In every one of these passages, and in many more which need not be quoted, but which will readily occur to every reader, Jahweh is represented especially as a god of increase, of generation, of populousness, of fertility. As such, too, we find him frequently and markedly worshipped on special occasions. He was the god to whom sterile women prayed, and from whom they expected the special blessing of a son, to keep up the cult of the family ancestors. This trait survived even into the poetry of the latest period. “He maketh the barren woman to keep house,” says a psalmist about Jahweh, “and to be a joyful mother of children.” And from the beginning to the end of Hebrew legend we find a similar characteristic of the ethnical god amply vindicated. When Sarah is old and well stricken in years, Jahweh visits her and she conceives Isaac. Then Isaac in turn “intreated Jahweh for his wife, because she was barren; and Jahweh was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.” Again, “when Jahweh saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren.” Once more, of the birth of Samson we are told that Manoah’s wife “was barren and bare not”: but “the angel of Jahweh appeared unto the woman and said unto her, Behold, now thou art barren and bearest not; but thou shalt conceive and bear a son.” And of Hannah we are told, even more significantly, that Jahweh had “shut up her womb.” At the shrine of Jahweh at Shiloh, therefore, she prayed to Jahweh that this disgrace might be removed from her and that a child might { 194}be born to her. If she bore “a man child,” she would offer him up all his life long as an anchorite to Jahweh, to be a Nazarite of the Lord, an ascetic and a fanatic. “Jahweh remembered her,” and she bore Samuel. And after that again, “Jahweh visited Hannah, so that she conceived and bare three sons and two daughters.” In many other passages we get the self-same trait: Jahweh is regarded above everything as a god of increase and a giver of offspring. “Children are a heritage from Jahweh,” says the much later author of a familiar ode: “the fruit of the womb are a reward from him.”
It is clear, too, that this desire for children, for a powerful clan, for the increase of the people, was a dominant one everywhere in Ephraim and in Judah. “Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine,” says Jahweh to his votary by the mouth of the poet; “thy children like olive plants round about thy table.” “Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them,” says another psalmist; “they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.” Again and again the promise is repeated that the seed of Abraham or of Joseph or of Ishmael shall be numerous as the stars of heaven or the sands of the sea: Jahweh’s chief prerogative is evidently the gift of increase, extended often to cattle and asses, but always including at least sons and daughters. If Israel obeys Jahweh, says the Deuteronomist, “Jahweh will make thee plenteous for good in the fruit of thy belly, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground”: but if otherwise, then “cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.”