Praise Her! But who is She and what for?
Today’s psalm celebrates certain aspects of the feminine - but in ways that honor some women more than others -and offer a familiar patriarchal position on what women’s worth is actually about. And there’s a twist.
JD Vance’s tasteless and cruel attack on childless women, whether they do or don’t like cats, caused quite a stir, demonstrating this politician’s traditional bias that values women based on what does or doesn’t happen in their wombs. We may know much more about the multiple factors for infertility in our modern reality, and not prioritize child-rearing above other legitimate choices but on some levels, in many contemporary contexts, mothers enjoy a more privileged status than women who for any reason, do not give birth or parent.
This problematic patriarchal position is at the heart of today’s psalm - which is all about praise.
Psalm 113 is familiar to many, yet contains a secret purpose and origin that few people who know how to sing it by heart have ever considered. It’s the first of six psalms chosen some 2,000 years ago to constitute The Hallel, or “Praise” - the liturgy that is recited, often sung, on many major holidays, including the Passover Seder, which is why it has popular appeal.
The poem’s jubilant tone celebrates the ways with which God makes everything better, and how the poor can rise from rags to riches with divine help. Hallelujah! The short psalm ends with a line that has always intrigued readers.
Who is she who’s being celebrated here? And what does she represent?
מֽוֹשִׁיבִ֨י ׀ עֲקֶ֬רֶת הַבַּ֗יִת אֵֽם־הַבָּנִ֥ים שְׂמֵחָ֗ה הַֽלְלוּ־יָֽהּ׃
God seats the childless woman within her household
as a happy mother of children.
Hallelujah.
Ps. 113:9
‘The childless woman’ is a translation that’s been debated. The Hebrew words ‘Akeret Ha’Bayit’ may indeed mean ‘barren’ or ‘childless’ but might also mean something like ‘She who is the essence of the home’. In modern Hebrew it means ‘home-maker’. Big difference.
Most scholars agree that it’s likely the former meaning - but what’s the meaning and why is this the psalm’s main trope?
Robert Alter’s commentary offers context for looking at the verbs uses in this verse and in the earlier part of the psalm:
“The literal sense of the Hebrew is “God seats the barren woman of the house.” There is a further play here on the causative verb “to seat,” hoshiv. Just as God seats, or enthrones, the needy among princes, God seats, or esconces, the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of sons. Given the gender divisions of biblical society, it is not surprising that the woman is accorded her triumphant fulfillment within the house, as childbearer, whereas the man is elevated to a position of political preeminence in the public realm, among princes.”
In other words - this psalm celebrates different forms of transformation - rags to riches, childless to childbearing — a hierarchy of worth central to biblical thinking and still quite normative today. But the focus is about women who yearn to be mothers - and the celebration of what happens when they succeed. The psalm may in fact be primarily about women’s fertility issues - and echoes the story of one famous biblical woman in particular. A close reading of the last verses of psalm 113 shows that they are almost identical to the prayer of Hannah in the first chapter of the Book of Samuel. Hanna, a beloved but barren wife, desperate for a baby, prays at the Shrine in Shiloh with such intensity that she becomes a pioneer of the art of prayer. When her pleas are answered she becomes the mother of Samuel the prophet. Her famous prayer is echoed in today’s chapter, almost word to word.
Hanna is not the only woman in the Bible who starts off barren. Three of the four matriarchs begin their claim to fame with fertility challenges, as do the mothers of Samson - and Samuel. Why is this such a significant pattern in our scriptures?
Rachel Adelman explores this question further:
“Why were so many prominent women in the Hebrew Bible barren? Further, what does the “barren woman” as a literary paradigm tell us about the relationship between God and God’s chosen people?
In agrarian societies during the biblical period (1200-600 BCE), bearing children was highly valued and women’s primary role was that of mother. Birthing and raising children, however, were fraught, given the high rate of maternal death in childbirth and of infant mortality; only half of all children born survived to the age of five. In the biblical stories of barren women, maternity is further complicated in order to heighten the drama of the arrival of the promised son, emphasizing the divine role in conception and birth. In the case of the patriarchal stories in Genesis, the matriarchs’ barrenness emphasizes that it is God who disrupts continuity, in the transition from one generation to the next, and then selects the true heir to the covenant…The motif of barrenness highlights the unique destiny of the promised son.”
As Adelman puts it - the promised son is the ancestor of the chosen people. The barren mother who then births is a symbol for the birth of the nation - from crisis to liberation.
Is this psalm then about the plight and praiseworthy journeys of women - or the essence of the nation?
Perhaps it’s both.
According to Prof. Brettler:
“Psalm 113, or at least an earlier form of it functioned as a psalm of thanksgiving for a woman who gave birth to a child…It is quite easy to imagine a woman who has given birth, especially if she has just given birth to a first child after a long period of infertility, reciting Psalm 113:4–9—its emphasis on YHWH’s greatness and ability to overturn fortunes, and its explicit mention of childless who became a happy mother in v. 9, are totally appropriate to that context…The idea that the formerly childless woman who now has a child is now in the house reflects the reality that new mothers were typically at home; women who were not mothers or whose children had grown up would help out in the fields. Psalm 113:9a should thus be rendered: “God makes the [formerly] childless mother reside in the house,” reflecting this woman’s new status as mother.”
Brettler goes on to explain that the original purpose of the latter part of this psalm was indeed a unique women’s prayer but that the other verses were added on later to complete the psalm and that “it was not meant to modify Psalm 113 alone, but to introduce the entire Hallel section. We know little about when and how Psalms 113–118 were perceived as a unit, but once this happened, an editor wrote an introduction to them, now found in Psalm 113:1–3.
The addition of Psalm 113:1–3 obscured the original function of 113:4–9..moved the poem from a psalm about a barren woman to one about Israel, imagined, as is often the case, as a woman.”
That explains the Aramaic translation of the verse:
“God who makes dwell the congregation of Israel, who is likened to a barren woman who sits beholding the men of her house, full of people, like a mother who rejoices over her sons.”
So who is She and what is praiseworthy? Perhaps a woman’s gratitude for becoming a parent, and perhaps the essence of the nation is a people always aspiring to be well regarded and accepted by the other nations? There is misogyny and ancient bias here, to be sure, as well as echoes of our tribal traumas. Yet when we sing these words, around the Seder table or in synagogue, we are in fact lifting up and honoring the lives of women, the hardships and the triumphs, the highs and lows. Beyond the binary blame and the hierarchy that we inherited - we praise the mystery that helps all of us, beyond gender or status, appreciative of life’s big and small wins, yearnings, and joys. Praise Her. And Not just Her but All of Them, and Us, for Praiseworthy presence - and for praising each other with appreciation for every way we show up fully in this world.
Image: Hannah and Samuel by Rembrandt Van Rijn
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I really love how you brought both the problematic and misogynistic issue to light and recognition for who that can hurt, while also bringing the appreciation and praise and using that to recognise and appreciate. Such a beautiful balance that reflects your approach to the Bible in general and I really love it so much! Always bringing the both and. Thank you! This is such authentic Torah. Shabbat Shalom!