The Red Tent: childbirth and menstruation in the law (passages in Exodus through Leviticus)

When it comes to our female identity, these topics are where the rubber meets the road. They are the details of life that make women different from men. This is evident, not just from the way the Bible talks about these things, but from observation available to anyone.  This part of female experience is common ground for all of us, regardless of our other ideas about what it means to be women. Not all women have children, and not all of us even have periods, but no one does either of those things who is not a woman.

What we learn about women

• Women experience ceremonial uncleanness while they are having their periods or bleeding after childbirth.
• Normal bleeding is distinguished from abnormal bleeding or discharge--with normal discharge you don't have to live outside the camp like you do with possible contagious disease processes.
• Though men are also "unclean until evening" when they ejaculate, women spend much more of their lives unable to enter the temple than men do.

What I'm wondering

• Since discharges keep you from being allowed to approach God in the temple, perhaps this kind of body function will not occur in our redeemed bodies?
• What was it like "outside the camp"? I assume they didn't just leave sick people out there with no shelter. Was there a sort of hospital there?
• Do we acknowledge the physical toll of being a woman too much or too little these days?

Passages about childbirth and menstruation
Ex 21:  If a pregnant mother is injured and her baby is lost, the baby's death is taken into account legally.

Ex 23:26  no infertility or miscarriages is a promised reward for serving the Lord only

Lev 12: purification after childbirth

Lev 15: discharges, and menstruation

The importance of giving birth
In the law, childbirth and menstruation are mentioned in a couple of ways. The obvious gift of new children to God's people is a primary and unmitigated blessing, brought about by women, but at the center of everyone's concern and joy. Success in reproduction was God's initial promise to the patriarchs and their wives, and it is promised as a blessing to all of the Israelites in Exodus 23:26 "You must serve only the Lord your God. If you do, I will bless you with food and water and I will protect you from illness. There will be no miscarriages or infertility in your land, and I will give you long full lives."

A theme of blessing for your children is a primary promise of blessing through the scripture, and is a prime area of concern for all people. We've already mentioned often how central and irreplaceable for humanity is the reproductive work women do. Minimizing this role for women or disassociating it from women's identity does us a great disservice. We only do it when we become jaded to the wonder of life, and distracted from what is arguably our main biological purpose as people--to continue the survival of humanity in order  to continue worship of God and enjoyment of him. We do this by creating, nurturing, and protecting human life. I'd venture to say that all other facets of civilization ultimately serve this goal in some fashion. Childbirth, and the menstrual cycle it depends on, are where the work is accomplished or not.

Uncleanness
However, the bulk of the text to do with menstruation and childbirth is in the middle of Leviticus, in the midst of how to take care of kind of gross physical problems like mildew, sores, discharge, and skin diseases. Menstruation, and bleeding after birth are counted as fairly standard "discharges" with required washing, changing of clothes, and waiting. These discharges cause people to be ceremonially unclean until they have been taken care of in the proper way.

The first obvious question is, what does it mean to be ceremonially unclean? The next is, why would this go along with bleeding? And then, practically, what would this mean for the lives of women? If you are unclean, what does life look like compared with when you are clean?

From Numbers 5, it seems that those who were unclean must live outside the camp. But if you count a seven day period and seven days waiting afterward, as it sounds like you might need to in the text, does this mean women were spending half of their lives during their childbearing years outside the camp? Who was making dinner?! In doing some research, I found two excellent articles which I highly recommend if this topic interests or confuses you.

The first helpful article is an entry from Baker's evangelical dictionary (https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionaries/bakers-evangelical-dictionary/clean-unclean.html). I found these few sentences defining clean/unclean to be very helpful in understanding what we are talking about here:

In Old Testament times the ordinary state of most things was "cleanness, " but a person or thing could contract ritual "uncleanness" (or "impurity") in a variety of ways: by skin diseases, discharges of bodily fluids, touching something dead ( Num 5:2 ), or eating unclean foods ( Lev 11 ; Deut 14 ).
An unclean person in general had to avoid that which was holy and take steps to return to a state of cleanness. Uncleanness placed a person in a "dangerous" condition under threat of divine retribution, even death ( Lev 15:31 ), if the person approached the sanctuary. Uncleanness could lead to expulsion of the land's inhabitants ( Lev 18:25 ) and its peril lingered upon those who did not undergo purification ( Lev 17:16 ; Num 19:12-13 ).

