The Great Physician XVI: The Barren, Infertile and The Temple

There is no question that any male or female with a specific defect involving his genitalia in terms of reproduction, would be stigmatized on account of the real or perceived compromise of his reproductive capability.  If we may paraphrase Isaiah 56:3, the male sufferer from any such reproductive dysfunction becomes, like the eunuch, a ‘dried-up tree’, עץ יבש.  In the female, we know that זוב menstruation and childbirth are all associated with a relatively low-level of stigmatization and impurity that precludes the woman in question from entering the sanctuary.  This prohibition for women is, therefore, precisely equivalent to that imposed upon both dysfunction and impurity having birth defects involving genital mutilation and, by implication, reproductive inability. 

In the case of female barrenness, the most obvious case of reproductive incapacitation in the female, the situation becomes complicated by the time-course of the condition.  Barrenness is an oft-recurring subject in the Bible and the centerpiece of a number of important narratives including Abrahams because it requires God’s direct intervention miraculously to allow Sarah to conceive. Ackerman has, from the viewpoint of the Documentary Hypothesis, examined all of the barren woman stories in the Hebrew Bible. Her conclusion, based on these texts, is that the specific prohibitions of Deuteronomy 23:2 are in principle, equally applicable to barren women in that access to the sanctuary becomes forbidden to them.

However, this prohibition differs in that it is not immediate but requires the passage of a certain time without the production of children before the woman can be formally declared to be barren (1 Samuel 1:7) (1).  Females barrenness, alone among what might be categorized as female blemishes, results in prohibitions and stigmatization commensurate with  זוב menstruation and childbirth but only after an appropriate period has elapsed in order to prove the chronicity and/or irreversibility of the barrenness.   Again, a diagnosis in the modern sense. Ackermann also stated that, ‘Even some cults, when providing some leeway, still marginalized barren women as a particular subgroup on account of their reproductive inability. (2)

Although it isn’t an STD, impotence in males seems to amount to what is considered a blemish in men. It is impossible not to notice the considerable emphasis given to sexual function and dysfunction among the ritual purity defects and also in the broader field of the purity/impurity laws.  Sexual disability, for the most part, is treated in a negative way throughout the Bible and sexual activity in one form or another is a frequently recurring theme in the Bible. This assumes sexual activity without defects like barrenness and impotence are the norm. Why? Because it raises the expectation that a whole and sexually perfect body should be regarded as ritually pure in the first place. A person should be sexually active to be considered whole in terms of ritual purity. This combines the idea that blemish-free is part of the ‘whole’ concept of Shalom (homeostasis). There is a caveat though…

Today, we are universally concerned with sexual performance and it is deficiencies in this capacity that are today seen as stigmatizing.  In the Bible, by contrast, the endpoint of sexual function was to be reproductive success. Sex was for procreation. Procreation to create a family, community that was central to the achieving of wholeness thereby, through way of obedience to God’s command to be fruitful and multiply. It was to be whole in one’s self and whole communally therefore also beneficial to community and worship. It made one more holy. This is where the Old Testament people’s stigmatization really becomes evident. Barren men or women were perceived as less whole. Therefore, less holy. At least by people. But I suggest God didn’t see it this way as he made barren women pregnant. The stigma was more from men, not God. I believe the pressure to bear children in Bible times was more cultural than theological.

This is why Jesus had to come. We all had/have or shortcomings in our lives. But the Levitical sacrificial system point to the sacrifice that would come in Christ. It wasn’t about the barren/blemished individual like Sarah, Rebekah, Elizabeth and others. God created descendants like Issac, Jacob, Joseph Samuel, etc, specifically because He was showing that nothing of this world would stop holy plans. In faith anything is possible. Even creating life out of nothing. Children from barrenness. A nation from a desert. A flesh heart from a heart of stone. It isn’t about the blemished.

Its about the One who can remove the blemish and impurity. 

I believe the real ironic thing about the relationships in the Bible that related to infertility or barrenness showed the godly men involved in those relationships seemed to care as much for their wives than any potential offspring. Abraham was apparently content with his wife Sarah; it was Sarah who pushed her handmaiden Hagar onto Abraham as a surrogate heir-bearer (Genesis 16). When Rebekah thought she was barren, Isaac did not seek out a second wife. Instead, he prayed that God would open his wife's womb (Genesis 25:21). Both Jacob (Genesis 29:30) and Elkanah, Samuel's father (1 Samuel 1:8), fiercely loved their wives despite troubles with barrenness. 

(1) S Ackerman, "The blind, the lame and the barren shall not come into the house " in Disability Studies and Biblical Literature (ed. Candida R. Moss and Jeremy Schipper; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

(2) Ackerman, "The blind, the lame and the barren shall not come into the house ". Pg 43.