As key to the understanding of every relation desirous of being re-created and illumined by the Word, the Biblical narration proposes Genesis 1 as a starting point: thus our complex relation, our reflection starts from there. It is there that we come to know, first of all, that the "Biblical" woman lives of a complex relation. She is created to the image and likeness of God, according to a quality that distinguishes her from all other creatures; at the same time, she is a shared image and likeness to be sought or, even better, to be created in the encounter between male and female, "God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God He created him, Male and female he created them" (Gen. 1, 27).

We, thus, spontaneously think that the first task of the "Biblical" woman, as of every other creature, is that of safeguarding her own specificity: "each according to one’s species", according to a refrain that keeps on returning along the account of creation. This means commitment to never getting flattened, uniformed or hidden, as well as never being annihilated; faithfulness in seeking one’s own identity, one’s own language to announce first of all a believing woman, in the daily gestures of one’s own humanity.

Genesis offers a fascinating contribution to the searching of our specificity: created out of the rib, namely, out of the same dignity and precious value of man, the woman is a gift that outbids every other expectation: "Yahweh God fashioned the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man. And the man said, ‘This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! She is to be called Woman, because she was taken from Man;’ this is why a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and they become one flesh. Now, both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame before each other". (Gen. 2, 22-25)

In the confrontation between God and man, which precedes these verses, we find ourselves before a wearisome journey, starting from the responsibility of cultivating and guarding the garden, so that it might grow. Then there is the unsuccessful tentative of letting the animals give a credible answer of sense to the questions from man. Everything, finally, flows towards the apparition of the first woman. She becomes the bearer of an absolute newness, a unique one before any other project of joy, happiness and relationship.

Finally we have "the help before you", that pushes you out of your house, besides being your son, namely a position where one is guaranteed and protected before the world, being he the guarantee of the future. Contrary to the relation parent-son, the relation man-woman is one that exposes you beyond the domestic walls, because it is a gratuitous relation, which, anyhow, surprises and overcomes us.

Then, being "she who is before you" the woman here appears as the apex of creation"; she is the one who educates, the place where one experiences that being before the other becomes the joyful possibility of defeating solitude radically. We must not lose the shade that the woman is a gift not only to man, but to the whole creation, to the garden to be made with all its different heroes. All this happens in nakedness, being in front of, without fears, where there is no need of being protected by masks, compromises or appearances, falsity or exaggerations.

Therefore, it becomes natural to think that the task of the "Biblical" woman in relation, and not self-centred, is that of remaining always the "other", the sign of a gift that outbids relation itself, witness of a belonging, which, anyhow, can never be possessed by the other. Her highest task is that of remaining always in front: without confusing herself and perhaps without blackmailing; without wanting to be considered as victim or using the possibility of being charming, seducing to the end of reaching one’s own goals.

The woman, therefore, is bearer of hope that wins every form of evil; she is a custodian of the faithful promise of God to humanity in its daily confrontation with the serpent and all that it signifies; at the same time, within the same relation, she is presented almost as a victim of this hope, of this trust, somehow as victim of the gift itself. One would think that at the very moment in which, in some preceding verses, she says, "I have been deceived", she actually refers to this experience, which she already feels within herself.

In developing our reflections on Genesis 3, it is possible to catch an interesting shade; the woman is a protagonist from the very beginning of the chapter; it is she that starts dialoguing with the serpent; it is she that expresses the dynamics of temptation and involves the decision of man.

It is just there, in her fear that the relation might be signed by envy and jealousy, perhaps of God himself, that she appears more exposed; perhaps it is her constitutive attitude, her structure, her mercy to push her to action and to make her realise that a relation cannot remain halved. We can well say that God puts at your disposal 9999 trees of the garden with their fruit and that, after all, he forbids you to take the ten thousandth. Yet, without that, the remaining part is like nothing. This is actually what happens In love: 99% is not almost all. The 99% is nothing. Thus the woman is within life without measuring herself, without calculations, with the risk of being and feeling surely cheated. It is just what happens in generating and falling in love, in the subtle thread between seduction and violence.

