Biblical

Interpretation

Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178 www.brill.nl/bi

e Myth of Birthing the Hero:

Heroic Barrenness in the Hebrew Bible

Rachel Havrelock
University of Illinois at Chicago

Abstract
Motherhood in the Hebrew Bible has been celebrated as indicative of female strength
as well as derided as patriarchy’s primary entrapment. Somewhere between the two,
birth figures as a moment of narrative focus on female characters during which they
reformulate their status. Birth seems to travel with its companion theme of barrenness
as most central biblical characters undergo a prolonged period of infertility and an
attendant struggle to conceive. Employing theories of the hero pattern, this essay
argues that the movement from barrenness to fertility is a mode of female initiation
into a relationship with the divine. While an explicit covenant promises men innu-
merable descendants and founder status, it is not realized until a parallel female cove-
nant is forged. Where God makes the covenantal overture to men, women demand
recognition through speech and deed. Barrenness motivates articulations that reveal
concern with female memory and legacy and actions that distill the characters of indi-
vidual women. Female volition draws divine attention and results in conception that,
like circumcision, physically marks an alliance with God. e mothers encode their
struggles and journeys from barrenness to fertility in the names of their children.
Combining folklore and feminist methodologies, the essay proposes new parameters
for understanding female heroism in the Hebrew Bible.

Keywords
women, fertility, heroines, matriachs, mythology, Hebrew Bible, hero pattern

Mortality and Memory

e covenant between the God of Israel and Hebrew males is drawn in
blood. Circumcision, the epidermal absence that denotes the eternal
presence of Yahweh, operates as a sign of the reciprocal remembering
of man and God and a “fruitful cut” that initiates the body as a vehicle

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/156851508X262948

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for national reproduction.1 Its reproductive and mnemonic functions

coincide since descendents hold the place of their forerunners and sus-
tain relation to the deity through ritual. As scholars have noted, such
interplay of covenant, lineage and ritual is systemically patriarchal and
lacks any provision for the sustenance of female memory. Upholding
this position, what I suggest against the grain of current scholarship is
that the tales of overcoming barrenness in the Hebrew Bible disrupt a
purely patriarchal construction of lineage and exhibit the reproductive
necessity of a covenant between women and God. I argue further that
prior interpretations of the barrenness motif have focused too narrowly
on the child and not the mother, on the ends and not on the means.
When considering the mother instead of the child, the story becomes
about the ways in which women discover and then transcend the lim-
its of their circumstances transforming their bodies and social status in
the process.
Barrenness or difficulty in conception is the Proppian lack that
serves as a catalyst for this variety of female tale and likewise causes the
biblical plot to divert from its usual focus on the male quest to secure a
place in the land and the protection of God to the female imperative
to secure a name and a form of longevity. Female infertility indicates a
breakdown of God’s promise to the patriarchs that “a nation, an assem-
bly of nations shall stem from you, and kings shall come forth from
your loins” (Gen. 35:11) as well as an impediment to the fulfillment of
the command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 35:11).2 e cove-
nant it seems is not self-perpetuating nor can it generate memory in its
restrictive form. Neither male loyalty nor devotion can repair this gap
between humanity and God that can be bridged only by female initia-
tive. Where God calls upon male heroes in distant locales and stipu-

1)
Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, “e Fruitful Cut,” in e Savage in Judaism. (Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 141-176.
2)
“Abram is promised land, seed, and blessing in 12:1-3 and this is echoed for Isaac
in 26:3 and Jacob in 28:13. What is of added interest is that these elements are also
repeated for each father after the successful completion of his tasks at the end of each
patriarchal unit (22:17, 26:24, 35:12)…Sarah, Rebekka and Rachel are initially bar-
ren; all three fathers go outside the land because of famine and drought,” Michael
Fishbane, “Composition and Structure in the Jacob Cycle (Gen. 25:19-35:22),” Jour-
nal of Jewish Studies 26 (1975), pp. 36-37.

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lates clear covenantal terms, the heroines must go to extreme lengths in

order to be recognized and improvise a kind of covenant never sancti-
fied as such that nonetheless is marked in their bodies and secures their
memory. A relationship of inversion is evident in that the male cove-
nant is ritually enacted through the shedding of blood and the female
covenant becomes manifest at conception through the absence of men-
strual blood.3 In other words, the movement from barrenness to fertil-
ity parallels the plot of the hero pattern as presented in Genesis while
interrupting the construction of uniquely male genealogy and legacy.
Esther Fuchs boldly precedes me in her study of “e Literary Char-
acterization of Mothers and Sexual Politics in the Hebrew Bible” where
she takes on the “recurrent motif of the miraculous conception of a
barren woman” and its alleged agenda of naturalizing and legitimating
male dominance.4 Fuchs’ astute analysis charts a kind of movement
from Sarah to the Great Woman of Shunem in which “a consistently
increasing emphasis on the potential mother as the true heroine”
becomes apparent.5 While, as I will show, I see a different pattern at
work, it is not on this count that I take issue with Fuchs’ reading.
Rather I suggest that her attention to context clouds the nuances of the
texts themselves in which female volition grabs divine attention and
reformulates alliances. Let me be clear that I agree with Fuchs in her
assessment of the patriarchal environment in which the stories are
found and that “the procreative context is the only one which allows
for a direct communication between woman and Yhwh (or his mes-
senger).”6 I do not subscribe to an apologetic view that essentializes the

3)
is is a variation of a proposal by the medieval exegete, Bekhor Shor, who pro-
posed “that the blood of menstruation…within the context of the observance of the
Jewish rules of menstrual purity and impurity, is the female analogue to male circum-
cision,” Shaye J.D. Cohen, Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Cove-
nant in Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 196. In the barren
mother stories, it is not menstruation but its absence that points to a covenantal
agreement. Furthermore conception, like circumcision, requires devotional action.
4)
Esther Fuchs, “e Literary Characterization of Mothers and Sexual Politics in the
Hebrew Bible,” in Alice Bach (ed.), Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader (New York:
Routledge, 1999), pp. 127-140 (128).
5)
Fuchs, “Literary Characterization of Mothers,” p. 128.
6)
Fuchs, “Literary Characterization of Mothers,” p. 138.

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stories of matriarchs as evidence that maternity equals female power7

nor do I propose an “appropriative” strategy in which the barren
women are repatriated as subversive characters bent on tearing down
the edifice of male privilege.8 Rather in reading the female actions that
Fuchs refuses to read, I identify a distinct female hero pattern.
Female figures that follow the male hero pattern have been recog-
nized, yet a distinctive female hero pattern has yet to be identified.9
Where the male heroes seek to conquer, claim and sanctify land, the
female heroes strive to inscribe their memory on the bodies of their
heirs; the acts of birthing and naming function as the counterpart to
those of settling and inaugurating territory.10 e female journey from
barrenness to fertility parallels the migrations through which the patri-
archs achieve intimacy with the divine. Indeed biblical heroines also
travel and make geographies vivid for biblical readers through their
exploits, but it is not in this sphere that they are said to achieve a rela-
tionship with the divine.11 Negotiation of the poles of barrenness and
fertility affords the heroines the opportunity to wrestle with man, God
and social position.

