Not Only a Father #2: God as Mother in the Bible

A warm welcome back to Dr Tim Bulkeley who is posting this series based on his book, Not Only A Father, looking at gendered language for God. For more on Tim’s background, see the first post.

Not only a father, gender and the Bible, Dr Tim Bulkeley | Sacraparental.com

In the previous post I started with an assumption:

…[t]he One True God is beyond human understanding. God is beyond all talk, pictures and even thought. Anything less is merely a god, an object within the sphere of human thinking and understanding, even invention.

The Old Testament protected this understanding of God in the Ten Commandments. In the opening section, which talks about the exclusivity of Yahweh, we read:

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (Exo 20:4)

The word ‘idol’ (pesel in Hebrew) refers to a carved object which is used to represent a god. Both the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and later Jewish people have tried to keep this commandment strictly. It allows not only no statues of Yahweh, but also no drawings or other pictures. The archaeological record is striking. In a region and time when divine images were common, there is only one object claimed by some scholars to present an image of Yahweh, though there are many female images which seem to represent the goddess Asherah.

English: Painted on a jar found in Kuntilat Aj...

Image from a potsherd found at Kuntilat Ajrud above an inscription mentioning ‘Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah’ (photo credit: Wikipedia)

Picturing God

By contrast with this aniconic (no pictures) approach, the Bible is full of word pictures of God. Often these combine imagery in ways a representational painting would find difficult. For example in Isaiah 40:10 Yahweh is pictured as a conquering warrior king, but verse 11 describes ‘him’ cuddling little lambs and carrying them. Either picture on its own gives a dangerously lopsided view of God, but together they are less misleading.

If you try to picture your god with an image, or drawing, it is difficult to avoid identifying the god’s gender, race, hair colour etc… however if such physical representations of God are forbidden word pictures are more flexible. So the Bible sometimes combines male and female imagery in one verse or passage:

If my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me up. (Psa 27:10)

28 ‘Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew?
29 From whose womb did the ice come forth,
and who has given birth to the hoarfrost of heaven? (Job 38:28-29)

(In Not Only a Father see 2.7 Two Parents Not One for more on this.)

Not only a father, gender and the Bible, Dr Tim Bulkeley | Sacraparental.com

Figurine from ancient Judah, The Jewish Museum, New York (via Wikimedia Commons)

Gendering pictures of God

Perhaps just because most Canaanite and Babylonian gods were presented as male or female, human word pictures of God are not as common in the Old Testament as we might expect. Although ‘lord’ is common, rocks and lions are too!

One word picture that is very common today, ‘father,’ is surprisingly rare in the Old Testament, and ungendered parenting pictures (How can you do that? Isn’t parenting all about [en]gendering?) sometimes replace ‘father.’

Hosea 11 begins:

1 When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.

2 The more I called them, the more they went from me;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.

3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.

4 I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.
I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them.

The picture in your mind (or the mind of the writer) here might be of a mother or a father but no words are used that betray the gender of the parent. Despite this, when I wrote my PhD, most Bibles and commentaries still entitled the section in ways that named God as ‘father.’

The poem, ‘The Song of Moses,’ that closes Deuteronomy begins picturing God as father:

Do you thus repay the LORD, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you? (Deu 32:6)

But soon adds mother to the thought:

You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you;
you forgot the God who gave you birth. (Deu 32:18)

(The Hebrew verb translated ‘bore you’ here, chul, means ‘to give birth to,’ not ‘carry.’)

The Bible uses motherly as well as fatherly pictures of God

Picturing God as a mother who gives birth and nurtures may seem strange to 21st century people (calling God ‘she’ still raises a titter) but it was not strange to the writers of Scripture.

Sometimes it is indirect. Jesus talks of the new life he brings as new birth. Being ‘born again’ has become a very popular image among Evangelical Christians. If we are born again who is our new mother? The early Aramaic-speaking Christians (Syriac Fathers) often took Nicodemus’ facetious question (from John 3:4) seriously and spoke of baptism as the ‘womb of the Spirit.’

Motherly pictures are used several times, in very different ways, in Isaiah 40ff. In the traumatic situation of exile, after the brutal destruction of Jerusalem, faced with the complaint:

‘The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.’ (Is 49:14)

As a picture of God’s constant unchanging love the prophet replied:

Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you. (Is 49:15)

This use of motherly imagery may seem conventional, but what about the gasping panting woman in labour in Isaiah 42? There it describes God as a soldier bent on destruction:

13 The LORD goes forth like a soldier,
like a warrior he stirs up his fury;
he cries out, he shouts aloud,
he shows himself mighty against his foes.

