Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

NURSE

Nurses (Heb. mêneqeṯ, ʾōmeneṯ) and midwives (mĕyalleḏeṯ) helped households determine which women would bear children, when couples would have intercourse, who would adopt children, and who would nurse them. In many households only one wife conceived, bore, adopted, and nursed its sons and daughters (Gen. 21:7; Exod. 2:7; 1 Sam. 1:23; 1 Kgs. 3:21; Cant. 8:1; 2 Macc. 7:27), but in some households a child could be carried by one woman, adopted by another, and nursed by yet another (Gen. 24:59; 35:8; Ruth 4:13-17; 2 Kgs. 11:2 = 2 Chr. 22:11). Jochebed (Exod. 6:20) conceives and breast-feeds Moses, but the daughter of Pharaoh adopts him (1:22–2:10); Ruth conceives Obed, but Naomi adopts and nurses him (Ruth 4:13-17). Breast-feeding immunized children against disease and reduced the chance of a mother conceiving again before she had weaned the child she was nursing; females were weaned in 18 months, males in 30.

The Bible celebrates God as mother, midwife, and nurse. God cradles humanity in his arms (Isa. 46:3-4; Hos. 11:3-4), breast-feeds humanity (Deut. 32:13-14; Isa. 49:15; Hos. 11:4; 2 Esdr. 1:28-29; John 7:37-38; 1 Pet. 2:2-3), and weans humanity to solid food (Wis. 16:20-21; Ps. 131:1-2). Midwives and nurses are metaphors for God creating the cosmos, birthing the first humans, beginning each day, and delivering the eschaton (Lam. 4:4; Joel 2:16). The governing of a state (Num. 11:12; Esth. 2:7; Isa. 49:23) and the care of Christian communities (1 Thess. 2:7) are also modeled on the service of midwives and nurses in the biblical world.

Bibliography. D. C. Benjamin, “Israel’s God: Mother and Midwife,” BTB 19 (1989): 115-20; B. Jordan, Birth in Four Cultures, 4th ed. (Prospect Heights, Ill., 1993).

Don C. Benjamin

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

NURSE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)