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Barren Women in the Bible

One of the ways God prepares to save His people is evident in the recurrent motif of barrenness. Barren women pray to God and He sends them a Savior. Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Samson’s mother, Hannah, Michal, and a Shunammite woman are all barren in the Old Testament. God intervenes and gives children to six of the seven women: Sarah (Isaac), Rebekah (Esau and Jacob), Rachel (Joseph and Benjamin), Sampson's mother (Samson), Hannah (Samuel), and the Shunammite woman. This recurrent motif divulges deeper meaning if we examine differences in these stories. Michal is Saul's daughter and marries David, but she is barren, and they have no child together. She remains barren and God does not intervene. Perhaps God does not want Saul’s lineage to continue, but there is a clear reason why Michal is the only one of the seven barren women in the Old Testament who is not healed. The last barren woman in the Old Testament is a Shunammite woman who asks for Elisha’s help. God gives her a child, her child dies, and Elisha brings that child back to life! See the progression and development of this barrenness motif. What is God saying here? Seven barren women in the Old Testament, God heals six of their barrenness, and the result of their faith and patience is a son who becomes a great man of God: Isaac, Jacob (and Esau), Joseph (and Benjamin), Samson, Samuel, and the child who dies but Elisha brings him back to life. It is the sixth barren woman, David’s wife Michal, who does not produce a child. Six signifies incompleteness or humankind; remember man and woman being created on the sixth day. Consider that the child who dies and is brought back to life is the seventh barren woman's child, emphasizing completeness and God's perfection. Since all seven of these women and their stories occur in the Old Testament the next barren woman in the Bible in the New Testament starts the cycle anew. Both Elizabeth and Mary have miraculous pregnancies in the New Testament. Of course, Mary's pregnancy being even more extraordinary than all of the previous miracles: a miraculous act of God as a virgin conceives a child.

The barren woman motif of the Old Testament is completed in the New Testament as Elizabeth, the seventh barren woman of the Bible, is healed. Mary then begins the new cycle or new age with an even more miraculous pregnancy. The miraculous birth motif develops into conception by a virgin! This event is emphasized and dramatically anticipated by each of the 7 miraculous births before it. Since the birth by a virgin cannot have an older brother, the motif of “the second is favored over the first” is present again. Christ is not the first miraculous birth in the New Testament, but the second. Elizabeth, a barren cousin of Mary, delivers John the Baptist before Mary delivers Jesus, the Christ. John recognizes his place (another development) as he foretells Jesus’ coming in all four gospels (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:7; Luke 3:16; John 1:27).

The barren woman motif is a succinct example of how important it is to look not only at the individual stories, but to look for connections among those stories. The Bible tells colorful, meaningful, short stories but with much more brilliance if read in its entirety and in context. Then we can appreciate the pieces that form a larger tapestry of meaning. Look for the meaning beyond these women’s barrenness by looking for the thread of barrenness in the Bible and follow it to its broader picture of meaning. Then ask what does this recurrent motif of barrenness look like over time, how does it develop, and what does this tell us about God and His larger story in relationship to mankind? These questions apply to all the themes explored in this book.