7)
See Leila Leah Bronner, Stories of Biblical Mothers: Maternal Power in the Hebrew
Bible (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2004).
8)
Fuchs, “Literary Characterization of Mothers,” p. 127.
9)
On female heroes, see Mary Ann Jezewski, “Traits of the Female Hero: e Appli-
cation of Raglan’s Concept of Hero Trait Patterning,” New York Folklore 10 (1984),
pp. 55-73; Coline Covington, “In Search of the Heroine,” Journal of Analytical Psy-
chology 34 (1989), pp. 243-254; Robert A. Segal, Hero Myths (Malden, Massachusetts:
Blackwell Publishers, 2000), pp. 116-124.
10)
e male journey of biblical narrative is a long-recognized variation of the hero
pattern with its external direction involving departure; tests; encounters visual, audi-
tory or visceral with God; the struggle with the son; and the ultimate establishment of
a clan or state structure. When a male hero encounters God, it is always outside, in a
grove of trees, on a mountain, or on the banks of a river. e God whom these heroes
seek, then, is one external to them, one for whom they must search. For the hero in
biblical narrative, see Ronald S. Hendel, e Epic of the Patriarch: e Jacob Cycle and
the Narrative Traditions of Canaan and Israel (HSM 42; Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1987).
11)
Hagar the Egyptian (Gen. 16, 21) and Ruth the Moabite (Ruth) as foreign women
have stories that blend elements of the male and the female journey stories.

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Otto Rank’s instincts about the centrality of birth in accounts of

heroism expressed in his 1909 essay, “e Myth of the Birth of the
Hero,” were correct. What Rank did not perceive correctly however
was the degree to which the birth of the hero is the culmination of a
female quest as well as the initiation of the hero into a maternal tradi-
tion of struggle followed by achievement. Rank casts the mother as a
blameworthy character that initially fails to give birth, surrenders the
hard-won son, withholds maternal nourishment and affiliates with her
infanticidal husband rather than her offspring. e child’s desire to be
rid of his father is vented by the reverse plot of the father’s attempts at
infanticide where anger at the maternal failure to adequately protect
and provide for her child finds its outlet in the fantasy that the mother
faced obstacles in conception or birth and later abandoned her infant.
e Gospel accounts of the virgin birth, according to Rank, offer a
corrective by eliminating the father and fulfilling oedipal desires by
replacing barrenness with virginity.12 e female body figures a site of
trauma and denial that the hero will need reinvestigate and conquer in
his later years as an erotic topos.13
I cite Rank because he intimates that the hero pattern arises from
parturient memories, but particularly in order to reverse his model by
focusing on the transforming process of birthing the hero rather than
the wounding experience of the hero’s birth.14 My enterprise recuper-

12)
Otto Rank, e Trauma of Birth (New York: Robert Brunner, 1952), p. 79.
13)
“Rank states it explicitly: repression of the birth trauma leads to oppression of
women,” Mieke Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 60.
14)
A rewriting of Rank with emphasis on the mother rather than the child would
read something like this: barrenness, it seems, expresses female frustration with the
limitations of marriage and the discovery of the husband’s weaknesses. When the
statement of protest that challenges these weaknesses fails to render results, the woman
establishes herself as the temporary head of the household by engineering a birth
through surrogacy or otherwise taking her fate into her own hands. By causing
another woman to become pregnant, for example, the future matriarch plays the part
of husband and thus temporarily solves the birth problem. Finding herself dissatisfied
with the adoption of another woman’s son, the woman again feels frustration with her
body and her husband. e frustration is mediated by a splitting similar to that in
Rank’s hero pattern where the positive and negative aspects of the child’s parents are
split into two sets of parents, the hostile set that abandons the child and the benevo-

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ates the much-maligned mother by considering birth from the mater-

nal perspective rather than from that of the child. e pool from which
I draw my paradigm includes the tales of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel,
Leah, Hannah, the mother of Samson and the Great Woman of Shu-
nem, all biblical women who overcome barrenness through a combina-
tion of articulation and initiative.
e steps of this journey are:
1. Barrenness
2. Statement of protest
3. Direct action
4. Encounter with God
5. Conception
6. Birth
7. Naming
is pattern drives the plot and organizes the accounts of the above
named biblical mothers. With this outline, I am not arguing for an ur-
version or positing dependence on an earlier form, but rather showing
the affinity between the birthing stories and suggesting that the mean-
ing of the barrenness motif is generated through this interrelationship.
As we will see, variations in the pattern as well as omission of certain
steps offer insight into particularities of specific characters.

Barrenness
From one perspective barrenness can be read as a crisis of the male cov-
enant, however from another perspective it highlights the absence of
relationship between a particular woman and God. e pathos involved
with establishing such a relationship is compounded by the sadness,
fear and anger concerning the possibility of being left out of the divine

lent set that rescues and raises the child. In the female hero pattern, the weak and the
powerful aspects of the husband are split into an ineffectual human spouse who ini-
tially fails to impregnate and an all-powerful divine spouse who engenders a child.
Once the powerful aspects of the husband are rediscovered through a woman’s inti-
macy with the divine, reconciliation ensues. e postnatal naming ceremony provides
the woman a chance to articulate the results of her initiative and thereby establish a
respected position within the family hierarchy.

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promise and familial status. Infertility characterizes the introduction of

Sarai “who was barren and had no child” (Gen. 11:30) and troubles
the genealogy that provides her background. As the failure of Abra-
ham’s father, Terah, to reach Canaan (11:31) enables Abraham to be
the pioneer propelled by the impetus of covenant, so Sarah’s initial fail-
ure to conceive leads ultimately to her co-creative relationship with
God. e terse opening of Genesis 16, “Sarai, the wife of Abram, had
not given birth to his children,” attests that the grandiose promises,
visionary proof and covenantal pledge made to Abraham (15:1-21)
have no effect on Sarah’s body.
Much about Rebekah’s character is revealed through the nuances of
her confrontation with infertility. When she is barren, Isaac acting as
proxy utters the attendant statement of protest (Gen. 25:21). Follow-
ing his supplication, Rebekah conceives and her encounter with the
divine occurs during her pregnancy rather than before conception
(Gen. 25:22-23). e employment of Isaac as a proxy foreshadows the
way in which Rebekah secures the first-born blessing for her preferred,
second-born son. Assuming moral responsibility, Rebekah sends a dis-
guised Jacob in place of Esau in order to receive the blessing from the
blind Isaac (Gen. 27:6-13). Here Jacob serves as Rebekah’s proxy, but
also goes before his father when it is his brother’s turn. e dispatch of
Jacob is further the means through which Rebekah enacts her prenatal
prophecy that her older son will serve her younger (Gen. 25:23). Her
encounter with God occurs through the medium of this prophecy that
binds the divine and the female in the plan to upset the hierarchy of
birth order.15 e theme of stand-ins and replacements in Rebekah’s
story reveals the aspect of her character that circumvents hierarchies
and capitalizes on the ambiguities of representation in order to reshuf-
fle birth order.
Rachel’s movement from barrenness to fertility reveals the degree to
which she is Jacob’s counterpart, a shepherdess trickster out to circum-

