Two Women of Philippi

There were so many good stories in the Come Follow Me reading for this week. One that podcasters discussed were the two women Paul met in Troas. The first was Lydia, a presumably successful business woman who produced the expensive purple dye valued by the Romans. In Acts 16:14-15 we learn that she "attended to the things which were spoken by Paul" and that after she was baptised, she "constrained" Paul and his companions to stay at her house. Two of the podcasters I listened to this week contrasted Lydia with another female we meet in the very next verse. She was possessed of a devil, which gave her the ability of soothsaying. She followed Paul and Silas around proclaiming that they were "servants of the most high God". Luke tells us that she was so annoying that Paul finally cast the spirit out of her, illiminating her value as a soothsayer, and angering her masters. The podcasters used Lydia as an example of the righteous believers, and the soothsayer as an example of the opposition.

I read the story a little differently. Yes, Lydia was awesome and her household became the main center of Jesus worship in the region. The Soothsayer, however, I saw as a victim, rather than an opponent. The scriptures call her a "damsel" (v. 16). The Greek word is παιδίσκην which suggests a young female slave. This term would not normally be used for a married woman, so she was probably just a teenager. When I read this passage this week, the term that came into my head was "human trafficking'". This girl's masters were exploiting her demonic possession for their own gain. The Soothsayer is a foil for Lydia not because Lydia was righteous and supportive of Paul and Silas, and the Soothsayer was opposed to them, but because Lydia was an independent woman of power and substance, and the Soothsayer was a young helpless girl in captivity. I really liked the fact that Paul finally released her from her possession, so that she could be possibly free from her masters and able to go forward with her life.