Daughter Zion Speaks to our Broken Concepts of Gender

Am I wrong to suggest that we have yet to establish a Reformed understanding of gender? Though we rightly understand that all of created reality is predicated on the trinity and covenant, we have yet to connect our triune God and his covenant to “male and female he created them.” Cornelius Van Til helpfully delineated classical Reformed trinitarianism in his Introduction to Systematic Theology, chapter 17, a work recently revisited by Lane Tipton. Add to Van Til, the insights of the father of biblical theology, Geerhardus Vos, as well as those building upon him, Meredith Kline and Tipton. Perhaps we already have a solid foundation on which to build a Reformed understanding of ourselves as male and female, which can be supplemented by the hard work done in other traditions of the Christian church that move us in the direction of seeing our differences representationally. As we have been clinging to a truncated understanding of ourselves, others have moved forward. They have come to see that we reflect things more foundational than ourselves, things that preceded the creation of the earth and things that will endure long after the end of this age. These are the things that we are destined to behold and receive in a coming kingdom that cannot be shaken (Heb 12:28).

I believe that John Schmitt, a Catholic Old Testament scholar, uncovered the foundation of gender by seeing two metaphors for God’s people in the Hebrew Scriptures, the masculine son and the feminine city. In other words, Schmitt saw maleness tied to sonship and femaleness to cityhood. Beginning with Moses in Exodus 4, God’s people as Israel are God’s first born son called to a promised land consecrated to God. And beginning with David in Psalm 9, God’s people as city are given the feminine image of Daughter Zion, a place where God dwells with his people.

The Reformed tradition has made little of the feminization of the city of God. Other theological streams have taken greater notice. The German Old Testament scholar Christl Maier outlines the feminine metaphors for the city of Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible. In her book Daughter Zion, Mother Zion: Gender, Space, and the Sacred in Ancient Israel, she finds a city in the prophets called Daughter Jerusalem or Daughter Zion, who also takes on other female identities such as mother, bride, prostitute, and victim of rape. Maier then traces these metaphors as the collective identity of God's people in the Psalms and prophets. She concludes that sacred space is personified as a female in the Hebrew Scriptures, most climatically, Jerusalem. Like Schmitt, she establishes the connection between Zion and the woman, but she has gone farther than Schmitt by more fully developing the various gendered images, beginning with what appears to be an overarching appellation which spans from David to Zechariah, from the Psalms to the post-exilic prophets. That name is Daughter Zion.

If we can just stop here for a moment and consider what the research of these Old Testament scholars might indicate. The Bible ascribes the significance of our existence as male and female not primarily by setting forth the lives of specific men and women in the Scriptures, nor in the Old Testament civil or ceremonial law, nor in the prescriptions of the New Testament household codes, nor in the prohibitions that concern order in the local church in the Pauline epistles. Rather, the overarching structure is given in images associated with gender found in embryonic form at the beginning of Scripture, which mature until the latter prophets. These are taken up by Jesus as he approached Jerusalem. As the son approached the city, Matthew tells us that it was in fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy, “Tell Daughter Zion, ‘Look, your King is coming to you, gentle, and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden’" (Matt 21:5). Daughter Zion is called to raise her eyes and receive the Son, her Savior, approaching her. The gospels pick up and carry forward the feminized symbolism of the city, Daughter Zion, further revealed in Paul’s letters as the invisible church, the bride of Christ, a Spirit-dwelling hidden from the eyes of this age until her veil is lifted at the end of time.

We have been looking for the significance of ourselves as male and female in all the wrong places. Our unique identities are not established by some golden age of the past, a time when we suppose everyone flourished according to their God-ordained “roles.” Nor is it now, as many in the name of Christ the King seek political power and the authority in pursuit of a new Christendom. Our identities are set by God’s decree as we anticipate the end for which we were made. We will forever reflect the Son or the City, even as we receive together the Son and the City in the age to come.

Perhaps this is part of the theological answer to transgenderism. What we mirror as from God is held by God as we move toward a future, full, and final unveiling of the meaning of our differences. The son and the city-bride of Revelation are two figures for God’s people that are oppositional. Though they are opposed images, they never create opposition because they are true complements, the substance of which will be clear when we receive our inheritance in the age to come. What we mirror uniquely as male and female, the Son and Spirit-city, we well receive together as co-heirs. In other words, as a woman, I will always mirror the Spirit-city specifically, even as I receive sonship in the Son. My neighbor, the man beside me, will always mirror the Son distinctively, even as he receives and becomes part of the bridal city of the Lamb in the Spirit. We could substitute head for Son and body for bride and find the same thing. We represent one, but we receive both. There is no competing for glory. No hierarchy. No judging ourselves by ourselves. Perhaps this enlightens Ephesians 5:28b-29, “He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church.” Extrapolated out, it would be something like this: The one who loves the Son loves the Spirit. The one who loves the enthroned Son above, loves the Spirit-city above. The one who loves the incarnate Son, loves the church. The who loves himself, loves his wife. No one hates his own dwelling, but provides for it. We are distinct in what we represent, but inseparable and indivisible. As co-heirs, we receive together at one time and in one place both the Son and Spirit-city. There is no place for demeaning or hating our neighbor on the basis of maleness or femaleness without hating our own future given us by grace at the cost of Christ’s blood.

