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Barren as a way to .... ???

Lila

Lila

Member
Female
I have been reading the Scriptures from the beginning and what I cannot work out is this:
It has never occurred to me before how many women were actually barren (let's name here Rebekah, Leah and Rachael) before we read that only after Isaac entreated the Lord for example, God opened the womb etc....

There are several layers to any of these stories, what I am looking for in this case is rather a more pragmatical approach. I am trying to connect the initial command to be fruitful and multiply together with the fact that it was also God that had to lift up the curse (?) of being barren first. I thought by default one is able to conceive though?

I just don't seem to get my head around the two points (contrasts at this stage) at the same time. I would love to understand it better though.
 
I am a firm believer that environmental factors can come into play. By default, the female of the species is fertile. However that could be blocked by any number of things: trauma, mutation, sickness, malnourishment. That doesn't necessarily make them curses, nor does it imply a failing in the woman, they're just side effects of living in the world. At least in my opinion. Alternatively, perhaps the Lord's hand is at work in some cases of barrenness, as there is a specific timing God requires for his plans?


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Good response, thanks, I didn't think these "modern life" factors would have applied back then already? That's what makes my head spin..
 
I would also add that "be fruitful and multiply" is not an absolute command, to be followed by everyone.

We know already that unmarried celibacy in service to the Lord (which precludes physical multiplication) is preferable to physical marriage (1Cor7:32-38) because an unmarried man or woman is more fruitful in spiritual things than the married folk are. I would posit that them that follow that path are still multiplying, but spiritually as they bring more sons and daughters into the kingdom rather than into their own households.

Isaiah 54 says that the children of a barren woman are more numerous than she who is married and Isaiah 56 says that the eunuchs that please the Lord will have a name better than that than those who reproduce.

So my understanding is that a barren woman or an infertile man both have a 'eunique' (OH HO HO I MADE A WORD) opportunity to serve God, and that is not necessarily (or no longer) a curse.

So I would even be so bold as to say that although barrenness can be the result of a curse, sometimes it is also a calling.

Whatever Paul's thorn in the flesh actually was, it was meant to mold him, not to punish him.
 
Lila, Sarah was also barren until she had a child long after her time for having children had passed. Scripture doesn't specifically say that God closed her womb, but she was barren until her time was right. I recall a discussion a long time ago in which it was argued that God kept her from having children for 30 years after she went into Abimilech's harem. While I hate it when people try to say "God did that because..." when God didn't explain why He did something, it's a reasonable possibility in terms of preserving the seed-line of Christ.

Hannah is more interesting to me along the lines of what you said, because 1st Samuel 1:4 states that God had (intentionally) closed her womb. The result was that she reached the point of promising Him her firstborn, who was to be Samuel.

Slumberfreeze, I have to take issue with this:

Slumberfreeze said:
"be fruitful and multiply" is not an absolute command, to be followed by everyone.
Click to expand...

The existence of an exception does not negate the command.

The exception is chastity due to service to the Kingdom, and we have the commentary of Christ in Matthew 19 on that as well as Paul's comments in 1st Corinthians 7 which makes it clear it applies to both men and women. On the other side of the coin we have Romans 1:26-27. If we ignore the traditional desire to make it all about sex and look at what Paul actually said, we find both the men and women rejecting the natural function of the woman due to a depraved passion, which was the result of God pouring His wrath out on them.

(My opinion is that the depraved passion is feminism)

To understand what the natural function of the woman is, all we need to do is examine why Eve was created. If Eve was created to be a helpmeet, wife and mother, then what Paul is describing in Romans 1:26-27 is a rejection of God's design for both men and women and a rejection of the command to be fruitful and multiply.

However, if Eve was created to be Adam's sex toy, then Romans 1:26-27 is all about sex because the purpose of women is to provide men with sex. I'd love to hear from any of the single women who believe their purpose in life is to be a man's sex toy. PM me. I have questions about battery life.

As to barrenness, that's neither fish nor fowl. God opens and closes the womb as He pleases and if God has a woman's womb closed that's out of her control and the command is irrelevant. Think of Samson. He took a wife from those people whom God commanded that His people not marry, but Scripture says God caused that because He desired to stir up trouble with the Philistines. We can't put God in a box and He can do what He wants to do.
 
Lila said:
Good response, thanks, I didn't think these "modern life" factors would have applied back then already? That's what makes my head spin..
Click to expand...

Mmmm, trauma, mutation, malnourishment, and sickness are not exclusive to the modern world. Perhaps mutation could be more prolific today, but trauma and malnourishment were arguably much higher then.

Eristhophanes said:
Slumberfreeze, I have to take issue with this:

Slumberfreeze said:
"be fruitful and multiply" is not an absolute command, to be followed by everyone.
Click to expand...

The existence of an exception does not negate the command.
Click to expand...

Exceptions do not negate the command, but it does mean it is not an "absolute" command, which is what Slumber said. If something has even one exception, it cannot, by definition, be absolute. Further there have been devout women throughout the years that were barren and *not* blessed with children, though they may have prayed fervently to that end. Are they then sinning? I'd think they were instead an exception.
 
We know about the fertility of very few women in scripture. They are not a statistically valid sample because there are so few - so what happened in their lives does not tell us what was normal.

We're often only told about things that are unusual in scripture. Women are virtually never mentioned unless something unusual happened with them - they were the first woman (Eve), barren and blessed with children (Sarah, Hannah etc), associated with key events in the life of a man (we know a little bit about David's wives Michal, Abigail and Bathsheba, but nothing of his other wives), mother of someone important (Mary, Elizabeth)... Barrenness is a reason to mention them. If they were not barren they mightn't have been mentioned at all (e.g. Noah's wife was arguably just as important as Sarah, but we don't even know her name). So the sample is likely very unrepresentative.

Furthermore they were all the wives of very prominent men whom YHWH was doing very unusual things with their lives - there's a good chance He deliberately made these specific women barren in order to force these men to pray. He had promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob great multitudes of descendents - He probably didn't want them to think they had accomplished that in their own strength, but wanted them to know that He was only doing this through His own power as a deliberate blessing on their lives.

So I wouldn't read too much into it.
 
What a diverse take on my initial question! Thank you, guys. It has enriched my views :)
 
Lila said:
What a diverse take on my initial question! Thank you, guys. It has enriched my views :)
Click to expand...
That right there is one of the things I love about this place. We all come from such diverse backgrounds yet were all here because of Christ. This, I believe, is what is meant by being united in Christ. Not that we are united in agreeing to every tenet, but instead, though we be different, united thru Christ.
 
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