Hi Elizabeth. I enjoyed your article despite disagreeing with it. Also I did want to note that actually God is personified in the feminine in the Old Testament. Psalm 8 makes reference to Lady Wisdom, which in Jewish tradition is the personification of God’s wisdom. However, for ancient Jews calling on certain attributes of God was not simply metaphorical. They abstractly identified attributes like “the Name” or “Wisdom” as God himself, as a second power that was in some ways distinct, but nonetheless identical to Yahweh himself. Lady Wisdom was not something created by God, otherwise God would not have always retained perfect wisdom, which would be absurd. Lady Wisdom was co-creator with God, and for Judaism, this essentially meant Lady Wisdom IS God.

It’s also important to remember that while the tradition has always anthropomorphized God we also know as it developed they came to see God not simply as some super powerful being but the very essence of existence itself, separate from the Creation yes, but not simply a being. For this reason I think the masculine connotation has less to do with gender itself (since God is not a being with a body) and more to do with an analogized status. I won’t hold it against someone for called God a “She” but I might question why they’re doing it. Is it actually out of faithful acknowledgment to Lady Wisdom, or is it for their own personal agenda of social justice?