It seems that a lot of the concern with ceremonial uncleanness is related to like, physical uncleanness. Though menstrual blood and semen are not infectious generally, they still could create unsanitary conditions if not cleaned up afterward. (The mother of young children in me is very curious as to how vomit got left out of this discussion, in my mind the most disgusting and infectious symptom there is! But have I gone too far?) It's interesting that there's a jump from these hygiene problems to the approach to God in his temple. Cleanliness is next to godliness? People with really contagious problems are asked to live away from the camp, while men and women with normal discharge are just to keep away from the temple. What we know about God's character tells me that these people outside the camp would have been in deep fellowship with him, perhaps even more than those healthy ones less aware of their physical weakness and mortality who were worshiping at the temple. But if the temple is a representation of people actually redeemed and in open fellowship with God as we will be when creation is restored, perhaps this is why symptoms of disease and even physical phenomena that are just a little less than sanitary are to keep away.

This article  (https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/female-purity-niddah) about female purity is VERY THOROUGH, i.e. long, but so so helpful for thinking through how the verses about menstruation should be read, and how they have been interpreted by the Jewish community over the last few (thousand) years.  To attempt to grossly summarize (see what I did there?), the author shows that in the text there is a contrast between normal female and male discharges, which are menstrual bleeding and ejaculations, and abnormal bleeding and male discharge. Normal menstrual periods do not require a 7 day waiting period afterward afterward before purification, while abnormal bleeding does. But in the interpretation of these laws by (male) rabbis over the years, the traditions became more and more restrictive about waiting times after menstruation and requirements for women to be sure they were not bleeding and causing uncleanness to their families, especially in priestly families. The author points out that for a man to have sex with a menstruating woman, and then enter the temple for worship is an almost unforgivable sin which can curse the entire nation and be punished by death (see above description of clean/unclean). That's worth thinking about! Why on earth?

I think we have some real food for thought when it is implied that regular menstruation (and ejaculation) which is part and parcel of the normal experience of post fall men and women is not a part of God's ideal fellowship with us. Are periods a consequence of the fall?? We have Jesus's statement that after the resurrection we will not be married, could this have something to do with the way our bodies will work and not work for reproduction when they are glorified? No babies were born that we know of until after the fall, and it looks like no marriage, and possibly no menstruation or ejaculation afterward. Does that mean that this period of post-fall pre-redemption will be the only epoch where new humans are created? Whew the speculation is running wild here!

Weighing the burden
But leaving all that aside and taking as a given that this is just what God asks of the Israelites under the law, we should consider that this abstaining from the temple while menstruating creates a big difference for men and women in how they participate in the public life of the faith community. Periods heavily influenced the lives of women in the Israelite community, and still do for women today.

Even in the age of lots of reasonably convenient feminine hygiene products, periods are still a pain. And at this point in our blogging journey, it is perhaps time to lay out in detail what it means for women physically that ours is the burden of bearing children. Though it is also the greatest privilege, here let's look at the cost we cover to do it.

During our most productive adult years for one week out of four, we will have periods, which entail, at least, the extra logistical difficulty of constantly managing bloodflow. This absolutely must be dealt with, no matter how long the bathroom line, or how inconvenient to find and carry the necessary supplies. In addition, many women suffer physical pain and weakness from cramps, and headaches, and emotional trouble from chemical storms in our brains. Even if we are not pregnant, our immune systems take the week off to protect a potential new invading life, and we get sick more easily. This is happening for 25% of our lives when we are about 12-47. This, alone, is a uniquely female vulnerability that has serious consequences for what we are able to accomplish in life. But women are amazing, and we surmount these obstacles pretty deftly to compete with men, until . . . we become pregnant.

Bearing a child is an incredible experience. Though some people say they aren't interested in doing it, for many women, we know from the get go that this is something we hope desperately for. Until children our born, there's no way to understand how profoundly we will be changed, but for most women, we instinctively know we want to do this. The pursuit of this goal makes it a fairly straightforward decision for women to arrange their lives around giving birth to and caring for their children. And though again of course we are not speaking in absolute universals, for most women, this heaviest burden brings the most powerful joy. Joy in the life and blessing of their children causes women's priorities to change so that their own individual happiness and purposes are no longer in the drivers seat. Once a baby arrives, the ability to advance your own agenda is compromised by the alignment of your own goals with those of a completely helpless infant who turns into an unruly and irrational child. This is where the most profound weakness happens for mothers. Good men realign their lives in a similar way, though perhaps not quite as profoundly as women experience. But the standard biological man is free to create a child and never think about the fact again in a way that a woman is not.

These economics of power and blessing in reproduction are at such a deep level of human experience, that we often have to challenge ourselves to remember that they are going on despite the fact that they order the world we live in. The specific parts of the law that deal with hygiene related to bodily discharge are a testimony that this physical phenomenon is a real factor in daily life that it is fair to acknowledge. The fact that this kind of human dirt is not permitted in the temple is thought-provoking tidbit, tempting me to to think that our redeemed bodies will be easier to manage and (please God!) involve less cleaning up. But for now, it's good to know that in the law, some of the cost of the blessing of bringing new life into the world is counted.

