Bible Sisters: A Year of Devotions with Women of the Bible
by Gennifer Benjamin Brooks

I appreciated the book’s layout and easy to read to style. You can start on any date because of the numbering versus dated format, so you don’t have to wait to begin on January 1st or in the middle of the book (if you are a rule minded kind of person). I appreciate that you can search for a particular woman or scripture passage using the index at the back of the book.

At first, I was astounded that someone was able to come up with 365 different women in the bible. As I read, I was able to see that some women are mentioned more than once. Hannah seemed to be mentioned the most at 8 different days, each was unique and special enough to resonate with me. Many, of course, did not have a name at all. The author names those like scripture does, i.e. The Samaritan Woman at the Well, Job’s Wife.

It is not a scholarly or in-depth book so I’m not sure that I would recommend it for a bible study but, that being said, I can’t think of a daily devotional that I would recommend using for a bible study. I placed it on my dining room table and picked it up during breakfast for the most part. It helped me start the day off with a different biblical woman in my prayers or a different perspective that women face on a daily basis.

I valued the author’s thoughts on “Wife of Judah”. She wrote, “As we find in so many places in the Bible, the identity of this unnamed woman focuses on the men. There was a father, Shua, then the husband, Judah. The brief report sounds like a simple transaction. First she was a daughter, property of her father, and then she was wife. I have often wondered how women felt about the reduction of their personhood and being considered property whose value was determined by men.” (p. 346) Much of our history has been written about and determined by men. It is fairly recent that women are starting to write about and investigate the women’s lives apart from the men. I applaud this author for her work in this area.

Overall, I thought this was a good devotional and I would recommend it to my friends.