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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Bad mothers of the Bible
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greenhouse
Shipmate
# 4027
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Posted
It's mothers day in the UK in a few weeks time. I have been volunteered to lead and preach at the service.
This isn't a problem, though I'd like to take a slightly different approach this year and am considering theming the service around 'Bad mothers of the Bible'. The intention is a light-hearted look at some of the Biblical role models for mothering.
There are a few contenders; Eve getting the family evicted, Samuels mother Hannah leaving the temple to care for him, Rahab the prostitute.
Hopefully the good people here can give me some further suggestions...
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Calvin Beedle
Shipmate
# 508
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Posted
What about Rebekah mother of Jacob & Esau. She showed terrible favouritism towards Jacob including, among other things, helping him to swindle Esau out of his birthright.
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A.Pilgrim
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# 15044
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by greenhouse:
...
There are a few contenders; Eve getting the family evicted, ...
I'm not sure that this is a good example. It was Adam, not the woman, that God called to account (Gen 3:9) and held culpable (Gen 3:17 - note the absence of a corresponding indictment when He addresses the woman in 3:16). (And putting my pedants hat on, she hadn't been named Eve yet, that happens in 3:20.)
I regret that I can't at the moment think of other examples of bad mothering. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Angus
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
Joash's grandmother in 2 Kings 11.
Athaliah is the Queen Mother.
Her son dies (at the same time as Ahab&Jezebel). So she murders the princes (NiV notes suggest that they would be her grandchildren*)-one survives and then becomes Queen for 7 years.
*cause she wasn't that unique, so there wasn't much left.
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
For cases where there's an absence of a good mother, you have several dysfunctional families (David springs to mind, to a lesser extent Jacob)
in neither case is it really the womens' fault.
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Or Mary conscripting the rest of Jesus's brothers to collect him in the middle of one of his preaching gigs.
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
Why list Rahab? She did, after all, manage to save her family from disaster.
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Yeah, I agree. She was the prototypical hoooker with a heart of gold.
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
I like Rahab. What I want to know is how she went from prostitute to snagging a prince of Judah for a husband. Oh, the gems the geneaologies hide!
But Mary didn't overlook things for two days--they missed him the first night, but were clueless enough that they didn't look in the right place for three days. Which may count as DUH!, but not bad mother IMHO.
Now take Penninah. There's a jerk, if you ask me.
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
But Mary didn't overlook things for two days--they missed him the first night, but were clueless enough that they didn't look in the right place for three days. Which may count as DUH!, but not bad mother IMHO.
Yeah and it wasn't like they could just track the kid down with their Nokia family plan. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem involved a go-zillion people and a lot of chaos, I understand. They (Mary and Joseph) probably spent those two days asking everyone in sight if some kid had wandered past their campsite.
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
I'm gonna put this out there, though-- forgive me, Blessed Virgin-- Mary does come across as a big old nag in some of her stories. Doesn't make her a Bad Mom, necessarily, I just like how refreshingly human the mother-son exchanges between Mary and Jesus are.
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Jengie Jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
What about the mother of James and John who wants the top places for her sons and goes straight to Jesus to ask for them. I am not sure about bad but definitely rather controlling.
Jengie
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Maybe along with "Bad Moms" you can include a side discussion of "Tiresome Moms."
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agingjb
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# 16555
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Posted
I've often wondered whether, considering the emphasis the Church places on the importance and sacramental nature of marriage, there are enough examples of happy, successful, monogamous, and faithful marriages in the Bible.
Which leads me to ask, who are the good mothers with whom we should be contrasting our examples?
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A Kind of Valediction
"Created sick, commanded to be sound." (Fulke Greville)
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Samuel's mom was pretty darn cool.
Naomi was pretty darn cool.
Sarah-- well, Sarah was a mixed bag as Moms go. She certainly was a bitch of a stepmom.
Oh, Moses's mom was VERY cool...
[ 04. March 2012, 22:00: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Ruth was no slouch, if she let Grandma monopolize the baby. I probably would have bit off Naomi's hands when I was a new mother.
