Bringing Babies Into The World-From the Beginning Till Now

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Our ancestors, wives of Jacob:  Leah-daughter of Laban, oldest sister of Rachel, with her 6 sons Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun,  Rachel with Joseph and Benjamin (born later) :   and Zilpah, handmaiden to Leah with Gad and Asher, and Bilhah, handmaiden to Rachel with Dan and Naphtali.  

Abraham, grandfather of Jacob, was born in about 1948 BCE-the 2nd millennium, almost 4,000 years ago. 

 When Rachel gives birth to Benjamin, she will die in childbirth near Bethlehem.  Benjamin is compensated for losing his mother by the land he inherits.  He is given land between Ephraim and Judah which includes the future Jerusalem.  Saul, 1st king of Israel, was a Benjamite.  The land eventually had to be partitioned between the 2 kingdoms of Israel and Judah, even though it was such a small plot.   

 Today, it costs about $20,,000 to give birth to a baby in the USA.  No wonder our population growth has slowed down.  There is only a 0.4% annual change from 2020.  The U.S. population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year since the founding of the nation, based on historical decennial censuses and annual population estimates.  The U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2021 Population Estimates released today show that population grew only 0.1% and that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the slower growth the country has experienced in recent years. 

What does that imply?  A baby will be born in a hospital with expert medical conditions guaranteeing the life for the baby and the mother. Parents cannot afford $20,000 for a child.   Now, Roe vs Wade is discarded and having an abortion is against the law.  The numbers should come up.  In our already crowded world, many are hysterical about this new law causing pain and inconvenience to their families. 

Eve didn't have it so well.  Imagine, her midwife was Adam and neither she or he knew what was happening or what to do.  She gave birth to Cain and Abel, and Cain wound up killing Abel when they were adults.  They had no understanding of the pain that Eve went through to bring them into this world.  

Jacob is our 3rd patriarch (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob).  He's the younger non-identical twin of Isaac and Rebekah.  The older twin was Esau.  Jacob was jealous of Esau as being the older, got the birthright benefits and the much desired Blessing, so their mother, Rebekah,  helped him cheat his twin out of it.  Esau went on to lose interest in  the family values having lost his birthright Blessing and status, and  threatened later to kill his twin, Jacob.  Jacob fled to Aram-Naharaim and Laban, his uncle.                         

They met 20 years later and Jacob tried to make friends with him and apologize  to no avail. The deed was done.    Then Esau became a villain, a violent person, a coarse materialist who was unable to recover from his trauma of having something and then losing it to trickery!  He had left the family and found wives amongst the Arabs.

 According to the Torah, Esau is the progenitor of the Edomites.  Jacob was born holding onto Esau's heel.  Esau, a "man of the field", became a hunter who had "rough" qualities that distinguished him from his twin brother. Among these qualities were his redness and noticeable hairiness.

                                                

Today's Edom is Israel, possibly as Edom was south of Judah-the southern end of ancient Israel.  Edom was the land touching the Dead Sea and bordering Judah.  Notice that much of Jacob's history took place in today's Syria.  

 Jacob was a plain or simple man, depending on the translation of the Hebrew word tam (which also means "relatively perfect man"). Jacob's color was not mentioned. Throughout Genesis, Esau is frequently shown as being supplanted by his younger twin, Jacob (Israel).                                              

Here, Esau did the hunting and Jacob does the cooking.  

Jacob fell in love with young Rachel and in order to win her as a wife, had to work for her father, Laban, who in fact was Jacob's uncle, for 7 years.  She was very young.  He was tricked into actually marrying her oldest sister, Leah, first, and had to continue working another 7 years to finally gain Rachel.  Leah gave him Reuben-1st son , Simeon-2nd son, Levi-3rd son, Judah-4th son, Issachar-5th son, and Zebulun-6th son.  Then he had a daughter, Dinah-order unknown.                               

Rachel, who also lived at Haran in Aram-Naharaim (Syria),  produced Joseph, Jacob's most precious son, and his 11th, finally produced by the love of his life.  He was an exceptional lad, treated as such even in the presence of his brothers, having been given a special coat of many colors that none had that showed favoritism.  Jacob hadn't had the chance to read child development books about such things as we have done.  He was ignorant of such things.  Joseph's brothers were so jealous that they intended to kill him, but settled for selling him to passer-by merchants on camels instead who took him to Egypt.     