14 For a long time I have held my peace,
I have kept still and restrained myself;
now I will cry out like a woman in labour,
I will gasp and pant.

15 I will lay waste mountains and hills,
and dry up all their herbage;
I will turn the rivers into islands,
and dry up the pools. (Isa 42:13-15)

Though as the following verses suggest the thought that this violence may give birth to something new is also present.

(These other passages are just examples, see 2.6 Old Things and New in the Latter Part of Isaiah for more.)

Hen with ducklings she hatched, photograph by Tim Bulkeley.

Hen with ducklings she hatched, photograph by Tim Bulkeley.

Jesus pictured himself as a mother hen. The word he uses in Matt 23:37-39 and Luke 13:34-35 (ornis) is expressed as feminine, underlining that this is a mother hen, not a cockerel.

St Anselm’s prayer to St Paul was a key medieval text for understanding Jesus as our mother (see 4.6 Christ as Mother in the Middle Ages). He saw the writers of the New Testament epistles regularly picture themselves as ‘mothers’ of the churches they founded (1 Cor 3:1-3; Gal 4:19; Heb 5:12-13; 1 Peter 2:2-3 etc.). He concluded that if they are like mothers, then Jesus who died so we might come to new life is surely our mother.

Conclusions and Questions

  • Scripture is happy to picture God as a mother, in labour, giving birth, feeding etc.
  • Jesus describes himself as a mother hen protecting her chicks.
  • The apostles speak of themselves as giving birth to, and feeding, the churches they founded.
  • If these pictures are biblical, can imagining a merely male god be biblical?
  • Why do you think such language and pictures are hardly heard today?

This is part of a series from Dr Tim Bulkeley, based on his recent book, Not Only A Father. He is happy to carry on discussion in the comments so please do leave your thoughts below.

You can read the other posts here:

1: What’s Wrong with this Picture?

2: God as Mother in the Bible

3: But Jesus named God ‘Our Father’

4: Speaking the Unspeakable

5: Knowing the Unknowable

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20 comments on “Not Only a Father #2: God as Mother in the Bible”

  1. not a wild hera Reply

    A conversation on Facebook in response to this post, copied with permission:

    Myk Habets That is why it is so profound that Jesus refers to God as his Father, his Abba, and he does this in the most imtimate ways. Jesus does it, it is not the invention of a later theological community. And so why do so many today want to reject that, or weaken that to merely a symbol rather than a proper name, so to speak? (A general comment on scholarship, not aimed at anyone here.)
    Unlike ¡ Reply ¡ 1 ¡ 12 hours ago

    Tim Bulkeley Did Jesus intend “Father” as a proper name? In the Lord’s Prayer he says “our father” not “Father” i.e. in that key passage (at least) it is a description not a name.
    Unlike ¡ 1 ¡ 11 hours ago

    Thalia Kehoe Rowden Tim Bulkeley will be addressing that question soon, Myk. But are you saying that God is ontologically male? If not, we do need to do something to stop our language for God implying that. It seems to me that the choices are basically expand to use female and non-gendered imagery and language more often, use male imagery and language for God less often, or start speaking about God in Mandarin, which doesn’t have gendered pronouns If Abba is about intimacy rather than gender, maybe we can figure something else out?
    Like ¡ Reply ¡ 11 hours ago

    Myk Habets. Gendered language for God does not imply gender, as the early church brought out very clearly. ‘When we say Father of God he is not like any father we have known.’ That Father and Jesus are proper names is, yes, the point. If it is good enough for Jesus to call God Father then why is it not good enough for us? And Tim (hi!), I think the Lord’s prayer is to discples – ‘this is how you should pray…our Father.’ Our Father is the sum of the Gospel is it not? The Father is only literally Father of the Son, but he becomes our Father by adoption, by grace, by union with Christ by the Spirit so that Christ’s relationship with the Father becomes ours by participation. So if God is the Father of Jesus, and we are in Christ by the Spirit, then his Father is our Father. Father is thus not a gender, nor is it a function, it is a pure relation of a person to another person (which is what ‘person’ means in theology anyway).
    Unlike ¡ Reply ¡ 1 ¡ 5 hours ago

    Tim Bulkeley Myk, yes but. As a theological construct, if qualified by the appropriate careful theological niceties I entirely agree. (Except, I need convincing that Jesus used “father” as a name. It’s a problem I also have in conversation with my children, when is “mum” a name for Barbara and when is it a description of a relationship. I.e. when should it have a capital M
    BUT 95%+ of Christians are not aware of all those theological niceties, and treat the exclusive talk about God as “Father” as if it were a gendered description. This is frankly idolatry, it makes God into a member of the class of male beings – a god. And, from my perspective it is not merely that 95% that do this, some theologians who ought to know better do too! (I am thinking of E. Achtemeier and CS Lewis among the 20C examples.)

