Biblical Hebrew has a small vocabulary. Though there are multiple words for similar ideas, in some cases a single root word can mean a number of different things! Here is a well-known one: in Hebrew, the word for “womb” is the same as the word for “mercy,” telling us that a woman is (or is at least meant to be) the embodiment of kindness. By way of contrast, the Greek word for “womb” is the root word for “hysteria.”
Other Torah puns offer considerable food for thought. Consider, for example aleph-mem-heh, or ְאָמָ֑ה. This word can mean, depending on context, “mother,” “maidservant,” or “cubit.”
Is there a connection between them?
Here is my understanding: A woman who is not a mother is, in a sense, “free.” She can make her own choices. But a mother is, in a sense, tethered. She has obligations that she cannot (legally and morally) shuck.
Indeed, a maidservant is in a similar situation. She is obliged to serve. But the service is not a straightforward fee-for-services, or merely transactional (which is why a “manservant” is not the male form of amah but is instead an entirely different word altogether, eved).
Both mothers and maidservants are invested in something/someone outside themselves. A mother and a maidservant give of themselves in order to nurture and sustain life.
And a cubit? Cubits are used to describe Noah’s Ark: which was there to hold and sustain life during the Flood (as a mother or homemaker does). And, in one verse, amah is used to give us the measurement of Og’s bed – the very same meaning! Amah/cubit is also used for the boundary around a Levitical city, which works as well.
Cubits are also prescribed, extensively, as measurements for the tabernacle and items within it. The tabernacle was the place where G-d’s presence dwelled among us. The imagery matches that for mother/maidservant. Indeed, as a “house of G-d”, a maidservant amah parallels a cubit amah nicely, as most maidservants served as homemakers.
In all three cases, the ְאָמָ֑ה, amah, invests and protects in something outside itself/herself.
The first use of the word “mother” (using these precise three letters) is found for Rivka’s mother. The Torah uses it thrice to discuss Rivka’s mother:
And the girl [Rivka] ran, and told them of her mother’s house these things. … And the servant brought out jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and garments, and gave them to Rivqa: he gave also to her brother and to her mother precious things. … And her brother and her mother said, Let the girl stay with us a few days, at the least ten; after that she shall go.
Isn’t it interesting that Rivka’s mother is not named at all here? Could it be because her job description is the most important thing about her? After all, isn’t it intriguing that in a house of scoundrels like Lavan, all the women somehow turn out superbly, giving us Rivka, Rachel, and Leah? Might their goodness have come, at least in part, because of Rivka’s mother?
From this house came a stream of great women – so great indeed, that even Rivka’s nurse Deborah is specifically named. Might this be why Rivka’s mother is the first given this title (all three letters) in the Torah? After all, it is no small thing to raise great children in a not-great environment. That is the shared role of the mother, the maidservant, and even the lowly cubit, keeping out the hostile flood waters and keeping alive and afloat both life in the ark and holiness in the tabernacle.
BUT: any analysis of this sort must not exclude data that seems to ignore or reject the model. In this case, there are two examples:
The waters of the Flood:
Fifteen cubits higher did the waters swell, as the mountains were covered.
And
A wind from G-d started up, swept quail from the sea and strewed them over the camp, about a day’s journey on this side and about a day’s journey on that side, all around the camp, and some two cubits deep on the ground.
How can we explain them?
Here is one possibility: In every other example of an amah as a measurement, there is always a corresponding measurement, giving us a ratio. X and an Y – and sometimes even a Z (as in Noah’s ark and the Ark of the Covenant).
But in these two verses, there is no corresponding dimension. Which means that the quality was not confined. And in both cases, the outcome was bad: the Flood drowned every living thing it touched. And the quails were, in the end, a sign of divine wrath.
A conclusion might be that an amah requires limits, confinement, or at least a degree of balance. It takes two dimensions to confine something. Even motherhood is not an unremitting good: children need fathers, too. So perhaps we are to see the triple meanings of this word, but keep in mind that no one attribute should drown out all others. There are other qualities that should be present as well.
[an @iwe, @eliyahumasinter, and @susanquinn work]