'Mother' in the Bible

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.

Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living.

Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.

He settled in the Wilderness of Paran, and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

Then he brought out objects of silver and gold, and garments, and gave them to Rebekah. He also gave precious gifts to her brother and her mother.

But her brother and mother said, “Let the girl stay with us for about 10 days. Then she can go.”

And Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah and took Rebekah to be his wife. Isaac loved her, and he was comforted after his mother’s death.

Jacob answered Rebekah his mother, “Look, my brother Esau is a hairy man, but I am a man with smooth skin.

His mother said to him, “Your curse be on me, my son. Just obey me and go get them for me.”

So he went and got the goats and brought them to his mother, and his mother made the delicious food his father loved.

So Isaac sent Jacob to Paddan-aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.

And Jacob listened to his father and mother and went to Paddan-aram.

Reuben went out during the wheat harvest and found some mandrakes in the field. When he brought them to his mother Leah, Rachel asked, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”

He told his father and brothers, but his father rebuked him. “What kind of dream is this that you have had?” he said. “Are your mother and brothers and I going to come and bow down to the ground before you?”

“Go,” Pharaoh’s daughter told her. So the girl went and called the boy’s mother.

Honor your father and your mother so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

“Whoever strikes his father or his mother must be put to death.

“Whoever curses his father or his mother must be put to death.

You are not to shame your father by having sex with your mother. She is your mother; you must not have sexual intercourse with her.

“Each of you is to respect his mother and father. You are to keep My Sabbaths; I am Yahweh your God.

“If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death. He has cursed his father or mother; his blood is on his own hands.

If a man marries a woman and her mother, it is depraved. Both he and they must be burned with fire, so that there will be no depravity among you.

except for his immediate family: his mother, father, son, daughter, or brother.

He must not go near any dead person or make himself unclean even for his father or mother.

“When an ox, sheep, or goat is born, it must remain with its mother for seven days; from the eighth day on, it will be acceptable as a gift, a fire offering to the Lord.

Now the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father was among the Israelites. A fight broke out in the camp between the Israelite woman’s son and an Israelite man.

He is not to defile himself for his father or mother, or his brother or sister, when they die, because the hair consecrated to his God is on his head.

Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and so that you may prosper in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

“If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’—which neither you nor your fathers have known,

remove the clothes she was wearing when she was taken prisoner, live in your house, and mourn for her father and mother a full month. After that, you may have sexual relations with her and be her husband, and she will be your wife.

“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father or mother and doesn’t listen to them even after they discipline him,

his father and mother must take hold of him and bring him to the elders of his city, to the gate of his hometown.

“If you come across a bird’s nest with chicks or eggs, either in a tree or on the ground along the road, and the mother is sitting on the chicks or eggs, you must not take the mother along with the young.

You may take the young for yourself, but be sure to let the mother go free, so that you may prosper and live long.

the young woman’s father and mother will take the evidence of her virginity and bring it to the city elders at the gate.

‘The one who dishonors his father or mother is cursed.’And all the people will say, ‘Amen!’

‘The one who sleeps with his mother-in-law is cursed.’And all the people will say, ‘Amen!’

He said about his father and mother,“I do not regard them.”He disregarded his brothersand didn’t acknowledge his sons,for they kept Your wordand maintained Your covenant.

that you will spare the lives of my father, mother, brothers, sisters, and all who belong to them, and save us from death.”

unless, when we enter the land, you tie this scarlet cord to the window through which you let us down. Bring your father, mother, brothers, and all your father’s family into your house.

So the young men who had scouted went in and brought out Rahab and her father, mother, brothers, and all who belonged to her. They brought out her whole family and settled them outside the camp of Israel.

Villages were deserted,they were deserted in Israel,until I, Deborah, arose,a mother in Israel.

Sisera’s mother looked through the window;she peered through the lattice, crying out:“Why is his chariot so long in coming?Why don’t I hear the hoofbeats of his horses?”

So he said, “They were my brothers, the sons of my mother! As the Lord lives, if you had let them live, I would not kill you.”

He went back and told his father and his mother: “I have seen a young Philistine woman in Timnah. Now get her for me as a wife.”

But his father and mother said to him, “Can’t you find a young woman among your relatives or among any of our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines for a wife?”But Samson told his father, “Get her for me, because I want her.”

Now his father and mother did not know this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion against the Philistines. At that time, the Philistines were ruling over Israel.

Samson went down to Timnah with his father and mother and came to the vineyards of Timnah. Suddenly a young lion came roaring at him,

the Spirit of the Lord took control of him, and he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done.

He scooped some honey into his hands and ate it as he went along. When he returned to his father and mother, he gave some to them and they ate it. But he did not tell them that he had scooped the honey from the lion’s carcass.

So Samson’s wife came to him, weeping, and said, “You hate me and don’t love me! You told my people the riddle, but haven’t explained it to me.”“Look,” he said, “I haven’t even explained it to my father or mother, so why should I explain it to you?”

He said to his mother, “The 1,100 pieces of silver taken from you, and that I heard you utter a curse about—here, I have the silver with me. I took it. So now I return it to you.”Then his mother said, “My son, you are blessed by the Lord!”

He returned the 1,100 pieces of silver to his mother, and his mother said, “I personally consecrate the silver to the Lord for my son’s benefit to make a carved image overlaid with silver.”

So he returned the silver to his mother, and she took five pounds of silver and gave it to a silversmith. He made it into a carved image overlaid with silver, and it was in Micah’s house.

