Remember this post? It’s one of my favourites because so many people commented on it and I loved to get everyone’s opinion. It’s a topic that I’ve been thinking about for many years and when I got some insight into alternatives for the infertile people in the Bible I couldn’t wait to share it with you…
Traditional surrogacy:
Genesis 16:1-2 (NIV): “Hagar and Ishmael 1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her. Abram agreed to what Sarai said.”
Genesis 30:3-7 (NIV): “3 Then she said, Here is Bilhah, my maidservant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and that through her I too can build a family. 4 So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. Jacob slept with her, 5 and she became pregnant and bore him a son. 6 Then Rachel said, God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son. Because of this she named him Dan. 7 Rachel’s servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son.”
Genesis 30:9-12 (NIV): “9 When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her maidservant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. 10 Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. 11 Then Leah said, What good fortune! So she named him Gad. 12 Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son.”
Modern traditional surrogacy is done via IUI. The eggs of the surrogate mother are inseminated with either the husband’s sperm or a donor’s sperm. In the biblical times there was no IUI, so it was done with intercourse. I’m sure a lot of modern women today are thankful that we don’t have to do it that way anymore!
In my reference Bible it says: “According to an ancient text from Nuzi from the second century BC it was customary for a barren woman to let her slave have intercourse with her husband, and to claim the resulting children as her own.” An Assyrian text from the 7th century BC has even more detail and roughly translated it says: “if Subetu does not get pregnant and give birth, she may appoint a slave in her place. Through the slave she (Subetu) will bring sons to life and the sons shall be hers. If she likes the slave she may keep her, but if she hates her, she may sell the slave.”
From the above verses you can see that both Rachel and Lea named the sons and it even says: “Then Rachel said, God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son.” Rachel is claiming the son as her own. I always thought that the slaves were more like concubines, and the children were seen as their children, but it seems that was not the case. I wonder if the slaves had any say in the matter. I think not…
Adoption:
Genesis 48:5 (NIV): “5 Now then, your two sons born to you in Egypt before I came to you here will be reckoned as mine; Ephraim and Manasseh will be mine, just as Reuben and Simeon are mine.”
Jacob had disinherited his eldest son Reuben, because he had committed incest with Jacob’s concubine. Jacob gave Josef his brother Reuben’s portion as well as his own portion of his inheritance, but instead of it going directly to Joseph it is given to his sons Ephraim and Manasseh, whom Jacob had adopted.
Exodus 1:22 (NIV): “22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”
Exodus 2:2-10 (NIV): “2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. 5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. This is one of the Hebrew babies, she said. 7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you? 8 Yes, go, she answered. And the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you. So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, I drew him out of the water.”
Jochebed, Moses’ mother made a plan to try and save her son from the decree of Pharaoh. She must have known that the Pharaoh’s daughter would go to bath at that specific spot, and she must have know that Pharaoh’s daughter would take pity on her baby. I’ve read in one article that the Pharaoh’s daughter might have been infertile, as the argument is that someone who has children of her own might not accept a stranger’s baby as her own so easily.
Esther 2:7 (NIV): “7 Mordecai had a cousin named Hadassah, whom he had brought up because she had neither father nor mother. This girl, who was also known as Esther, was lovely in form and features, and Mordecai had taken her as his own daughter when her father and mother died.”
Enhancing fertility:
Genesis 30:14 (NIV): “14 During wheat harvest, Reuben went out into the fields and found some mandrake plants, which he brought to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”
The Dudaim or Mandrake plant was traditionally believed to increase a women’s fertility but was also know for its aphrodisiac qualities and believed to remove sterility in the East. It’s not commonly used anymore, but was also used for its anaesthetic qualities and could cause hallucinations if ingested in sufficient quantities. The mandrake fruit would have been ripe between April and May for a very short time and it was quickly eaten by birds and animals. Harvest time was late May to early June, so it was very unusual for Reuben to have found some. That’s probably why Rachel wanted them so desperately.
Ironically the mandrakes did not help Rachel to get pregnant, but Leah did get pregnant when Jacob visited her tent that night. Rachel did conceive another boy at a later stage though only after Leah had another two sons and a daughter.
