BARREN, BARRENNESS (bartren, bar'ren nes), (Heb. 7;?, aw-kawr', when spoken of per sons).
Barrenness is, in the East, the hardest lot that can befall a woman, and was considered among the Israelites as the heaviest punishment with which the Lord could visit a female (Gen. xvi :2 ; XXX :1-23 ; I Sam. 1:6, 29 ; Is. xlvii :9 ; XI1X :21 ; Luke i :25 ; Niebuhr, p. 76; Volney, ii :359). In the Talmud (Yeramotli, vi :6) a man was bound, after ten years childless conjugal life, to marry another woman (with or without repudiation of the first), and even a third one, if the second proved also barren. Nor is it improbable that Moses himself contributed to strengthen the opin ion of disgrace by the promise of the Lord of ex emption from barrenness as a blessing (Exod. xxiii :26; Deut. vii :14). Instances of childless wives are found in Gen. xi :3o; xxv :21 ; xxix :3i ; Judg. xiii :2, 3; Luke i :7, 36. Some cases of un lawful marriages, and more especially with a brother's wife, were visited with the punishment of barrenness (Lev. xx :2o, 21). Michaelis, how
ever (Jlosaisches Recht. v. ago), takes the term in a figurative sense, implying that the children born in such an illicit marriage should not be ascribed to the real father, but to the former brother, thus depriving the second husband of the share of patrimonial inheritance which would otherwise have fallen to his lot if the first brother had died childless.
This general notion of the disgrace of barren ness in a woman may early have given rise in the patriarchal age to the custom among barren wives of introducing to their husbands their maid-serv ants, and of regarding the children horn in that concubinage as their own, by which they thought to cover their own disgrace of barrenness (Gen. XVi :2 ; XXX :3). (See CHILDREN.) The reproach attached to barrenness, especially among the Hebrews, was doubtless due to the constant expectation of the Messiah, and the hope cherished by every woman that she might be the trother of the promised Seed.