“Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, they may forget, yet will I not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you upon the palms of my hands…” (Isaiah 49:15-16).
Ancient Hebrew was a pictorial language, and its alphabet consisted of 22 pictures which evolved into letters. When we know the pictures for the letters, they reveal another layer of meaning to the words they form. Most Hebrew words have a three-letter root, all consonants (in ancient Hebrew vowels were not written). By examining the pictures for these three letters, a deeper meaning of the word is revealed.
One of the most intriguing is rechem—the Hebrew word for womb. Its three-letter root is r-ch-m. In Hebrew: resh-chet-mem. (ch is pronounced like “k”) Their word pictures:
resh—A picture of a person’s head. It means person.
chet—A picture of a fence. It means to surround, to protect.
mem—A picture of water. It means water.
Therefore, rechem—womb— means a person surrounded and protected by water.
Isn’t this beautiful? But there’s more: It is also the Hebrew word for compassion—mercy. When God wanted to illustrate mercy and compassion, He used the same word for womb! There is nothing more definitive of protective love than a baby in its mother’s womb. (That is, until abortion came into the picture!) In a play on words, Isaiah 49:15 uses rechem in both ways.
Will the Real Mama Please Stand Up! Great
Once when the young King Solomon was presiding over cases brought before the throne, he was presented with the dilemma of determining the true mother of a newborn. Two women who were prostitutes came before him, each claiming that the child was hers. They had both given birth at the same time, but one mother had rolled over on her baby in the night and accidentally smothered it to death. While the other mother slept, she switched her dead baby for the living baby. In the morning, the other mother awoke to a dead baby that she knew was not hers.
Before the King they argued back and forth who was the mother of the living child. Finally, Solomon asked for a sword to be brought and commanded that the baby be divided in two, giving each mother half. The true mother cried out: “No! Give her the living child, but do not slay it!” Solomon then knew she was the true mother, because a mother will do anything to save her baby, even if she is unmarried and has no support system, as in the case of this mother (1Kings 3:16-28). When her child’s life was on the line, she cried out for the child’s life to be saved, revealing her true mother’s love.
Yet God said, as we read, there are cases when a mother will forsake her child, but He promised you and me that He will never forsake us! (Psalm 9:10, Matthew 28:20, Hebrews 13:5).
You Can’t Have My Sons!
“And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped down upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night” (2Samuel 21:10).
There are many mega moms in Scripture, and one lesser-known is Rizpah, the concubine of Israel’s first king, King Saul. She bore him two sons, Moroni and Mephibosheth.
When David became king after Saul’s death, there came a famine in Israel that lasted for three years, so David inquired of the Lord why it was not ending. Because their prosperity was measured agriculturally, famine was viewed as the removal of God’s hand of blessings upon the nation. David wanted to get to the cause.
God’s answer: While Saul was king, he broke the vow Joshua had made with the Gibeonites when Israel first came into the Promised Land. He had promised to protect them and not slay them as the other heathen nations they were displacing (Joshua 9). Now hundreds of years later, King Saul had them killed, breaking this covenant, and bringing God’s judgment upon Israel.
David called the Gibeonites to ask what he could do to make atonement for Saul’s sin. (We should remember, under the old covenant, the penalty was “blood for blood.”) The Gibeonites did not want Israelites to die, but they did request for seven men of Saul’s seed to be hung in Gibeah, Saul’s hometown. This would not only avenge with blood, but also greatly disgrace the house of Saul, because the law said, “Accursed of God is he who hangs on a tree” (Deut. 21:23).
David complied, but he spared Jonathan’s sons because of the covenant they had made when he was fleeing Saul’s murderous attempts on his life, and Jonathan swore to protect him. David could not break his covenant with Jonathan, or he would bring judgment on his own house. David gave over five of Saul’s grandsons and his two sons by Rizpah to the Gibeonites who hung them on a hill in the early days of the barley harvest (2Samuel 21:1-9).
Then Rizpah went to the hill, took sackcloth and spread it upon a rock, and there she stayed day and night, beating off birds and beasts, preventing them from consuming the bodies of her sons! Throughout the entire harvest, she guarded them, determined to keep vultures from devouring her children! After a time, someone told David what Rizpah was doing, and he ordered them to be taken down and honorably buried with the bones of their father and brother, Saul and Jonathan (vv.10-14).
In Scripture, birds and beasts of prey are symbolic of demons spirits. Today, the spiritual principle for moms and grandmoms (and all parents and grandparents): Go to the hill of prayer and beat away the demons that are trying to devour your children and grandchildren!
Beat off the demons of drugs and alcohol! Chase away the demons of sexual perversion! Beat off the demons of violence and death! Chase away the demons of mental illness and suicide! The prayers of moms and grandmoms come unto the throne of God, who can dispatch angels to chase the vultures off our children. Make your voice heard on high!
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