Give.My.Baby.Back.To.Me....
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Back to bad mothers for a sec...
Herodias, the mother of Salome.
Surely, no explanation required. I mean, come on...
[ 04. March 2012, 22:25: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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greenhouse
Shipmate
# 4027
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Posted
Just to say a big thankyou to those who made suggestions. Better go read up on them all now!
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
What about the mother of James and John who wants the top places for her sons and goes straight to Jesus to ask for them. I am not sure about bad but definitely rather controlling.
Perhaps she was the original "helicopter parent?"
--Tom Clune
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Spiffy
Ship's WonderSheep
# 5267
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by agingjb (emphasis added):
I've often wondered whether, considering the emphasis the Church places on the importance and sacramental nature of marriage, there are enough examples of happy, successful, monogamous, and faithful marriages in the Bible.
Yeah, if you're looking for that bit there in bold in the Bible, you may have a fairly fruitless search.
Although there is Mrs. Peter in the NT, who doesn't get a name, but we know she's likely around because Jesus goes and heals Mr. Peter's mother-in-law. And if you're into complementarianism (which I'm not so...) her whole jumping off the sick bed to start serving people could work for a sickly sweet image of motherhood.
(I always thought she did that because of an OMG THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU here now let me give you what little I can pull together as a small token of gratitude for the immensely awesome thing you've done for me. But I rarely hear it portrayed that way in sermons, everyone wants to go for the "yep, that's a woman's place".)
Priscilla and Aquila seem to have done good work as a couple, but we don't know if they had kids.
I always wondered about Hannah. It seemed to me that she wanted a baby as a status symbol. And then she prays, and gets what she wants, and drop-kicks the kid to the priests to raise as soon as possible. Of course, I'm also guilty of reading this from a different cultural perspective, but to a modern, Western reader this is really hard to swallow.
[ 07. March 2012, 18:27: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
What about the mother of James and John who wants the top places for her sons and goes straight to Jesus to ask for them. I am not sure about bad but definitely rather controlling.
It's interesting to compare Mark's version of this episode with Matthew's. Since Mark's gospel was earlier, many scholars consider his version the more accurate.
Moo
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Latchkey Kid
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# 12444
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Posted
Though the point of the two passages does not seem to differ, it seems to me.
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Mika; in Hello? Is Anybody There?, Jostein Gaardner
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
Well, this thread is about bad mothers. In Mark's version there is no bad mother.
Moo
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Spiffy:
I always wondered about Hannah. It seemed to me that she wanted a baby as a status symbol.
She was little enough concerned about her status to risk being laughed at as a "drunk" when she went to pray. And I dunno, I've known enough women who have wept over the lack of a child in their life for me to accept her sorrow as sincere. If I didn't work with kids, I might be one of those women.
quote:
And then she prays, and gets what she wants, and drop-kicks the kid to the priests to raise as soon as possible. Of course, I'm also guilty of reading this from a different cultural perspective, but to a modern, Western reader this is really hard to swallow.
That, I think is cultural. I think the modern version would be putting him in a preparatory boarding school that guaranteed his admission into MIT; very often the only way a kid could get any education at all was to be placed on the cleric track. She clearly had the means to do that, and took advantage of them.
I dunno, I always had a soft spot for her. The affection between her and her husband moves me also. ("Aren't I better than a dozen sons, honey?") In an era when filial succession seemed so important, something else seems to be going on here, and I find that intriguing.
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Yeah. He's clueless, but sweet.
Hannah may have been trying to keep up her end of a "deal," too. I mean, we know God doesn't encourage that sort of thing, but it's human to offer to do such and such if only God will do X, and then when we GET X, we feel obligated. Hannah's theology might not have been the absolute best, but there's a lot to be said for keeping your word. And she kept up the connection with Samuel, even after having five other kids. And managed to keep him at home for several years on the plea of nursing, which went on longer in that culture.
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
I dunno, I always had a soft spot for her.
