Have you ever conceived of God as mother? Moses did.
Tonight my paternalistic view of God was challenged in the Book of Numbers. Just as a hungry baby turns to his mother, so did the sojourning Israelite.
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has a special gift for opening eyes to biblical texts that might otherwise have a soporific effect on the contemporary reader. The passage below is from An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination, my “go to” book whenever I am reading the Hebrew Scriptures:
Numbers 11:4-25 reports on Israel’s hunger in the wilderness and the response of sustenance. In verses 4-6, Israel is presented in a needy, demanding posture of complaint. Moses then intercedes with YHWH on Israel’s behalf (vv. 10-15), and verses 16-25 report on the organized way in which YHWH responds to the crisis of hunger. The narrative is of particular interest because of the speech (prayer) of Moses on behalf of hungry Israel. In addition to demonstrating the courage and effectiveness of Moses vis-à-vis YHWH, the particular, defiant charge of Moses against YHWH in verse 12 merits attention:
Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, “Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a suckling child,” to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors?
In Moses’ own denial of responsibility, it is clearly understood that it is YHWH, not Moses, who conceived, birthed, carried, and gave suckle to Israel. It is remarkable that this rhetoric employs maternal imagery, and so implies YHWH to be a mothering God. One may conclude that such extremity of expression is evoked and required by the extremity of the hunger crisis and the threat that that crisis poses to Mosaic leadership.
February 25th, 2010 | 8:59 am | #1
The maternal-sounding phrasing is interesting, and I admit I had not taken special note of it before. Thank you for sharing.
Having just heard this passage preached on last Sunday though, I find myself challenging the summary that this episode is about Israel being hungry and God providing sustenance? It seems like He was already doing that, and this episode is more illustrative of the sins of complaining and lack of contentment to which the people of Israel were so prone. Unfortunately this attitude is probably even more prevalent today, speaking just from my own shameful experience in complaining.
It seems clear from the passage that God despises this kind of complaining, when you see that he ended up wiping out a great number of people with the very thing they were complaining about not having.
I’m sure there are mothers you would react this way to complaining as well, although perhaps not to the same degree. I’m not sure if it’s something most people would consider illustrative of maternal instincts though.
February 25th, 2010 | 12:06 pm | #2
As long as we keep clear the distinction between analogy/simile and metaphor when images of God as a mother are used, we are good.
What left-wing feminist theologies attempt to do is to suggest that God reveals Himself to be Mother. In fact, He never does.
He reveals Himself to be Father and there is Son and Holy Spirit.
Never “Mother, Divine Child and Creative Energy” or whatever the latest substitute rhetoric is for the Trinity.
February 25th, 2010 | 1:03 pm | #3
Rev McCain,
Did you mean that we have to distinguish between analogy/simile on the one hand, and metaphor on the other? If so, could you flesh that out? I don’t see what you’re getting out of the distinction–how is that distinction necessary for warding off the strange substitute rhetoric?
Separate thought:
It’s important that God almost exclusively uses the image of Father in Scripture, almost never a maternal image–this passage and Matthew 23:37 being the only ones I recall. That’s how he teaches us to address him & think of him.
We can’t go to “Mother, Divine Child, and Creative Energy”. But that doesn’t imply that maternal qualities don’t find their source in him, as well–motherhood is part of the Image of God the Father in mankind, somehow. (Whether that means maternal qualities are “less close to the heart of God’s identity”, or something else, I have no idea. If Scripture reveals the answer, I don’t know it yet.)
February 25th, 2010 | 1:04 pm | #4
Something like that, or comparable to it.
; )
February 25th, 2010 | 1:05 pm | #5
My point is simply God is not revealed as “Mother” but is described as doing things that are analogous to mothers.
February 25th, 2010 | 5:09 pm | #6
It is both maleness and femaleness together that completes the ‘image of God’ in Genesis 1.
God is neither masculine nor feminine – He is Spirit. But He relates to us in masculine terms, not because he is more male than female, that’s absurd – but because the ROLE of authority was given to Adam, the ‘male portion’ of His image that reflects most those aspects of who He is.
Giving God gender specific pronouns is a function of anthropomorphism. In the same way that God is described as a hammer and a shield and a rock… he is no more those things than He is inherently male or masculine. But it is the way he reveals himself to us that helps us to understand, in our limited capacity, what role He plays in our lives here. It is in that sense that we ought not attempt to alter how we address Him… It is not because He does not have feminine qualities – He is more masculine and more feminine than any of us will understand this side of glory – but it is how He has chosen to reveal Himself to us that dictates how we respond to Him.
In my humble opinion…
February 25th, 2010 | 5:38 pm | #7
Greg, your comments are commonly heard today in some circles, but the point that makes many uncomfortable is the reality that God identifies and reveals Himself as Father, and of course, He has a very real Son, incarnate as a very real and actual human male.
Is God a man? No, but in Christ, He is.
This is the scandal of particularity about God’s revelation of Himself that is out of sync with popular notions of male/female and God.
God compares Himself to many things in the Scriptures, but reveals Himself to us as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
February 25th, 2010 | 8:42 pm | #8
Mr. McCain, we are in agreement.
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