The original dilemma between virtue and vice enters here. We can figure it as the need of accepting that at least there be the fullness of encounter. In fact, this is the heart of the challenge that God launches originally to man: to accept that the encounter be true and authentic even if you do not have full dominion on the garden, on your brother, on him whom you love, on your entire life; rather, the encounter is true when you are not its owner and Lord, but a creature before other creatures and the Creator. This is why the woman bears its consequences more than man, as Genesis narrates. 3

She, image of God as she enters the relation and mother of all living beings, narrates how one can be radically a sign of received, donated and lost life, of free, passionate and dehumanising love.

Sara and Agar (See: Gen. 16, 18.21) are a story of gift and repentance, of joyful and fearful smile, but also of cold jealousy, which signs permanently the destiny of their children. Leah and Rachel (See: Gen. 29, 30-35), roots of a family that becomes people, are brought together in a journey in which we do not understand well where the blessing begins; mainly when we understand that the love story, the true one generates two children: the first was sold by his brothers and the other that comes to light the very instant in which the light of its mother extinguishes.

Debora, the prophetess, and Jael "the most blessed of the tent-dwelling women" (Judges: 5, 24), compelled to shoulder the fears and fragility of the so called strong men, but unable to come out of a meeting that goes towards a clash, trusting on one’s own strength. Dalila instead is the able seducer who several times accepts the risk of being deceived and finally defeats Samson just there, where, according to Genesis 3, he should exercise the role of dominator.

Very beautiful is the figure of Anna who, in the grief of her sterility, is judged drunkard and wicked by Eli (See: 1 Sam. 1, 14), yet out of her weakness the announcement is born that the arc of the strong ones is torn, while the weak are clothed with vigour.

This gallery could be protracted to infinity, entering the space of wisdom images, like the perfect owner of her house (See: Proverbs: 31), or the girl that plays before the architect (Proverbs: 8), or the many representations of Lady Wisdom opposed to Lady Folly, in a perennial challenge for the education of inexpert youths,

I like to conclude this roundup by comparing two scenes. The heroines are two foreigners, both facing the challenge that the land may become salvation. While on one side the man of power, a wealthy leper, appeals to the prophet and promises, "Allow your servant to be given as much earth as two mules may carry, since your servant will no longer make burnt offerings or sacrifice to any god except Yahweh. Only –and may Yahweh forgive your servant for this- when my master goes to the temple of Rimmon to worship there, he leans on my arm, and I bow down in the temple of Rimmon when he does; may Yahweh forgive your servant for doing this!" (2 Kings 5, 17-18). On the other side Ruth answers Noemi: "Do not press me to leave you and to stop going with you, for wherever you go I shall go…." (Ruth 1, 16-17).

Two styles, two gestures, two choices of life: a vision of faith vitiated by a compromise that, anyhow, heals, and a "virtuous" donation, beyond any good sense, ready to risk itself up to the depth, in a relation that so far had savoured of deceit.

Our thought flies naturally to Mary of Nazareth. She is one who believes in the impossible measure of God and trusts the word offered to her life. She is blessed because " believing in the fulfilment of the words of the Lord, she offers to her Creator a space of finally authentic image and likeness, "You see before you the Lord’s servant, let it happen to me as you have said". (Luke 1, 37-38).

The panorama is very vast here also: from the Syro-Phoenician woman who challenges Jesus on the bread scraps, " Little dogs under the table eat the scraps from the children" (Mark 7, 28), to Euodia and Syntyche who collaborated a lot and "struggled hard for the Gospel with me (Paul); now they simply accept the other big challenge of faith: to be in harmony wit the Lord" (Phil. 4, 2-3).

Thus, the course of liberation is realised in a history of encounters signed by vices and virtues; sometimes by formal vices and substantial virtues: between a Peter who feels to be as high as Jesus to the extent of not wanting Jesus to wash his feet, and Jesus who considers great the gesture of a sinful woman in the city, who with sweet scented oil crouches down at His feed, wets them with her tears and wipes them with her hair, kissing and anointing them with scented oil". This is a new way of staying in front, the image of a finally forgiven humanity, saved in peace (See: Luke 7, 37 and following).