I have too. I am especially touched by this passage, 1 Samuel 2:18-19. quote:
Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy wearing a linen ephod. His mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year, when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice.
When my older daughter got married, I made her wedding dress. It was the last time I would clothe her, and I wanted to do it myself.
Moo
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Yeah, that vignette just strengthens my feeling that the "boarding school" analogy works well.
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Yeah. He's clueless, but sweet.
I think what he said was absolutely gigantic and astonishing, in cultural context. Having plenty of heirs was just as much an issue for him as it was for his wife to supply them, and he was basically saying, "Our relationship to each other is more important to me than whether or not you have a child." And I don't think he was clueless at all, I think in that place and time you had to have gigantic cojones to make a statement that bold. He had to know what he was saying implied.
I'm sure lots of good men said things like that to their wives throughout the ages, but this is the first time you see something like that in the Bible. That part of the story becomes about what Hanna wants-- what a woman wants-- and she wants a child. Mind-blowing.
[ 07. March 2012, 18:36: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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Janine
The Endless Simmer
# 3337
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Posted
Lot's daughters -- the mothers of Moab and Ben-Ammi -- they were no gems, I think. Not that Pappa Lot was fabulous.
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
When I said he was clueless, what I meant was that it seems to me a clumsy way to comfort someone for childlessness. Well-meant, yes; but to say to any childless woman, "but you have a loving husband" or "lots of friends" or "a great career," with the idea that this will, this SHOULD, somehow fill that gaping hole in her heart--well no, it won't and it doesn't and it shouldn't. Only a child will do that, and in the absence of that solution we need to respect her pain and not suggest doofus substitutes. That just leaves her feeling misunderstood and guilty now too, because the substitute is not enough for her, though everybody says it SHOULD be, and she's clearly ungrateful... (You can see I'm reading this story very differently than you)
I had such things said to me many times when I was childless, and I know they were meant well, but they made me want to throw something. Usually at the loved one who had just said it with every good intention. And to avoid hurting that person, I had to nod and smile right when I wanted to scream.
Recall that Elkanah already HAD children, many of them. More heirs would be a nice thing, but not strictly necessary. If they were, he could always marry a third woman to bear them. There is no child-shaped hole in his heart. I suspect he loved his wife dearly but didn't entirely "get" her grief over childlessness. Why should she be upset, when he loved her so dearly and showed that through his actions, unlike the average Israelite husband of an infertile wife? She should count her blessings and just get over it. (And I doubt Penninah did her nasty stuff in front of him, so Elkanah may have missed that byplay.)
I just wonder if, like my own mother, he didn't think that Hannah was getting a bit obsessed and needed to see a shrink. My mother certainly thought that, and let me know it in no uncertain terms. She also told me I was jealous and ungrateful. A lot of people with children just don't "get" the grief involved.
I'll sum this all up by saying that I like your reading better than mine, and I really hope it's the right one.
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Recall that Elkanah already HAD children, many of them. More heirs would be a nice thing, but not strictly necessary. If they were, he could always marry a third woman to bear them. There is no child-shaped hole in his heart. I suspect he loved his wife dearly but didn't entirely "get" her grief over childlessness. Why should she be upset, when he loved her so dearly and showed that through his actions, unlike the average Israelite husband of an infertile wife? She should count her blessings and just get over it. (And I doubt Penninah did her nasty stuff in front of him, so Elkanah may have missed that byplay.)
See the bold-- exactly my point. Especially since he had the whole heir thing taken care of he had no obligation to comfort her at all-- in fact, he had cultural justification to completely ignore her or even put her away. While I agree that his comfort did not solve Hanna's problems, I still think a statement is being made by the author about how a good husband treats his wife, whatever her condition.
[ 08. March 2012, 03:00: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Yeah, I can go for that!
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
Can a study of 'bad mothers' really be 'light-hearted'? I don't know if I'd appreciate listening to a sermon like that. What message do you want the congregation to take away from the service?
