Babies and Nursing - SF.1646
BABIES AND NURSING
Ref. 1646
BIBLE READING: Ezekiel 16:4-5
INTRODUCTION:
This is a preliminary study of the customs and practices current in Biblical times regarding the care and handling of the new-born baby from childbirth through breast-feeding to weaning. Each single datum, whether a single idiom, a verse, or a full paragraph, is taken as a model representing a custom, regardless of the literary or theological context from which it was elicited. As a result of its wide scope and its semi-anthropological character, this essay can only be regarded as a guide towards further investigation and research in all the areas it examines. The information has been drawn directly from the Hebrew Bible, with little additions from the customs of other ancient Near-Eastern civilisations.
A very explicit reference to the treatment given to the new-born infant immediately after birth is given by the prophet Ezekiel. Though the prophet uses this description as a metaphor to describe the birth of Jerusalem-Zion, its details could serve as a medical record, as it reads: This is how you were treated at birth: when you were born, your navel-string was not tied, you were not bathed in water ready for rubbing, you were not salted as you should have been, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes. No one cared for you enough to do any of these things or, indeed, to have any pity for you; you were thrown out on the bare ground in your own filth on the day of your birth (Ezekiel 16:4-5).
1.1. Umbilical Cord
In order to sever the umbilical cord, ancient people used pieces of wood, glass, sharp reed, or a hard bread-crust. The Bible, however, does not record any of these. The act of cutting, as attested to in the Bible, was performed mainly with ‘iron instruments’- the sword - but when human (ties hias)? not to be slashed but carefully cut, as in circumcision and presumably in severing the umbilical cord, mention is made of the use of a tzur. Tzur, as agreed by most scholars, is a sharp, knife-like instrument made of flint (Exodus 4:24; Joshua 5:3).
1.2. The Salting
After the infant had been washed in clean water, salt was rubbed upon the wound so that the skin would become thicker and harder than the inner parts of the body. If one acknowledges that the baby was indeed rubbed with salt, then one can accept Oslander’s suggestion that the ‘salt of the text refers to nitrum which is the Biblical neter (Jeremiah 2:22). However, the text in Ezekiel uses the word melakh, which can mean three things:
(1) be dispersed in fragments, dissipated (as in Isaiah 51:6)
(2) rubbed or washed in salt (as in Leviticus 2:13)
(3) rags, worn-out clothes (as in Jeremiah 38:12).
As the people of antiquity used to rub salt on wounds, most of the Bible commentaries read the text in the primary sense outlined above. However, one must bear in mind that the treatment given to the new-born baby is found only once in the Bible, so that taking linguistic formula into consideration, the parallel phrase can read, ‘You were not covered in any rags, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes.’ This interpretation eliminates the salting process altogether, and agrees with the verses which follow. When God takes pity upon the abandoned baby and performs all which was previously denied to the child, the salting is not mentioned at all. To reverse the injustice, the bathing in a later (verse 4) turns to bathing and anointing with oil (verse 9). The filth which covered the body verse 5) turns to jewellery (verse 11), and similarly the rags and swaddling clothes (verse 4) turn to ‘robes of brocade and sandals of stout hide’ (verse 10).
1.3. Swaddling
After the cleansing and, as some scholars argue, the salting, the baby was wrapped in swaddling clothes. These were very tight wrappings of the kind used in bandaging a broken arm (Ezekiel 30:21), intended to ensure that the child’s limbs would grow straight. One can understand the horrifying nature of this practice from the Aramaean version of this binding, khitu, as isurim, meaning shackles (Targum on Ezekiel 16:4). Only then was the infant fondled, loved, and laid down in its mother’s bosom. In spite of Ezekiel’s description of casting the baby out into the open field, Jewish literature holds no record of infanticide nor of child abandonment, and accordingly there are no Jewish laws concerning this phenomenon.
1.4. Announcement of Birth
While the midwife and women in attendance were busy with the birth, a message would be sent to the father, who would not be at the scene of the delivery (Jeremiah 20:15). The high esteem in which a male infant was held is evident in many instances, and is emphasised by the encouraging exclamation of midwives made on two occasions to mothers dying in childbirth: ‘Fear not, you have a son’ (I Samuel 4:20; Genesis 35:17). This can probably be attributed to the fact that the grown-up sons would help support the family and therefore gained for it a higher social standing. A daughter, on the other hand, according to Ben Sira, ... is a secret anxiety to her father, and the worry of her keeps him awake at night, when she is young, for fear she may grow too old to marry, and when she is married, for fear she may lose her husband’s love; when she is virgin, for fear she may be seduced and become pregnant in her father’s house; when she has a husband, for fear she may misbehave; and after marriage, for fear she may be barren (42:9-10).