As for an acknowledgement of the work of motherhood itself, I think this is reflected in the entire structure of Israelite society where women as a class are acknowledged as needing support and care from the men in their lives, their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons. You can see how the vision for patriarchy makes sense even though God knows, we all know, it has been horribly abused almost always. Next time we'll explore more about that in the context of how the law deals with marriage and sex.

But one final thing to think about: the law says menstruating women must not come to the Temple, and that sick people can't even live in the camp with everyone else. This seems like an additional level of hardship for people already dealing with some difficulty. But though it is not mentioned in the law, we know that God is with those who are weak and who suffer in a way that can be even more profound than when we experience in health and strength. Though they are not joining God's people assembled to meet him in cleanness in the Temple, I feel sure that God would have been meeting them in their trouble on the outside. He comes to sinners, to the weak, to the sick, to meet us, heal us, take up our cause and ultimately redeem us. When we are weak, then we are strong.

Infanticide and women helping women (Ex 1:15-2:20)

From Potiphar's wife, the categorical villainess, we move right along to the book of Exodus and our first unmitigated heroines, the Hebrew midwives, Shiprah and Puah. When we left off in Genesis, the Israelites had just arrived in Egypt at Pharaoh's invitation. The last 10 chapters or so of Genesis, though they feature a few women, are mostly about Joseph and his father and brothers and how God blesses them with the favor and wealth of Egypt. Important stories in God's plan, but not specifically useful for looking at what God has to say about women. But when Exodus opens, we are greeted by some truly incredible women handing awful circumstances with the courage, faith, compassion, and grit.

Parallels
However, to set the stage for their stories, we do need the larger context of what is going on with God's people at large. The Israelites arrived in Egypt in honor, which was afterward forgotten and replaced with persecution, oppression and enslavement.

The story of the Exodus has been treasured by oppressed people throughout history. Reading the part of the story we are focusing on, parallels between the plight of the Israelites and enslaved African Americans are plain, but I noticed a new similarity this time. The obvious parallel is that both groups are enslaved and oppressed, and feared because they are becoming too numerous. In the United States, as time has passed, some liberation for African enslaved people has been gained. But another similarity between these two people groups that was particularly salient for me at this cultural moment, and in thinking about the part women play in the story, involves the solution Pharaoh proposes to control the group he wants to oppress. This is where the Hebrew midwives, Shiprah and Puah, come in. Pharaoh tells them to kill the Hebrew baby boys as they are being born. “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.”

The concept that made this parallel jump out to me was "infanticide," which we have horrifyingly found in our headlines lately, around the national discussion of what we will allow when we permit abortion. Infanticide is the horrible extreme of the permission given to mothers to end the early lives of babies who would burden them. Pharaoh is clearly barbaric for ordering the murder of born-alive babies whose mothers want them to live. But there is some overlap in strategy between his plan and the historic racist eugenics movement, which has its current iteration in clinics in offering abortions to African Americans at a much higher rate than the rest of the population (some key statistics can be found on this page). The root idea employed there is the same--to manage an oppressed people by lessening their numbers, through keeping their offspring from living.

Women helping women
In our modern conversation, this topic appears much more complex, because abortion is linked to the idea of helping women avoid the loss of power and agency that happens to them when they bear children. Women are asked to participate in the decision to kill their babies, and encouraged that though the decision is difficult, it will be better for everyone if there are less dependents to care for. In one light, abortion is seen as a strategy that women must fight to make available, to help each other, despite it's terrible nature. Women who want to help other women often want to preserve the right to use it, with the idea that it will help some people, closing their eyes to the even more innocent people who it destroys. But can we really call this women helping women?

The way this "parallel" works when it come to the women in the story is actually not as a parallel, but a contrast in how women have seen their own flourishing and needs in biblical history versus our own moment. In ancient Egypt as well as 18th century America, there were similar conflicts between oppressive governments and enslaved people. Pharaoh relied on his evil authority to kill the baby boys among his slaves to keep them down, where as Margaret Sanger and her crew turned to the idea of eugenics for similar reasons. But the women upon whom the strategies were implemented reacted in very different ways then and now.

When it comes to Shiprah and Puah, the brave Hebrew midwives, we have a different dynamic of women helping women than what is offered in abortion clinics. In order to help their fellow women, the midwives defied, not an obvious moral standard, but rather the decree of an evil king. The reason they did not kill the Hebrew baby boys was because "they feared God." This is a sound way of choosing between right and wrong and determining a course of action in a difficult situation. Their fear of God led them to a reverence for the lives of the new people he was bringing into the world. They understood the miracle and blessing of new life, and they had too much fear of God to be able to listen to Pharaoh and commit murder.

