. . . a glimpse of the true nature
of the divine couple’s relationship can be found in an ancient poem in Genesis.
It recycles an even older incantation into a ritual song conveying Yahweh’s
blessings upon the legendary ancestor Joseph. The incantation invokes a series
of deities to bestow sexual masculinity the fruitfulness upon Joseph’s penis,
euphemistically described as his ‘taut bow’ and ‘strong hand’. Included in the
divine roll-call is a goddess bearing the title ‘Breasts-and-Womb” – a likely
epithet of Asherah, given it is used of Athirat, her older incarnation at
Ugarit. She is paired in the poem with a deity called ‘Father’ and ‘Most High’ –
ritual titles of the God of the Bible, inherited from Athirat’s husband, El:
From the God of your ancestor, who
supports you,
from Shadday who blesses you:
the blessings of Heaven above,
the blessings of Deep crouching below;
the blessings of Breasts-and-Womb,
the blessings of your Father, warrior Most High;
the blessings of the Everlasting Mountains,
[the blessings] of the outlying Eternal Hills. (Genesis 49:25-26)
The coupling of ‘Father, warrior
Most High’ and ‘Breasts-and-Womb’ points to the sexualized collaboration of
these deities, paralleling the pairing of ‘Heaven’ and ‘Deep – the divinized,
primeval parts of the universe, whose union birthed and built the very cosmos.
The poem hints at an ancient pantheon, in which the coupling of the high god
and high goddess is set within the frame of an ordered, fertile creation. (Francesca
Stavrakopoulou, God: An Anatomy [London: Picador, 2021], 153)
Further Reading
Thomas J. King on Genesis 49:25 and Belief in a "Divine Feminine"