15)
e revelation of the prophecy to Rebekah instead of Isaac also upsets the ‫תולדת‬
(genealogical) pattern of the names of male ancestors with which Rebekah’s birth
story begins (Gen. 25:1-20). While the ‫ תולדת‬pattern prepares the reader for an
emphasis on Isaac’s role in the birth, the expectation is defied when the focus shifts to
Rebekah.

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vent birth order along with paternal will and wrest the best blessing
from God. Where Jacob’s story results from a split with his brother,
Rachel’s is contoured by the fact that she must live alongside her sister
as co-wife. Where the narrator of the romance between Jacob and
Rachel emphasizes three times that Jacob “loves” her (Gen. 29:18, 20,
30), God infers that Leah is “hated” and intervenes by making Leah
fertile and Rachel barren. Since it seems as if Leah also hates her,
Rachel’s infertility becomes doubly bitter in the shadow of Leah’s cele-
brations of the births of her first four sons. As Leah exults that “God
has seen my pain,” and “God has heard that I am hated and given me
another one,” speculates that “maybe this time my husband will bond
with me,” and resolves that “this time I will thank God,” she names her
sons Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah (Gen. 29:32-35). While mark-
ing her triumphs and articulating her desire for marital love in the
names of her sons, Leah bequeaths them sibling rivalry, an inheritance
that drives the story of Joseph and his brothers. While no one can call
a woman with four children barren, even Leah experiences a period
during which she cannot conceive (Gen. 29:35).
Hannah’s barrenness resembles Rachel’s insofar as she is the more
beloved of two wives (1 Sam. 1:5) and therefore taunted by her fertile
counterpart (1:6-7). Again God seems to engineer an almost perverse
correspondence between being loved and being barren. God’s hand in
the matter becomes clear not only because Peninnah the co-wife has
children where Hannah has none (1 Sam. 1:2), but also in the associa-
tion of the uxorious attention directed toward Hannah with God’s
closing of her womb (1:5). Hannah’s desperation results from the dura-
tion of her barrenness marked “year after year” during the family’s pil-
grimage to Shiloh (1 Sam. 1:7). Where Hannah ultimately pledges her
son to God, promising that “no razor will touch his head” (1 Sam.
1:11), the unnamed barren woman of Judges 13 is diagnosed as infer-
tile by an angel, told that she will conceive, and ordered to rear the
child as a Nazirite, never letting “a razor touch his head” (Judg. 13:5).
e Great Woman of Shunem never identifies herself as barren. at
the narrator also never labels her as such suggests that perhaps she does
not belong in the category of barren women. Yet because there are
aspects of her story that conform to the pattern, it warrants examina-
tion. e Great Woman of Shunem’s reproductive future becomes an

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issue through her relationship with Elisha the Prophet. Where the
Prophet’s disciples and their descendants demand sustenance (2 Kgs
4:1-7, 4:38-41), require that shelter be provided for them (2 Kgs 6:1-
7) and, in one case, go behind his back to extort money (2 Kgs 5:20-
27), the Great Woman of Shunem provides Elisha with food (2 Kgs
4:8), shelter (4:10) and comfort (4:11). Feeling a sense of indebtedness
never expressed by his disciples, Elisha inquires as to what he can do to
repay her generosity. After the Great Woman of Shunem replies that
she is content and self-sufficient (2 Kgs 4:13), Elisha’s disciple, Gehazi,
speaks up to announce that she has an aged husband and no child.
Indeed, not having a child and being barren are qualitatively distinct.
Perhaps the Great Woman of Shunem had no desire for a child until
Elisha arrived and began making promises. Still, the manner in which
the lack of offspring is addressed resembles the dynamics surrounding
the more explicitly barren women. e measures that each woman
takes to reverse the situation of infertility are simultaneously the means
through which she forges a relationship with God either directly or
though an intermediary.

Protest
Rather than accepting the status quo, many of the barren women react
with a statement of protest. ese moments of female articulation chal-
lenge spouse and God alike to participate in the woman’s grief as well
as in her determination to reverse the situation. By refusing to submit
to a present reality, the barren women initiate change. Sarah, for exam-
ple, proposes surrogacy to Abraham as a potential means of providing
her with an heir and perhaps of testing his fertility. “Look, Yahweh pre-
vents me from giving birth, try with my maidservant, maybe I will be
built up from her” (Gen. 16:2). Identifying God as the source of her
barrenness, Sarah speaks only to her concerns. Abraham’s covenant is
not at stake, rather her desire that her household, status and name be
“built up” through a child. Although directed to Abraham, the state-
ment of protest evokes God and shows Sarah’s willingness to assume
the role of creator by engineering conception. at “Abram listened to
Sarai’s voice” (Gen. 16:2b), meaning that he acceded and followed suit,
emphasizes the power of her act of speech.

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Although partially motivated by jealousy of her sister, Rachel directs

the force of her protest toward Jacob by demanding, “Give me chil-
dren, for if you don’t, I’m a dead woman” (Gen. 30:1). Her statement
emphasizes her personal need for children through the repetition of
first person pronouns; she is concerned with her memory and her own
lineage. Jacob’s need for descendants may be satisfied through the birth
of Leah’s sons, but he must, at the same time, preserve Rachel’s indi-
vidual legacy.16 Her choice of words has multiple resonances since
Rachel equates her inability to give birth with death, emphasizes that
her story will never be told if not condensed in the name of a child and
will eventually die giving birth to her second son.
e protest statement of the female journey tends to oppose not
only the state of barrenness, but also the limits set on female auton-
omy. In this case, Rachel speaks to the threat of her negation should
she not reproduce. Perceiving the limits of her own power, she turns to
the person with immediate power over her, her husband, Jacob. Jacob
deflects responsibility and in fury wonders why Rachel places him in
the role of God who has denied her the fruit of the womb (Gen. 30:2).
In her desperation Rachel stands accused of the incorrect interpreta-
tion of signs; however, had she not spoken out, she would not have
known where to direct her discontent. e power to create life is not
among those dealt to Jacob in his blessing, but rather is a question of
God’s cooperation with Rachel’s imperative. Leah’s statement of protest

