Elkanah

I have posted about Hannah before, but it occurs to me that her husband, Elkanah, deserves some attention, too. In 1 Samuel 1, Elkanah had two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. God shut up Hannah’s womb, but Peninnah had several children. Elkanah loved Hannah more than he loved Peninnah, but Peninnah took the opportunity to harass Hannah about it. I have to believe that Peninnah was jealous of the way Elkanah treated Hannah, and tried to convince Hannah (and herself) that she was the better wife, because she was providing Elkanah with a legacy.
Unfortunately, Elkanah either wasn’t fully aware of what was going on, or he just didn’t know how to deal with it. To be honest, I don’t understand why Elkanah had two wives in the first place. I realize that it wasn’t considered immoral at that time, but it was something that was usually reserved for men with some measure of power. Perhaps Elkanah was wealthy, it doesn’t say. If he loved Hannah, then why was he also married to Peninnah? I have to think that he wasn’t overly bright—having two wives just isn’t a good idea. At the same time, I know men today, that, in a situation like that, would probably tell Hannah, “What are you complaining to me for? Peninnah’s not having any trouble conceiving; the problem obviously isn’t on my end!” Apparently Elkanah was at least smart enough to realize that there would be times when he would be asleep, while Hannah was awake under his roof, possibly even in his bed. Believe me when I tell you that falling asleep while there’s an angry wife in the house is a bad idea.
I think that Elkanah tried to at least do things for her, to try to make up for her barrenness. At one point he said, “Am I not better to thee than ten sons?” For the here and now, maybe he was, but Hannah wanted a legacy. The question itself shows that maybe he didn’t really understand what she was going through (or maybe he was just frustrated because he didn’t feel that there was anything he could do). Thanks to Peninnah, Elkanah had a legacy, but Hannah wanted to have her own children and grandchildren and possibly even great-grandchildren. There was nothing Elkanah could do that would make up for that.
He could have told Peninnah to leave Hannah alone, or he would rip her lips off. Perhaps he was not aware that Peninnah was giving Hannah a hard time; possibly he had told Peninnah repeatedly to stop harassing Hannah, but she continued behind his back—He couldn’t be with them 24 hours a day, after all. Hannah doesn’t seem like the type of person that would running to Elkanah every time Peninnah said something to her, either.
Elkanah, to some extent, was caught in the middle. He had a wife that he loved very much, and she had an adversary right there under his roof. Unfortunately for Elkanah, Hannah’s adversary was just as much Elkanah’s wife as Hannah was. I’m sure that when he married two wives, he wasn’t planning on being their referee. Even more than that, though, Hannah had a problem that Elkanah couldn’t even identify with. She had no children, and it grieved her. He had children, just not by her, but he didn’t even seem to understand why it bothered her. You know, sometimes you just have to be willing to cry with someone only because you know that they are hurting, even when you don’t understand what it is that has upset them.
The bottom line, of course, is that Hannah had to go to God for her answer. God had shut up her womb, as part of a greater plan. She wanted a legacy, and, oh boy, did God give her a legacy. Not one but two books of the Bible are named for the son that she gave birth to after God answered her prayer, and she continued to have more children after that. God had a plan all right.
We need to understand from Hannah’s story that we are going to have adversaries. Whether it’s a ‘friend’ who can’t resist telling you about how good her life is (and if that’s the case, you might want to look at what you’ve got that she hasn’t got, because there is a good chance that she’s only telling you that because there’s something in your life that she’s jealous of), or a boss that sets unrealistic goals (in which case, pray for him that he could understand your job better, so that he can do his job better), or maybe just somebody that doesn’t like the fact that you are a Christian (pray for that person, too, because they really need to get saved). There is bound to be somebody, and the people that we love, and that love and care for us aren’t necessarily going to help (sometimes they honestly won’t be able to help, and sometimes they won’t understand your problem enough to be able to help, and sometimes they’ll just be too wrapped up in their own problems). Keep in mind, though, that God has a plan. His plan won’t necessarily be clear to us, but in the end, all things work together for good…
What we can learn from Elkanah’s story is that people around us are going to have problems. We won’t always be able to solve their problems (men, in particular, find it really frustrating to not be able to solve problems, even someone else’s problems—especially our wives’ problems), but we can show some sympathy, and take the problems to God. Sometimes it will take a considerable amount of work just to understand the problem, but a soul may hang in the balance. Keep in mind that oftentimes God allows problems to exist only so that He can be glorified, but we have to have the faith to see it through.

