What we learn about women:
- When a woman gives birth, she experiences it almost as if the baby is part of herself, but the new life she bears will be separate from hers and does not necessarily share its meaning.
- A woman's misery in her own life might, however, be powerful enough to keep her from being able to appreciate the hope that may be fitting for her child.
What I'm wondering:
- How did Ichabod's life turn out? I wish we knew more than we do about him and his brother Ahitub.
- Did his mother think he would die? If she knew he would survive would this have brought her any hope?
First Samuel is a book with fewer stories about women. This makes sense since a lot of the narrative is military, and the main characters are Samuel, Saul, and many warriors and priests. But in the fourth chapter there is a short and devastating story about a woman who dies in childbirth. She is the daughter-in-law of Eli, the priest under whom Samuel has been serving. She is married to Eli's son Phinehas, described along with his brother Hophni as "scoundrels who had no respect for the Lord or for their duties as priests." (1 Sam 2:12)
The central story of this book so far is God punishing Eli's family for the behavior of his sons, and instead elevating Samuel as his prophet and priest. Eli's sons' sins are detailed in chapter 2 of 1 Samuel. Most of the attention is given to the way they take too much of the meat that the Israelites bring for sacrifice. But there is also an aside that they are seducing the women who work at the temple entrance. If this is Phinehas's general practice, one thing we can surmise about his wife is the disrespect and relational pain she must suffer regularly.
Part of the rebuke from God that Eli receives regarding the behavior of his sons is this, "You will watch with envy as I pour out prosperity on the people of Israel. But no members of your family will ever live out their days. The few not cut off from serving at my altar will survive, but only so their eyes can go blind and their hearts break, and their children will die a violent death. And to prove that what I have said will come true, I will cause your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, to die on the same day!"
The day this woman's story takes place is her last day alive. It is a bad day for her and for all of Israel, but especially for Eli's family. The Israelites are at war with the Philistines, and have recently suffered a defeat in battle. In response, they decide to bring the ark of the covenant out to the battlefield with them, imagining it will work as a charm. Though it motivates the troops, the Philistines respond with even greater counter-enthusiasm. The battle ends with Hophni and Phinehas dead, and the ark taken by the Philistines.
The chapter then descends into a chain reaction of grief. A messenger comes back from the battlefield with the news, and a cry goes up from the whole town. Eli, waiting by the road for information, hears the commotion and asks what has happened. When he learns that his sons are dead and the ark has been captured, he falls backward, breaks his neck, and dies. Also waiting for news is Phinehas's wife, nearly to term with her pregnancy. As soon as she hears that Eli and her husband and brother-in-law are dead, and the ark is captured, she goes into labor, and dies as she delivers her son.
The story of her death and her child's birth receives more attention than any of the rest of the tragedy relayed in the chapter. To me, the whole story seems to focus in like a microscope on this one death and birth, and the commentary around it. The end of the story is announced first, "she died in childbirth, but before she passed away . . . " Phinehas's wife's death is the last in the string that goes from the loss the battle, and the loss of the Ark, through the deaths of Hophni and Phinehas, to the death of Eli. We might expect that the last logical domino to fall would be the death of Phinehas's wife's new baby. But the baby lives.
As his mother is dying, the midwives try to encourage her with the news that she has a new son. But she will not be consoled. She is focused on the idea of the loss of the glory of God from Israel. She leaves this thought in the name of her son, "Ichabod"-- "where is the glory?" She explains this, saying, "Israel's glory is gone." The text tells us she is referring to the loss of the heads of her family, and the loss of the Ark. Then it quotes her again, "The glory has departed from Israel, for the Ark of God has been captured."
The way this story conveys the loss of hope is powerful. It describes a string of death and loss that doesn't end, but instead, leaves a new baby, orphaned, and named for the loss of his parents and the loss of the presence of God in his tribe. There is always hope in a new birth the way there is in a new morning. It's a beginning, full of possibility. But the morning of little Ichabod's life is heavy with what has happened in the preceding night.
We don't really hear anything about Ichabod after this, except one mention that he is the uncle of Saul's priest Abijah, the son of his older brother Ahitub. I read one bit of commentary that said the reference to Ahitub as Ichabod's brother means that people must have known who he was, he was probably the more successful brother. (Abijah's brother Ahimelech is later murdered with 85 other priests for supporting David, and Ahimelech's son Abiathar becomes the priest who is David's main spiritual leader while he is on the run from Saul.) Ichabod's life continues after this bleak beginning, and the glory of the Lord does in fact continue to be displayed in Israel, though inconsistently, despite Ichabod's mother's despair at the time of his birth.
The story is full of emotion--despair, particularly. To tease out its meaning, and how this female human being in her primal role of giving birth contributes to that meaning is challenging. The most obvious factor that jumps out is the giving of a name that declares a verdict of hopelessness on a life that has barely begun. Most names try to impart some good quality or memory of a worthy person who has gone before. To name a person for the loss of the presence of the Lord is to express the belief that the life is really over before it has started. Frankly I wonder if she expected that to be true, that her son's life would be lost with hers and his name would be a memorial to that loss in its greater context.
This hopeless birth story also conveys the bleak situation in which Israel found itself at the dawn of the monarchy. After many chaotic years of rule by inconsistent judges, the priestly family has become completely corrupt, and Israel's military power has been overcome, even when accompanied by the token of the ark, which Israel seems to be treating as a charm that guarantees God is on their side. But now, the charm has been lost, the battle has been lost, the priests are lost. The only thing left is a new baby awakening in a culture with nothing it can put hope in . . . other than the authentic and freely given love and mercy of the Lord.
Ichabod's mother makes our hearts pang with sympathy, as women so often do when they bear terrible consequences of the actions taken by those with more power. Giving birth is one of the most life affirming and powerful actions of which a woman is capable. The midwives in the story can feel this as they try to encourage her not to give up. But in the moment, she feels none of this power and is instead overcome by the heaviness of what is happening around her which she can do nothing about. She concludes that her family has died, her people have lost their glory, and the Lord has departed. She is unable to consider the new family member she has gained, and the new gifts he may bring. A sadness this profound is a powerful weight even for a reader to contend with, and she ties it around her son's neck when she names him Ichabod.
But children often surprise us by living lives which are remarkably differently from what their parents hope for or imagine. Ichabod's apparently successful life offers evidence that even a parent's final conclusion that hope is lost, combined with an indelible statement of that judgement, does not dictate future reality. Children are always born in a new morning, so to speak, in which God is always waiting with new mercies.
I hear in the philosophical world whispers that echo the sentiment of Ichabod's mother--this world is ruined; it's so full of grief that no one could live well here, and the best thing would be for babies not to be born. The sentiment comes from a desperately sad and probably authentic place of despair. But it is so important to remember that the power of discouragement does not have to spread from one life to another. The author of all life remains full of energetic goodness, and each new person is able to partake of that in a way completely different from what their predecessors have done. The world is and has been a difficult and terrifying place, but morning comes again and again, and hopelessness does not have the final word.
And yet for a woman to die in childbirth, but apparently of grief, juxtaposes profoundly the power she possesses to make new life possible with the lack of power she holds over the way life unfolds. This is a deeply human image of the way our agency can be frustrated as it is exercised, and exercised as it is frustrated. God's plan continues to unfold as his people grieve the loss of their hopes for what it might have been. This truth is illustrated powerfully in this deeply feminine, yet universally meaningful, moment 1 Samuel documents.