16)
In her comparative study of anthropological and biblical traditions of sacrifice,
Nancy Jay proposes that each of Genesis’ sources (J, E, P) has a particular orientation
toward matriliny while sustaining “a continuing tension between descent from fathers
and descent from mothers” (p. 97). In her view, the J source highlights the tension by
setting the better part of Jacob’s adulthood in matrilineal Haran where the sisters vie
for predominance. e E source lets the competition between the patriline and matri-
line stand while consistently favoring the paternal imperative and deprecating the
maternal line with questionable actions like Rachel’s theft of her fathers goods. P, fol-
lowing a program of suppressing female names in genealogical reports, never lets on
that the mothers are invested in a rivalry of lineage with their husbands. As I argue
throughout, the redactor forms the stories according to a recognizable pattern that
parallels the male hero pattern with its covenantal climaxes. Nancy Jay, “Sacrifice,
Descent, and the Patriarchs,” in roughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Reli-
gion and Paternity (Chicago: e University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 94-111.

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is coupled with the actions that she and Rachel take to conceive and
therefore will be further analyzed in the next section. Here we note
that Leah’s initial protest is lodged against Rachel for usurping Jacob’s
love then demanding Leah’s help in battling infertility (Gen. 30:15)
and her subsequent protest is aimed at Jacob for forcing her to hire
him from Rachel for a single night (Gen. 30:16).
Hannah’s protest takes the forms of supplication, prayer (1 Sam.
1:10) and oath-taking (1:11). Her desperation is evident beyond her
tears by the fact that she defies convention to offer a personal prayer as
a woman at the temple of God. Hannah addresses God directly, pledg-
ing her child to God if he will help her to conceive. “O Lord of Hosts,
if you will acknowledge the suffering of your servant, remember me,
not forget your servant, but give your servant a male child, then I will
dedicate him to God all the days of his life” (1 Sam. 1:11). Hannah’s
protest touches on the theme of God’s forgetfulness as the cause of bar-
renness. In light of the penalties with which Israel is threatened should
it forget the covenant, the Exodus and the commandments, Hannah’s
exhortation that God not neglect her memory speaks to her urgency in
forging an individual covenant. e other covenantal aspect of her vow
is its reciprocity. Despite the repeated assurance that Hannah speaks to
God as a “servant,” she proposes an exchange between equals. If God
will give her ‫ נתתּה‬a son, she will give him ‫ נתתּיו‬to God.
It is a great shame that the woman of Judges 13, the future mother
of Samson, utters no statement of protest. I say this not because it dis-
turbs my paradigm, but rather because the husband’s speaking where
the woman should renders the scene something of a bungled annunci-
ation. After her initial encounter with the angel who promises her a
Nazirite son, the woman reports her vision to her husband. Like Isaac,
her husband, Manoah, addresses God as a proxy and requests that the
angel reappear (Judg. 13:8). When the angel reappears to the woman,
Manoah intervenes in order to hear a recapitulation of the instructions
given to his wife. Unable to grasp that the angel seeks an audience with
his wife alone, he rambles on, extending inappropriate invitations
(Judg. 13:15) and asking unanswerable questions (13:17). By placing
the story of Samson’s mother in the context of the barrenness stories,
we see the mistakes and excesses of a man interposing himself between
a woman and God.

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As stated above, the Great Woman of Shunem does not ask for a
child nor does she utter a statement of protest concerning her childless
state. However, after Elisha’s disciple, Gehazi, anticipates what she may
desire and Elisha pledges that in a year’s time she will cradle a baby, she
asks that Elisha not deceive her with false promises (2 Kgs 4:16). It
seems that the Great Woman of Shunem would rather be content with
a life of her design than harbor illusions of motherhood. e fortitude
that she displays throughout her trials warrants admiration. e Great
Woman of Shunem’s husband who in this case goes unnamed seems
almost as clueless as Manoah. e child, also unnamed, becomes
gravely ill while in his care and his father’s response is “take him to his
mother” (2 Kgs 4:19). Following the son’s death as the Woman hurries
toward Elisha, her husband wonders why she would make such a pil-
grimage when it is not a holiday (2 Kgs 4:23). Upon reaching Elisha,
she releases the passion of protest by rushing to his person and implor-
ing, “Did I ask my Lord for a son, did I not say, do not mislead me” (2
Kgs 4:28). e Great Woman of Shunem’s protest erupts when faced
with the death of her child rather than when frustrated by childless-
ness.

Action
e language of protest sets the course of action. As she proposed,
Sarah “takes” her maidservant, Hagar the Egyptian, and presents her to
Abraham in the name of producing an heir which Sarah intends on
claiming as her own. e degree to which she seizes male power is
expressed in the verb “took” also used when Abraham and his brother
“take wives” (Gen. 11:29) as well as when Abraham’s father, Terah,
“took” his family from Ur Kasdim to Haran (Gen. 11:31). As the verb
that characterizes male agency within the family is ascribed to Sarah,
so her actions of using a female body to her own ends have a patriar-
chal flavor. When Sarah abuses Hagar (Gen. 16:6) and drives her from
the household (21:10), the negative aspects of emulating male domi-
nance come into relief. While the action may not be laudable in the
same way that the actions of the Patriarchs are often ethically question-
able, it shows the degree to which Sarah claims reproductive agency.

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 166 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178

e actions taken by the barren women to affect their transforma-

tion disprove Fuchs’ thesis that “woman has no control at all over her
reproductive potential.”17 Such potential rather is never actualized
unless the women take control. Between Sarah’s direct action and her
divine encounter, the covenant between Abraham and God becomes
manifest physically through circumcision. Shaye Cohen observes that
the theme of Genesis 17 is “covenant and fertility,” specifically male
covenant and fertility, and identifies what he calls “the Sarah paradox.”18
Sarah, uninitiated into the covenant, seems to function as only a vessel
for the promised seed and yet “maternal filiation is essential to the cov-
enantal process” since only Sarah’s son and not Hagar’s benefits from
it.19 e paradox to a certain degree is resolved in the biblical text by
the fact that the generative dimension of the covenant carries no force
until there is a parallel bond forged between a woman and God. Abra-
ham may be the first to hear of Sarah’s son (Gen. 17:16,19,21) and the
first to laugh at the possibility (17:17), but there is no last laugh until
Sarah and God come to know one another. e realization of God’s
promises to Abraham requires Sarah’s intervention.
e space between barrenness and fertility is a gap in the relation-
ship between Rachel and God that she must bridge through symbolic
acts. By employing her servant, Bilhah, as a surrogate, Rachel performs
a kind of imitative magic in which she plays the deity causing a woman
to conceive in the hopes that the creator will likewise fertilize her. Sur-
rogacy is a measure taken by Sarah, Rachel and Leah as a means of
bypassing the obstacles to conception by claiming the body of another
woman as an extension of their own. In addition to the patriarchal
reverberations of wives compelled to reproduce for their husbands forc-
ing their servants to give birth for them, surrogacy also shows how
birth is an occasion in which multiple female bodies operate in tan-
dem. In biblical narrative, birth is a moment of female communitas
when the boundaries between distinct bodies collapse. All female bod-