The Biological Clock

I mentioned Hannah briefly last week. She was the mother of Samuel, and promised to loan him to God before she even got pregnant. It is clear from her story that having children was very important to her. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7 that “if the flower of her age pass,” let them marry, that is not a sin. I think what Paul was referring to is what most people today would call the woman’s biological clock. Perhaps that is what Hannah was dealing with.
Not every woman wants children. Some women want children, just not right now. Sometimes there are other things they want to do first. Maybe they feel a calling to do something for God that they wouldn’t be able to do as a mother. Perhaps they put their career first, at least in their twenties and early-to-mid thirties. When they decide that they have established themselves, or succeeded in whatever it was that they intended to do in their professional lives, sometimes they are a little old to be having children. Of course, one can get married, and still choose not to have children (at least, in the twenty-first century one can; it was probably considerably more difficult in the first century). There is nothing wrong with that. I think that it’s important to note that Paul says that staying single is better, because one can do more for the Lord, but that getting married is good, too. There’s nothing wrong with having kids, but there’s also nothing wrong with not having kids. Being a mother is pretty much a full time job in and of itself. It doesn’t leave you a lot of time to encourage other people in the Lord. It can still be done, but raising children will soak up a lot of your time (if you do it right).
The point that I’m trying to make is that, the decision to have children, or not to have children, is a personal choice. There are some people that have a calling on their lives that simply cannot be fulfilled as a mother (or a father), but, for most of us, God has left that decision in our hands.
I am particularly concerned about women that put off family life for one reason or another, and then, when they start feeling their biological clock ticking, suddenly get anxious about finding a husband and having babies. Don’t tell me that doesn’t happen, it does. I realize that a lot of women that have had that happen to them don’t want to admit it, and that’s okay; I’m not asking for confessions. The sad part of it is, when a woman finds herself in such a situation, and starts trying to make things happen, instead of letting God have control, she winds up seeming desperate. Did you ever notice that a less-than-attractive confident person usually gets more dates than a very-attractive desperate person? On the face of it, that may not make a lot of sense, but desperation can make a person seem a lot less attractive. I think that guys tend to think that even if she looks good, there must be something seriously wrong with her for her to be so desperate. I’m sure that this works in reverse, too, but guys are much less susceptible to the biological clock. Yes, we sometimes act really goofy when we start thinking that we’re ‘getting old,’ but with us, we suddenly start trying to do things to prove that we’re still young; getting married and having kids isn’t usually a symptom of a male mid-life crisis. If anything, it’s more likely that a man will leave his wife and kids to go do something completely stupid because they are part of what makes him feel old.
Think about it, though, ladies, would you go out with a guy that came across as being desperate? Of course not. So, why do you want to chase after us acting desperate? Just relax, take a deep breath, and let God have His way. If that guy that seems like the perfect husband really is, then God will bring the two of you together. You don’t have to rush things; remember that patience is a virtue, and in your patience possess ye your souls.

Women In the Bible (Part II)