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Can a study of 'bad mothers' really be 'light-hearted'? I don't know if I'd appreciate listening to a sermon like that. What message do you want the congregation to take away from the service?
I'd have thought that's about right.
What would be a relief is recognition that motherhood (and fatherhood) are not unambiguously good things. Therapists spend all their time sorting out the mess resulting from (often well meaning) parenthood. Whether parents love too little or too much, things can go wrong.
And of course lots of maternal relationships are not necessarily very happy, either for the child or the mother. They can be redeemed by God's grace of course. But please don't talk as if all mother/child relationships are lovely and unproblematic. There's bound to be some pear-shaped family relations in any average congregation.
Surely the Christian good news it that God loves us and we can love others irrespective of our family relationships? We are not dependent on our family relations for our value as Christians.
I hope so much the readings for Lent 4 and the preparation for Easter are taken seriously, with the blessing and distribution of flowers treated as a charming, humane and appropriate addition.
(PS How about a reference to St Joseph, whose feast day is the next day?)
[ 09. March 2012, 20:38: Message edited by: venbede ]
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Algernon: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
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Spiffy
Ship's WonderSheep
# 5267
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
I dunno, I always had a soft spot for her.
I have too. I am especially touched by this passage, 1 Samuel 2:18-19. quote:
Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy wearing a linen ephod. His mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year, when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice.
When my older daughter got married, I made her wedding dress. It was the last time I would clothe her, and I wanted to do it myself.
Moo
Good point, I hadn't thought about that bit. And some other good points that made me think about it from a different perspective, especially since I've never had the desire to raise children of my own.
I do like to borrow kids from their parents sometimes so I have someone my own mental age with whom to converse about Pokemon and Candy: How Awesome Is It?
But yeah, I also come from a culture where my mom still buys and mails me clothes from time to time, and her mom does the same for her. So, you know, having a "last time I clothed my daughter" is pretty much, you know... next week (when I expect I shall find a t-shirt and a box of Easter candy in the mail).
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As your Senior Warden, all I ask is unswerving loyalty and blind obedience.
--Me, to the vestry at my parish.
And then they laughed for some reason.
Shavin' my head, curin' cancer.
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
What would be a relief is recognition that motherhood (and fatherhood) are not unambiguously good things. Therapists spend all their time sorting out the mess resulting from (often well meaning) parenthood. Whether parents love too little or too much, things can go wrong.
And of course lots of maternal relationships are not necessarily very happy, either for the child or the mother. They can be redeemed by God's grace of course. But please don't talk as if all mother/child relationships are lovely and unproblematic. There's bound to be some pear-shaped family relations in any average congregation.
This is what I was getting at. Parents do get things wrong. Sometimes they make a serious mess. But's that's not exactly 'light-hearted' material. I hope the congregation won't be expected to laugh at some of the tragic domestic scenarios listed on this thread! Yes, sometimes we have to laugh at painful situations, because the alternative is to cry. But that's a very nuanced thing. Humour in sermons tends not to be of that kind.
I appreciate how you've explained this. I just hope that on this occasion, the weak pulpit jokes are avoided!
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Jokes in sermons should always be avoided.
Unless they appeal to my warped sense of humour.
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Jack: That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple.
Algernon: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
venbede
I didn't want to be the first to say it, but I often find pulpit humour a little cringeworthy, and the laughter it elicits always seems a bit obsequious to me. I suppose it's okay if the subject matter is fairly benign, as most sermons are these days, but if the subject is really serious, as in the case of 'bad mothers', I just don't want to feel obliged to laugh at something that wasn't particularly funny.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
O Svit, I agree with you. I'm amused by donnish humour, but that probably would confuse many. And that's why jokes are best avoided: what one person finds funny, another would find tedious. Or possibly as you suggest, hurtful.
It's as though the preacher is trying to ingratiate themselves and that can merely convey lack of confidence.
(Sorry, admins, this is wildly offtopic.)
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Jack: That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple.