 Rachel had finally given birth to Benjamin-12th son and then died in childbirth   near Bethlehem.  Who raised her son?  Probably her handmaiden, Bilhah, who, with Rachel's permission, had also given birth to Dan and Naphtali by Jacob before Rachel had ever given birth.  (Gen: 30) Rachel had said that if she remained childless, it would be as if she were dead, so that's why she needed her Bilhah to have a son.  Rachel would be credited for it.  She had threatened Jacob for not getting her pregnant, but of course he could do nothing about it.  The irony is that she was his great love and she had a hard time getting pregnant.  

This instigated Leah to add more sons from her, so she gave her handmaiden to Jacob and Zilpah then gave birth to Gad and Asher.  In those days, men felt obligated to produce sons.  It was of great value to them.  Probably these 4 women acted as midwives to each other.  There probably was jealousy among them, but necessity was also in the mix.  Their worth to Jacob had to be considered.  Their sons were their insurance.  

Who were the handmaidens?  Chances are they were bought in Egypt and were also  sisters.  They all would have spoken the same language, maybe those females that hadn't attracted a mate and the father could use the money.  

As we see, even with our Israelite family, women had less status than men did at this point in time.  We're lucky to know about Dinah and how she had been raped and what he brothers had done about it by putting themselves in jeopardy.

Resource:

Tanakh, Stone Edition

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

  

2nd Millennium BCE :In the Days of Dinah and Her 12 Brothers

Nadene Goldfoot                                   

                                                     Idol from Ur
Imagine knowing that your worth as a woman depended on how many children you could produce in this god-filled world of many families of gods and goddesses but also its idol statutes replicating them.  You as a human lived in a sparsely inhabited planet in the Bronze age that only had about 25 million in it in 3,000 BCE.  By 1,000 BCE it would be heading towards having some 50 million inhabitants, the number that in 2014 CE would be  comparable to a country like Sudan that has about 44 million.  By 2012, there were already 7 billion people living on earth.  

Your husband is your Uncle Abram.    Haran, your father, is your husband's brother.   You've known him all your life.  Your name is Sarai,  and you haven't produced one child as yet, so you give your Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, a princess in her own right,  to your husband, hoping she will get pregnant.  If she produces a child, you get the credit.  It's like adoption and the baby will be your responsibility and to your credit.  You will then have worth.  You wind up getting the credit but also asking that both Hagar and the boy leave their clan as it isn't working out as planned.  Hagar became uppity and the boy teased your child, Isaac, constantly, keeping him crying all the time.  

This pattern will be repeated.  Isaac, Sarai's actual son born much later, will marry Rebecca. They are 1st cousins once removed.   Rebecca's brother is Laban.  They will produce twins, Esau and Jacob.  Jacob's name has been found in Akkadian and Egyptian sources.  Jacob goes to his mother's brother, Laban to find a wife and must work for this uncle for 7 years to gain his beautiful  cousin Rachel for marriage.  Laben tricks him by giving him Leah, his first born daughter who had weak or tender eyes, instead for a wife, causing him to work another 7 years for Rachel.  So Jacob has married his 2 cousins, daughters of Laben, his maternal uncle.

The producing of children almost becomes competitive where Leah winds up giving her handmaiden to Jacob.  She herself becomes the mother of 6 boys and then feels she has worth. Her last child is a girl, and they name her Dinah.  Dinah, the youngest in the family is a lucky girl to have 12 brothers watch over her jealously.   Her sister has only produced 2 sons of hers naturally and then died, but in her desperation, she had given Jacob her handmaiden, Bilhah, so that she would be worthy.  Bilhah had 2 sons.
                                                                             

Now living in Canaan, Dinah went out one day to see if she could find other girls her own age.  Shechem, son of Hamor, prince of the region they were living in, came along and raped her.  Afterwards he wanted to marry the girl as he liked what he  saw.  At the time of this occurrence, her brothers were all in the field with their cattle.

Shechem's father talks with Jacob, hoping for an intermarriage.  Dinah's 12 brothers were incensed, feeling their sister had been defiled, having had forced  sex with an uncircumcised man. Shechem's father even says they will all become circumcised, then.  Dinah had already been taken to Shechem's house and was living with him.