What kind of blessing?
Verse 20 tells us that because of Shiprah and Puah's fear of God, God was kind to them, the people continued to increase, and in my favorite detail, "because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own." Mark down another instance of God rewarding women by blessing them with the gift and holy task of bearing children. I love that the reward comes to them because they helped babies live and helped mothers keep their children, and that the reward is for them to also have children. This is a banner story for women as mothers, and as helpers of mothers. We can so clearly see God's favor on these roles for women who fear him.

Contrast this picture of blessing for women and the one we often maintain in this century: women as self-sufficient, unencumbered by the heavy work of bearing and caring for children, empowered to pursue any agenda without thought for this aspect of their lives. The two ideas are very different. We have lost the understanding that children and motherhood are at the heart of some of the greatest purposes and blessings for women. This devaluing of our feminine humanity has lead to terrible consequences. When motherhood is a hindrance that we need to dispense with in order to live fully, it is not a big jump to see actual children as hindrances that need to be dispensed with. But this is a great and tragic error. Its consequences keep women from the most fulfilling (though surely also the most costly and demanding) parts of life, and encourage them to commit murder to avoid experiencing them. To the babies themselves, the error denies the blessing of life.

For modern mothers, even if we believe that abortion is wrong, it's worth looking at our assessments of our lives and asking which kind of blessing we are valuing more heavily? Are our goals in life encumbered by our care for our children, or vice versa? What will the result be of our struggle to "have it all"? Can we win it? If we have to land on one side or another, which side will we land on?

Though we have been really emphasizing the privilege and goodness of motherhood for women here, there is another beautiful piece of this story for women who are not mothers. Shiprah and Puah only receive their reward of having families at the end of their part in it. In their work supporting women and families, they are full participants and heroines in God's plan. Motherhood is not required for a meaningful and influential life as a woman in God's sight, though it may become a reward from him, for women who bravely and faithfully live in holy fear of him. The midwives are single ladies, and fully serving God in that role.

I drew him out of the water
Moving on in the story--tragically, Pharaoh will not be completely outwitted by the Hebrew midwives. His next step goes further than subtly making it look like the baby boys are being born dead. To ensure that live baby boys are not allowed to live, he orders them to be thrown into the Nile.

Moses' mother and sister are the next two brave, God-fearing women we meet in this section. His mother is in a terrible situation where she cannot legally provide for her son. Horribly, Pharaoh has instructed "all his people" to throw the Hebrew baby boys into the Nile. Moses is in terrible danger from which his mother can't save him. But she does what she can to help him survive. Technically she does put Moses into the Nile, but she sets him in a little basket boat, nestled in the reeds, and sends his sister to watch over him. It's hard to imagine being in this horrible position as a mother. Perhaps she was planning to just keep him in the basket "in the Nile" and continue to care for him there? That would have been an ingenious solution if you ask me.

But this desperate mother receives help when it is desperately needed. Pharoah's daughter hears the baby crying, understands his plight, and decides to take care of him. Moses' sister Miriam cleverly inserts herself into the situation, offering to find a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby. I just wonder if they are all aware of what is going on here, if Pharaoh's daughter understands how Miriam and the "Hebrew woman" are related to Moses. I like to think so. Pharaoh's daughter "adopts" Moses to save him, but then brings his mother along, keeping her in the picture and supporting her to allow her to care for her son. This is an incredibly beautiful picture of how women can truly help and encourage each other. It is a stark contrast from women helping each other to abandon and kill their babies to make a better life for themselves. Rather these women are helping each other provide for babies, sharing the burden in really difficult and dangerous circumstances. God is deeply involved with them, unfolding his plan to save the whole nation of his people. They have a role of honor, bravery, and privilege both trusting him in their lack of power, and using what power they have to save life, and mother together.

At this part of the story we can discuss another component of the abortion issue. Openness to adoption is the obvious required corollary to a pro-life stance. But adoption is also critiqued sometimes as a means for babies to be taken from families who can't support them and effectively bought by wealthy families of the dominant culture who then assimilate the children into that culture, robbing them of their cultural identity, and robbing other communities and families of their youth.

Because it can be so difficult, open-adoption, where biological parents maintain contact with children who are adopted by other families, is often avoided. But here we have a different perspective, where a whole family is adopted and supported through the resources of a wealthy, concerned woman. Maybe this is a better way? Pharaoh's daughter names the baby Moses- "I drew him out of the water." What if Christian women with power and resources everywhere listened for those crying babies in trouble, drew them from the water, and then found their mothers to help them and bring them along too? The application seems obvious, though it's much easier to write about than to actually do.