17)
Fuchs, “Literary Characterization of Mothers,” p. 135.
18)
Cohen, Gender and Covenant in Judaism, pp. 8, 13.
19)
Cohen, Gender and Covenant in Judaism, p. 13. Cohen sees this example as pro-
viding the “mythic origins” for the rabbinic matrilineal principle (141). Neither
Cohen nor rabbinic exegetes recognize Sarah’s story as the source of the principle.

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 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178 167

ies on the narrative stage at the moment of birth function as a collec-

tive body absorbed in the process and implication of birthing. is is
evident in the surrogacy scenes, as well as the birth scenes of Rachel
and Tamar in which midwives take part in the naming of the child,
and the opening of the book of Exodus, where the midwives to the
Hebrews defy Pharaoh in order to save the lives of Hebrew babies and
the Pharaoh’s daughter and Moses’ mother function as co-mothers to
the imperiled baby.
e notion that birth is a collective female action that transcends
ethnic difference is exemplified in the book of Ruth where Ruth the
Moabite pledges to bind her body and her fate to her Judean mother-
in-law, Naomi (Ruth 1:16-17). Ruth labors and seduces a kinsman in
order to sustain Naomi’s legacy and memory in her hometown of Beth-
lehem and eventually is granted the ability to conceive by God (Ruth
4:13). Following the birth, a chorus of women blesses Naomi with the
pronouncement that “a son is born to Naomi” (Ruth 4:17) and Naomi,
who earlier declared herself “too old to be married” (Ruth 1:12),
becomes the child’s nursemaid (Ruth 4:16). As Ruth disappears from
the closing scene, it seems as if Naomi and Ruth have come to func-
tion as one female body, one conceiving the child and the other nurs-
ing it.
e collectivity of the birth process may hover in the background of
matriarchal stories, but Rachel emphasizes her personal volition when
delineating the surrogacy procedure to Jacob. “Here is my servant, Bil-
hah, consort with her and she will give birth on my knees so that I also
will be built up through her” (Gen. 30:3). From her point of view, nei-
ther the collective nor the family is of importance, but rather the per-
petuation of her own legacy. As Bilhah twice gives birth, Rachel has
the opportunity to thrust her own jabs at her sister through the names
of the sons, Dan because “God has vindicated me,” and Naphtali
because “I wrestled with my sister and prevailed” (Gen. 30:6,8). As she
engages in sibling rivalry, Rachel also struggles with God in order to
win the ability to give birth.
e simultaneity of this contest is apparent in the full naming cere-
mony of Naphtali. “Rachel said, ‘wrestlings of God I have wrestled
with my sister and prevailed ‫’יכלתי‬, so she called him Naphtali” (Gen.
30:8). Since the etymology is explained by the verb ‫( נפתלתי‬I have

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 168 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178

wrestled), and the name’s motivation as a declaration of triumph logi-

cal, the initial statement “wrestlings of God” seems grammatically and
thematically extraneous.20 is seemingly awkward phrasing however
echoes the statement of Jacob’s victory in his contest with God and
thereby draws the corollary between Rachel’s and Jacob’s strivings.
Rachel’s naming of Naphtali echoes God’s renaming of Jacob, “your
name will no longer Jacob, but Israel, because you have wrestled with
God and with men and prevailed ‫( ”תוכל‬Gen. 32:29). Both Jacob and
Rachel prevail in contests doubly waged with people and with God.
e initial statement in Rachel’s naming ceremony, “wrestlings of
God,” parallels the first part of Jacob’s renaming, “you have wrestled
with God,” and the rare verb ‫( יכלתי‬prevailed) points toward the paral-
lel contests of Rachel and her husband. e struggle with barrenness is
the matriarchal counterpart of the trials undergone by male heroes as a
means of proving their mettle and forging a dialogic relationship with
the divine. Where Jacob’s contest wounds him (Gen. 32:32), Rachel’s
results in a fertile body.
In both contests, reconciliation is the way to victory. Where Jacob
first draws a truce with God and then negotiates an icy peace with his
brother, Esau, Rachel first strikes a deal with her sister and then wins a
life from God.21 e sisters carve out terms of agreement when they
find themselves in the same position. e barren Rachel has claimed
two sons through her maidservant, and Leah, who has “ceased giving
birth,” imitates her sister by adding two to her list through her servant,
Zilpah (Gen. 30:9).22 In the same way that the male characters find
refuge in the courts of foreign rulers and homes of foreign hosts, yet
ultimately find such shelter unsatisfying, the matriarchs employ a for-
eign body as an extension of their own, but remain unsettled until they

20)
ere is no other morphology like this in the Hebrew Bible.
21)
“is deal evokes the notorious deal between Jacob and Esau (Gen. 25:29-34). In
both cases, as Fokkelman points out, the younger person initiates the deal,” Ilana
Pardes, Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1992), p. 66.
22)
Leah stresses her good fortune as she names the sons of Zilpah. “Gad” suggests
that Leah is fortunate and “Asher” is a word belonging to the delocative verb class that
foresees that other women will declare Leah’s fortunate.

