The Blight of Barrenness

Bill and I have been married since 1993. We never anticipated that we would not have children. We both wanted children, but they never came along. From time to time, that maternal instinct tugs at my heart. Sometimes, when Bill and I are around children and young people, we talk later about how nice it would be if we had some of our own children to love, train, and nurture.

Yet, in our society it is acceptable to be childless. And it is possible to live a fulfilling life without children. We have prayed many times for God to have His will in our lives. We don’t want to push open a door that God has closed. So, at some point long ago, we subconsciously settled into a place of acceptance. We are content with life as it is, just the two of us.

God told the first couple – Adam and Eve – to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). Jesus loved to have children around Him (Matthew 19:14). I like the word picture of Psalm 128:3, which promises blessings to a man who fears the Lord: “Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.” Psalm 127:4 is also picturesque: “As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.” It is obvious from Scripture that bearing and raising children is God’s plan. In Bible times, deviation from this plan was the exception, not the norm.

Yet, occasionally God must have other plans. Though we do not understand His ways, we have learned to rest in His knowledge and wisdom. And since America is in the process of redefining the term “family” and altering God’s original design for marriage and family anyway, a childless couple experiences little societal pressure. In America, life without children is not considered unusual.

But it is not so everywhere. Living childless in the Middle East is an educational experience. I am often asked how many children I have. When I tell them I do not have any, people think something is wrong with me. Once I told an elderly Arab woman that I was content with my life. She looked at me like I was crazy. I don’t remember meeting even one Middle Eastern married woman without children.

Why is childbearing so important in the Middle East? Because that culture, which is vastly different from the West, follows the model of thousands of years of tradition. In their society, a woman’s worth is determined largely by her ability to marry and birth children. Thus, if a woman is barren, her worth is compromised.

In Jordan, if a child is not conceived after two years of marriage, the wife must go to a doctor to see what can be done to help her conceive. Fertility clinics are easy to find, because they serve to address a key issue in society.

Grandparents will pressure their children to give them grandchildren. Family lineage is very important. It is shameful to not provide your husband with children to carry on the family name. So boys especially are anticipated. I know one family with three daughters. They are lovely girls, but because the wife did not bear a son, it has created problems in the marriage.

In both the Arab and traditional Jewish world, barrenness is a terrible state to find oneself. Why a woman would be unmarried or married without children is unfathomable to the minds of many Middle Easterners.

This is reminiscent of biblical times. In addition to the pain of not being able to fulfill instinctual maternal longings, a barren woman endured ridicule for her shameful, childless condition. She lived, day in and day out, with a stigma. She could not provide a male heir for her husband, a man to continue the family name.

I find it fascinating that the patriarchs of the Bible – Abram, Isaac, and Jacob – all had barren wives.

When Sarai, Abram’s wife, could not conceive a child, she resorted to an acceptable custom of her time. She offered her handmaid Hagar to her husband. The custom dictated that a barren wife could adopt the child birthed by the handmaid and it could become a legal heir. (This is why, later, God told Abram to cast out the bondwoman and her son. According to God, only the child of promise, Isaac, was legitimately entitled to inherit and enter a covenant relationship with Him. See Genesis 17:19; 21:10-13; Galatians 4:23-31. God and Abram had a similar conversation about Eliezer. See Genesis 15:1-4.)

Human nature being what it is, this custom was not ideal and was not void of jealousy and resentment between the two women. Once Sarai had her true birth child (Isaac) in her arms, she no longer wanted the surrogate child (Ishmael). In the end, Sarai's attempt to control circumstances backfired on her. Rather than wait on God to fulfill His promise, she chose a human, almost businesslike arrangement, to achieve the goal. It is hard to fault Sarai, since she had no Bible to read. She was one of the Bible's first leading ladies. She was a pioneer and had no previous stories about miraculous births to bolster her faith. All she could see was the shame of her barrenness.

Listen with your heart to the words of Rachel, Hannah, and Elisabeth. These are three biblical women that lived during different time periods, but they had one thing in common: They bore the shame and reproach of childlessness.

Rachel, Jacob’s wife, pled with her husband, “Give me children, or else I die.” “Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?” Here we see barrenness triggering marital conflict. When Rachel finally bore a son, Joseph, she said, “God hath taken away my reproach” (Genesis 30:1-2, 23).

Hannah had a good husband, Elkanah, but no children. Her husband’s other wife “provoked her sore, for to make her fret.” Elkanah asked her, “Hannah, why weepest thou? and why eatest thou not? and why is thy heart grieved? am not I better to thee than ten sons?” It is apparent that Elkanah loved Hannah and wanted to comfort her in spite of her inability to give him a son.

But Hannah was driven by the shame on her life. With anguish in her soul, she said to the Lord, “If thou wilt look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life” (I Samuel 1:6,8,11). The Lord heard Hannah’s heart’s cry, and gave her Samuel, who she then committed to the service of the Lord. Thus, she was released from her shame.

When Elisabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, conceived, she said, “Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men” (Luke 1:25).

Psalm 113:9 is a beautiful verse which summarizes the role of a woman during Bible days: “He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children.”

Because biblical people would clearly understand the analogy, God often used barrenness to describe the nation of Israel’s spiritual condition. If Israel would follow His plan and serve Him, He promised to bless their land with fruitfulness. The women would not be barren or “cast their young” (miscarry). Their land and animals would be fruitful as well (Exodus 23:26; Deuteronomy 7:14; 28:4; Job 21:10; Malachi 3:10-11).

There is a similar principle outlined in the New Testament. As we cultivate the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, we will “neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (II Peter 1:5-8).

In the New Testament, the Greek word for “barren” – argos – also translates to mean “idle” and “unemployed.” (Read Matthew 20:1-7). Just as the Israelites had to be pro-active in their obedience and service to God, so we have to be willing to work in the Lord’s vineyard. In these New Testament times, it is much more shameful to be spiritually barren than it is to be physically barren.

Keeping in mind the spiritual analogy we can draw for our own lives, a fresh understanding of how biblical people viewed barrenness enables us to better understand their unique challenges. In particular, we can view with greater sympathy and appreciation the women of the Bible whose lives swung the pendulum from bitter barrenness to blessed bountifulness.