These stories read to me like a ballad of honorable women: Shiprah and Puah, Moses' mother, Miriam, Pharaoh's daughter, all heroines. What a delightful place to stop and think about women in God's plan.

Takeaways:

• Pharaoh's plan to kill the Hebrew baby boys is a prefiguration of the racist policy of selectively offering abortion for African Americans more than other races. Both attack babies to oppress a population.
• God shows his favor to women by giving them children again in this story.
• The heroic action of the midwives, Moses' mother and sister, and Pharaoh's daughter are a key component of God's plan to bring his people out of Egypt.
• God provides for Moses' mother when a wealthy, powerful woman intervenes and supports their family as a unit.

Questions:

• Did Pharaoh's daughter know who Miriam and the "Hebrew woman" were?
• If you are a mother, do you honestly see yourself as more blessed or burdened by your children? Probably a combination, right?
• What exactly is the current way to find families with babies in the reeds and help them?

Lovely Rachel and Rejected Leah (Gen 29-35)

Welcome to the third generation of Abraham's family, which will officially begin the nation of Israel with its twelve tribes, formed from the descendants of Jacob's twelve sons.

As we begin to look at the lives of the women in these stories, let's note that Rebekah, our mover and shaker from the last episode, again starts the action in this story when she sends Jacob back to her family to look for a wife. She does this partly so he can escape the anger of Esau, whom she helped Jacob trick out of his firstborn's blessing from Isaac, and partly because she wants him to marry within her family rather than with a local Hittite woman like Esau has done.

Rachel and beauty
Jacob first meets Rachel at the well. This scene should remind us of when Abraham's servant met Rebekah: again there is animal watering and a beautiful eligible young woman. Rachel is introduced to us as a shepherd, which makes her the first career woman in the Bible. This time it is Jacob who takes the initiative, helping get the water and intervening in some local conflict over the well, and he is delighted to find that Rachel is a potential wife. They go to find Laban, who again is very happy to welcome an unexpected kinsman with marriage potential for his daughters.

After Jacob has been there a month, they arrange his future marriage to Rachel, which will take place after Jacob has served Laban for 7 years. Leah is mentioned as Laban's other daughter who is less desirable because of her "dull eyes." Translators tell us the meaning of the description isn't clear. But the point is that Rachel is much prettier.

Jacob clearly falls in love with Rachel instead of Leah because of her beauty. This is a major major topic among ideas about women. It's almost axiomatic that women's beauty is of high value in the world, where men's attractiveness is not as important. Beauty is considered to be a corollary of femininity. It's also pretty much universally acknowledged is that this is not fair. That most women would love to be absolutely beautiful is evidenced by all the trappings of fashion, makeup, jewelry, beauty products, fitness plans etc. It is a major deal in women's lives that takes up a lot of time, energy, and money. But we don't pursue all this stuff out of stupidity and frivolity. This story is the first Bible story giving evidence that the prettier a woman is, the more desirable and loved she will be, the more things will go well for her, and the more power she will have.  I can feel angry eyes burning back at me from the reading side of this post, but believe me mine are flashing from this end too, because it's not fair and it also affects me. But listen, let's acknowledge how this is and speak frankly about it.

Also, let's read along, and see where this advantage and disadvantage take Rachel and Leah in their lives, and how God deals with each of them in their own situation. In doing so let's look for clues about how he values physical beauty in women. He is its creator after all.

After the seven years fly by for Jacob who is so in love with Rachel that they "seemed to him but a few days," the day for the marriage arrives. Laban reveals himself to truly be from the same stock as his strategically dishonest sister Rebekah. In an almost identical trick to the one she played on Isaac, he substitutes Leah in for her sister when Jacob is unable to see her and recognize what is happening. When he realizes he's been tricked, it's too late. The deed has been done and Laban's agenda is achieved.

Laban's action is truly unfair to Jacob and he is right to be angry. But I do wonder if Laban's motivation was one of love to poor Leah, who he worried would not receive her own attention, and might not gain herself a husband on her own, and would therefore have no one to provide for her. He gives Rachel to Jacob as well, as promised, but gets seven more years of labor for himself out of the deal. Jacob takes this all as well as could be expected.

Leah and children
Immediately after the wedding, the narrative begins to take up Leah's case, that Jacob loves Rachel much more than her, and that the Lord sees this. "When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he enabled her to have children, but Rachel could not conceive." There is a lot going on there. God seems to have noticed that Leah was suffering from a lack of love from her husband, and mitigated that suffering by honoring her with children. Though we saw God's similar concern that Sarah would be the mother of Abraham's heir, the children God gives to Leah seem to be to comfort her even more specifically, since God will bless Jacob with many legitimate sons through several women in the end. God clearly finds her lack of received love to be wrong, and intervenes to compensate and bless her.

