Welcome.

Heather Farrell.

It’s a name you ought to remember. Especially when you are searching for books to read that will both compliment, enhance, and deepen your study of the Old Testament, Book of Mormon, or New Testament.

In so saying, please do not misunderstand me. There is no substitute for reading and pondering the words of scriptures themselves. They are uniquely able to bring the Spirit of God which allows us to have experiences with the Divine and become more and more sanctified, but I guess that’s the paramount thing I love about Farrell so much. It is so obvious she’s been in the scriptures – seriously deep diving – into them. No surface reading for her. She’s prayed, fasted, pondered, wondered, inquired, sought, begged, pleaded, probably even fought (or should I say wrestled) to understand and gain these treasured intuitions and perceptions. It’s truly been a labor of love, and I am overcome by her offering of self. Her efforts have yielded me so much more connected to these women, so many of them with whom I can share parts of my life’s story.

Although Farrell has other books, I highly recommend these three to interested individuals (both male and female) who want to add to their daily scripture pondering and reading. In the following suggested books, Farrell writes largely to a female audience and focuses on women found in holy writ, but hands down, her books will benefit any serious learner of the scriptures:

1. Walking With the Women of the Old Testament

2. Walking With the Women of the New Testament

3. Walking With the Women of the Book of Mormon

Heather is the greatest female scriptorian I’ve ever known. Of herself, she wrote, “Heather Farrell’s love for the scriptures began young when at the age of eleven, she hid a flashlight under her pillow so she could read the Old Testament late at night…” 1 And she’s been reading and studying it and our other scriptures ever since with a passion and commitment that is unmatched by most. She’s a remarkable author with insights that inspire. She is incredibly well read, super insightful, and most importantly probably, divinely inspired.

Scriptures aside, I don’t believe I’ve ever read a more consistently inspiring and insightful author when it comes to additions, corrections, perspectives, historical context, and out of the box thoughts about women in the holy scriptures. She really is one of a kind.

I am fortunate enough to live within the same ward and stake boundaries as she does. She presently guides one of our ward’s gospel doctrine classes on a regular basis, and I just love sitting on the front row when she teaches. I just can’t get enough of her presence and her acumens.

She reads and speaks Hebrew, some Egyptian and some Greek if I’m not mistaken. She is well educated and some months ago, she and her family returned from living in Israel where she completed her master’s degree. She is the mother of several children and is just radiating with Christ’s goodness and light!

I call her friend, and I’m just honored to be that. I have learned so much from her.

Here in this post, I want to share, with Heather’s permission, a few precious insights she’s taught me about these women found in our scriptures.

Job’s Wife (Old Testament):

Farrell wrote:

“Many commentators make Job’s wife out to be the devil’s advocate, who slyly tried to get Job to give in and make Satan the winner of his debate with God. Yet I wonder if we might give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she was simply having a crisis of faith. In fact, I think many of us can relate to Job’s wife. How often, when faced with a situation or a person that we cannot change, do we find ourselves wishing that it (or they) would disappear?…Not only had [Job’s wife] suffered great personal loss, but she was now also the sole care provider for a husband suffering from poverty, extreme illness, and depression. It is easy to see how she could feel trapped and full of despair. Thus, her faith in God wavered…It seems that, perhaps for a time, Job’s wife began to despair; she lost her focus on God and lost hope. An apocryphal book, The Testament of Job, supports this interpretation and gives us more insight into her. We learn that Job’s wife’s name was Sitis and that before Job’s downfall, she was a great lady who was often generous to the poor. When her husband became destitute and sick, she became a slave to provide for herself and her husband. She even sold her hair (the ultimate act of disgrace) to buy bread to eat. After this deep degradation, the account says that ‘Satan followed her along the road, walking stealthily, and leading her heart astray.’…[This was] a woman who was deeply weary and did not have the strength to continue. She was hopeless. Death, for her and her husband, seemed like her only option for escape. In response to her lament, Job responded compassionately. He told her, ‘Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at he hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ (Job 2:10). I love how writer Daniel Darling imagined this scene:

“I imagine Job lifts his blistered hand and strokes her hair.

At first, his words read like a harsh rebuke: ‘You speak as one of the foolish

women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?’

Yet, if you listen to Job, you almost hear admiration. ‘You speak as one of the foolish women.’

He didn’t say his wife was foolish. He didn’t even say her words were foolish.

He said, ‘She sounds like one of the foolish women.’

In other words, ‘You don’t sound like yourself.’ You might read these words like this:

Sweetheart, that’s not you talking.

This doesn’t sound like the woman of God I know and married.

That is not you talking, my wife. Let’s remember God’s promises.

 Let’s remember his goodness.’ ” 2

I wept when I read this! I had not before read those musings by Daniel Darling, but instantly, I loved them and felt that perhaps it had indeed happened that way or in a way very similar. I love Job’s wife, Sitis. I agree with Farrell: “Job’s wife certainly had her share of trials…Just like her husband, she endured trials that would crack the noblest of souls. She may have faltered, but I’d like to think that, like Job, she was refined by her trials.” 3

Me, too, me, too.

