Maternal Grief in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

This book explores the stories of biblical mothers who were placed at key junctures in Israel’s history to renegotiate the destinies not only of their own children, dead or lost, but also those of larger communities, i.e. family lines, ethnic groups, or entire nations. Since ‘rites in general are a context for the creation and transformation of social order’, these women used the circumstance of child loss as a platform for a kind of grief-driven socio-political activism. As maternal bereavement is generally understood as the most intense of all types of loss and was seen as archetypal of all mourning in the ancient Near East, Israelite communities in crisis deemed sorrowing motherhood as a potent agent in bringing about their own survival and resurgence back to normalcy. The book considers (1) modern examples of socio-political engagement among women that stems from child loss; (2) a survey of recent grief studies that identify maternal grief as the most intense and the most enduring among other types of bereavement; and (3) an overview of ancient Near Eastern cultures that viewed maternal grief as paradigmatic of all mourning and used ritual actions performed by mothers in contexts of large-scale catastrophes as mechanisms for dealing with a collective trauma. Against this background, the book discusses Hagar (Gen. 21), Rizpah (2 Sam. 21), the Tekoite (2 Sam. 14), and Rachel (Jer. 31), all of whom perform rites for their dying or dead children and exhibit a form of advocacy for society at large.

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