Themes in Genesis: The Importance for a Woman to Give Birth

As I touched upon in an earlier article, having children was the highest of values in Genesis. It was the most important of all values and as such, in order to get children much of what we hold to be near and dear was pushed aside.

After Lot left Sodom and lost his wife because she loved Sodom, he was left alone with his two daughters. They had nobody else to marry so they chose to get their dad drunk and sleep with him in order to have children by him. The end result was two nations were born - Moab and the Ammonites. I have often wondered if this wasn't a story told in Israel to belittle their two neighboring nations - sons and daughters of incest.

Sarah was barren so she let Abraham sleep with her servant Hagar. Through Hagar, Sarah had hoped to raise a child, but it seems that once a child was born that child bonded more to the true mother as it was in this case.

When Rachel saw that her sister had 4 sons (they shared the same husband) and she had none, so she gave her servant to her husband because she hoped to be able to even the score with her sister even though they were her servant's children and not hers. It worked so well, that her sister Leah realizing the kids weren't being popped out anymore, gave her servant to their common husband. By the end, the husband Jacob was sleeping with four women, giving a grand total of 12 sons and unknown amounts of daughters.

Jacob's 4th born son Judah had 3 sons. The oldest died (God killed him because he was evil) leaving his wife to the next brother to carry out an important Israelite tradition - to have a child with the widow so that the child can be raised as the son of the dead husband, thus carrying on the name of the dead husband. But the 2nd son was not a good brother and spilled his seed on the ground so that she could not become pregnant. For some reason, he didn't care to continue his brother's name. God got upset with his behavior and killed him.

By the way this passage has been used by misinformed preachers to preach against masturbation, but this is having to do with the duty of carrying on the dead brother's name, not... you know....

Judah began to believe that his sons' deaths were all due to one common denominator - the "black widow" Tamar. So he made her a deal, "Wait until my youngest son is older and you can have a child by him." But Judah had no intention on doing this. Tamar saw through his scheme when the boy was older and she had no offer to have sex with him, so she took matters into her own hands (literally).

Without Judah knowing, Tamar put a veil on and posed as a prostitute, snagging Judah into her bed. It worked and she got pregnant by Judah, who had no idea the prostitute he hired was his daughter-in-law. Eventually when he was told she was pregnant through prostition he wanted to have her killed, but when he found out that he was the father, he commended her for her righteousness.

Why? Because she did it to have a child in the name of her dead husband by a close kin. Having children was more important than avoiding incest.