The meanings of the names Leah gives her boys are a peek into how her relationship with Jacob is developing:  Reuben -"The Lord has noticed my misery, and now my husband will love me"; Simeon - "the Lord heard that I was unloved and has given me another son"; Levi - "surely this time my husband will feel affection for me, since I have given him three sons"; Judah - "now I will praise the Lord!" Does the meaning of that last name show a development that Leah is at last giving up on Jacob's affection and turning to receive the affection of God, who blesses her regardless of what her husband does?

Rachel is on a different journey. Though she is loved dearly by her husband, she is unable to have any children. If beauty is one asset women are expected to have, fertility is another. And it was even more important in the historical setting of Genesis than it is today. Further, I think biologists would say that in the grand scheme of things, our ideas of attractiveness tend to be characteristics that indicate fertility. Beauty is often a sign of what nature deems really important between the sexes, ability to reproduce.

Rachel becomes jealous of Leah's children, despite her clear victory over Jacob's affection. Her infertility also causes a relational wedge between her and Jacob. She demands that he give her children, "or I'll die!" Jacob is "furious" at this and says that God is the one keeping her from having children. But neither of them approach God for help. Instead, we see Rachel using mandrakes to try to increase her fertility. When Rachel finally does conceive, it says that God remembered her and answered her prayers. But there is no recorded conversation between either of Jacob's wives and the Lord compared with what we had with Rebekah and Sarah.

Rachel's infertility is first mentioned in contrast to Leah, who God enabled to have children because she was unloved. I would love to understand God's motivation here. It does seem that God is comforting Leah in her loneliness and rejection by giving her children. Is Rachel punished for being loved? My idea of infertility is typically that it's a problem--that scientifically, if the right things happen, a couple will get a baby. But maybe this is the wrong way to look at it. In each of the family stories we've read, the couple has been completely dependent on God for a child, and the child does not arrive without his intervention. When you consider even from a physical standpoint all the millions of tiny developments that have to go right for a healthy baby to arrive, it does seem miraculous that it ever happens at all. And perhaps this is the correct way to look at children. They are brought about by God as a gift. Though we participate, it is up to him to give them.

Servant-wives as teammates, not rivals, this time
This drama always seems less present, though, in the lives of the servant women recruited by their mistresses for help when God is not delivering on the timeline desired. Maybe though we don't know their stories as much as we know Leah's,  God is acting similarly for the servant women who are not honored and cherished in marriage?

But in this story, the servants Bilhah and Zilpah are pretty much completely accepted into the family. Where Sarah was jealous of Hagar's pregnancy, Rachel and Leah are delighted with the children of their servants, and take credit for them. Perhaps the difference in their emotional experiences is because of the competition between the sisters. Another reason that marriage is best with just one man and one woman--competition in this relationship is terrible! Because of the rivalry between the sisters, maidservants become teammates rather than rivals themselves.

It's noteworthy that where Ishmael was rejected as the heir and sent away, Bilhah and Zilpah's children are full tribes of Israel. God does accept them, and Jacob accepts them and blesses them on his deathbed (albeit with shorter blessings than Rachel and Leah's sons receive). Though the tribes of Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher are less legendary than the Levites, the tribe of Judah, and the others from the lines of Rachel and Leah, they are Israelites, where the Ishmaelites and the Edomites are not. Is this partly due to the real influence of Sarah and Rebekah who are both influential in their stories in favoring their boys? Of course God works through all of this. But perhaps in these stories we can also see these women's actions influencing the plot.

We don't know a lot about the servant women of Rachel and Leah other than that they were lauded for bearing children. After Zilpah bears her first son, Leah says, "Now the other women will celebrate with me!" Maybe this tells us that the women of the household were a bit of a support group for each other, in the absence of the relational support of a primary marriage relationship?

Leaving Laban
When all of his children are born, Jacob feels the need to separate from Laban. After some years of negotiating about livestock with shrewd Laban, Jacob receives a message from God that he should just go, and return to his homeland. I love that he consults Rachel and Leah about this move. They respond to the idea with hearty approval, seconding Jacob's disillusionment with Laban, saying that he will not give them any inheritance, and expressing that "all the wealth God has given you from our father legally belongs to us and our children." This discussion about money is the reason they think Jacob should "go ahead and do whatever God has told you."

They leave in secret, and in an interesting development, Rachel steals her father's household idols. Are they valuable, and is she hoping to get some "inheritance" back from her father after all? Is she doing it out of superstition? Laban chases the family down, angry both because they left without telling him and because of the stolen idols. Jacob is sure of his his innocence, and unknowingly puts Rachel in grave danger, by promising to put to death anyone who may have taken them. He also promises to give back any other stolen goods, not mentioning a death penalty in that case. Maybe he would be more upset to find anyone in his household worshiping idols than thieving.

