alternative spelling for Rebecca is Rebekah (King James Version).
Even closer to Hebrew text is Rivka.

Answer: By telling her son to disguise himself as Esau

Jacob and Esau were twins in fact, but somehow Esau had come first. Already in their mother's womb the two children had been fighting. Esau lived for hunting and the pleasures of the world and sold his right of primogeniture to his younger brother for a plate of lentil soup. Rebecca gives Jacob Esau's best clothes and camouflages his not-so-very-hairy hands and neck with goatskin. As Isaac has grown blind, he is unable to find out he is being cheated. The Bible does not explain how Jacob 'camouflaged' his voice. Esau and Jacob become enemies. Later they would be reconciled.
It can be said that Esau by his preference for "material pleasure" (the lentil soup) rather than for "a priestly role", had already shown that he was not fit for the duties of first-born. When Esau ultimately gets another type of blessing from his father, that poses no problem for Jacob as he any way is about to leave home and to travel without worrying about his material heritages at home.

It was Lot's daughters who had made their father drunk. The lentil soup was prepared by Jacob himself. The goatmeat was a preparation of Rebecca's, so Jacob needed no recipe.

Answer: Joseph

Giving their hubbies an off-spring was clearly the prime duty and honour for most women in the Bible. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah are Leah's first four children. Then Rachel asks her husband to sleep with her slave Bilhah. Two more children are born: Dan and Naphtali. Also Leah's slave Zilpah bears Jacob two sons: Gad and Aser. Leah has another try at bearing children for her husband and soon she gives birth to her fifth son Issakar (Jacob's ninth!).

Then follow another son Zebulon and a daughter Dinah. Only then it's Rachel's turn to give her beloved Jacob a son of her own Joseph.

Answer: Ben-Oni

Japheth, Shem and Ham were Noah's sons. How they became the ancestors of several nations is another story, especially with the shortage of women there must have been after the Flood. Rachel had chosen the name Ben-Oni, but as the Biblical Hebrews were a very patriarchal society, Jacob was the one who made the decisions and the child was called Benjamin.

Answer: Rachel

Sexual rules in the Bible were certainly not the ones which are upheld nowadays by most of the Christian churches. The criteria with which Jahweh 'evaluated' people were, to say the least, much less a product of modern 'law and order'.