Toledot–Genesis 25:19-28:9
LA JOLLA, California — This parshadeals mainly with the adult life of Isaac, the second patriarch. It opens with Ch. 25:20 “Isaac pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord responded to his plea…”
The idea of the barren woman caught my attention, as it occurs numerous times in the Tanakh. I checked the internet for how the issue was handled by others in former times. There is much on the topic, actually universally throughout history, and often in an unkind way toward the woman who doesn’t conceive. Commonly she was considered to have sinned. In the Fertile Crescent, because of its fertile land, there was a large focus also on the fertility of animals and women. A near complete absence of true scientific knowledge prevailed. Pregnancy was attributed to a gift from the gods, and its absence a punishment by gods.
In Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Ugarit, the language of law codes were dominantly negative to the woman. Girls were reared to attain motherhood. Upon marriage if she did not bear healthy children, she and her family were disgraced.
A wife’s dowry likely prevented many husbands from discarding a barren wife. This was because Hammurabi’s Code specified if a man discarded his barren wife, he had to return the dowry.
In Canaan, pagans celebrated Baal, a fertility diety for both crops and offspring. A tablet from Ugarit states: “over the fire, seven times the sweet voiced youths chant, ‘Coriander in milk, mint in butter.'” This was a ceremonial meal for infertility.
There is also a 14th Century BCE Ugaritic epic about Dan’el, a good royal who lost his son, and pleaded for a replacement to be his descendent. He prayed to the god El, who instructed Dan’l to mount his bed and kiss his wife. There followed the birth of a son, ‘a scion like unto my kindred.’
Medical papyruses from Egypt alleged ways to “test’ a woman’s fertility. One involved the subject sitting on the earth covered in beer. She was force-fed dates, and monitored to see if she vomited, presumably to somehow determine if she was capable of conception.
The Hebrews, in a goodly degree of contrast to their neighbors, were more tolerant, loving, and supportive of barren wives, e.g. Isaac, Hannah, etc..
Nephthys, the Egyptians’ goddess of infertility, was the wife and sister of the sterile god Set. She was terrifying, represented by a falcon or vulture, which species Egyptians thought were also sterile, i.e. having spontaneously appeared out of thin air. Nephthys was also the goddess of funerals and certain dangerous rites of the afterlife.
Ancient China was one of the few societies that dealt with infertile women not as outcasts. Via concubines, the couple could bear acceptable children.
Rome and Greece didn’t treat infertile women with respect. Barrenness was legitimate grounds for divorce and punishment. At the festival of Lupercalia, 15 goats and a dog were sacrificed, following which two priests cut out skin from the dead animals and ran around whacking the women with the bloody material. A blow was intended to make them bear children.
Infertile women in medieval times had other problems. The Malleus Malefaction (1487), a popular witch-hunting book in Germany, claimed that infertility was caused by witches and the Devil. Without harming the organs, they just made the organs useless, poisoned the seed, or cooled the ardor between man and wife. And if women weren’t disturbed enough by advice to blame the Devil, childless women were sometimes regarded as witches themselves.
Irv Jacobs is a retired medical doctor who delights in Torah analysis. He often delivers a drosh at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla, and at his chavurah.