Suffering in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Two Pregnancies

Just as I was getting ready to post this entry, my dear husband commented that I really should "de-densify" future blog postings and inject a little humour or else he might stop reading altogether! This I will do (next time!). My students are the source of endless anecdotes and so there is plenty of material to draw from. Did I tell you the one about my Israelite Religion student and the 3-D glasses? No? Well, maybe next time. But for now, something a little more "dense"!

Today, I have been working on the puzzle of “two pregnancies” and “two births,” another aspect of the metaphor of childbirth in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the text that I am studying right now (Hodayot 11:8-13), the first pregnancy and birth seem straightforward. In spite of “excruciating pain at the mouth of her womb” and the “breaking waves of death” and the “pains of Sheol,” a woman safely delivers a child, a “wonderful counselor” (echoes of Isaiah 9:6?). In the ancient world, childbirth was accompanied by the very real possibility of the death of both mother and child. Yet, it seems that this vivid word picture was meant to convey that not even the threat of death could prevent the safe delivery of this “wonderful counselor.”

However, there is darker and more terrifying aspect to this hymn. A second “pregnancy” is found in the next lines, “But she that is pregnant with vanity (or 'wickedness' or, even, 'a viper'!) also experiences excruciating pain and the breaking waves but it results in 'works of terror'.” Ouch! The suffering of labour was not, therefore, a guarantee of a positive outcome, to say the least!

So, I’ve been struggling with what this means. One pregnancy resulted in the birth of a “wonderful counselor” while the other resulted in “works of terror.” How could sufferers know exactly with what they were “pregnant” since both labours involved “excruciating pain” and deadly “breaking waves”?

British Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Dr. Julie Hughes has been most helpful for my work today. She notes in her book, Scriptural Allusions and Exegesis in the Hodayot, that the hymn brings to mind this passage in Isaiah:

… they rely on formless emptiness (i.e. old-fashioned “vanity”) and speak lies,
they conceive trouble and give birth to evil.
They hatch the eggs of vipers and spin a spider’s web.
Whoever eats their eggs will die,
and when one is broken, an adder is hatched (Isa 59:4-5).

Dr. Hughes distinguishes between the two labours and births, describing a contrast between a fruitful suffering and an unfruitful suffering. (I am so grateful to have found her book on the TWU library shelves!) Again, how could one be assured that his or her labour and suffering would be fruitful? Perhaps we might play with these ideas for a moment.

Could it be that the author of the hymn was implying that what was birthed – whether a fully formed child or a unformed and meaningless “terror” – depended on the origin of its conception? When something had been conceived from “vanity” - and here, the language from Isaiah evokes the pre-Creation chaotic “formlessness” or “emptiness” of the earth in Genesis 1 – then, the product would be “not-formed” and “not-named” and, therefore, of a terrifying meaninglessness. The suffering endured during this birth would be, therefore, decidedly unfruitful.

However, the opposite would also be true. What was conceived by God was neither formless nor meaningless. As a creation of God, it would be fully formed, safely delivered, and named as a “wonderful counselor” who was born out of suffering. The suffering endured in this birth, therefore, was fruitful in ways that may have been unimaginable during the pain of labour.

Perhaps this Dead Sea Scrolls hymn struggles to give words to a hope that responds to a question common to humanity. Is our suffering, necessarily, meaningless or might it be fruitful and, therefore, meaningful? Furthermore, if we could know that our suffering had the potential for fruitfulness, would we find it easier to bear? I tend to think so.

Now, while this Dead Sea Scrolls hymn does not suggest that God causes pain, it does assume that God does not always prevent it. That said, the people of God might be encouraged to know that God’s most fruitful and creative work is often birthed in and through human suffering. What is brought forth is living but may also be life-giving and fruitful for others in surprising and unexpected ways.

Finally, another remarkably sobering and poignant poem from Isaiah reminds its readers that even the people of God could fail to deliver what they were intended to birth:

As a woman with child and about to give birth
writhes and cries out in her pain,
so were we in your presence, O LORD.

We were with child, we writhed in pain,
but we gave birth to wind.
We have not brought salvation to the earth;
we have not given birth to people of the world (Isaiah 26:17-18)

So, these are some of today's thoughts, not yet fully formed, but definitely in gestation!