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 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178 169

themselves give birth. e maidservant stratagem proves effective in

producing adopted sons, but not in transforming the matriarchal
body.
In the midst of their competition, Rachel and Leah are faced with
the failure of imitative magic through surrogacy and turn to a medici-
nal remedy. During the wheat harvest, Reuben reaps “love fruits” or
mandrakes for his mother. When Rachel demands a share of the
bounty, she is answered acerbically by Leah, “is it not enough that you
took my husband, now you would take my son’s mandrakes” (Gen.
30:15). Rachel turns her sister’s complaint into the terms of negotia-
tion by giving Leah “back” her husband for one night in exchange for
the mandrakes. In the meantime, she increases her request for a por-
tion of the mandrakes to a demand for all of them. e exchange
results in the birth of Leah’s fifth and sixth sons and her first daughter,
Dinah. By acquiring and, we assume, taking the mandrakes, Rachel
shifts her method from imitative to contagious magic.
In analyzing the repeated occurrence of barrenness, both James Wil-
liams and, more famously, Robert Alter make much of the rivalry
between the barren woman and her fertile counterpart, and, although
neither scholar says so explicitly, highlighting this aspect plays into old
stereotypes about female competition.23 e theme of contest is appar-
ent in the stories of Sarah, Rachel and Hannah, but in each case com-
petition contributes to the boldness of the actions undertaken and
correlates with the biblical hero pattern. e rivalries of female charac-
ters, in other words, parallel those of male characters. For example,
Abraham’s actions set him apart from his father and brothers and later
from his nephew, Lot. Abraham’s rivalry and eventual split from Lot
serves the etiological function of justifying the differences between the
descendants of Abraham and Lot’s descendants, Ammon and Moab,
who live on the opposite side of the Jordan River from Israel. Sarah’s
competition with her maidservant, Hagar the Egyptian, performs the
similar function of distinguishing Sarah’s descendants from Hagar’s
(Gen. 16:11-12, 21:21). As Abraham’s rivalries and treaties chart Isra-

23)
Robert Alter, e World of Biblical Literature (New York: Basic Books, 1992); James
G. Williams, “e Beautiful and the Barren: Conventions in Biblical Type-Scenes”
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 17 (1980), pp. 107-119.

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 170 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178

el’s cultural topography of enemies and allies, so Sarah’s competition

sets a border between two groups. A similar dynamic on the familial
level is at work in the contest between Rachel and Leah. e divisions
among the tribes descended from Rachel, Leah, Zilpah and Bilhah
become apparent, for example, in the encampments surrounding the
desert Tabernacle.24
In Hannah’s case I suggest that her rivalry, brought into greatest
relief at the cultic sanctuary, models that of her son, the Prophet Sam-
uel, who in the realm of the cult will contend with corrupt priests and
kings alike. Hannah’s action, in many ways an extension of her prayer
of protest, involves a confrontation with Eli the High Priest. e
author first suggests the distance between male cultic authority and
women’s spiritual needs spatially by situating Eli in a manner of throne
near the entrance of the temple while we imagine Hannah humbling
herself near the temple floor.25 e distance between their experiences
causes Eli to misunderstand Hannah by interpreting the prayers of her
heart as drunken raving (1 Sam. 1:13). With her alleged drunkenness
as pretext, Eli tries to drive Hannah from the temple environs. Her
action as I understand it involves standing up to Eli, justifying her con-
duct and refusing to be classified as a deviant woman. When ordered
to become less drunk and less visible, Hannah responds by claiming
her desperation and explaining that what Eli takes for drunkenness is
really the outpouring of her deepest soul (1 Sam. 1:15). Resisting Eli’s
attempt to define her as transgressive, she insists that spontaneous
prayer was the only available outlet (1:16). Hannah’s self-defense per-
suades Eli, who sends her off with a blessing for the God of Israel to
grant her request. rough unmediated speech directed toward God

24)
In the encampments around the Tabernacle, the Leah tribes and the Rachel tribes
remain distinct. e Leah tribes of Judah, Issachar and Zebulun camp on the east side
(Num. 2:1-9), a mixture of Leah tribes (Reuben, Simeon) and a Zilpah tribe (Gad)
camp on the southern edge (Num. 2:10-16), the Rachel tribes (Benjamin, Ephraim,
Manasseh) camp on the west side (Num. 2:18-24), and Zilpah (Asher) and Bilhah
tribes (Naphtali and Dan) camp to the north (Num. 2:25-31).
25)
e Septuagint emphasizes that Hannah “stood before the Lord,” but still the dis-
tance between enthronement and standing in supplication comes into relief.

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 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178 171

and frank speech addressed to the cultic official, Hannah makes a place
for prophecy among the priests of Shiloh.
In her description of birth narratives, Susan Ackerman connects the
climax of annunciation with the nadir of the son’s near-death experi-
ence. She observes that Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and the Great Woman of
Shunem’s son face peril in their youth, while Samuel and Samson are
spared an early brush with death due to their mothers’ pledges to dedi-
cate their sons to God. However Yahweh exacts his ransom, Ackerman
identifies the common “ideological motif…that a child given to a bar-
ren woman is a gift of Yahweh.”26 Since God enables conception and
thereby operates as a doubly metaphoric father, Yahweh can also
reclaim the gift. Ackerman argues convincingly for this paradigm and
shows how the barrenness motif is differently realized in the Ugaritic
epic of Aqhat where the husband is infertile and the heroic offspring is
female. I diverge from Ackerman by suggesting that the life and death
trial faced by the sons mirrors the barrenness trial of the mothers, itself
a negotiation of the tension between life and death.
For example, the woman of Judges 13 (Samson’s mother) does not
initiate action in order to counter her infertility; instead, the visiting
angel dictates prohibitions upon which her son’s future depends. In
order to conceive and give birth she must abstain from wine, liquor
and unclean food (Judg. 13:4, 14). I suggest that Samson’s dangerous
appetites result from the fact that the actions that reversed his mother’s
barrenness were foisted upon rather than chosen by her. e Great
Woman of Shunem takes swift action not in order to conceive, but in
order to revive her dead son. When her son expires, the Great Woman
of Shunem hastens to Elisha, reversing the scenario in which he came
to call upon her. Her urgent desperation drives her refusal to leave
unless Elisha accompanies her home (2 Kgs 4:30). e Shunemite’s
insistence proves necessary as nothing but direct contact with Elisha
resurrects her son (2 Kgs 4:34). Rather than a question of how Yahweh
gives and Yahweh takes away, I see the hero’s struggle to stay alive as a
legacy of his mother’s struggle to give life.

26)
Susan Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical
Israel (New York: Doubleday, 1999), p. 192.

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 172 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178

Divine Encounter/Conception
Commonly known as annunciation, the moment of encounter is like-
wise the female ‘cutting’ of covenant. is severing of the promise of a
child, what I call the divine encounter, from the prior actions of the
would-be mothers obscures female agency and portrays conception as
an inscrutable act of grace. In his assessment of annunciation, Williams
perceives no female action whatsoever, but rather notes that only beau-
tiful women are marriageable, that barren women are never called
beautiful and that female beauty is “a sign of favor with God.”27 In
contrast, emphasizing that the annunciations are encounters resusci-
tates the women as active partners rather than passive recipients; as I
have argued, were they not to take matters into their own hands, then
no divine recognition and no conception would ensue.
e angels sent to Sarah are first seen by Abraham who in his eager-
ness to entertain guests scurries about the house dispatching chores.
While he sends her baking, the guests’ first question, “where is Sarah
your wife” (Gen. 18:9), makes it clear whom they have come to visit.
Where Abraham sidelines Sarah by sending her “into the tent,” Sarah
positions herself “at the entrance to the tent,” the very place where
Abraham was sitting when the three visitors appeared on the horizon.
Her eavesdropping on the dialogue between Abraham and his angelic
guests expands the conversation to include an additional track between
Sarah and God. Where Fuchs stresses Sarah’s “absence” and “passivity,”
I read her actions as displaying a dogged determination to participate
in the matters of covenant.
Hearing the promise of imminent birth (made all the more miracu-
lous by the narrator’s aside that Sarah had stopped menstruating),
Sarah laughs and wonders to herself, “now that I am spent, am I to
have pleasure with my old husband?” (Gen. 18:12). e games of hear-
say begin as God tells Abraham what Sarah was thinking while she
eavesdropped on God’s messengers. When asking why Sarah laughed,
God edits her sentiments as if to protect Abraham’s feelings: “Why did
Sarah laugh, saying, Am I really to give birth when I am so old?” (Gen.
18:13). In God’s cleaned up version, there is no mention of sexual