Hannah was a godly woman who wanted nothing more than to have children. The Bible says that God had shut up her womb, but that she went to the temple and prayed about it. She promised God that her first-born son would be loaned to God, and she indeed had a son, Samuel, that she loaned to God, and then she had more children afterwards that she raised herself. I could probably spend a lot of time talking about Hannah, but, for now, suffice it to say that God laid something on her heart, and, even though it was hard for her, she did it, and she got rewarded for her faithfulness. Some of you may be saying to yourselves that I shouldn’t be telling you that having children is a reward. Maybe for you it isn’t, but for her it was.
Ruth was an important woman in the Bible; she has her own book. She was not Jewish by birth, but somewhere along the line she accepted the Jewish faith. Naomi was a Jewish woman that went, with her husband and two sons, to the land of Moab when they fell upon hard times in Israel. The two sons married Ruth and Orpah (presumably these women accepted the Jewish faith before the wedding—it doesn’t really say). Something happened to the men in the family, and then these three women were all widows. Jewish tradition (and perhaps Moabite tradition as well) dictated that if a married man dies childless, then his nearest male relative was to take the widow as his own wife, but then her children would be the heirs of the deceased. Naomi had a problem, though, she didn’t have any male relatives in Moab, they had all died. She was going to go back to Israel, but she suggested that Ruth and Orpah go back to their own families in Moab. Orpah did, Ruth, however, insisted that Naomi was her family, and that Naomi’s God was her God, and Ruth went to Israel with Naomi. Once there, she met a relative of her late husband named Boaz. They got married and lived happily ever after; they had a son named Jesse, who had a son named David…
King David’s first wife was Michal, and for the most part she was a good woman—she saved David’s life, but she did criticize David once, and she never had any more children after that (was that punishment or reward? I assume that it was punishment).
David’s wife Abigail was a real prize, although she was married to someone else when David first met her. Nabal had angered David greatly, and David was on his way to kill him, when Abigail interceded for her husband. Later Nabal died anyway, and David married Nabal’s widow.
Bathsheba was, evidently, a very attractive woman. One night, David was up on the roof, and found a vantage point where he could observe Bathsheba taking a bath. It turns out that her husband was one of the mighty men in David’s army, and was off defending Israel. David sent for her, and she came to him, and became pregnant. The Bible doesn’t really say how much of an argument she put up; what do you say in an era when women were treated pretty much as property, and your husband is away, and the king sends for you and wants to have you? I’m sure she argued the best she could; the sin was David’s, not hers.
There was woman of Tekoah that had some significance during David’s reign, whom the Bible doesn’t even name. There had been a situation where David had banished one of his own sons from the kingdom. David was miserable about it, and, quite frankly, it didn’t make a lot of sense. One of the men close to David, named Joab, sent this woman to David with a situation that closely mirrored David’s own situation. Once she got David to look at the situation objectively (that is, looking at it from the perspective that it was someone else’s problem, instead of his own), he realized that he could deal with the situation better, and he brought his son home. As it turns out, he might have been better off if he had left the situation as it was, but that wasn’t her fault.

Happy Mother's Day!

Mother’s Day is Sunday (Saturday in Mexico), so it seems appropriate to blog about mothers today. I blogged about my parents earlier this week, so not so much about my mother, just mothers in general.
We can start with Eve, since she was the first mother, and, in fact, Genesis 3:20 indicates that Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living. In actuality, Eve simply means life. I would imagine that she was a good mother, most of her children turned out okay, and that’s not an easy task, even when you have an example set for you by your own mother. I understand that Abel was understandably concerned about the way that she raised Cain, though.
Sarah was the mother of all of Israel, even though she doubted when she first heard that she would be (Genesis 18:12). To some extent, it’s understandable; she was old. She ended up having Isaac when she was 91. That’s quite an accomplishment.
Hannah, the mother of Samuel, was a woman in emotional turmoil, because it was very important to her to have a child. Her husband, Elkanah, had another wife, who had children, so it wasn’t a question of continuing her husband’s lineage; it was a question of her feelings of self-worth wrapped up in her desire to be a mother (that could be a good or a bad thing. In this case it was good, but, under most circumstances, a woman’s worth is not based on haw many children she has. Those were different times, though). She prayed to God, and promised her son to the Lord if He would just allow her to have a son. He did, she did, and Samuel ended up being raised by the High Priest, and becoming a prophet. God also allowed Hannah to have more children, after she showed her faithfulness with Samuel.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, was blessed among women. I think that she is underrated, and overrated, at the same time. Some people don’t seem to appreciate that she was not chosen simply because she was the millionth customer. Granted, her lineage figured into it, but God would not have chosen her to bear the Christ child and then to raise him, if she were not a righteous woman. She had a special relationship with God because of her faithfulness, that’s why God was able to trust her with such an important role. On the other hand, some people seem to think that she is practically a goddess in her own right. I suspect that she would object strenuously to that idea if she heard it. I can sort of understand the urge to try to have her act as an intercessor: “Mary, your Son will listen to you, and His Dad will listen to Him, and I need…” She, of course, is considerably less intimidating than God Himself is. Still, remember the wedding at Cana? She went to Jesus because they ran out of wine. She knew He could do something about it. He did, but not before getting upset with her for trying to put His abilities on display. Granted, in that instance, her intercession was successful, but how many times do you think she can get away with that? Do you think that any of us living today are as close to her as the couple getting married at Cana? The Bible tells us to honor our parents. It always seemed to me that Jesus’ response to Mary was a little on the disrespectful side. What kind of example is He setting? It seems to me that, for Him to respond to her that way, it must have been very important to Him for us to know that we shouldn’t count on Mary’s intercession ever again. We certainly can intercede for each other, though, particularly since Jesus taught us that whenever two or three are gathered together in His name, that He would be in the midst of us. The Bible does tell us to fear God, but it also tells us that He loves us and would like to take care of us, if only we will let Him.

