You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female barren among you or among your livestock. Deuteronomy 7:-14
God wants you to be fruitful in all aspects of your life, including spiritually, emotionally, physically, financially, and relationally. To receive fruitfulness, you must first deal with barrenness. Barrenness refers to being unfruitful, unproductive, empty, closed-up, shut-up, lifeless, forlorn, and helpless. It represents the inverse or absence of fruitfulness.
God’s word has some very particular promises regarding barrenness.
Exodus 23:25-26
So you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land; I will fulfil the number of your days.
There were remarkable women through whom God planned to bring forth the promised SEED, who had to overcome barrenness. Women like Sarah, Abraham’s wife; Rebekah, Isaac’s wife; and Rachael, Jacob’s wife—the three mothers of Israel.
God calls every one of us in a barren state and even leads us through cycles of barrenness in our lives before revealing His ultimate plan for us.
When you are in a condition of barrenness, you have certain feelings, as alluded to in the Isaiah chapter that we read.
(Is. 54:4, 6). You feel…
- Ashamed • Disgraced • Forsaken or deserted • Grieved in spirit (not comforted) • Refused or rejected
God want to transform our barrenness into fruitfulness.
However, He intends to deal with us through barrenness first. When it has completed its intended tasks and provided the desired results…God will transform our barrenness into fruitfulness. He will make the barren woman keep home (Psalm 113:9).
Some Barren Women in the Bible
1. Sarah, The Barren Mother of Nations
Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was a beautiful woman (Genesis 12:11), but she was unable to bear children (Genesis 11:30). Sarah and Abraham eventually received the Abrahamic Covenant, and God promised them descendants as numerous as the sands of the sea and the stars in heaven (Genesis 15:5). But as the years passed without having children, I couldn’t help but wonder how Sarah felt. Where was the blessing that she and her husband were promised?
How can we choose to follow God when the blessings do not come immediately? As a woman, Sarah wanted to have a child, to be “a mother of nations” as the Lord promised (Genesis 17:16)—but her biological clock was ticking, and the miracle hadn’t happened.
Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. (Hebrews 11:11)
The blessing did come, as it usually does when we trust God’s timing. She got the blessing she wanted, even if it wasn’t on her timeline – she was 90 years old when she had Isaac! (Gen. 17:17)
- Rebekah, the Beautiful Barren Wife
(Gen 25:21 NIV) Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. The LORD answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.
For around nineteen years, Rebekah did not conceive. When Isaac married (Gen 25:20), he was 40 years old, and the children didn’t come until he was 60 (Gen 25:26). Despite the passing of 19 years of marriage, Isaac persisted and prayed to God for a son. Because Isaac will have offspring after him, his request was a response to his faith in God’s promises (Gen 17:19). The moment Isaac stepped up on Rebekah’s behalf, the barrenness ended.
This demonstrates the power of intercession. When God’s promises are slow to manifest in our lives, we might find other people to intercede for us so that we can see them fulfilled.
Zechariah, another Biblical figure, interceded for his barren wife. He, too, received an answer to his prayer when a son was born to him, none other than the forerunner of Jesus Christ.
Rebekah’s barrenness was not simply fixed when she had children. First, she had twins. That much beyond her expectations. They were not ordinary children back then. These youngsters will defeat their foes, implying that they will be great.
3. Rachael, the Beloved Barren Wife
“When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister; and she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I shall die’” (Genesis 30:1).
Although Jacob had a deep love for Rachel, he married Leah before getting married to Rachel due to Laban, his father-in-law’s slyness. Leah’s status as a wife was established by bearing Jacob children, but Rachel—who was childless—became envious of her sister. Because her sister had children and she didn’t, Rachel was resentful. Rachel was incapable of becoming pregnant, while Leah had given birth to four boys for Jacob.
Rachel’s outburst against her husband revealed her distress as a childless wife: “Give me children, or I shall die” (Genesis 30:1). Jacob’s response to Rachel also indicated his anger with the situation, as he knew that his wife was demanding the impossible of him. Jacob asked Rachel, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” (Gen. 30:2).
At last, the Lord heard Rachel’s cries of desperation and showed compassion for her: “Then God remembered Rachel.” God granted her request and enabled her to become a mother (Genesis 30:22). After becoming pregnant, Rachel gave birth to a son she named Joseph. According to Genesis 30:23, Rachel declared, “God has taken away my disgrace” after becoming a mother.
Thanks to God’s kind intervention, all of these barren women became pregnant and gave birth to children. According to Psalm 113:9, God “gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.” Prophet Isaiah affirms that God opens the wombs of barren women:
“Sing, O barren one who did not bear; burst into song and shout, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate woman will be more than the children of her that is married, says the LORD”
(Isaiah 54:1)