    • brookwarner1986 Reply

      I agree with the 95% comment. We need to begin a conversation that opens this up to people in the pews, who have never thought about this before. “Not only a Father” is a great way at eliciting dialogue even if we don’t agree in the end!

      • Tim Bulkeley Reply

        Thanks, Brook, I’m not (mainly? really, I hope)) looking for agreement but do want to stimulate conversation. I’m not good at that, better at polemic. So I do hope you’ll continue to join a conversation, or argument – as long the arguing is done with respect. The two Christian thinkers I disagree with by name are both writers I respect enormously, both better theologians and better writers than me, but I think very seriously wrong on this issue!

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  4. Josh Pound Reply

    Good discussion 🙂
    This is what I’ve picked up:

    1. God is not gendered, ie., a transcendent Spirt. To view God as gendered is idolatry.

    2. The bible uses both feminine and masculine similes to describe characteristics of God. God reveals himself using illustrations we can relate to.

    3. Yet, Jesus exclusively refers to ‘God the Father’ as Father and not Mother. An example he lays out for us to follow.

    So, with that in mind does it sound right to join the biblical witness by interchangeably using masculine and feminine images to describe or illustrate what God is ‘like,’ but continue with tradition in referring to God as ‘Father’ (Son and Spirit)?

    Thanks, Josh.

    • Tim Bulkeley Reply

      Good question Josh 🙂 Complicated answer, sorry:
      1. there is more to say (I think) about Jesus’ talk of God as Father see: http://sacraparental.com/2013/04/13/not-only-a-father-3-but-jesus-named-god-our-father-guest/ for the condensed version.
      2. I don’t in my practice in 2015 change the Father Son Spirit language. Though I do try to use it less and to use mixed gendered pictures and language more. I am more afraid of people exchanging God for a mere god than I am of them exploring God full riches. So I would not quickly condemn someone who did.
      The problem is (putting the two together) that people are more in danger of using the right language without the right understanding than the reverse.
      Tim Bulkeley recently posted…11. Reading in the light of ChristMy Profile

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  6. dog Reply

    We watch the shack and it told us about god is not only like a father but a mother and we know he’s a boy of course but god loves his children and me and you like a mother. GOD IS A AWESOME GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!-11 year old girl

  7. Roy Reply

    If Adam was not born of woman but formed from the dust of the earth.
    Why was he quoted as saying soon after the woman was formed from the bone from his side ? “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his “mother”and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”Genesis 2:24
    Where did Mom come from?

    They were already one flesh as soon as she was formed.
    So what I get from this is that they were married as soon as they were united/created.

    It also reads in Genesis 5:2 that He created mankind in His likeness. “He created them male and female and blessed them, and named them both “Adam” when they were created.”
    When God gives us a name, we should leave well enough alone.
    So what I get from this is that they were created as equals in every way in the likeness of the Godhead.

    This was a game changer for me with regards to what is taught and what is learned when one desires answers.
    Read scripture with an open mind and consider the some traditions may not be for our best interest.

  8. marlon Reply

    God is androgyne . No sex ..no gender ..we may say so but how will you explain man was created in their image, from their image man was created .Based on these.. I firmly abided that there is not just a father but also a mother who created us. A manifestation of what ever we have on earth, there is in heaven also.

  9. marinda Reply

    Also when you read the book of 2Kings chapter 1 in Hebrew ..youl see Eliyah refer to Elohiem She…

    When you read Malachai in Hebrew youl see him refer to Elohiem He (Yahuveh)
    Hebrew english linear available online at scriture4all.com

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  12. Nadia Nique. Reply

    I really appreciate this article and all the comments. Rather than continuing the theological analisys i would like to give my very personal opinion. That even though it is kind of “understood” that God doesn’t have a gender, the fact that in Church we cry out to our Father (yes just like Jesus) does have a representation as a relationship with a father in the earthly way, because we are humans and thats how we see things, that is what we know. That is why i thank God for showing me recently that i can cry out to my Mother…because i lost mine as a child and there is a longing there that only God can fill for me in that role. And yet i felt a bit insecure of doing so because it is not practiced, you don’t hear that anywhere (even though i should not have since God is showing me so, who should i listen to) and had to go to online resources on the subject. But thanks for the reassurance that is Biblical and yes i love my Heavenly Mother for showing me that.