Male and female were also made to represent one another. I trace this back to the Trinity. There is no blurring of their persons. We could say that they are truly opposed in the sense that the Son and Spirit have differences. They have “incommunicable” personal properties. The Father begets, and the Son is begotten. The Spirit is not begotten but proceeds from the Father and Son. However, the Father, Son and Spirit, even in this personal opposition, exist as the one divine, triune essence, their individual manifestations reflecting and representing one another (John 14:6-10). In their works in creation and providence, we recognize the Son in the mission of the Spirit, and we know the Spirit in the mission of the Son, beginning with the revelation of themselves in the heavens. In other words, the heavenly throne and the heavenly city are mutually representational. The Throne of the Father and Son represents the Spirit-city, and the Spirit-city represents the Throne (Matt 23:21). On earth, male and female are mutually representational. We mirror one another without blurring our distinctions as we image the triune God from whom we have come, who has revealed himself in the heavenly realm (throne and city).

All this is to say that gender is first and foremost trinitarian and eschatological, whose fullest meaning will be revealed on the final day. This requires faith. I believe the meaning of our differences as male and female will be undeniable when we move through the gates of the Spirit-city and are taken into the embrace of the Son. Then we will know better the Three in One, the One in Three, who has loved us with an everlasting love. Today we mirror what we have received in shadow, but tomorrow we will mirror what is revealed in the full light of that eternal day. In the words of Isaiah, “Look at Zion, the city of our festival times. Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a peaceful pasture, a tent that does not wander; its tent pegs will not be pulled up nor will any of its cords be loosened. For the majestic one, our Lord, will be there” (Is 33:20-21a).

In a nutshell, who is Zion? First, she images the Spirit as internally proceeding from the Father and Son. The Spirit is the image and likeness of the Father and Son, exhaustively representing their persons, even as the Spirit exists with the Father and Son as the entire triune divine essence without remainder or residue. Second, Zion images the Spirit externally as the angelic realm. Thirdly, Eden images heavenly Zion as the garden of God, the visible dwelling of God with man on earth. Eden imaged heaven and was part of the history of heaven, but not the enduring substance of the promise. On condition of obedience, Adam was promised nothing less than Sabbath rest, understood as the heavenly mountain that would descend to transform the earth, conforming it to the glory of heaven. Fourthly, under grace, God’s people image Zion as a promised land or city, climatically Jerusalem, renowned for her strength and beauty, and tied to the joy she incites in her people. She is portrayed as both sacred space and the people who inhabit sacred space. She is a fortress protected by God. Fifthly, in sin and misery, Zion mirrors a people and place judged for unfaithfulness in the most graphic of terms in Lamentations and the prophets. She is turned over to her enemies because of her many transgressions. When the prophet Jeremiah wants to express the most intense suffering of Jerusalem in Lamentations, he takes on the voice and persona of Daughter Zion, experiencing the pain of loss — menstruation, childbirth, and bereavement. Finally, in glory, Zion is God’s people as the eternal habitation of the redeemed, the heavenly citadel as she descends to unite with sacred space on earth, filling the earth with her glory. She is the mountain to which the nations stream in Isaiah 2 and Micah 4, God’s eternal dwelling place among men. This is the final manifestation of the Spirit-tent. She constitutes our joy as confirmed in righteousness and glory, the bridal-city of the Son.

In his sufferings, our Savior took to himself not only the form of the son, but also the voice of Daughter Zion. I suggest that the dignity of the woman’s representation is further established by Christ who became not only a son, the Second Adam, but identified himself with Daughter Zion, a mother gathering her young. As the incarnate Son, he bound himself not only to the image of son, but to the image of the city to assure the resurrection of both fallen son and fallen city. Look at Lamentations 2:1, 15-16 in the light of Psalm 22:12-14 and Matthew 27:39-41, although Lamentations 2 as a whole is worthy of consideration in light of the crucifixion:

How doth the Lord cloud in His anger the daughter of Zion, He hath cast from heaven to earth the beauty of Israel, And hath not remembered His footstool on the day of His anger . . . All who pass by scornfully clap their hands at you. They hiss and shake their heads at Daughter Jerusalem: Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth? All your enemies open their mouths against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth, saying, “We have swallowed her up. This is the day we have waited for! We have lived to see it.”

Perhaps this makes sense of Jesus’s remarks as he identifies himself with sacred space in John 2:19, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.” Jesus takes on both “sonship” as Israel, God’s firstborn son, and “cityhood” as Daughter Jerusalem, and thus secures the redemption of both on the final day.

