The God of your
father who helps you, And Shaddai who blesses you With blessings of heaven
above, Blessings of the deep that couches below, Blessings of the breast and
womb. (Gen 49:25 | 1985 JPS Tanakh)
Some Latter-day Saints have argued that, in light of modern Old
Testament scholarship, this passage supports early belief in a divine feminine
among the biblical authors. Kevin L. Barney in his essay How
to Worship Our Mother in Heaven (Without Getting Excommunicated) wrote:
4. Genesis 49:25.
Jacob's blessings to his sons includes an invocation to Yahweh (v. 18),
followed by an invocation to El (v. 25) including the common El epithet Shaddai
("almighty") used in parallel with "El." This verse also
bestows the blessings of Breasts-and-Womb, which was known as an epithet of
Asherah (Mark S. Smith, The Early History
of God: Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient Israel [San Francisco: Harper
and Row, 1990], 16).
In his work on the Priestly (P) source, Thomas King wrote the following
which supports Barney’s claim that Gen 49:25 is evidence of belief in a “divine
feminine”:
A second tradition
attached to שׁדי in the Bible, distinct from that associated with storm or military
imagery. The second tradition appears exclusively in relation to the compound אל שׁדי. We have
already observed that the occurrences of אל שׁדי in
Genesis appear in conjunction with the theme of abundance (all within PN). Koch
has affirmed this phenomenon in pointing out that every occurrence of אל שׁדי in
Genesis appears in conjunction with the verbs פרו ורבו (“be fruitful and multiply”) (13).
In light of the same evidence, Biale understands these passages as fertility blessings
(Gen 17:1b-6; 28:3; 35:11; 48:3-4). The only passage in PN containing אל שׁדי which
does not explicitly appear as this type of fertility blessing is Gen 43:14a.
Nevertheless, in relation to this verse, Biale points out the possibility that
the writer may have sensed “the association between raḥaimim (mercy) and reḥem
(womb)” (Biale, “The God with Breasts: El
Shaddai in the Bible,” History of
Religions 20 [1982]:247).
The key to understanding this tradition
regarding אל שׁדי appears in the Joseph blessing of the Testament of Jacob. Genesis
49:25 not only associates אל שׁדי with a fertility blessing by attributing the term שַׁדַּי by means of wordplay with the term שָׁדַיִם (breasts). This wordplay may reveal the meaning
according to which the author of the blessing and the previous fertility
blessings in Genesis, understood אל שׁדי, that is, “El with breasts” (Ibid., 248) . . . Some evidence
suggests that the fertility blessings reflected in Genesis derive from
Canaanite fertility traditions. Significant among this evidence is the
description of the Canaanite fertility goddess. Asherah was depicted with
prominent breasts, and the Ugaritic record contains references to “the divine
breasts, the breasts of Asherah and Raḥam, a phrase noticeably similar to the
biblical ‘blessings of breasts and womb (רָחַם)’” (Gen 49:25) (Ibid., 253-54). Accordingly, Biale concludes: “Hence,
there is abundant evidence that the fertility tradition of El Shaddai may have
originated with the Israelite interest in the figure of Asherah, the fertility
goddess represented by breasts” (Ibid., 254). (Thomas J. King, The Realignment of the Priestly Literature:
The Priestly Narrative in Genesis and its Relation to Priestly Legislation and
the Holiness School [Princeton Theological Monograph Series; Eugene, Oreg.:
Pickwick Publications, 2009], 112-13, 114)