  13. Constantin Reply

    “The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.””
    ‭‭Genesis‬ ‭2:23‬ ‭NASB‬‬

    Woman was taken out of Man. Was he saying she was already inside? If G d wanted to, could He have caused woman to have a conversation with Adam while she was inside? Inside how?

    The Bible then qualifies further that anyone who marries becomes one flesh or ‘echâd. G d doesn’t see them as separate but as united flesh. Two individuals yes but united for the same purpose drawing from the same source, aspiring in the same direction with the same motivation.

    This mystery is beautiful.

    Adam a male had the woman inside of him something that has not repeated since because now women give birth but he could not commune with her until G d brought her out and made her in Adam’s likeness. In Genesis 5 it says that Adam gave birth to a son in his own image Seth. This Adam was both the male and the female counterpart. They were ‘echâd.

    G d ‘echâd unlike Adam is complete in the three persons of the ‘echâd. But to show the mystery G d took Eve out of Adam. Man came out of G d but in order to commune with us He cloaked Himself. At first in different forms, angels, one man, three men as in the case of Abraham under the oaks of Mamre, burning bush, pillar of fire, cloud. Finally He cloaked Himself directly in humanity taking on the form of a human but underneath was fully G d. So that He could commune directly with man, again.

    The issue with Adam was that by removing the woman out of Adam it appears he lost something but gained it in the form of a companion. So long as they were ‘echâd they were complete.

    All things are made by Him and made from Him and exist and have their being in Him. By removing us out of Himself He allowed the possibility of us rejecting Him. But so long as we are ‘echâd with Him we have of His glory John 17 which He says He shares with no one. So to have it we must be in Him.

    G d while I see as being three distinct persons, is far more ‘echâd and on a far higher dimension. To the point that the Bible will ascribe atributes to the Father and then the same author will ascribe then to the Son. Ephesian4:6 then Colossians 3:11 Interchangeable. Because G d is ‘echâd.

    G d is male but has all attributes shared by all persons of the G dhead. These attributes that we associate with the female sex doesn’t make G d female, that would be projecting onto Him our image. The image was unpacked in Creation.

    In order to fully know G d a man needs to be ‘echâd with the wife. In order to be united with G d we must be in Him.

    G d is definitely male but in Him are all the attributes that we find exclusive to males and females. In G d’s case He doesn’t need to take on female form to express female like attributes. Females express certain G dlike attributes and men other G dlike attributes. We associate them as male and female but from the beginning they were all in Adam the male.

    I need to develop and refine this thought much better than this. My apologies.

  14. Jim Cornell Reply

    Dear Tim, my reading of both testaments resulted in the same appreciation for words to describe God as you. I began studying the nature of God in the Hebrew testament, the Christian testament and the Lord’s prayer specifically, and wondering about why specific words are used to describe God. I lived in Israel in 1989/90 and have a Jewish branch of my family; so, perhaps I’m more sensitive to anyone picturing God as an image similar to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel’s God reaching out to Adam. I understand God like a multi-faceted diamond that shines differently as we turn it and zero in on any particular face. While I can appreciate God as father, mother, Lord, friend, judge, and all the 1000 names for God in Islam, I am wary of “picturing” God in any human or animal way. I came to this understanding slowly, and in conversation a few years ago with a Christian friend of 35 years, I mentioned to her that I felt that if we picture God as an old man with a beard, we are creating an idol. Her reaction was to ask, “So, you think I worship an idol?!” I said, “Of course not, and I didn’t say that. I was trying to say we cannot limit God to a human form. God is so much more.” I went on to say that God specifically chose the period in which to intervene in human history in the form of Jesus. I suggested that Jesus necessarily appeared as a male because the world has been essentially a patriarchy since oral and recorded history began. But, I went on to suggest that if it had been a matriarchy, Jesus might well have appeared as a woman. That was the end of our friendship! She refused to see me, returned a book I had loaned her via her husband, and cut off all contact. How strange that a conversation between two Christians on the nature of God could result in the end of such a long friendship.

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