Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

MOTHER

According to a number of biblical texts, most women desire motherhood. Male narrators define motherhood as the social role that brings women honor and happiness, a view that disregards the frequency of miscarriage and infant mortality in antiquity and the possibility that a woman might object to risking her life repeatedly in pregnancy and childbirth. The ideas that many children are a blessing and that woman’s self-importance derives from giving birth are cultural constructs designed to encourage large families that promote agricultural prosperity, to insure social prestige for the fathers, and to divert feminine energy into maintaining a patriarchal structure whose margins house women and their children. The linkage of multiple pregnancies to curse and punishment in Gen. 3:16 probably catches more accurately the biblical woman’s ambivalence toward motherhood. When women do suffer and die in childbirth, their experiences are reinterpreted by male characters; e.g., acknowledging her suffering the dying Rachel names her new son ben-ʾônî (“son of my sorrow”), but Jacob renames him ben-yāmîn (“son of my right hand”), an expression of delight in his own virility.

Often a woman’s inability to conceive allows the storyteller to showcase divine power and potency. The heroes of Israel are born to women with shriveled wombs, who cannot conceive without divine assistance. Their stories glorify the might of Israel’s God at the expense of women like Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and Samson’s nameless mother. Their wombs are closed and opened in order to emphasize that, from the beginning, Israel’s existence has depended upon a divine graciousness at work in its circumcised members. Few female characters echo Eve’s joyful cry (Gen. 4:1) honoring woman’s active role in birth. Once mothers deliver their sons, they generally disappear from the story.

The prophets’ use of maternal imagery to describe God’s attitude toward Israel is also problematic. If the male Yahweh can provide a mother’s love for Israel, there is no need for a divine mother. In the same way, women themselves are seldom described acting as mothers, other than giving birth. Absent from the divine world, mothers are quickly dispatched to the fringes of their narratives. Rebekah and Bathsheba are notable exceptions; they guide and direct their favored sons long after Jacob and Solomon have attained adulthood. Sarah likewise intervenes to secure Isaac’s birthright by having Hagar and Ishmael banished from Abraham’s household. While the actions of these women benefit their sons, they also reinforce the misogyny within the biblical text, portraying women as divisive and manipulative, often at odds with their husbands, a potential threat to household order as they champion their favorites. Wisdom Literature offers a more positive view. The male narrator of Proverbs urges the young male reader to pay attention to his mother’s teachings. These teachings are the teachings of Woman Wisdom, who is lover, builder, teacher, prophet, wife, mother, divine companion, pattern for creation, Torah. Like the instruction of Wisdom, maternal instruction preserves the androcentric and patriarchal status quo.

In the NT, the pregnancies of Elizabeth and Mary celebrate divine power and favor, not female fertility and sexuality. Mary praises God for being so pleased with her lowliness that he has done great things for her (Luke 1:48-49). She later surfaces as an anxious mother searching for her adolescent son, whose words intrigue and puzzle her (Luke 2:41-51). Jesus’ response to praise of his mother in Matt. 12:46-50 subverts biological motherhood as a suitable definition for woman in the Christian community; even more blessed than his own mother are those who do the will of his father in heaven. In John’s Gospel Mary is doubly a sorrowful mother; she witnesses her son’s execution and is passed, without consultation, into the hand of the disciple he loved (John 19:25-27).

Kathleen S. Nash

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

MOTHER

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)