Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

MOTHERS HOUSE

More accurately “mother’s household” (Heb. bêṯ ʾēm), indicating not simply a dwelling place but rather a social unit. It is the female-oriented counterpart to “father’s house(hold)” (bêṯ ʾāḇ), the normal term for the primary living group, used widely in reference to an extended or compound family group that may also have included nonfamily members such as servants or resident aliens. In addition to its human members, the household, as the basic economic unit of society, consisted of property (land), animals, pottery vessels, farm implements, and even objects of household religion. The attachment of the term “father” to “house” in the scores of instances in which the family household is mentioned leads to the conclusion that the household unit was male-dominated and patriarchal in nature, with the senior male figure controlling the dynamics and decisions of family life. The appearance of the term “mother’s house” in a small but significant set of passages calls that traditional interpretation into question.

In Gen. 24:28, in the endearing story of how Rebekah became Isaac’s wife, “mother’s household” apparently refers to the same entity (“father’s house”) mentioned several verses previously (v. 23; cf. 24:27). When Rebekah herself is depicted as going home, it is to her mother’s household that she runs. Ruth’s memorable statement of loyalty to her mother-in-law (Ruth 1:16) follows Naomi’s exhortation for both Ruth and Orpah to return, each to her “mother’s house” (v. 8). In the female-dominated Song of Solomon, the female expresses how dear her beloved is by speaking of bringing him to her “mother’s house” (Cant. 3:4; 8:2).

Several indirect references to a woman’s household appear in Proverbs. In Prov. 9:1 Woman Wisdom is depicted as having “built her house,” and in the succeeding verses she is shown managing her household. A reference to wise women building their houses appears in the Hebrew of Prov. 14:1 (the difficult Hebrew here means that English translations often delete the word “women”; cf. 24:3). The “worthy woman” poem of Prov. 31:10-31 describes a woman, clearly a mother (vv. 15, 28), skillfully managing her household’s functions, notably its economic ones.

Several characteristics found in most or all of these contexts are noteworthy: a woman’s story is being told; a wisdom association is present; women are agents in their own destiny; the agency of women affects others; the setting is domestic; marriage is involved. The term “mother’s house” apparently reflects the family household viewed from the female perspective. The household was the major arena of daily life for most Israelite women (and most men too); within that setting women’s voices were heard and their activities were essential. Women and their deeds shaped the dynamics of ancient Israel’s fundamental social unit. In the androcentric Hebrew Bible, these few instances in which the household is designated in relation to its senior female members provide a rare female angle of vision on the internal workings of family life. As anthropologists have noted, the formal documents of a society do not always map accurately the informal reality, which in this case may have been the way in which females were powerful actors in the daily affairs of Israelite households.

Bibliography. C. Meyers, Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (Oxford, 1988); “ ‘To Her Mother’s House’: Considering a Counterpart to the Israelite Bêtʾāb,” in The Bible and the Politics of Exegesis, ed. D. Jobling, P. L. Day, and G. T. Sheppard (Cleveland, 1991), 39-51, 304-7; L. Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” BASOR 260 (1985): 1-35.

Carol Meyers

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

MOTHERS HOUSE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)