The (Metaphorical) Birth of Israel

A while back I packed my kids up and went to visit my folks over a weekend, which meant I got to visit the church I grew up in. That week the pastor preached on Genesis 32, the story of Jacob wrestling in the night with a mysterious figure. I have to admit that I do not recall the point the preacher was trying to make. I am particularly bad at listening to sermons--something I do feel guilty about, considering I once was a preacher and know the frustration of working hard on a sermon, only to look out at a congregation full of fidgeting and glazed eyes. But I remain a terrible listener.

I do recall that the preacher spent a good bit of time telling the backstory of Jacob--how he came to be staying up late by a stream in the middle of nowhere. And I do like a good story, so I listened to that part. And also I listened when he retold the strange episode of a "man" appearing and wrestling with Jacob through the night. Even the most apathetic listener would be hard put not to be drawn to this story. Who is this "man"? God? An angel? A demon? Jacob's own inner demons personified? It's anybody's guess, really, as the text doesn't say. What is clear is that this being was well matched in strength with Jacob: they wrestled through the night up to dawn, it had the power to dislocate Jacob's hip with a single touch, and it conferred upon Jacob a new name as a result of their striving.

Jose Alain Austria, Jacob Wrestling with God, mixed media on canvas, 2008

Halfway through this incredible story it hit me: this is a birth story.

It begins with the setting: the dead of night. Ask any woman who experienced a spontaneous labor (as opposed to being induced), and I'd guess 9 out of 10 would tell you her labor began at night. This is when the mother's hormones get reset, and some tipping point is reached in the dance between the mother's body and the baby she's been carrying all these months, and the contractions begin. The relentless contractions, which are a sort of wrestling that continues through the night, and does not cease until the baby is born.

In this story and in birth there are waters flowing (so, so, so much water and other fluids flow freely in birth).  Jacob has shunted all of his wives and children and possessions just across the river before nightfall, and so in the story and in birth, there are people nearby. But those people are only incidental to the drama unfolding between Jacob and his foe, and between a woman in labor and the force of her contractions. I am a doula, and it is my job to support women in labor. I am usually one of many support people: her partner, her midwife or doctor, nurses, other family and friends. We are all there to try to keep her safe and as comfortable as possible, but in labor, it is really all up to the mother to find a means of coping, of not giving up. I can bring her a cool cloth or a sip of water, I can assure her that what she is experiencing is normal, I can talk with her about her fears. But she must find her own way to conquer her fears, to cope with the intensity of her contractions, and ultimately to give in to the process, to let her body wrest the blessing from what can seem to be a stronger foe. But this is a crucial point that many people do not realize: the process of labor is not stronger than the laboring woman. It is her body that is doing this. She is as strong as her contractions. She is well matched to this labor with which she wrestles, just as Jacob in the end is well matched to his adversary.

At the end of his long night of wrestling, Jacob wrested a blessing from his mysterious opponent. In birth, it is obvious that there is a blessing. It might be that our first thought is that a baby is a blessing, and of course, that is true. But in the Genesis story, it is Jacob who is reborn, and, though we often overlook it in our excitement over the new baby, when a child is born, a mother also is born. At the end of his ordeal, Jacob receives his new name: Israel. Just as a woman who gives birth is still June or Stephanie or Katie, she is now also known as Mother. And just as Israel is not only one man's name, but also the name of a people, so are women who give birth now part of something larger than themselves. We are Mothers, we span time and space, not bound by nationality or era. We belong to a new tribe.

And when we recognize our strength, we are fierce.

As day breaks, Jacob limps onward. Though it goes without saying that he has been psychically altered by this experience, he has been permanently, physically altered as well. Once a woman has carried a baby in her belly--stretching her skin and squishing her internal organs beyond what she could have imagined was possible--and then she has birthed that baby, her body will also be permanently, physically altered. Nothing she can do will bring her body back to what it was. She has lasting scars, battle wounds. Ones I believe she should wear with pride.

photo by Jade Beall, creator of A Beautiful Body Project

The Curse of Eve

I think I have to start here with any kind of semi-organized analysis of birth and the biblical narrative, ’cause doesn’t it seem as though everybody likes to pile on Eve and blame her for EVERYTHING BAD THAT IS? It’s like Bob Marley sings, “Woman is the root of all evil.”

In this post I’m going to leave aside the question of  whether or not Eve deserves all the blame for everything that has ever gone wrong, and focus rather on the so-called “curse of Eve,” which is the notion that women experience pain in childbirth because Eve took a bite of forbidden fruit. We’ve all heard this explanation for the existence of labor pain, but what exactly does the Bible say?