What Are You Worth?

I have been told, that if we were to break down a human body into its basic chemical components (mostly water), it would be worth about 94¢. I'm not sure how that has been affected by inflation since then, but I think it is safe to say that, from a chemical standpoint, we are each worth less than what most of us earn in an hour--certainly less than one week's pay. Of course, no chemist could assemble a working human being, no matter how many chemicals he tried to use. We are much more valuable than the sum of our parts.
Some years ago, we had a young woman that attended our church that liked to wear a lot of jewelry. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with wearing jewelry (although there is a scripture that might contraindicate my opinion—but I really think that Paul wasn’t trying to say that wearing jewelry is a sin, just that there are other things that are much more important), but this seemed somewhat excessive. One time she and I were talking, and she said something about her jewelry, and I took it upon myself to ask her about why she wore so much—although I was a little more discreet in the way I asked (maybe not a lot more discreet, but a little). I don’t remember how I phrased the question, but I tried to do it in such a way that it didn’t imply that I thought she wore too much, because I didn’t want her to feel defensive about it. As it turns out, I was considerably less clever than I thought I was, because she did end up getting defensive about it, but I got a sense of the why in spite of myself. It seemed to me that she had come to the realization that people paid more attention to her when she wore jewelry, and more jewelry meant more attention. She had gotten her sense of self-worth wrapped up in her jewelry. When I realized that, I backed off the issue, and tried to soothe her ruffled feathers, but I may not have done a very good job of that, either (I have since heard that I tried to talk her into selling her jewelry and giving the money to the church—I did no such thing, but, she may have felt that I was suggesting that, and told somebody who told somebody…). For what it’s worth, I really don’t care how much jewelry one wears, but I do worry sometimes about what it says about one when one wears so much jewelry.
Still, this is something that has plagued people for just about as long as there have been people. In First Samuel 1, we learn about Hannah, who is distraught because she has no children. Her husband, Elkanah, asks her if he is not better to her than ten sons, and, in truth, takes very good care of her, because he loves her very much, with or without children. This would seem to be a common thought amongst Old Testament women: Jacob’s wives, Leah and Rachel, competed see who could produce more children. In both cases, the woman’s sense of self-worth was wrapped up in being a mother; being a good wife wasn’t enough. Even today, people sometimes get their sense of self-worth from things that really shouldn’t have anything to do with it. I mentioned jewelry before, but there are other things. Some people think that they need a spouse to be whole (of course we know that no single man is complete, but once he gets married, then he is finished). Some still think that they need to have children. There is nothing wrong with wearing jewelry, being married, or having children, but, a person’s sense of self-worth should be based on the fact that your Creator made you, He loves you, and He gave Himself for you, to redeem you from the world. No one, not spouse, nor children, nor parents, will ever love you more than He does.

Maternal Instinct

We are taught, generally from a fairly young age, that mothers have a natural instinct to take care of their children. Of course, there are ways to suppress it; in today's society the obvious way would be with drugs: A strung out mother will sell her baby to get money to buy drugs. In this time of year, when we always think of Mary and the Baby, I thought I would share a little bit about what the Bible says.

In First Samuel chapter 1, we are told about a woman named Hannah, who very much wanted children, but couldn't have any. She went to temple and prayed, and ended up later giving birth to Samuel, the prophet for whom the book is named. In Genesis 30, Rachel became distraught that she didn't have children. Now, in both of these cases, the woman in question was one of two wives, who had no children, while the other wife bare children. Interestingly enough, in both cases, the barren wife was actually the favored of her husband; I'm not sure if there's any significance to that.

In Judges 11, Jephthah's daughter bewailed her virginity. Of course, I should point out that she was in trouble for celebrating her father's return from a victorious war (it's complicated); but, if she had not been a virgin, she would not have been celebrating her father's return, she would have been celebrating her husband's return, and would not have gotten into trouble. The end of this story has been interpreted many different ways, but, my reading is that she died, still a virgin.

I think that we are all familiar with King Solomon's famous exercise in wisdom in First Kings 3: He had to rule in a case where two mothers both claimed the same child, and he depended on the the maternal instinct to determine which woman was the child's mother (the other woman was willing to let the king kill the child).

In Second Kings chapter 6, there is a rather gruesome story that shows that it doesn't take drugs to override maternal instinct, just a very desperate situation. It's hard for me to imagine such a situation, but that may just be because I'm spoiled.