The House of the Mother

Abstract

This book reevaluates the biblical house of the father ( bêt ’āb ) in light of the anthropological critique of the patrilineal model. It uncovers and defines the contours of an underappreciated yet socially significant kinship unit in the Bible: “the house of the mother ( bêt ’ēm ).” Identified with what anthropologists call “the uterine family,” the biblical house of the mother comprised a mother, her maidservants, and her biological and adopted children. The house of the father subdivided into maternally named or maternally identified units. Members of a maternally named house formed an alliance within the larger house of the father and competed as a unit for succession within the house of the father. Biblical Hebrew recognizes these maternal units with kinship labels specific to a mother and keyed to female reproductive organs: “son of my womb,” “the child who opens the womb,” “my brother, the son of my mother,” “a brother, one who had nursed at my mother’s breasts.” We also find maternally delineated space within the house of the father described as a “house,” “chamber,” or “tent” of the mother, and this space is associated biblically with conception, birth, breastfeeding, and marriage negotiations. This book demonstrates that the Bible recorded its past in the form of idealized, founding-family narratives, and within those narratives, competing mothers and their sub-houses marked hierarchies within the house of the father and political divisions within the national house of Israel.

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