27)
Williams, “e Beautiful and the Barren,” p. 116.

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 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178 173

pleasure and the agedness ascribed to Abraham is transferred to Sarah.

When God repeats the promise of a son, “I will return at the same time
next year and Sarah will have a son” (Gen. 18:14), the title “your wife”
(18:10) is omitted to signal the shift of focus from Abraham to Sarah.
Sarah does not retreat however until God speaks to her directly. After
denying her laughter, God responds, “you did laugh” (Gen. 18:15).
Not the “troublesome interference” named by Fuchs, this is the very
exchange in which Sarah is recognized as commending an heir. Sarah’s
intervention changes the interaction from a conversation between
intermediaries (the messengers and Abraham) to a brief but direct
encounter between her and God, the parties responsible for concep-
tion. As the absence of foreskin is the sign of Abraham’s covenant
(Gen. 17:11), so the absence of menstruation signifies Sarah’s corollary
bond that completes the covenant while at the same time bearing per-
sonal ramifications for Sarah. Her conception is described in terms of a
divine visitation, ‫ה´ פקד את–שרה‬, and a fulfillment of God’s promise
(Gen. 21:1).
e mandrakes do not cure Rachel’s barrenness, but they do alert
God to her desperation and the lengths to which she will go in order
to conceive. In other words, the actions that Rachel takes to reverse her
situation function as self-initiation into a relationship with God and
prove her to be an ambitious mother worthy of a heroic son. Rachel
follows a three-part course in protesting her infertility: articulation of
discontent, surrogacy, and medicinal aid. God likewise responds with
three actions: “God remembered . . . listened . . . and opened her
womb” (Gen. 30:22). Her struggle results in an encounter with God
in which her memory is assured, her voice heeded, and the barrier to
conception lifted. Divine acknowledgment of the women is dramatic
in every case, for example God “listens” to Leah when she conceives
her fifth son (Gen. 30:17), but the covenantal aspects of such recogni-
tion are particularly emphasized by the use of the verb “remember” as
is the case with Rachel and Hannah (1 Sam. 1:19). In the biblical
accounts of the nation of Israel’s loss or suffering, acts of memory
(whether human or divine) are the first step toward redemption. In the
stories of barren women, the occasion of divine remembrance signals
that their actions have led to acknowledgment and the reversal of their
situation.

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 174 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178

e morning after Hannah’s prayer and confrontation with Eli, the

family completes the pilgrimage rites and returns home. Once at home,
God remembers Hannah thereby enabling her to conceive (1 Sam.
1:19). Hannah, like all of the barren women mentioned above, has sex
with her husband yet God’s involvement in the equation suggests that
it is not human coupling alone that results in conception. Such mirac-
ulous births require a partnership between a woman and the creator as
well as a sexual union between a woman and a man. As God partici-
pates in acts of conception, we see a theme later expanded into the
story of the virgin birth in the Gospels of Matthew (1:18-25) and Luke
(1:26-38).28 ese accounts of Mary’s conception amplify God’s
involvement while excising the component of sexual union.29
e encounters of Samson’s mother and the Great Woman of Shu-
nem with emissaries of God contain more suggestive elements that
lend the stories a more provocative tone. In Judges 13 a few clues insin-
uate that perhaps the angel and not Manoah engenders Samson. To
begin, the angel initiates contact with the woman, approaching her
when she is alone and speaking to her of the intimate matters of infer-
tility and pregnancy (Judg. 13:3). e unborn child’s status as a
Nazirite dedicated to God further implies a manner of divine pater-
nity. Upon Manoah’s request the angel visits a second time, again
appearing to the women as she sits alone in the field (Judg. 13:11). e
field is a biblical topos where transgressive (Gen. 4:8, Num. 22:23) and
often romantic (Gen. 24:63-67, 29:2; Ruth 2:2-23) encounters tran-
spire. Outside the bounds of domesticity, it is a place not subject to the
same societal constraints. As in Rachel’s acquisition of the mandrakes
(Gen. 30:14), the field is further associated with fertility. When the
future mother of Samson scurries to her husband following the angel’s
appearance in the field, there is a sense that she seeks exoneration
(Judg. 13:10). During Manoah’s questioning about his paternal respon-

28)
In Luke 1 the story of Mary’s virgin birth is intertwined with that of the miracu-
lous conception by the barren Elizabeth and the birth and maternal naming of John
the Baptist.
29)
I thus qualify the observation that “there is no Old Testament precedent for a vir-
ginal conception,” David T. Landry, “Narrative Logic in the Annunciation to Mary
(Luke 1:26-38),” Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (1995), pp. 75-83 (76).

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 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178 175

sibilities, the angel privileges his dialogue with the woman (Judg.
13:13). In terms of characterization, the portrait of the bumbling
Manoah makes it difficult to imagine him impregnating his wife. e
narrator contributes to this suspicion by omitting the notice that
“Manoah knew his wife and she conceived.” In place of the expected
formula, the text reads, “the woman gave birth to a son” (Judg. 13:
24).
Similarly 2 Kgs 4:8-37 resonates with possibilities concerning the
relationship of Elisha the Prophet to the Great Woman of Shunem and
her son. e Shunemmite builds Elisha a room on the upper floor of
her house so that he will always have comfort when in her company (2
Kgs 4:10). When Gehazi identifies her lack of a child, he emphasizes
her husband’s senescence, perhaps implying that she needs to conceive
with another partner. Again the red flag is the narrator’s failure to state
that the Great Woman of Shunem had sex with her husband; instead
the verse reads, “the woman conceived and gave birth to a son…as Eli-
sha had assured her” (2 Kgs 4:17). e absence of her husband’s role in
conception may also help to explain why he seems so nonplussed when
his son expires while in his care (4:19). During the crisis of the boy’s
death, the Great Woman of Shunem lays him on Elisha’s bed and
rushes to the Prophet (2 Kgs 4:21-22). As the Shunemmite grabs Eli-
sha’s feet (a term often used euphemistically for genitals) and Gehazi
manhandles her in order to push her from the Man of God (4:27), one
wonders if this is a violent reapproximation of their former intimacy
that Gehazi struggles to prevent. e Shunemmite prevails and only
when Elisha lines himself up with the boy is the child revived (2 Kgs
4:34). Perhaps this represents the power of God working through Eli-
sha or perhaps restoration through contact with the biological father.
As all of the examples attest, an encounter with God precedes or
accompanies conception. In some cases, the suggested encounter proves
more intimate than others.

