Mother

"mother; grandmother; stepmother." Cognates of this word appear in nearly all Semitic languages including Ugaritic and Aramaic. Biblical Hebrew attests it 220 times and in all periods.

The basic meaning of the word has to do with the physical relationship of the individual called "mother." This emphasis of the word is in Gen 2:24 (the first biblical appearance): "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife…." ’Em sometimes represents an animal "mother": "Likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen, and with thy sheep: seven days it shall be with its [mother]; on the eighth day thou shalt give it me" (Exod 22:30). The phrase "father and mother" is the biblical phrase for parents: "And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle's daughter: for she had neither father nor mother [living]" (Esth 2:7). The "son of one's mother" is his brother (Gen 43:29), just as the "daughter of one's mother" is his sister (Gen 20:12). These phrases usually emphasize that the persons so represented are whole brothers or sisters, whereas the Hebrew words ’ah, ("brother") and ’ahôt, ("sister") meaning both whole and half siblings, leave the issue unclear. On the other hand, in Gen 27:29 this phrase appears to mean peoples more distantly related: "Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee." Em can represent blood relatives further removed than one's mother. in 1Ki 15:10 the word means "grandmother": "And forty and one years reigned he in Jerusalem. And his [grand]mother's name was Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom." This word can also mean "stepmother." When Joseph told his dream to his family, "his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed Shall I and thy [step]mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth" (Gen 37:10; cf. Gen. Gen 35:16ff., where we read that Rachel died). The word can signify a mother-in-law, or the mother of one's wife: "And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness …" (Lev 20:14). The woman through whom a nation originated is called its "mother"; she is the first or tribal "mother," an ancestress: "Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite" (Ezek 16:3). Even further removed physically is Eve, "the mother of all living" (Gen 3:20). Em can represent all one's female forebears: "Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out" (Psa 109:14). A group of people, a people, or a city may be personified and called a "mother." Hosea calls the priests (probably) the "mother" of Israel: "…And the prophet also shall fall with thee in the night, and I will destroy thy mother" (Hos 4:5). The people of Israel, the northern kingdom, are the "mother" of Judah: "Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away" (Isa 50:1; cf. Hos 2:4, 7).

An important city may be called a "mother" of its citizens: "… Thou seekest to destroy a city and a mother in Israel…" (2Sam 20:19). The title "mother in Israel" was a title of respect in Deborah's day (Judg 5:7). "The mother of a way" is the starting point for roads: "For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination…" (Ezek 21:21).

is used (a) of the natural relationship, e.g., Mat 1:18, 2Ti 1:5; (b) figuratively, (1) of "one who takes the place of a mother," Mat 1:12-50, Mar 1:3-35, Joh 19:27, Rom 16:13, 1Ti 5:2; (2) of "the heavenly and spiritual Jerusalem," Gal 4:26, which is "free" (not bound by law imposed externally, as under the Law of Moses), "which is our mother" (RV), i.e., of Christians, the metropolis, mother-city, used allegorically, just as the capital of a country is "the seat of its government, the center of its activities, and the place where the national characteristics are most fully expressed;" (3) symbolically, of "Babylon," Rev 17:5, as the source from which has proceeded the religious harlotry of mingling pagan rites and doctrines with the Christian faith.

Note: In Mar 16:1 the article, followed by the genitive case of the name "James," the word "mother" being omitted, is an idiomatic mode of expressing the phrase "the mother of James."

denotes "a matricide" (No. 1, and aloiao, to smite); 1Ti 1:9, "murderers of mothers;" it probably has, however, the broader meaning of "smiters" (RV, marg.), as in instances elsewhere than the NT.

"without a mother" (a, negative, and No. 1), is used in Heb 7:3, of the Genesis record of Melchizedek, certain details concerning him being purposely omitted, in order to conform the description to facts about Christ as the Son of God. The word has been found in this sense in the writings of Euripides the dramatist and Herodotus the historian. See also under FATHER.