[First posted in 2014 on the occasion of
Mother’s Day. As the original introduction pointed out, “Mother’s Day follows Labor Day, makes you wonder if the holiday planners made an unconscious connection?”
We are reposting this in March, acknowledged as “Women’s Month”, to analyze how women in scripture fared as wives, mothers, and other roles they assumed in the culture of their times. Not a surprise, in patriarchal narratives women actually had a voice and in fact led men (fathers, husbands, brothers, sons) in decision-making. It did not always go well, but the record of their male counterparts were no less dismal; humans are prone to committing mistakes and making unwise decisions when we follow our will over and above the revealed Divine Will in any circumstance. Here’s a short list of notable women in the Hebrew Scriptures, named and unnamed.—Admin1]
When we seek role models for mothers in the Bible, the track record of women who are mentioned for what they did or did not do, is not all that impressive in some cases though surprising in others.
Consider Eve. Not the best role model as the first woman or the first mother. Her name in Hebrew is Hawwah – “living one” or “source of life”. “Eve” is from the Greek Eua, heua. She was named by Adam, who was assigned by the Creator the privilege of naming all living creatures. Hebrew names are usually descriptive, but to non-Hebrew speakers these descriptive words sound like names. Eve is rightly named, for it is she (and all born female) who is given the privilege of carrying to full term and birthing humans though unfortunately after the ‘fall’, according to Hebrew Scripture etiology the curse of painful childbirth befall all of her gender.
Having been created an adult with no female parent to ‘role model’ motherhood, Eve produces firstborn Cain who turns into someone a mother would not wish for — the murderer of her other son. Was Eve a failure motherwise? We keep forgetting that while one son made wrong choices, another seemed to have done right, at least in the only act for which he is commended by the Creator Himself — a pleasing and acceptable offering of the best of his flock. And there’s yet another son, Seth, from whom the line of other biblical figures like Noah and Abraham supposedly descended; again, as per Hebrew Scripture etiology.
The next mother figure is practically invisible in the flood narrative, this would be Noah’s wife. And yet she births and mothers three sons — Jepthah, Shem, and Ham —-who would repopulate the earth after all living creatures including humankind have been wiped out. The nameless wives of these sons are mentioned only in connection with their husbands, just like Mrs. Noah; not fair, don’t you think? After all, the surviving male population cannot reproduce all by themselves, that is why the command to Noah is to load the Ark with a pair of every species as the Creator-Designer had intended for ‘natural’ procreation and propagation of their kind, ‘male and female’ He did create them, not LGBT. Enough said.
Mrs. Abraham, ‘Sarai’ later changed to ‘Sarah [princess]—physiologically could not become a mother without God’s intervention and promise to her husband Abraham. She, like Eve, is not the best role model to emulate. For one, she laughed at God’s promise that she would bear a child in her old age and consequently, tired of waiting, convinces Abraham to father a child through her maid Hagar. Then she sends off Hagar not once, but twice. She holds the track record as far as we know, of birthing a son way beyond normal child-bearing age, something she herself was incredulous about from the beginning.
To her credit, she did produce an obedient son, Isaac. It has been speculated that her death was a result of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac because the narrative mentions her death thereafter although as it is in simple biblical narrative, we have to guess at the time-span between the two cited incidents. Rabbis connect the dots better than we do as casual readers unlearned in the Hebrew literary traditions.
Rebecca is next in line. She is sought out not by Isaac but by Abraham through his servant Eliezer. She marries Isaac, bears him twins, and since Isaac favors the older twin Esau, she favors the younger twin Jacob. She teaches Jacob to be conniving and together they manage to fool Isaac into giving the birthright and blessing of first-out-of-the-womb-firstborn Esau, to his younger twin. The rest of the story is recorded in Genesis 25-33.
The mothers of the 12 sons of Jacob get to be confusing if one reads casually. There are two sisters,
- Leah and
- Rachel,
—-and two servant-concubines
- Bilhah [Rachel’s] and
- Zilpah [Leah’s].
From these four women are born the 12 sons of Israel:
- Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah [Leah];
- Dan and Napthali [Bilhah];
- Gad and Asher [Zilpah];
- Issachar and Zebulun [Leah];
- Joseph and Benjamin [Rachel].
Such an extended family from the patriarch Jacob renamed Israel shows a complicated triad-relationship between husband/wives-sisters-mothers:
- Rachel is more loved than Leah,
- one is fertile while the other is barren,
- maidservants get into the picture due to the rivalry.
The effect on the next generation is not discussed, but trouble in a family such as this is to be expected.
Two last tidbits related to subsequent generations:
- there is one daughter born to Jacob and Leah, this is Dinah who is raped by Hamor, the prince of Shechem. Simeon and Levi, her brothers, exact vengeance and this has consequences on their future.
- Then there’s the firstborn of Jacob, Reuben, he defiled his father’s bed with Bilhah so he loses his birthright as firstborn to the sons of Joseph born in Egypt from an Egyptian mother.
Read all about it in Genesis 34 and 35.
By the time we get to the Moses narratives, women are key to the early years of this greatest of biblical figures. He owes his being born—-
- first to YHWH of course,
- then the midwives who did not obey Pharaoh’s orders to kill all the male babies,
- then to Jochebed who gave him birth and put him on a floating cradle
- with sister Miriam watching closeby
- when the Egyptian princess discovers him and claims him as her adopted son.
Midwives, mother, sister, princess—save the life of the baby-son-brother-adopted child, to whom YHWH not only reveals His Name, but His Plan of Redemption for His yet-to-be-formed nation.
And then there’s wife Zipporah who connects Moses with the Midianites. And Deborah in Judges 4 (no spoon-feeding here, do your homework!).
One more mother worth mentioning would be Naomi in the story of Ruth. Bereft of husband and two sons who die in the land of Moab, she turns bitter and releases her daughters-in-law before returning to her homeland but one, Ruth, chooses to return with her, giving one of the best quotes for gentile proselytes:
“Your people will be my people,
your God will be my God.”
Ruth marries Boaz and mothers Obed who is the ancestor of David.
Next in line would be Bathsheba who became David’s wife under most sinful circumstances (adultery and murder) and yet she mothers the third king of Israel, Solomon, to whom is given the privilege of building the magnificent Temple in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, despite the wisdom Solomon is given which he himself asked for, he hardly applied that wisdom as King, having ended up with roughly—700 wives and 300 concubines. For other reasons related to the complication of fathering competing heirs, the united monarchy which he inherited from his father David split into two, not the greatest legacy for a supposed “wise” king.
So . . . what is the influence of women and motherhood in a patriarchal society? Did they make a difference in the lives of Israel’s patriarchs and their progeny?
Yes, of course . . . though it appears, at least in this short list of stories where some women contributed to making life complicated for their husbands and their sons, that unfortunately some hands that rocked the cradle also rocked the boat!
But let us not blame women altogether for the state of affairs in a world of two specifically-designed-natural-genders, there’s Father’s Day coming up next month . . . .
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