Women Who Made All Manner of Cloth (Book of Mormon):

Farrell wrote:

“Women making cloth is specifically mentioned three times in the Book of Mormon [those references are: Helaman 6:13, Ether 10:24, and Mosiah 10:5]…when the scriptures repeat something, especially three times, it usually means there is something important about it. All three scriptures state that the women made ‘fine-twined linen’ and that the reason for their work was so the Nephities could ‘clothe [their] nakedness.’ Each scripture also states that there was peace in the land…Book of Mormon women may not have actually used flax as we think of it today to make their linen, but they could have used a different fiber to produce a material similar to linen…insight [listed prior] into the spiritual significance of linen changes how we read the Book of Mormon’s mention of women making ‘fine-twined linen’ in order to ‘clothe nakedness.’ These women were probably not making ordinary clothes. We know that the Nephities built temples…We don’t know what sort of work they did in those temples, but since the Nephities lived the law of Moses, it was probably very similar to the type of temple work that was conducted in Old Testament times. The Nephite women may have been making linen garments similar to the ones worn by Aaron and his sons in the tabernacle…fine-twined linen contributed to peace in the land…” 4

Wow. What a connection! What insight! I’d never considered it before, but now I can’t not see it. I love the possibility.

Jesus’s Aunt (New Testament):

Farrell wrote:

“We don’t know much about this woman except that she was the sister to Mary, an aunt to Jesus, and that she stood at the cross in the final moments of Christ’s life…Her presence at the cross indicates that perhaps more of Christ’s family than just His mother accepted Him and followed His teachings. Our families can be either our greatest critics or our greatest supporters. Joseph Smith’s family was a bulwark of faith and support for him throughout his life…It is encouraging to me to think that Christ may have also had a family like Joseph Smith, one that rallied around Him and supported His mission with their whole hearts. While we can’t know for sure, His aunt’s presence at the cross suggests that perhaps He did.” 5

I love this idea – that the family of Jesus was nothing but supportive and sustaining.

Lot’s Wife (Old Testament):

Farrell wrote:

“…The three holy men told Lot to take himself, his wife, his daughters, and his sons-in-law and leave the city immediately. Right away, Lot went and spoke to his sons-in-law and his married daughters and told them that they needed to leave that very night because God was going to destroy the city. Yet Lot’s sons-in-law would not listen to him…Lot and his wife were now faced with a difficult choice. The holy men were telling them that they had to leave, quickly, but doing so meant leaving their married daughters, sons-in-law, and perhaps grandchildren behind in a city. It is no wonder that scriptures tell us that Lot and his wife ‘lingered’ in the city. I doubt that their hesitation had much to do with leaving behind their home or possessions but rather leaving behind their children. Wouldn’t each of us, if we knew that the lives of our loved ones were in immediate danger, stay if we thought we could convince them they were in danger?…Sodom was known for it’s slimepits, which means bitumen pits…Bitumen is a hydrocarbon allied to petroleum and natural gas. It is a lustrous black solid, breaking with a conchoidal fracture, burning with a yellow flame, and melting when itnited. It is probably derived from natural gas and petroleum by the process of oxidation and evaporation…there is reason to believe that considerable quantities of it rise to the surface of the Dead Sea during earthquakes…Some scholars speculate that there was a huge earthquake in Sodom that liquefied and ignited these bitumen pits, thus creating a huge, fiery landslide that sunk Sodom into the ground…Yet, it appears that Lot’s wife never made it. Genesis 19:26 tells us that when Lot fled, ‘his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.’ The phrase ‘behind him’ tells us that Lot’s wife was not with him. She had either lingered longer behind, she was slower than him or she had purposely turned back to Sodom. I wonder how many of us can truly fault her. Behind her, in Sodom, were her daughters, their husbands, and her grandchildren. How many of us, even running for our lives, would be able to forget that and not, even just in our hearts, look back?…[Here she quotes Elder Holland in, “Remember Lot’s Wife”] She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought – fatally, as it turned out – that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind…The consequence for her look back was that she ‘became a pillar of salt.’ The Hebrew word for ‘pillar’ is netsiyb, and it means ‘something stationary, as in a military post, a statue.’…It is most often translated in the Old Testament as the word garrison, indicating someone who is positioned as a guard or sentinel. Also, we know that salt is a symbolic substance in the scriptures and was often used in making covenants. If we think about Lot’s wife becoming a ‘sentinel of salt,’ that changes our understanding od her story in an incredible way…if Sodom was destroyed unexpectedly by some sort of explosion or fiery earthquake, something similar to what happened in the Roman city of Pompeii might have occurred. People were ‘frozen’ in place by the ash, becoming statues. If Lot’s wife had been caught out on the plain during the destruction of Sodom, rather than within the safety of the city, it is possible she may have literally become a volcanic statue…She or something very like her, may have literally been preserved for people to see for years afterward – a powerful monument to a mother’s love…” 6

Another wow. I’ve never seen Lot’s wife’s story that way. Now I pause to wonder if she lingered because of love for family, not because of a heart set on Sodom’s lures. Seems to be a thought worth consideration, an unspoken possibility, as Farrell noted, of an unmatched kind of love.

Heather Farrell.

It really is a name you ought to remember.

She’s remarkable – as are the women about whom she has written. I loved them before, but gosh, I adore them now. Heather has scoured every scriptural nook and cranny and found every easily visible and every not so discernable woman of mention – no matter how slight! And I admire, thank, and love her for it.

Unto all the world: I love the women of holy writ, and I love Heather Farrell for helping me understand and love them better!

References:

1. Farrell, H., “Walking With the Women in the Old Testament,” front page insert about author
2. Farrell, H., “Walking With the Women in the Old Testament,” pg 38
3. Farrell, H., “Walking With the Women in the Old Testament,” pg 39
4. Farrell, H., “Walking With the Women in the Book of Mormon,” pg 203
5. Farrell, H., “Walking With the Women in the New Testament,” pg 143
6. Farrell, H., “Walking With the Women in the Old Testament,” pg 58-59