There’s a scene in the Gospel of Luke chapter one where Mary greets Elizabeth her relative, and Elizabeth replies in part with the following words:
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” 1:42 (NRSV)
I want to start with the second sentence and to make some points that admittedly few people will make today, although they resonate with the interpretation of the ancient church, as we shall see.
“Blessed is the fruit of your womb” may sound like a strange metaphor for those of us who are increasingly alienated from the natural world, but it evokes a widespread recognition of a kind of correspondence that exists between agricultural and biological systems, where the earth and the womb are seen as macrocosm and microcosm. Both produce life within themselves in ways that seem not only analogous but somehow connected. An example of this parallelism can be seen in Deut 7:13 or 28:4, where Moses promises the Israelites that God will “bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground.”
What I want to argue then is that for Luke this phrase, “the fruit of your womb,” is more than an empty idiom—a mere figure speech. Rather, Luke is fully aware of and exploits the resonance it evokes.
Now, Elizabeth is of course referring to Jesus as the fruit of Mary’s womb. Let’s take a quick look, then, at how Jesus’s conception was described to Mary by the angel Gabriel:
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.” 1:35
Notice the word “therefore”—the direct manner of God’s involvement in the conception of Jesus through the Spirit makes it particularly fitting to call him “Son of God.”
Now let’s look at a second text in Luke relevant to the conception of Jesus, that is, Luke’s genealogy of Jesus. It begins like this:
“Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, son of Matthat . . .” 3:23-24
The text continues to trace this lineage all the way back to the beginning of creation; so we jump to its conclusion:
“. . . son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God” 3:38
Adam, in the Bible, as the first human, was created directly by God in a way not paralleled until the birth of Christ, meriting for both the description “son of God” in Luke’s narrative. But Adam, of course, was not only formed directly by God but formed from the earth, earth which is described in Genesis as virgin earth. St. Irenaeus in the second century already picked up on this, but it has been largely forgotten:
“But whence, then, was the substance of the firstformed [i.e., Adam]? From the will and wisdom of God and from virgin earth—’For God had not caused it to rain’ [Gen 2:5], says Scripture, before man was made, ‘and there was no man to till the ground’ [Gen 2:5]. So, from this [earth], while it was still virgin, God ‘took mud from the earth and fashioned man’ [Gen 2:7] the beginning of mankind. Thus, the Lord [i.e., Jesus], recapitulating this man [Adam], received the same arrangement of embodiment as this one, being born from the Virgin by the will and wisdom of God” (On the Apostolic Preaching, 32, trans. John Behr, lightly edited)
So “blessed is the fruit of your womb” taps us into the broader symbolic world of Scripture and allows us to detect the fullness of the parallel that the Gospel of Luke draws between Jesus, son of God, and Adam, son of God, both drawn from virgin wombs.
Now let’s come to Elizabeth’s first statement: “blessed are you among women.” (The connections I want to make in this and the next paragraph are not unique to me; but I don’t know who first drew them together.) This phrase, “blessed are you among women,” is closely paralleled in two prior stories in Israel’s traditions, the first from Judges (5:24), the second from Judith (13:18). In both cases a woman acts heroically to deliver Israel from existential threat by dealing a mortal blow quite literally to the head of the leader of the opposing armies. In Judges, Jael delivers Israel by inflicting a mortal wound to the head of Sisera, and in Judith, the eponymous heroin similarly deals with Holofernes, decapitating him.
Now, about whom was it said that her “offspring [literally ‘seed’] will strike your head [i.e., the serpent] and you will strike his heel” (Gen 3:15)? Eve, of course; Eve’s seed was to strike the head of the serpent. (Note the earth/womb construct in “seed”!)
So “blessed are you among women” is used of women through whom the head of the enemy is mortally wounded; it is not accidental then that “blessed are you among women” is immediately followed in Luke by “blessed is the fruit of your womb,” for that clause speaks of the seed through whom the devil is defeated in the Gospel of Luke, which is, of course, Jesus.
So, arguably, Mary is presented to us in Luke’s gospel as much more than a disciple. She is in fact painted with the hues of primordial colours: we might say that she—like Eve is said to be—is the mother of all living (Gen 3:20), a title borrowed from the earth itself (Sir 40:1). (If this is right, her obedience may well be intended to paint a picture of her as not only a complement but also a counterpoint to Eve.) As for Jesus, Luke describes him as a greater Adam; in the words of Luke’s second volume, he is the very “Author of Life” (Acts 3:14).
~ Nicholas A. Meyer, PhD
©2024 didaskalos.ca All rights reserved