I return now to the image of Daughter Zion. I find support for the significance of our differences as man and woman in the 152 occurrences of Zion referring to a specific mountain citadel which became the capital of Israel in the Old Testament. Of those instances, 26 times she is “Daughter Zion,” bat-siyon. The scholarly consensus is that “daughter” is not something that Zion possesses, but something that Zion is. Rachel Aldeman writes,

“As a conceptual metaphor, the term yields multiple meanings for God’s relationship to the people, the land, and the Temple at its sacred center. The term ‘Daughter Zion’ . . . is not to be understood in the sense of daughter of Zion, but rather in the sense of Zion as daughter (bat).”¹

Many Bible translations now render the Hebrew construct bat siyon as an appositional or explicative genitive, not a possessive genitive. In other words, the daughter, bat, is not possessed by Siyon, but rather Siyon emphasizes the identity of the daughter. In many translations, “daughter” has now become part of her title. As a daughter, Zion has many faces in prophecy. She can indicate both a mother whose heart is wrenched at the suffering of her children, as well as a heartless mother. She is portrayed as both a victim of untempered violence and a staunch rebel deserving what she receives. She appears alternately degraded by divine judgment because of her excessive pride and raised up by divine favor. Most often in the prophets, the earthly daughter has become the antithesis of the heavenly daughter, and yet hope is never completely extinguished that she will one day be transformed in glory.

The first time that Zion is mentioned in Scripture, she refers to a Jebusite citadel captured by David in 2 Samuel 5:7. Within a decade, the fortress became “the city of David” (1 Kings 8:1). Zion generally means “fortress,” but it would become the proper name of the civic and cultic capital of Israel. Zion as a city seems to be synonymous with Zion as a mountain. She is raised up, conceived as a mountain-city-fortress, and her personification as daughter begins with David himself in Psalm 9.

But the LORD sits enthroned forever; He has established His throne for judgment. He judges the world with righteousness; He executes judgment on the nations with fairness. The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. Those who know your name trust in you because you have not abandoned those who seek you, LORD. Sing to the LORD, who dwells in Zion; proclaim His deeds among the nations. For the One who seeks an accounting for bloodshed remembers them; He does not forget the cry of the afflicted. Be gracious to me, LORD; consider my affliction at the hands of those who hate me. Lift me up from the gates of death, so that I may declare all Your praises. I will rejoice in Your salvation within the gates of Daughter Zion (vv. 7-14).

Psalm 9 is the only mention of “Daughter Zion” by David. Her identity clearly goes beyond the 2 Samuel 5 citadel which he and his men took from the Jebusites in the tenth century BC. David has in view another city, another throne, another time, and another cosmic plane. The daughter which is on the king’s tongue is none less than the city where the Father and Son are enthroned, seeking an accounting for the blood of the afflicted. The throne is for judgment and the city is for refuge. For Meredith Kline, that refuge is tethered to the third person, the Spirit, who clothes himself with the heavenly tent, a shelter for God’s people.² David has in view the heavenly citadel, the gates of Daughter Zion, Sabbath rest for those lifted up from the gates of death. The king envisions eternal salvation within the gates of life, the feminized city above.

Geerhardus Vos understood the eschatological nature of the Psalms, how it “gravitates with all its inherent weight toward the end.”³ He saw that the Psalter was above all eschatological in nature. With this, Vos has keyed us to the enduring significance of gender seen in the Psalms. What we are here below as male and female is the servant of what we will see and receive above. Those attuned to their rights and power below will never see it for what it is. It takes minds set on that one thing, hearts tuned to eternity (Ps 27:4). Why did Vos not write on gender? Far from what Andreas Köstenberger surmises, the “oak” of the Genesis 1 female made in the likeness of God is not her gender “role,” giving birth, nurturing children, busy at home as the companion-servant of her husband. There is only one final and enduring marriage in heaven as shadows dissipate in the full light of that eternal day. We find the “oak” of gender in Revelation 21-22, the final word given concerning male and female. That final word is the son and the bridal city, Zion.

Next time I would like to look at Psalm 46, Psalm 48, Isaiah 6, and Micah 3, outstanding references to what Christl Maier calls the “Pre-exilic Zion Tradition in the Psalms and Prophets.” There she finds Zion praised as a city on a sacred mountain, where God is enthroned. She stands as the symbol of life and order, an impregnable stronghold against the forces of chaos.⁴

1. W. F. Stinespring, “No Daughter of Zion: A Study of the Appositional Genitive in Hebrew Grammar,” Encounter 26 (1965) 133-141 and Michael H. Floyd, “Welcome Back, Daughter of Zion!”

2. Meredith Kline, God, Heaven, and Har Magedon, chapter 2.

3. Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology, “The Eschatology of the Psalter,” 325.

4. Christl Maier, Daughter Zion, Mother Zion, 30-59.