Mourner, Mother, Midwife: Reimagining God's Delivering Presence in the Old Testament

by L. Juliana M. Claassens

Traditional understandings of God as deliverer depict God as a mighty liberator-warrior and wrathful avenger. Juliana Claassens explores alternative Old Testament metaphors that portray God as mourner, mother, and midwife--images that resist the violence and bloodshed associated with the dominant warrior imagery. Claassens discusses how metaphors of God as life giver began to develop in the aftermath of the trauma of Israelite exile. She offers compelling examples of how this feminine imagery still has the power to inspire hope amidst violence in today's world. She demonstrates that God's delivering presence helps people of faith cope with trauma and suffering on many levels--individual, community, national, and global--while bringing forth new life out of death and destruction.

Genres: Theology

140 pages, Paperback

First published November 16, 2012

Reviews

[Whitney Dziurawiec · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting read. Claassens delves into the scriptures that use metaphors to God as a mourner, mother, and midwife and how they particularly relate to an exiled, traumatized community. The way she relates these verses to modern studies on the trauma of exiled communities was particularly fascinating. It weirdly didn't compel me like I thought it would. It was a more academic book but the subject matter maybe needed a warmer tone?

[Erin Sigmund · Rating 5 out of 5]

With gentle yet strong prose, Claassens embodies the female God that she describes challenging the reader to pay attention to three female depictions of God in the Old Testament: mourner, mother, and midwife and respond ethically the theology which is born from her creative reimagining. Claassens writing is tight and her research is sound and apparent all throughout the work without reading like a dissertation. At the end of the work, Claassens expertly makes room for even her critics, embodying the very compassion she hopes to teach. And by providing instructions for use in worship, she makes her thesis easily accessible to even those pastors who may have difficulty translation Biblical interpretation into practices of faith. Halfway through my seminary career, Claassens book takes the place of my favorite and invites me to reorient my faith in response as any good theology will do. More to say later - probably upon the second and third reading. :)

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Claassens' call to draw on different images of deliverance than God as victor and punisher is timely and needed. Claassens is in dialogue throughout this book with many other feminist Biblical scholars, which can point the advanced beginner Biblical student toward other scholars to engage. This is a book oriented toward professional biblical interpreters, though, and there is a plea at the end about what incorporating these images from the pulpit can mean to folks in the pews and for spiritual life of those who are rightly wary of conquering and colonial God images. Recommended for religious professionals.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Claassens book was most definitely eye opening and challenging to a person of masculine privilege. Finding the feminine Spirit of God throughout the prophetic was reflective to me personally as I viewed it from not just a pastoral perspective but as a person who lives life in a wheelchair and am considered by the world's perspective to be suffering. It was a simple read but complex in its challenges to live a life of presence amidst humanities brokenness.