2. Naming the Baby
The baby was named by one of the three who were regarded as partners in his creation: God, the father, or the mother.
In some instances we are told that God provides the parents with the name for their baby. This is most common when the mother did not conceive easily, and close intervention by the heavenly powers was called for, as in the case of Ishmael (Genesis 16:11) or Yitzkhak (Genesis 17:19). In the same way, when the birth of the child is symbolic or fulfils a prophecy, the children are named according to the message of God which is to define their whole future existence. This is the case with the ‘unloved’ and ‘unpitied’ children borne to Hosea by his unfaithful wife (Hosea 1:6,9), or Isaiah’s son Ma’her-shal’al-hash-baz (Isaiah 8:3), which in free translation means, ‘The invaders are coming to get the spoil faster than you can even imagine.’
2. 1. Naming by Parents
Some scholars try to determine whether the mother or the father was dominant in the family, on the basis of analysing who it was that actually named the child. However, any conclusions reached by this method must prove erroneous, because the naming cannot indicate familial power politics either in different era’s or in different social strata. There are examples of families where some children were named by the father, and some by the mother (Genesis 38:3-5). The only pattern which emerges is that when mothers named their children, they tended to attach meanings to the names they chose. Usually this represented what the child meant to them. For example, Leah named her first-born son Reuven, meaning, ‘see, it is a son’ (Genesis 29:32), to convey her pride in her new status as a mother (Genesis 30:24; Isaiah 4:21).
One of the most prominent characteristics of Biblical naming is its objectivity and its evident absence of any portrayal of emotions. Analysis of the names given by mothers to their children is one way of revealing the feelings of the mothers. unfortunately the same does not apply to names given by fathers. In most cases where fathers name their children, there is little clear motivation for the name chosen, with only few notable exceptions in Joseph (Genesis 41:51-52) and Moses (Exodus 2:22). When Rachel’s soul departed her body after the long and hard delivery of her second son, she named him Ben-Oni, meaning ‘the son who is all my strength.’ Jacob, his father, apparently did not want to live with a constant reminder of his beloved wife’s ill-fortune, and changed the boy’s name to Benyamin (Genesis 35:18), but this re-naming does not reveal why he chose ‘son of my right hand’ since the boy was his youngest son and consequently neither the heir nor the supporter of the family.
2.2. Circumcision
It was the father’s duty, eight days after a baby boy was born, to enter him into the Covenant, brit, between God and Israel by circumcising him (Genesis 21:4) and so joining him with the community of Israel and the Jewish faith. However, in Exodus 4:25, we read that Moses did not circumcise his first-born. Some commentators ascribe this to the long desert trip which lay ahead of them. When the lives of both father and son were endangered because of this neglect of the commandment, the Midianite mother, Zipporah, took the matter into her own hands and circumcised her own son.
2.3. Redemption of the First-Born
All first-born, both of man and of beast, are dedicated to the Lord, and in turn are to be granted to the priests and Levites who serve God at His Sanctuary. However, God commanded them that notwithstanding, you must accept payment in redemption of any first-born of man and of unclean beast (Numbers 18:15). And though one redeems the first-born of the woman, whatever openeth the womb, it was the fathers responsibility to perform this religious ceremony.
The suckling baby is called yonek, from the root j’n’k which indicates suckling, to differentiate it from alel, which is the collective name for young, as opposed to old, and does not indicate exact age, or nature of feeding (Lamentations 4:4). Because of famine, drought and epidemics, breast-feeding was regarded as obligatory for the mother, who was considered blessed if she could feed. Mothers who refused to suckle their babies were despised for cruelly robbing the new-born of its natural right and its chance of survival. Such mothers were considered even lower than wild beasts, as even the wild beasts offer the breast, they give suck to their young ones’ (Lamentations 4:3). The period following the birth is a time of peril for both mother and baby. Therefore, during lactation, both mother and child were excused from the long exhausting trips which were necessary to fulfil religious duties (I Samuel 1:22), and even of special national assemblies (Joel 2:16). However, if travelling was unavoidable, then the mothers and young ones travelled in wagons while the rest of the people walked (Genesis 45:19; 46:5).
