In addition, Abraham enters into a covenant ‘between the pieces’ where “Abraham is asked to make a bloody pathway consisting of progressively smaller animals… the passage through the bloody path can be interpreted as a symbolic birth or new beginning” … a birth canal.Įven when Isaac is born, Abraham (his natural father) is asked to distance, disconnect himself from his natural son by sacrificing him where (according to at least one Midrashic account) he is actually slaughtered and then re-born (resurrected) by God. They are divinely re-born and given new names Abram to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah. Miraculously Sarah gives birth… Unlike similar stories of miraculous births in both the Old and New Testaments, in the case of the conception of Isaac, both natural father and mother are barren. Her husband, Abraham at 99, is no youngster. Isaac’s mother is a woman of 90 and barren. These texts also often include rituals or events similar to rites of passage.”… “All of the ‘divine birth’ texts also include a denial of human fertility.”
Although in many of the cases of ‘divine birth’ no actual birth takes place, the term birth is used because the texts often highlight the transformation with a denial of human or natural birth, they also often include elements associated with birth, that is, renaming and words meaning birth. “‘Divine birth’ to mean a transformation whereby the individual is changed from being a product of natural (human) descent to one of divine descent. The Holy One, blessed be He, caused them to conceive on the spot. They would say: “I am more attractive than you,” and the men would reply: “I am handsomer than you.” In that way they would arose their sexual desires and become fruitful and multiply. While the men were eating and drinking, the women would take out their mirrors and glance into them with their husbands. They would (sell some), cook and prepare (the fish), and buy some wine (with the proceeds of the sale), and then bring it to their husbands in the fields, as it is said: In all manner of service in the field (Exod.
Simeon the son of Halafta said: What did the Israelite women do? They would go to the Nile to draw water, and the Holy One, blessed be He, would fill their jugs with little fishes.
You find that while the Israelites were making bricks in Egypt, Pharaoh decreed that they were not to sleep at home so that they would not have intercourse with their wives. The bronze of the offering (tenufah) refers to the bronze vessels given to a bride, for in Greek they call a bride nymphé. These are the accounts of the tabernacle … and the bronze of the offering (Exod.