Again they wept loudly, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

Boaz answered her, “Everything you have done for your mother-in-law since your husband’s death has been fully reported to me: how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth, and how you came to a people you didn’t previously know.

She picked up the grain and went into the town, where her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. Then she brought out what she had left over from her meal and gave it to her.

Then her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you gather barley today, and where did you work? May the Lord bless the man who noticed you.”Ruth told her mother-in-law about the men she had worked with and said, “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz.”

Ruth stayed close to Boaz’s female servants and gathered grain until the barley and the wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.

Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi said to her, “My daughter, shouldn’t I find security for you, so that you will be taken care of?

She went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law had instructed her.

She went to her mother-in-law, Naomi, who asked her, “How did it go, my daughter?”Then Ruth told her everything the man had done for her.

She said, “He gave me these six measures of barley, because he said, ‘Don’t go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed.’”

Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice.

Samuel declared:As your sword has made women childless,so your mother will be childless among women.Then he hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord at Gilgal.

Then Saul became angry with Jonathan and shouted, “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Don’t I know that you are siding with Jesse’s son to your own shame and to the disgrace of your mother?

From there David went to Mizpeh of Moab where he said to the king of Moab, “Please let my father and mother stay with you until I know what God will do for me.”

Now Absalom had appointed Amasa over the army in Joab’s place. Amasa was the son of a man named Ithra the Israelite; Ithra had married Abigail daughter of Nahash. Abigail was a sister to Zeruiah, Joab’s mother.

Please let your servant return so that I may die in my own city near the tomb of my father and mother. But here is your servant Chimham: let him cross over with my lord the king. Do for him what seems good to you.”

I am a peaceful person, one of the faithful in Israel, but you’re trying to destroy a city that is like a mother in Israel. Why would you devour the Lord’s inheritance?”

Then Nathan said to Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, “Have you not heard that Adonijah son of Haggith has become king and our lord David does not know it?

Now Adonijah son of Haggith came to Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother. She asked, “Do you come peacefully?”“Peacefully,” he replied,

So Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him about Adonijah. The king stood up to greet her, bowed to her, sat down on his throne, and had a throne placed for the king’s mother. So she sat down at his right hand.

Then she said, “I have just one small request of you. Don’t turn me down.”“Go ahead and ask, mother,” the king replied, “for I won’t turn you down.”

King Solomon answered his mother, “Why are you requesting Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Since he is my elder brother, you might as well ask the kingship for him, for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab son of Zeruiah.”

The king responded, “Give the living baby to the first woman, and don’t kill him. She is his mother.”

He also removed his grandmother Maacah from being queen mother because she had made an obscene image of Asherah. Asa chopped down her obscene image and burned it in the Kidron Valley.

Then Elijah took the boy, brought him down from the upper room into the house, and gave him to his mother. Elijah said, “Look, your son is alive.”

Elisha left the oxen, ran to follow Elijah, and said, “Please let me kiss my father and mother, and then I will follow you.”“Go on back,” he replied, “for what have I done to you?”

He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight. He walked in the way of his father, in the way of his mother, and in the way of Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin.

He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, but not like his father and mother, for he removed the sacred pillar of Baal his father had made.

However, Elisha said to King Joram of Israel, “We have nothing in common. Go to the prophets of your father and your mother!”But the king of Israel replied, “No, because it is the Lord who has summoned these three kings to hand them over to Moab.”

Suddenly he complained to his father, “My head! My head!”His father told his servant, “Carry him to his mother.”

So he picked him up and took him to his mother. The child sat on her lap until noon and then died.

The boy’s mother said to Elisha, “As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So he got up and followed her.

When Joram saw Jehu he asked, “Do you come in peace, Jehu?”He answered, “What peace can there be as long as there is so much prostitution and witchcraft from your mother Jezebel?”

When Athaliah, Ahaziah’s mother, saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to annihilate all the royal heirs.

Jehoiachin king of Judah, along with his mother, his servants, his commanders, and his officials, surrendered to the king of Babylon.So the king of Babylon took him captive in the eighth year of his reign.

Nebuchadnezzar deported Jehoiachin to Babylon. Also, he took the king’s mother, the king’s wives, his officials, and the leading men of the land into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Amasa’s mother was Abigail, and his father was Jether the Ishmaelite.

Jerahmeel had another wife named Atarah, who was the mother of Onam.

Caleb’s concubine Ephah was the mother of Haran, Moza, and Gazez. Haran fathered Gazez.

Caleb’s concubine Maacah was the mother of Sheber and Tirhanah.

She was also the mother of Shaaph, Madmannah’s father, and of Sheva, the father of Machbenah and Gibea. Caleb’s daughter was Achsah.

Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother named him Jabez and said, “I gave birth to him in pain.”

King Asa also removed Maacah, his grandmother, from being queen mother because she had made an obscene image of Asherah. Asa chopped down her obscene image, then crushed it and burned it in the Kidron Valley.

He walked in the ways of the house of Ahab, for his mother gave him evil advice.

When Athaliah, Ahaziah’s mother, saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to annihilate all the royal heirs of the house of Judah.

White and violet linen hangings were fastened with fine white and purple linen cords to silver rods on marble columns. Gold and silver couches were arranged on a mosaic pavement of red feldspar, marble, mother-of-pearl, and precious stones.

Mordecai was the legal guardian of his cousin Hadassah (that is, Esther), because she didn’t have a father or mother. The young woman had a beautiful figure and was extremely good-looking. When her father and mother died, Mordecai had adopted her as his own daughter.