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The term “blood relatives” exists as an accepted and understood part of our English lexicon. It is only recently that anthropologists focusing on kinship studies have leveled a critique against the uni- versal application of the metaphor of “blood” as a substance that establishes kinship relatedness. Adam Kuper, for example, argues that the notion of blood relatedness is culturally constrained, a uniquely European concept that finds its fullest articulation within British imperialism, an era that coincides with the development of the field of anthropology in Europe.1 Likewise, Edouard Conte, who examines concepts of relatedness within Arab cultures, posits that the notion of kinship being determined by “blood” is a par- ticularly western phenomenon and does not fit the self- understanding of Arabs.2 He argues that Classical Arab physicians deal little with blood and do not see blood as passing on hereditary attributes.

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Spatially, the term “house of the mother” (bêt ’ēm) is found in a parallelistic line with the phrase “the chamber of her who conceived me” (Song 3:4) and is described as a place one can run to, return to, and take one’s lover into. Biblical narratives associate the “house of the mother” and tents and chambers of mothers with sleeping, sex, conception, and childbirth. If a mother and her children received recognition and legitimacy from the male head of household, their bêt ’ēm formed a spatial subunit nested within the house of the father. If a mother and her children were not recognized and legitimized by the father or were cast out by a primary wife, their maternal house became a satellite house in relationship to the house of the father; they were physically separated from the house of the father. Sons born into these low-status, satellite houses of the mother had no ascribed status in the house of their father and had to fight for any property and inheritance rights.

This book reevaluates the biblical house of the father (bêt ’āb) in light of the anthropological critique of the patrilineal model. It uncovers and defines the contours of an underappreciated yet socially significant kinship unit in the Bible: “the house of the mother (bêt ’ēm).” Identified with what anthropologists call “the uterine family,” the biblical house of the mother comprised a mother, her maidservants, and her biological and adopted children. The house of the father subdivided into maternally named or maternally identified units. Members of a maternally named house formed an alliance within the larger house of the father and competed as a unit for succession within the house of the father. Biblical Hebrew recognizes these maternal units with kinship labels specific to a mother and keyed to female reproductive organs: “son of my womb,” “the child who opens the womb,” “my brother, the son of my mother,” “a brother, one who had nursed at my mother’s breasts.” We also find maternally delineated space within the house of the father described as a “house,” “chamber,” or “tent” of the mother, and this space is associated biblically with conception, birth, breastfeeding, and marriage negotiations. This book demonstrates that the Bible recorded its past in the form of idealized, founding-family narratives, and within those narratives, competing mothers and their sub-houses marked hierarchies within the house of the father and political divisions within the national house of Israel.