The Nature of Barrenness in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

In an essay on the rhetorical use of disability in the Deuteronomistic History, Jeremy Schipper has argued that in the Hebrew Bible, barrenness or infertility can be presented as a disability.¹ He makes three main points in this regard: first, that barrenness is mentioned in close context with illness (Deut 7:14–15); second, that barrenness is said to be “healed” (Gen 20:17); and third, that barrenness appears to be “under the control of a divine ‘sender/controller’ ” (following the terminology of Hector Avalos²). Rebecca Raphael, in her book on disability in the Hebrew Bible, states that “an understanding of disability as bodily impairment in the context of social environment reveals that female infertility, seldom viewed as a disability in modern post-industrial societies, is the defining female disability in the Hebrew Bible.”³ This chapter will explore in more detail some of the nuances of barrenness as disability in the Hebrew Bible, with the fundamental question in mind: what can we know from the biblical material about the reality of barrenness, and the treatment of barren women, in ancient Israel? It will do so through three separate though interconnected lenses. First, the question of what the biblical texts might be able to tell us about the “realia” of infertility in ancient Israel: where on the spectrum of “normality” did ancient Israelites conceive of fertility and infertility? Second, the theological aspect: to what force or forces did the ancient Israelite authors ascribe barrenness?