Texts in Conversation
Genesis shares Ugaritic recognition of painful childbirth, placing a familiar human experience within its explanation of why life after disobedience is hard.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 1.12 I:25
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
El laughs in his heart, and […] in his liver: “Go out, you, O Tls, handmaid of Yarih, O Dmgy, handmaid of Athirat, take your chair, your […] your […], and go out among the oaks […] in the midst of the wilderness. […] dig with the forearms in the dust, with the bones of the hand […] writhe, give birth to the Devourers, […] and give birth to the […].” The gods proclaim their names. On them are horns like bulls, and humps like steers, and on them the face of Baal. Baal walks about and hunts, […] the edge of the wilderness. […] he reaches the Devourers, and he finds the […]. Baal desires them greatly, the son of Dagan […]. Baal goes after them on foot, and the god Haddu […].
Genesis 3:16
Hebrew Bible
16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your labor pains; with pain you will give birth to children. You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you.” 17 But to Adam he said, “Because you obeyed the voice of52 your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ the ground is cursed because of you; in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grass of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return.” 20 The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.
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Notes and References
“... The fact that giving birth was painful and toilsome is acknow-
ledged in Ugaritic as well as biblical texts (KTU 1.12:1.25-27; Gen.
3:16; 25:22-23). According to KTU 1.12:1.14-28, women gave birth in
relative confinement. This may be related to the belief that a woman
who gave birth was unclean. In the Bible this belief is expressed in
Lev. 12:1-5. Scholars have offered various answers to the question why
the number of days of impurity was doubled when the child was a girl.
I assumed this was related to the phenomenon of vaginal discharge of
the baby girl caused by maternal hormones. The mother symbolically
bore the uncleanness of the baby girl. The Hittites, too, knew a larger
number of days of impurity for mothers of baby girls. ...”
Marsman, Hennie J.
Women in Ugarit and Israel: Their Social and Religious Position in the Context of the Ancient Near East
(p. PDF 724) Brill, 2003
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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