Genesis 38:28:
. . . the midwife who attends Judah’s daughter-in-law
Tamar as she gives birth ties a red thread around the hand of Tamar’s son Zeraḥ
as he breaches the womb. Most probably, as noted above, this is an apotropaic
act meant to protect the baby from malevolent agents. In the words of Carol
Meyers, the red thread’s use “may reflect a set of practices involving the
apotropaic character of strands of dyed yarn, with both their red color and the
fact that they are bound on the infant’s hand having magical protective powers.”
(Meyers, “From Household to House of Yahweh,” 290; Meyers, Households and
Holiness, 38-39) (Susan Ackerman, Women and the Religion of Ancient
Israel [The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library; New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2022], 285-86)
Gen
30:14-16:
There, Rachel, who is barren (Gen
29:31), and her sister Leah, who has ceased to bear children (Gen 30:9), vie to
use the “love plants” (dûdā’im, a term kindred to the noun dôd,
meaning “love, beloved”) that Lah’s son Reuben has found in a field. Their hope
is to benefit from the love plants’ powers as an aphrodisiac and their ability to
facilitate reproduction. Meyers thus writes of Rachel and Leah engaging in a “magical
act performed to promote fertility,” and Marten Stol, who follows the standard
interpretation that Leah’s and Rachel’s “love plants” were mandrake roots,
describes the mandrake of Gen 30:14-16 as “a magical plant.” (Meyers, Household
and Holiness, 38) (Ibid., 286)
