Biblical Hebrew Forum

["David Stabnow" <dstabno AT lifeway.com>]

On 5/21/01 at 8:27 CDT George Athas wrote:

< The unresponsiveness of Phinehas' wife indicates that she refuses to
acknowledge the child. In such cases, a refusal to acknowledge the child
means that the child is unwanted and would, therefore, be left out in a
field either to die or for someone else to take and care for (cf the
imagery in Ezekiel 16). I suspect the implication in the narrative here is
that the babe was abandoned, just as the Ark had been. >

It is a definite possibility that her unresponsiveness indicated
disinterest in the child.  Indeed, she seems to be disinterested if life
itself, as brought on by the emotional trauma of losing her husband and
father-in-law, and losing the Ark.  However, if she had no interest in the
child, would she have bothered to name it?

In context it is clear that she is in the process of dying in childbirth.
Her unresponsiveness, therefore, could just as easily be associated with
her physical trauma.

So the questions are, what killed her and what caused her to be
unresponsive?  Was it physical trauma, or emotional trauma?  Did both her
death and her unresponsiveness have the same cause?

Further, the Ark was not abandoned, but lost under duress of battle.
Therefore, the literary parallel device is not perfect.

Dave