My permanent hiatus from criticizing religion from a religious skeptic’s standpoint

“Roots of Barrenness

In agrarian societies during the biblical period (1200-600 BCE), bearing children was highly valued and women’s primary role was that of mother. Birthing and raising children, however, were fraught, given the high rate of maternal death in childbirth and of infant mortality; only half of all children born survived to the age of five. In the biblical stories of barren women, maternity is further complicated in order to heighten the drama of the arrival of the promised son, emphasizing the divine role in conception and birth. In the case of the patriarchal stories in Genesis, the matriarchs’ barrenness emphasizes that it is God who disrupts continuity, in the transition from one generation to the next, and then selects the true heir to the covenant.

In the Bible and until quite recently, the problem of infertility was attributed physiologically to women, though ultimately it was God who was seen as holding the keys to opening and closing the womb (Mishnah Taanit 3:8). Only female figures are identified by the descriptor “barren [‘aqarah]” (Genesis 11:30, 25:21, 29:31; Judges 13:2, 3; 1 Samuel 2:5; Psalms 113:9; Job 24:21), derived from the Hebrew root ‘qr, meaning “to uproot or pluck up,” the opposite of “to plant” [nt‘] (Ecclesiastes 3:2). A woman’s infertility might also be marked by the phrase “she had no progeny” (as in Genesis 11:30, Judges 13:2, 2 Kings 4:14). Often these biblical women suffered deep shame as a consequence, their barrenness attributed to some hidden wrong, sin, or flaw. Sarai confronts Abram, when she is slighted in Hagar’s eyes: “May the wrong done to me be on you!” (Genesis 16:5). When Rachel pleads with Jacob, “Give me children or else I die” (30:1), her husband answers: “Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” (v. 2); when the matriarch finally conceives, she names her son Joseph [Yosef], “for God has taken away my reproach” (v. 23). Peninah, mother of Elkanah’s children, made Hannah miserable, taunting her because “God had closed her womb” (1 Samuel 1:6).” -Jewish Women’s Archive

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