Anyway, Rachel, proving her genetic connection to her father and aunt, sneakily avoids being caught, using a very feminine excuse (while sitting on the idols, she says she can't get up, she's having her period). After Laban unsuccessfully searches Jacob's belongings, Jacob makes a great speech defending his innocence and rubbing Laban's nose in it. And that's that. As far as we know, nobody ever finds out about Rachel's theft.

In the next part of the story, where Isaac returns home and has to face down Esau, we see a contrast between him and his father and grandfather when facing conflict with other powerful men. Where both of his forefathers used their wives as bargaining chips with local kings, offering them without qualms to their rivals, when Jacob goes out to meet Esau, he protects everyone. He appeases Esau with gifts before they arrive, and then divides his family into groups to attempt to keep some of them safe. His divisions clearly and openly show the rank of the women in his family. Least protected are the servant wives and their children who go to meet Esau first, then Leah and her children, and finally Rachel and Joseph.

The meeting goes well, and after reconciliation the brothers live in two different towns. But Jacob is forced to move again after a scandalous and murderous incident with a local tribe over his daughter Dinah. I think we'll talk about this one in separate post. They leave, and return to camp at Bethel, where Jacob has earlier met God. Here Jacob does order his household to get rid of all of their idols, so he must have had some knowledge of the presence of idols in his family after Rachel's theft. Also at Bethel, they hear of the death of Rebekah's old nurse. We learn her name, Deborah, and they name the tree where they bury her "the oak of weeping." She seems to have been much beloved. In contrast, we don't even know exactly when Rebekah dies.

The sisters' lives in hindsight
Jacob's family next moves to Ephrath, or Bethlehem. But on the way, Rachel goes into labor, and winds up being the first recorded woman in the Bible to experience the curse of difficult childbirth to such an extent that it causes her death. The story is very sad. She has intense labor pains and a difficult delivery, and she must have been having a terrible time because her midwife tries to comfort her "Don't be afraid--you have another son!" "With her last breath" she names the baby "son of my sorrow." We have her pain, her fear, and her sorrow, in the last moments of her life all recorded in these sentences. It makes my heart ache.

Jacob does not want to leave the baby with this legacy from his mother in his name, and changes it to "son of my right hand" or Benjamin. They bury Rachel there and leave a stone monument, which "can be seen there to this day." I wonder when it faded out of memory. Wouldn't that be amazing to find??

After Rachel's death, her maidservant Bilhah gets into trouble with Reuben, and in half a verse we are given the report of their affair, with no other commentary. But this sexual sin keeps Reuben from receiving the firstborn's blessing from his father, even though he is the only son of Jacob who will later keep his brothers from murdering Joseph.

We don't hear any more about either Rachel or Leah, except in much counting of their descendants over the next few chapters. Though Leah's death is not recorded, Jacob later tells us that she is buried with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebekah at Mamre. Though she was less loved by her husband, she was honored to be the mother of the most important tribes of Israel and to be buried with the patriarchs, where Rachel was not.

These chapters are, among other things, a contrast study of the lives of a pretty woman and a plain woman. Beauty, often associated with fertility, turns out not to guarantee it for Rachel, but the favor of God does for Leah. However God does not completely deny Rachel, whose physical condition gives her the advantage in romance and disadvantage in family honor, and he also gives her a son at last. But judging from Rachel's tragic early death, beauty and a romantic spark did not ultimately give her the win in life. I wonder as the years rolled on for Leah how the pain of her rejection by her husband evolved, and whether she achieved peace and happiness in life.

Does either sister really know God? There is little evidence of their interaction. So for this story I think we can gain the most from looking at how God acts toward them. As we often see in the Bible, here God brings about a reversal, where the person you would expect to see in a place of honor: the young, pretty sister, does not receive favor from God as much as the older, less pretty sister.

About beauty itself, I think we see God acknowledging it as an asset for women, though of course he doesn't use it to calculate a woman's value. Instead, he blesses those who suffer for lack of beauty the same way he blesses the poor, who suffer for lack of money. Maybe that's a good analogy for considering beauty. Like money, or any other skill or asset, it's not good or bad in itself, it is just a resource to use for God's purposes, and he takes into account what we have been given and how we use it. Though money and beauty ease life for some, they don't guarantee happiness and can become completely irrelevant to whether we achieve it. But in neither case can they be completely ignored when you consider a person's situation in life. One difference is that money can be more attainable for most, where beauty is not as attainable. This contributes to the power dynamic between men and women where a general human lack of ability to become much more beautiful affects women more than men. But we can take heart that God sees and understands all this, and is good and trustworthy in the midst of it.