2.4. Day-to-Day Care
During the day, the infant stayed with its mother, carried gently under the arm, (Numbers 11:12; Isaiah 40:11), or tied on her side while she performed her daily tasks (Isaiah 66:12). When the mother was at leisure, the baby was hugged (2 Kings 4:16) and fondled on the mother’s knees (Isaiah 66:12). The Bible tells of Joseph who went to visit his ailing father, Jacob. When the old man saw his two grandchildren and wanted to bless them, ‘Joseph brought them out from between his knees’ (Genesis 48:12). There is no place more comfortable for a young child than in body contact with his parents, and even an older child who feels sick likes to come and sit on his mother’s knees (2 Kings 4:20). In a Sumerian tablet (UM 29-16-85), dating from c. 2000 BCE, lines 92-94 are clearly a lullaby that a mother might sing to her young son. However, concerning child-care at sleeping time, the Bible only records that the mother laid her baby beside her, warming him with her own body-warmth (2 Samuel 12:3), so that she was ready to feed any time the baby was hungry, or her breasts were full and had to be relieved.
A dangerous consequence of this practice was that it increased the possibility of suffocating the sleeping child by lying on him (I Kings 3:17-21).
It is obvious that in the case of adoption, the infant would need a wet-nurse, but apart from Pharaoh’s daughter who adopted Moses and required the services of a meineket, we read of no other adoption procedure in the Hebrew Bible. However, we are informed of two wet-nurses. The first is Rebecca’s wet-nurse, Devorah, who accompanied her mistress from her father’s home in Mesopotamia to her husband’s home in Canaan, and was later presumably of great help as Rebecca bore twin sons (Genesis 24:59). The second is the wet-nurse at King Ahazia’s house, who safeguarded the baby in her care against a conspiracy to kill the whole royal family (2 Kings II :2). In these two cases, the mothers were of high social standing and might have been representative of a class of women, like those of the ancient Egyptian aristocracy, to whom suckling appeared a ‘denigration’ of their position. On the other hand, these wet-nurses might have been engaged to help Rebecca in feeding her twins, and Ahazia’s wife if she had been unable to feed, a predicament which, though considered a grave punishment (Hosea 9:14), was surely the lot of a certain percentage of mothers. As the Bible does not record the artificial feeding of suckling infants, it may be assumed that the hiring of wet-nurses was a widespread custom.
In post-Biblical literature (Tosefta, ividah 2:4), it is explicitly stated that wet-nurses were prohibited from nursing any other child, including their own (Ketuboth 60b). According to Hammurabi’s code, transgression of this prohibition was punishable by cutting off the offender’s breasts. These laws apparently neither deterred any of the nursemaids from Mesopotamia, nor caused them to live in constant fear, as is evident from a Sumerian tablet (UM 29-16-85) from the second millennium BCE, in which lines 29-30 tell us that the wet-nurse not only suckled the baby, but also talked to him to calm and stimulate him.
3. Omen/Omenet
Another person directly concerned with the welfare of the young and their training is the omen or omenet. Mordechai was Esther’s omen, and Moses describes himself as omen; obviously, then, breast-feeding was not one of the roles assigned to the omen. When Moses was angry with the People of Israel, he used this relationship as a simile to describe his personal feelings of rejection:
....was it I who have conceived all these people? or was it I who have begotten them? that you should say to me, carry them in your bosom as a nursing-father [omen] bears the suckling child? (Numbers 11:12).
One record of a female in this role survives in the account of Jonathan’s son, who was dropped while being carried by his omenet and was lamed for life (2 Samuel 4:4).
3.1. Special Effects of Lactation
The modern popular belief that lactation exerts a contraceptive effect was erroneously believed to apply to the people of antiquity because of the statement concerning Hosea’s wife: ‘After weaning Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and bare a son’ (Hosea 1:8). However, no people of antiquity believed in such an effect, and any such assumption must be regarded as unfounded, because it is based on one indecisive verse.
3.2. Term of Lactation
Unlike God, who will carry and suckle the nation until old age (Isaiah 46:3-4), it is evident from the extant contracts of Egyptian and Roman wet-nurses? that the usual lactation period was two years. A rabbinical debate (Ketuboth 60b) reveals that the custom among the Hebrews was to nurse for between eighteen and twenty-four months. But since this was only a custom, there were obviously exceptions. If one is amazed to read of the mother of seven martyrs who nursed her children for three years (2 Maccabees 7:27), then one is obviously unfamiliar with the account of the boy from a primitive tribe who had learned to smoke before he was weaned, or the boy who suckled at his mother’s breast till he was twelve.’ A feast was made to celebrate the weaning of an infant (Genesis 21:8) and a special offering was brought to the Sanctuary (I Samuel 1:24).