The Barren Woman Sings

A believer who falls seven times and rises, takes hold of the victory of the cross, and keeps walking is going somewhere, and Scripture names where in the language of birth, growth and family.

The first blessing God spoke over the man and the woman was “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28), and it ran through the one flesh of husband and wife and the knowing that Scripture calls yada. The union God made filled the earth with children of the body, and Scripture never calls that blessing anything but good. Yet long before the New Testament, the same Scripture began to sing about another kind of fruitfulness, one that no body can produce. It sings about it through the figure who seems least likely to bear anything at all: the barren woman.

Mothers Who Could Not Bear

The story of Israel’s mothers is, to a surprising degree, a story of women who could not have children. Of Sarah the text says, “And Sarai was barren; she had no child” (Genesis 11:30). Isaac prayed for Rebekah “because she was barren” (Genesis 25:21). When Leah bore sons, “Rachel was barren” (Genesis 29:31). And in the days before the kings, a man named Elkanah had two wives, and “Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children” (1 Samuel 1:2).

Each time, the child through whom God carried His promise forward came from a womb that could not bear by its own strength. Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Samuel were all given, not produced. When Hannah brought the boy Samuel to the house of the LORD, she prayed, and her prayer became a song.

1 Samuel 2:5 The full have hired themselves out for bread, and the hungry have ceased; until the barren has borne seven, and she of many sons languishes.

Her word for the barren woman is aqarah (עֲקָרָה), the woman whose womb is closed, and her verb is yalad, to bear a child. Hannah sings of a reversal that only God can work: the woman who could not bear now bears, and the woman who had many sons languishes. No clever person could arrange it; it is what the LORD does when He turns things over.

The Psalms take up the same reversal and make it a praise of God Himself.

Psalm 113:9 Who seats the barren woman in the house, a joyful mother of sons. Hallelujah!

The barren woman is given a seat in the house, and the house is filled with her sons. The psalm gives the credit to no one but God.

Sing, O Barren One

Isaiah carries the song much further.

Isaiah 54:1 Sing, O barren one who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who did not travail; for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman, says the LORD.

The first word of the verse is a command, and it is spoken to a woman who is still barren. Isaiah does not tell her to bear her sorrow quietly. God looks at the barren woman and says, sing. And He gives the reason: “more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman, says the LORD.” The desolate woman has no husband beside her. If she has more children than the married woman, those children cannot be children of the body. Isaiah is speaking of a fruitfulness of another kind, and the LORD Himself puts His name to it.

Paul read the verse in exactly that way.

Galatians 4:26-27 But the Jerusalem above is free; she is the mother of us all. For it is written: "Rejoice, barren woman who does not bear; break forth and shout, you who are not in labor; for more numerous are the children of the desolate than of the one who has a husband."

Paul sets Isaiah’s barren woman beside the Jerusalem above, and he says two things about her: she is free, and she is the mother of us all. Her children are those who belong to that city by faith. A few lines later Paul names the difference between the two kinds of children, “he who was born according to sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh)” and “him who was born according to pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit)” (Galatians 4:29). The barren woman’s children are born the second way.

A Name Better Than Sons and Daughters

Isaiah goes further still, to people who could never have children of their own in any way.

Isaiah 56:4-5 For thus says the LORD to the eunuchs who keep my Shabbat, and choose what pleases me, and hold fast my covenant (berit בְּרִית ber-eeth'): I will give to them in my house and within my walls a hand and a name, better than sons and daughters; an everlasting name I will give him, that shall not be cut off.

The word for eunuch is saris. A eunuch had no hope of sons to carry his name after him. To such a man God speaks a promise that is startling in its size. The word for name is shem, and the word for sons is banim. What God gives is better than the sons a man would ordinarily count as his future.

And the verse names the eunuchs to whom the promise is spoken. They are those “who keep my Shabbat, and choose what pleases me, and hold fast my covenant (berit).” The fruitfulness that the body could not give them comes to men who keep God’s Shabbat and hold fast His covenant. That is the same agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay this book has been tracing from its first part: love toward God that keeps what He has commanded.

He Shall See Seed

The song reaches its height in the Servant of Isaiah 53. Of Him the prophet says that “he was cut off from the land of the living” (Isaiah 53:8). He goes down to death with no children of His own. Yet two verses later the promise is given.

Isaiah 53:10 Yet the LORD was pleased to crush him, he made him sick; when his soul (nephesh נֶפֶשׁ neh'-fesh) makes a guilt offering, he shall see seed, he shall prolong days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

“He shall see seed.” The word is zera זֶרַע zeh'-rah, the word for offspring, the same word used of the promised seed from Genesis onward. The One who was cut off and whose soul was made a guilt offering does not end without descendants. He sees seed, and He prolongs days.

Psalm 22 ends on the same note.

Psalm 22:31 A seed will serve (avad עָבַד aw-bad') him; it will be told of my Lord (Adonai) to the generation.

(YLV Psalm 22:31, Masoretic verse order) The psalm that speaks of those who “go down to the dust” ends with a seed that serves Him and a report carried to the generation to come.

What These Texts Say Together

A single line runs through all these passages. The creation command to be fruitful through husband and wife filled the earth, and it was good. But Hannah’s song, the Psalms, Isaiah and Paul all speak of a fruitfulness that the body cannot produce: the barren woman with more children than the married one, the eunuch with a name better than sons and daughters, the Servant who is cut off and still sees seed. Isaiah does not describe this second fruitfulness as a lesser consolation for those left out of the first. He calls it more, he calls it better, and he commands the barren woman to sing over it. Scripture itself places God’s greater joy in a fruitfulness the body cannot produce.

This is not a reading pressed onto the texts from outside. It is the plain line of the texts themselves, and Paul confirms it when he names the barren woman’s children as those whose mother is the Jerusalem above. Nothing here lowers the marriage that God made in the garden, which Scripture holds in high honor. What these verses add is that God’s purpose for fruitfulness did not end with the body. He intended a family born another way.

In the New Testament this song is heard in the life of an apostle who had no wife and no children of his own, and who nevertheless called himself a father, and even a mother in labor.