Mourner, Mother, Midwife : Reimagining God's Delivering Presence in the Old Testament

by Claassens, L. Juliana M.

• ISBN13: 9780664238360
• ISBN10: 066423836X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-11-28
• Publisher: Presbyterian Pub Corp

Summary

Traditional understandings of God as deliverer depict God as a mighty liberator-warrior and wrathful avenger. Juliana Claassens explores alternative Old Testament metaphors that portray God as mourner, mother, and midwife--images that resist the violence and bloodshed associated with the dominant warrior imagery. Claassens discusses how metaphors of God as life giver began to develop in the aftermath of the trauma of Israelite exile. She offers compelling examples of how this feminine imagery still has the power to inspire hope amidst violence in today's world. She demonstrates that God's delivering presence helps people of faith cope with trauma and suffering on many levels--individual, community, national, and global--while bringing forth new life out of death and destruction.

Author Biography

L. Juliana M. Claassens is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Stellen-bosch University in South Africa. She previously taught in the United States at Wesley Theological Seminary and Baptist Theological Seminary. She is the author of The God Who Provides: Biblical Images of Divine Nourishment.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Liberating God-Language?	p. 1
The Liberator-Warrior God-for-Us?	p. 2
Woman Warrior and die Liberator-Warrior God	p. 4
Reimagining God as Deliverer	p. 7
Recognizing Complexity	p. 12
Journeying from Tears to New Life	p. 15
God as Mourner	p. 18
Mourning Women	p. 18
Terror All Around	p. 20
And Yet	p. 23
Calling the Keeners	p. 26
Divine Wailing Woman	p. 30
Looking at the World through Tears	p. 35
God as Mother	p. 41
Mothers	p. 41
Deutero-Isaiah as Survival Literature	p. 42
Disjunctive Metaphors	p. 43
Facing the Empire	p. 47
Rhetorical Significance of the Female Imagery for the Divine in Deutero-Isaiah	p. 49
A Turn to Love	p. 62
God as Midwife	p. 64
Midwives	p. 64
Praying from die Depths of the Deep	p. 65
Rupturing God-Language	p. 68
Memories of Midwives	p. 69
A New Kind of Speech: God as Midwife in Psalm 22	p. 71
Redeeming Memories: God as Midwife in Psalm 71	p. 74
Becoming Midwives	p. 78
God's Delivering Presence	p. 80
Conjuring Up a New World	p. 81
Toward a Theology of Presence	p. 83
Education as Transformation	p. 89
Transforming Worship	p. 93
Notes	p. 99
Bibliography	p. 119
Permissions	p. 125
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