Below I will excerpt the passage in question (because I hate it when I read commentaries that make ME look up what passage they are referring to), but first a note on the translation used: it is from Robert Alter’s translation of the book of Genesis. Alter is a scholar of Hebrew and comparative literature, who strives to produce a close literal rendering, while also capturing the poetry and wordplay of the Hebrew text.  

And now, the text, Genesis 3:14-19.

And the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

Cursed be you
of all cattle and all beasts of the field.
On your belly shall you go
and dust shall you eat all the days of your life.
Enmity will I set between you and the woman,
between your seed and hers.
He will boot your head
and you will bite his heel.”

To the woman He said,

“I will terribly sharpen your birth pangs,
in pain shall you bear children.
And for your man shall be your longing,
And he shall rule over you.”

And to the human He said, “Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree that I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat from it,’

Cursed be the soil for your sake,
with pangs shall you eat from it all the days of your life.
Thorn and thistle shall it sprout for you
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread
till you return to the soil,
for from there were you taken,
for dust you are
and to dust shall you return.”

First of all, did you notice that Eve is not cursed at all. Only the snake and the ground are actually cursed. (What did the ground do?  That is another question for another day.) So the whole “curse of Eve” thing is a total misnomer.

But more to the point of the story, this episode, like much of the Bible and particularly the first 11 chapters of Genesis, is meant to help us understand why things are the way they are. So, the question we are asking today is, “Why do women experience pain in childbirth?”

Genesis’s answer is this: Humans go their own way/rebel against God/sin/whatever you want to call it. Anyone who looks around and pays attention to human nature can see that. The consequence (not curse) of that distance between humanity and God is that we have to work. We are no longer able to live a childlike existence in the Garden where our every need is provided for us. Our lives are not easy because we are so unruly–in other words, we brought this trouble on ourselves because of our own poor choices. Any parents out there to whom this sounds familiar? In this worldview, God is our parent, and like any conscientious parent, God allows us to live out the consequences of our actions.

What is really interesting, and also totally missed in most translations of this passage, is that the text shows a parallel description of that consequence for both men and women—even using the same word to describe how both sexes will suffer equally.  Read again verse 16:

To the woman He said,

“I will terribly sharpen your birth pangs,
in pain shall you bear children.
And for your man shall be your longing,
And he shall rule over you.”

and then in the very next verse (17) we see the parallel consequence for the man:

And to the human He said, “Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree that I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat from it,’

Cursed be the soil for your sake,
with pangs shall you eat from it all the days of your life.

In the time and place Genesis was written (and in plenty of places even now), woman’s work=childbearing, while man’s work=providing food. Both types of work are described with the word ‘pangs’. In this reckoning, both man and woman are equally pained. They have equal punishment because they share equal blame. So stop blaming it all on Eve, people. God didn’t.

OK, so that’s the rotten news. But, God is a good parent, one who lets her children face their own consequences, but who does not give us up for lost. Even though both Eve and Adam disobeyed God, he does not abandon them. If you read further, you will see that God helps them find clothes and then goes with them out from the garden. Remember, this is just the beginning of God’s story of being in relationship with humans. The whole rest of the Bible is about how God continues to be present with us, continues to provide for us, continues to love us and to give us another chance. And another. And another.

And the human called his woman’s name Eve, for she was the mother of all that lives. (Genesis 3:20)

But wait, there is even more good news! Despite this decidedly downbeat beginning, throughout the Hebrew Bible, over and over again childbirth is seen as a blessing, not a curse. And Eve, for all the poop everyone gives her, still gets crowned with a title: she is forever remembered as The Mother of All Living. Which is pretty dang cool, in my opinion.

And just a bit further in Genesis, we get to hear out of Eve’s own mouth just how cool she thought becoming a mother was:

And the human knew Eve his woman, and she conceived and bore Cain, and she said,

“I have made a man with the help of the Lord!” (Genesis 4:1)

Ok, so I added the exclamation point. But honestly, who can read this exclamation of Eve’s without hearing an exclamation point?

What a counterpoint to the downside of childbearing shown in Gen 3:16!  This is not the voice of a woman ashamed. She is proud of being a co-creator of life! And clearly, the pangs she experienced in the process of bringing forth her son did nothing to diminish her sense of wonder and fulfillment and joy at meeting him.

Yes, labor is painful. Maybe we can blame Eve for that, maybe not. But we can absolutely follow her lead and do the work of childbearing with pride, reveling in the wonder that, with the help of the Lord, we are creating and bringing forth life.