Takeaways:

• Both Sarah and Rebekah have real influence on the major plotline of the family God chooses to form his people.
• In this story we see the advantage that beauty gives some women in life being acknowledged and mitigated by God's favor.
• Neither Rachel nor Leah is recorded interacting with God. The only references to God in their lives are comments about their prayers when their children are born.

Questions:

• Why the difference in status for Ishmael compared with Bilhah and Zilpah's sons?
• How do you reckon with the intuitive way people value beauty in women? Not fair, but real. What do we do with it?

The God who sees me (Genesis 16, 21:8-20)

Interwoven with the story of Sarah and Abraham is the story of Hagar. Though Sarah is the one remembered and honored in the hall of fame of holy women in many places in the Bible (1 Pet 3:6, Hebrews 11:11, Rom 4:19, 9:9, Gal 4:22-23), Hagar's character shows us another a heart-warming picture of God's support for those less honored, less remembered, and in need of help and grace.

The first exile
When we are introduced to Hagar, she is little more than a pawn in Sarai's plan to move God's plan forward. She is from Egypt, but that is all we know about her backstory before she is given to Abram as a wife. We know Abram agreed to this plan, Hagar's feelings about it are not considered in the text. But Hagar's first recorded contribution to the action is the contempt from her that Sarai perceives when Hagar becomes pregnant.

Abram takes Sarai's side in the dispute, and tells Sarai to deal with her as she sees fit. What Sarai sees fit is treatment so harsh that Hagar feels the need to run away. When Hagar is alone, we get a glimpse into her story at what is likely one of it's most profound points over the course of her life.

Hagar receives a visit from an angel, who is very interested in her circumstances, and gives her direction about them, saying "Return to your mistress and submit to her authority." He follows this up with promises to her, that she will have more descendants than she can count, and that her son will be wild, and live in hostility with others. The angel also gives her Ishmael's name (meaning Hagar is the one who names him when they return, probably after sharing this story with her household). It means "God hears" and is a sign to Hagar that the Lord is involved in her stressful life. She, in response, uses a new name for the Lord "the one who sees me."

What a beautiful interaction this is! Hagar's recorded intimacy with God here is in stark contrast with her holy mistress's relationship with God, played out in overheard conversations, attempts to influence him from afar, and doubt about his power. I think we have to observe here that God is involved with different people in different ways, even when each is one of his own people, one of his own women.

Hagar does return, in obedience and in faith in the promise she has received from the Lord, but we hear nothing of her relationship with Sarai until there is more trouble 14 years later. The reconciliation at the end of chapter 16 is recorded that she "gave Abram a son." No information is given about how she or Sarai felt about being back together at that point.

The second exile
After Sarai's relationship with the Lord is resolved in gratitude and laughter, at Isaac's birth, Hagar comes back into the action. She is having a similar problem to what happened in the earlier episode. But instead of Hagar being contemptuous to Sarah, now it is Ishmael making fun of Isaac. Again, Sarah's anger flares, and Abraham allows her to send them away.

The first time God came to Hagar and Ishmael in their difficulty, they were on a road, near a spring of water. This time they are wandering aimlessly in the desert, and their water has just run out. Hagar is desperate now, crying alone, unable to bear watching her son die. She has earlier been promised that God will make a great nation out of Ishmael, which would be precluded by his death. So her faith has to be shaking at this point. Also she is faced with the immediate dire problem of their physical needs. But God "hears" again and comes to her, repeating the promise about Ishmael. He also shows her a well that saves them, and the crisis is apparently solved at that point. Ishmael grows up in the wilderness as a skillful archer an ultimately marries someone from Egypt, where his mother is from.

Perhaps this is a very happy ending for Hagar, to return to her homeland with a son she is proud of who is blessed by God, and to settle there and integrate him back into her people. Though Hagar and Ishmael's story is a bit of a sideline from the story of God's people in the Bible, God does indeed see and hear them, and my heart is warmed at his compassion for them in the midst of his greater plan.

Takeaways:

• In contrast with God's distant relationship with Sarah, he interacts intimately with Hagar in her time of need.
• God is extremely compassionate with Hagar in the context of her motherhood, rescuing her in the midst of a troubled pregnancy, and then later, when she is unable to provide for her son. This, despite the fact that their own provocation seems to have brought the trouble upon them.

Questions:

• Why did God seek out Hagar to help and bless her? Could it have been because of her relationship with God's chosen man, Abraham, and his son?
• What was the relationship between Abraham, Sarai and Hagar like in between her two departures?