"God Is a Woman" was first teased in a scene in the music video for lead single "No Tears Left to Cry", which displayed what appears to be a working track listing for the upcoming album.

[4] During an interview with SiriusXM's Radio Andy, Camila Cabello commented that "God Is a Woman" was initially written for her, but eventually stating that "it didn't end up sounding right for me.

[6][7] It was characterized as a pop-hip hop hybrid track that blends "trip hoppy-R&B" and soft rock with influences of reggae over "hypnotic" trap-pop production.

[6][8][9][10] Time described the song as "an anthemic, sultry banger", and noted that "Grande's voice is layered so that it sounds like a choir, but really, it's only her, multiplied.

Mike Nied of Idolator described it as "a sexually liberated bop", writing: "The beat picks up as [Grande] moves into the chorus.

The track is full of chilly, hypnotic trap beats, tasteful drops and electronic squawks, atop which Grande harmonizes with herself to suck listeners into the world she's created for three-and-a-half minutes.

[Grande] performs with a maturity that her last two singles lacked, taking a fairly simple formula—heroic female pop vocals plus entrancing trap beats—and turning it into a bite-sized masterpiece.

The track probably won't put to bed any controversial theological debates, but it sure made a lot of people believe in something tonight.

[22] Following the release of Sweetener and its performance at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards on August 20, 2018, "God Is a Woman" jumped 22 positions on the Hot 100 from number 30 to number 8, becoming Grande's tenth top-ten single there and placing her as the twelfth overall artist and seventh female artist with the most Hot 100 top 10s in the 2010s decade.

It has since reached number six there, earning Grande her ninth top-10 on the Radio Songs chart and giving her the most top 10s among women since her first, "Problem" in June 2014, surpassing Taylor Swift who has amassed eight since that date.

The video pays homage to The Creation of Adam, Romulus and Remus, astronomy, female genitalia, and other visual imagery similar to that of "No Tears Left to Cry", also directed by Meyers, as well as Greek mythology.

[39][40] The next scene then displays Grande dancing inside the flame of a candle,[41] followed by her sitting on top of the Earth "fingering" a hurricane.

[39][42] The music then stops for the next scene, where a group of rodents come out of their mounds in an arid landscape, prior to one of them screaming,[40] whom according to Grande, represent "the frustration of being a woman and feeling misunderstood.

[36] In the next scene, the music stops again and Grande lip-syncs to a voiceover appearance by Madonna, who recites a version of Ezekiel 25:17 (as in the 1994 film Pulp Fiction)[42][44][45] while Grande stands inside a replica of the Roman Pantheon, before using a hammer to break the glass ceiling of the building, exposing the legs of a large woman and a light engulfing the area between the two.

[46] Several of the final scenes include Grande holding balloons in the shape of various planets while walking a tightrope, her standing in the middle of a worshiping crowd, and her appearing on top of a lighthouse's deck.

"[48] The Atlantic's Spencer Kornhaber additionally opined that the video had "a comedy to [its] conceptual overload and shabby-chic CGI effects, but what exactly the punchline is isn’t clear,"[10] whilst Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine added it to the magazine's 'The 20 Best Music Videos of 2018' list, while referring to it as "digital eye candy.