So you can see from the above that there were alternatives for the childless couples in the Bible. They could adopt, have a child though a slave or even use some herbal remedies (we only have proof of the mandrakes from the Bible, but there could have been others). Why do some people expect us then to just have faith and pray for our own babies in today’s day and age?
I’m convinced that our modern methods of ART are better than the traditional surrogacy method of the Bible, and maybe we should remind the critics of ART of that next time they want to voice their opinions on a matter they know nothing about…
hi M,
thank you for this – i had an elder in our church say to me – “I hope you aren’t going to do IVF for ethical reasons” – and this from a man with two naturally-conceived young children…. it has bothered me such a lot, and i have prayed with my sister about it and asked for other council. we have subsequently started IVF, but it is something i still think about all the time. apparently there are 2 different schools of thought re this issue in churches across the world. basically some people don’t agree and others do, but i guess for us it was a case of having to make this choice ourselves through prayer and consultation.
very interesting topic, thanks!
nikki
I absolutely LOVE this!! So many good points that I have never even thought of, much less all the ‘naysayers’. Thank you for posting this!
Again a wonderful thought provoking post. I know many churches are against IVF etc but when I raised this at my church they mentioned that in the bible there is reference to alertantive manners to parenthood.
Personally I believe that God knew infertility would strike His people and that He has given doctors the knowledge to help us through IUI and IVF. It’s no co-incidence that since the inception of IVf in 1978 that doctors can only take the treatment so far and no further. That the continuance of life and implantation is up to Him and Him alone. “Funny” that with all the research done on this, doctors cannot explain the one thing that needs to happen to have a baby – implantation…. God still needs to breathe life into those children no matter what we do to “help” the process along the way…
Just my opinion.
Thanks for this post.
xxx
A MAJOR objection to IVF is that the survival rate of resulting embryos is poor. The standard procedure is to fertilize many ova. Generally most if not all are fertilized. But not all survive to be implanted. Then, of those that are implanted, some die. If more than one embryo implants and develops, they are allowed to continue for a time. Then the best looking one is marked off and the rest are aborted.
Many of us are convinced that each “fertilized egg” or embryo is a miniature complete human being, not merely a mass of human tissue, at least from the eight-cell stage of development. To deliberately kill any of them is to kill a living human being.
Further, to commit acts that are known to cause or result in the deaths of human beings as an integral part of the procedure constitutes murder. Certainly many human activities typically result in deaths, but we avoid those that have killing as an intended part. We know that people die from driving cars, building bridges, etc. but death is not an inherent part of those procedures.
When we engage in sexual intercourse in the natural manner we do not deliberately or negligently cause the deaths of embryos that do not survive any more than we are responsible when our intercourse results in children who are killed, die of disease or eventually die of old age.
Slavery is not condemned in toto in the Bible. When God’s people live in societies where slavery is legal, it is not wrong for Christians to buy slaves and to keep them in slavery. However, we know that slavery is not an institution of God, for the apostle wrote that men were not made to be the slaves of men but the free servants of God. I cannot see that Christians could support instituting slavery in a society where it was not already legal and customary.
The Christian also is very limited in dealing with his(her) slave(s). Better to provide positive incentives for good behavior than to expect punishment to obtain submission. A wise slave owner would pay his(her) slave(s) a fair wage for his(her) work, take care of the slave in sickness and old age, and so on. If a slave did not respond to kind treatment, the civil authorities might have to be appealed to to compel the slave to behave properly.
Manumission (freeing) might be a possibility but many slave societies were very restrictive. The government had to be convinced that the slave, once freed, would not fall into crime or beggary, but be self-supporting. The freedman (or freedwoman) should not be sent away emptyhanded but provisioned and assured of a means of supporting him(her)self.
Surrogate motherhood is not contrary to Scripture but in the case of Abram, Sarai and Hagar, Sarai said she had erred. God promised Abram (later Abraham) that he would have a son by the body of Sarai. Ishmael did not qualify despite Sarai’s adoption as her own son.
The slavewoman who was used sexually was not to be sold except back to her own people. If her master decided that he did not want her any longer, he was to free her.