 Later, Simeon and Levi, sons of Leah and two of Dinah's full brothers, got even by killing every male in Shechem's city including Hamor himself and his father.  Jacob told his 2 sons that they had done wrong and that now they were in danger of being wiped out themselves for having done this by the Canaanites and the Perizzites.
                                                                           

  Rachel had brought on her own death by stealing her father's house idol in order to keep him from using it, and did not tell her husband about the theft or if it was a wise move.  When her father comes and accuses Jacob of the theft, Jacob allows him to search their tents.  Not finding it, Jacob had said that whoever had taken it would die, and that's what happened to poor Rachel.  She died after giving birth to Benjamin, Jacob's 12th son.

Each wife had her own tent to live in.  No doubt they were close together, like cabins at the beach of today's world are next to each other.  This would allow for safety from roaming bands  The handmaidens would be living in the tent with their charge, being available for anything needed to be done.

Whereas Laban had tricked Jacob into working for 20 years; 7 years each for the 2 wives and 6 more years for his flock of sheep, goats and camels, Jacob, in return, also tricked him by asking for the sheep and goats for wages that were speckled or spotted with brown pigment.  Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar and hazel and chestnut and peeled white streaks in them and lay bare the white of the rods and set them up in watering pots where the animals came to drink.  The Animals saw these colorations and produced like flocks, thereby giving Jacob more wages.  Since Laban had been such a deceitful rogue anyway, changing the wages on Jacob 100 times over the 20 years, Jacob felt justified in his actions.  
                                                                           

Long ago the patriarch of the clan, Terah, had left Ur Kasidim which would be in today's Iraq.  He had had 3 sons; Abram, Nahor and Haran.  Haran was the father of Lot and Haran died in Ur.  Abram was the responsible uncle and watched out for Lot.  So when Terah left Ur, he took with him Abraham and Nahor and Lot.

Nahor married Milcah, his niece,  who was the daughter of Haran.  Abram married his niece, Sarai, the other  daughter of Haran.  Therefore, Milcah and Sarai were sisters and daughters of the deceased brother, Haran.  They were also sisters of Lot.  This is how people in those days created families being there weren't many others to choose from.  You married into your clan.

Ur of the Chaldees had been a prominent city of the Sumerian Empire.  The city was sacked by the king of nearby Elam soon after 2,000 BCE.  A Sumerian text from 1960 BCE, which was about when Terah moved his family from Ur to Haran (a city they named for their deceased brother) told of the reason they left Ur in their opinion.  They felt "the gods had abandoned them like migrating birds.  Smoke lies on your cities like a shroud."
           

According to our biblical version, it was Abram who urged the leaving of Ur because it was an idol worshipping city.  In fact, his father was an idol maker.  Abram had an experience of hearing G-d speak to him and that he was to leave and start his life in a different place where the influence of other deities would be non-existent.  They went north and created Haran in the kingdom of Mari.  This was northern Mesopotamia.  The facts were recorded on clay tablets of which were found our bible names of Terah, Nahor, Serug and Peleg.  This was a powerful dynasty.
                                                         

From Haran, Abraham, for his name is now changed a little, migrated to Canaan,  which is where today's Israel and Lebanon are.  Abraham's tribe is like that of other West Semitic steppe dwellers of the 18th century BCE in its tribal structure.  Their family customs and law had parallels in the Old Babylonian and Hurro-Semite law of the early and middle 2nd millennium, according to archaeologists.  That is, until G-d spoke to him and caused him to realize that idols were not gods and that there really was only one unseen g-d.  He became the father of monotheism.

The 2nd millennium BC marks the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age.  Bronze is made from a mixture of melted copper and tin, both metals that are mined.  "It is more useful for tools and also better for making statues."  As bronze aged, it turned green and was melted down and recycled.  

"Its first half of the Bronze Age is dominated by the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and Babylonia. That was the world for people living in the Middle East.

The alphabet develops. Indo-Iranian migration onto the Iranian plateau and onto the Indian subcontinent propagates the use of the chariot. Chariot warfare and population movements lead to violent changes at the center of the millennium, a new order emerges with Greek dominance of the Aegean and the rise of the Hittite Empire. The end of the millennium sees the transition to the Iron Age.  World population begins to rise steadily, reaching some 50 million towards 1000 BC."

Resource: http://mirrorh.com/timeline3.html 2,000 BC-end/sumerian dynasty-
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/arts/bronze.htm
http://sensationalsumer.weebly.com/fun-facts.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
The Stone Edition Tanach, artScroll Series, Genesis