Birth and a Name

e final stage of the female journey is the naming of the child that, in
the words of Meir Sternberg, “usually reveals more about the character

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 176 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178

of the name-giver than the recipient.”30 e giving of a name affords

the mothers the opportunity to tell their story of movement from bar-
renness to fertility and to perpetuate their experience through the
child’s ascribed identity. God visits Sarah as promised, she conceives
and gives birth (Gen. 21:1-2); divine remembrance is signified through
a physical change as in the parallel scene of Abraham’s circumcision.
Although Abraham’s primacy is fronted by the announcement that
“Sarah bore a son to Abraham in his old age” (21:2), Isaac’s two nam-
ing scenes show that his birth depended on a maternal as well as a
paternal bond with God. Abraham names his son without explanation
and circumcises him as stipulated by his covenant (Gen. 21:3-4). Sarah
in contrast speaks to her journey from barrenness to fertility with the
name of her child, “God made me laugh, so everyone who hears will
laugh with me” (Gen. 21:5). Her experiences give rise to the name
Isaac (he will laugh). e explanation of the name causes her eaves-
dropping on God and incredulous laughter to inform Isaac’s identity.
In the same way that Rebekah does not speak on behalf of her own
barrenness, so she is not credited with the naming of her twins. Who
names them remains unclear as the Hebrew text attributes a plural
voice with naming Esau in honor of the red hair that covers him and a
singular voice with naming Jacob after the fact that he emerged from
the womb already grabbing his brother’s heel, trying to get ahead.31
Leah attests that she is rewarded by God because of her action of
using Zilpah as a surrogate as she names her fifth biological son, Issa-
char: “God has given me my reward (‫ )שׂכרי‬because I gave my maidser-
vant to my husband” (Gen. 30:18). e name also works as a pun for
Leah’s pre-coital statement to Jacob, “I have earned you (‫)שׂכר שׂכרתיך‬
through my son’s mandrakes” (Gen. 30:16). Zebulon, like Joseph, has
two names implicit in his naming ceremony. In the cases of Zebulon
and Joseph, the mothers utter a pious statement of thanksgiving, and
then express their true wish. Both sons are named according to the sec-

30)
Meir Sternberg, e Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the
Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), p. 330.
31)
Esau’s name is really a play on Edom, the nation that stems from him. Because he
emerges with a kind of red covering ‫אדמוני‬, the nation descending from him is called
‫אדום‬. Because Jacob pulls at Esau’s heel ‫ עקב‬he is called ‫( יעקב‬Gen. 25: 25-26).

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 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178 177

ond term rather than the first. In the case of Zebulon, “Leah said, ‘God
has given me a wonderful gift, this time my husband will honor me
because I have given birth to six of his sons’, and she called his name
Zebulon” (Gen. 30:19). If Leah’s intention is to praise God, then Zeb-
ulon’s name should be something like Zebed or Zebad, a name multi-
ply attested in Phoenician and Palymyrene Aramaic. Instead we see
how Leah tries to win honor and affection from Jacob by giving birth
to children. Much is revealed about the shared nature of Rachel and
her son, Joseph, in the naming ceremony. Although she begins with
the pious statement that “God has removed my disgrace” (in which
case Yosef would be named Asaph), she calls her son Yosef, meaning,
“may God add another son for me” (Gen. 30:24). Celebrating her vic-
tory, Rachel already begins strategizing for another; this striving for
glory when survival itself seems precarious will characterize the biogra-
phy of her first child.
Hannah’s naming of Samuel seems more properly to belong to Saul,
the king with whom the Prophet Samuel will contend. Likely we are
dealing with a case of a spliced text, but we can also view the fusion of
Samuel’s name and the explanation for Saul’s as pointing toward their
intertwined biographies. After she gives birth, Hannah names her son
Samuel because “I asked God for him” (1 Sam. 1:20). Although ety-
mologically inconsistent, Hannah’s explanation references the degree to
which she sidestepped convention by speaking directly to God in the
language of her own devising from a place ordinarily restricted to her.
Samson’s mother is the agent of the naming, yet she articulates no
explanation for the Israelite muscle man’s name (Judg. 13:24). In the
reported text, the Great Woman of Shunem bestows no name on her
child. e child’s anonymity matches that of the woman and her hus-
band, but seems also to operate as a device indicating that neither the
Shunammite’s maternal journey nor the precarious balance between
life and death ceases upon the birth of her child.

Conclusion
Although the tales of female heroes conclude with the birth of a son
and seemingly function to fulfill the male covenant, the duration of

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 178 R. Havrelock / Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008) 154-178

the stories distinguish the characters of the would-be mothers and

reveal the necessity of a covenant between women and God. e sto-
ries show that in the absence of such a covenant there is no engender-
ing of heirs, no covenantal continuity, no legacy of memory. In order
to birth a next generation, both women and men must establish a rela-
tionship with the deity and, somewhat less importantly in the Hebrew
Bible’s estimation, have intimate relations with one another. Indeed,
the insight provided into the minds and wills of biblical women results
from the fact that the birth of male heirs is of central importance to
biblical men and biblical writers. Little else is narrated about biblical
women and the birth of daughters largely goes unrecorded. True to
Fuchs’ observation, “soon after the birth of the son, the mother figure
is quickly whisked off the stage.”32 Memory of the mother persists,
however, through the record of her deeds and continues to exert influ-
ence through the name she bestows on her child. ese names, in
which her experiences and her covenant are encoded, determine char-
acter and forecast fate. e repetition and variation of this pattern sug-
gests that, like the male covenant, the female struggle and reconciliation
with God is transmitted through generations and becomes part of Isra-
el’s national character. While women are granted the most time on the
Bible’s narrative stage in connection with motherhood, reproduction is
not the sole manifestation of female strength; indeed prophetesses are
never noted as being mothers. For those who do become mothers, the
movement from barrenness to fertility depends on articulation, asser-
tion and action as well as a heroic daring long remembered in the
names they leave behind.

32)
Fuchs, “Literary Characterization of Mothers,”, p. 137.

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