Algernon: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
Again not the thoroughly bad people, just badly placed. But still not the expected family tree [you'd expect for God to pick...and as such possible to learn from]
Matthews genealogy lists 5 women.
Tamar, (widowed by Judah's sons)
Rahab, a prostitute&traitor
Ruth, an immigrant widow.
Uriah's wife (Bathsheba, artificially widowed)
Mary
(You can probably infer some more, Sarah, Rebecka (the disfunctional family), Leah (the lesser loved wife), for starters.
[ 10. March 2012, 14:56: Message edited by: Jay-Emm ]
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
O Svit, I agree with you. I'm amused by donnish humour, but that probably would confuse many. And that's why jokes are best avoided: what one person finds funny, another would find tedious. Or possibly as you suggest, hurtful.
It's as though the preacher is trying to ingratiate themselves and that can merely convey lack of confidence.
(Sorry, admins, this is wildly offtopic.)
Gee whiz! Ya think? ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Yeah the topic of "general use of sermon humor" sounds like fodder for a whole other thread-- Purgatory, I think.
K.A., K.H.
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
Okay, some on-topic references.
Sarah, wife of Abraham, was a bad mother to her adopted/step child, Ishmael, by sending him and his 'birth mother' away.
Lot's wife deprived her children of a mother by looking back at the destruction of Sodom and getting turned into a pillar of salt. (And where was she when Lot offered their daughters up to be raped?)
The lifestyle of Hosea's wife, Gomer, was pretty appalling, especially when you consider that she was a mother.
There were the two 'prostitues' who came to Solomon for wisdom. One of them had accidentally suffocated her child while asleep one night, and she decided to pretend her companion's live child was her own. She was even willing for this child to be murdered if she couldn't have him/her. Was she 'bad' or just traumatised?
Job's wife must have suffered deeply at the loss of her children, and the family's impoverishment. But the Bible doesn't approve of her bitterness. 'Curse God and die' was a very cruel thing to say to her husband.
That'll do for now.
Posts: 1384 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Job's wife must have suffered deeply at the loss of her children, and the family's impoverishment. But the Bible doesn't approve of her bitterness. 'Curse God and die' was a very cruel thing to say to her husband.
She had had all she could take. Everyone has their limits, and she had hit hers.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
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Net Spinster
Shipmate
# 16058
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Posted
The mother in 2Kings6:24-31 seems particularly bad.
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spinner of webs
Posts: 249 | From: San Francisco Bay area | Registered: Dec 2010
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Anglican_Brat
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# 12349
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Posted
quote:
Job's wife must have suffered deeply at the loss of her children, and the family's impoverishment. But the Bible doesn't approve of her bitterness. 'Curse God and die' was a very cruel thing to say to her husband.
That'll do for now.
Another interpretation is that Job's wife said that, out of sympathy, not of bitterness. If Job cursed God and he suffered death, he would be released from his earthly suffering. So, Job's wife might be saying "To end your suffering and pain, you must give up your faith."
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
Moo and Anglican_Brat
Those are interesting interpretations. But how would it benefit Job's wife, or Job himself, if Job were to die, having made an enemy of God? Job's wife may have been trying to help, but the text clearly finds her help unhelpful!
Maybe the moral is that if we don't know what to say for the best, we should just offer a hug or a cup of tea instead of advice!
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Anglican_Brat
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# 12349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Moo and Anglican_Brat
Those are interesting interpretations. But how would it benefit Job's wife, or Job himself, if Job were to die, having made an enemy of God? Job's wife may have been trying to help, but the text clearly finds her help unhelpful!
Maybe the moral is that if we don't know what to say for the best, we should just offer a hug or a cup of tea instead of advice!
I'm assuming that Job does not have a theology of the afterlife. So, if Job dies, that would be caputs, gone, nadda, annihilated. No life, no pain.
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Um, that actually IS a theology of the afterlife. But based on what we see in Job, "nothing" is NOT what he thinks comes after death. Whatever it is, he doesn't know; but it's no such comforting belief as nonexistence.
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Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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