Genesis 4: Adam & Eve, Bereaved Parents
- Hinda Eisen Labovitz
- Oct 21
- 10 min read
"It’s unnatural for parents to bury their child.” I’ve heard over and over. People have said it to me, as if they think it’s comforting. (It’s not.) I’ve heard it said by well-meaning clergy at funerals.
There are bereaved parents who say this, for whom it is comforting. If it comes from them, that’s the exception. In the same way you (the outsider, not the parent) should not impose your theology on a bereaved parent’s experience, so too this is one thing you should not say to them unless they say it first.
Please: Never tell a bereaved parent that a loss is “unnatural.” Certainly don’t say it in a eulogy. If you’re clergy delivering a eulogy, this is the easiest way for you to show the bereaved that you don’t get it and you haven’t ever been there. This statement tells the hearer that her experience is incomprehensible, unsupportable, and closes a door for important communication between you. It’s a statement to which there’s no invited response. It tells the recipient that they are “over there,” that they are somehow outside the natural order of things. It tells her you don’t believe her experience has happened to anyone else, or could happen, especially to you. It tells her she’s alone. (She doesn’t need to hear that from you, she already thinks so.)
Among the first stories shared in Torah is that of Kayin (Cain) and Hevel (Abel). In anger, Kayin “rises up” and kills his brother Hevel, leading to the famous line, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9).
In the modern world, it’s true that the death of children is rare, but this is a relatively new phenomenon. In his 1852 publication Solace for Bereaved Parents [1], the Reverend Thomas Smyth tells of a period of just a few months in which he, in his ministry, buried thirteen children. Smyth reflects that, at his time, “Almost all parents are called to endure the loss of children” (14); yet, he also finds that,
Barukh HaShem—thank God—child death is not as commonplace today as it was even one century ago. And yet, as uncomforted as those parents were left in Smyth’s time, and even though resources in the Age of Information are so available, all the bereaved parents are singly unattended to.
In this neglect, and in the silence of the biblical Author on bereaved parents in general, it was particularly stark to re-read the following passage in our recent study of Kohelet/Ecclesiastes, during the Sukkot festival this month:
Restating the text for clarity: Kohelet believes that the stillborn child is more fortunate than a person who lived his life fully, because unlike the fully-living adult, unsated by material wealth, the stillborn baby never had to experience disappointment and futility. Rashi clarifies: because the stillborn child never saw good, nor desired it, the stillborn child incurs no distress.
Kohelet had said something similar a couple of chapters earlier:
Christian biblical scholar Ellen Davis, in her book Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament (Cowley Publishing: New York, 2001), makes a striking connection between Kohelet's message, hevel havalim—typically translated as "all is futile," or "vanity of vanities!"— and the First Parents:
I am always curious about intertextual awareness. Do we presume that Kohelet knew the stories of Genesis as we have them today? Probably. And it certainly is feasible that, with his preoccupation with death and the fragility of life, that Kohelet might have been drawn to the first narratives of mortality.
I confess: Until Ronen died, I had never given much thought to Adam and Chava’s emotional expressions in this moment. Some classical artists have done beautiful and grotesque renderings of the moment Adam and Eve discover their son is dead, though our classical commentators say very little about their role in these biblical moments. Adam and Chava’s reactions are not recorded in the text, in the moment of that event.
What happened to them? How did they respond? Who buried Abel? (To this question, at least, the Midrash responds: Adam, after a raven modeled burial for him because he was clueless.)
What do I imagine?
Kayin, stunned, having struck his brother in anger and impulse but never having understood that the consequence could be finality.
Kayin, trying to shake Hevel awake. Realizing he would never, I imagine he let out a shriek so loud it cracks open the Heavens and roused God from complacency.
Adam, running over to see what has happened. Seeing Hevel splayed out on the ground surrounded by blood, fear in his eyes, Adam freezes.
Chava, observing from afar, sees Adam frozen. She has never seen him stilled by fear before. Chava observes Hevel's discolored foot on the ground to the left side of Adam and slackened hand at the other end, though his face is obscured behind Adam's body. She knows her son is dead, but she won't believe it. Why is Adam not helping? Not lifting Hevel up? She runs to her son and, without hesitation, pushes past her statuesque husband and throws herself on top of Hevel, but quickly reels, springing back onto her knees, from the shocking temperature of her son's lifeless body. The chill, the unfamiliar texture, the devastation of the living son she no longer recognizes, shatters her denial and her innocence.
She screams—a wail that further decimates the Heavens, seizing all the Holy Forces in trembling, tormenting and puncturing the Throne of Glory where the Supreme God suddenly understands the roaring blaze of Eternal Motherhood. She, the Bereaved Mother, has taught the Holy One that the consequences of loss are greater than God.
In memory of Chava, God determined that the women—the mekonenot—would be those called upon by Jeremiah.
The shattered women, the bereaved mothers—they will be the ones who will pierce the complacency of the Blessed Holy One, puncturing the Throne of Glory, and ushering the Age of Eternal Peace.
The First People’s names are not even mentioned again in the narrative, until they procreate again for the sake of the continuation of Creation…
But read the biblical statement as Adam and Chava bring their next child into the world:
Notice that Chava names her third child, not Adam. The text says that she named him. (The text will “fix” this later in Genesis 5:3.) It resonates deeply for me, as the mother who chose the name for a subsequent child after a loss, both wanting to honor the new child’s namesake and acknowledge the loss we endured before her birth. The omission of Chava’s name here, too, resonates: her singular identity as Mother of All is subsumed by her story of loss and the need to continue on anyway.
Notice the hurt and pain embodied in Chava’s explanation of his naming, evoking the losses of both of her older sons: Hevel, who is dead, and Kayin, whom she has not forgiven.
Notice that she uses all of their names. This is critical for bereaved parents: my child is dead, but I need to keep hearing, and saying, his name, even as life moves on and my family grows without him. When I mention my children, I need to mention all of them. They were all siblings, all my children. Shet … Hevel … Kayin.
We say over and over that the child conceived after a loss is not a replacement for the child that died, but… it’s complicated. A new child does not replace the deceased one, but the lost promises of the deceased child are easily projected onto the new life. And, perhaps like Chava, although I am not there with her, I can admit that if Ronen had lived, we might not have chosen to have another child. In some ways, in my most forgiving moments, I can thank Ronen for the gift that his sister has been to us.
But let’s be clear: The first parents in biblical history—in our religious history of the world—are bereaved parents. Adam and Chava’s subsequent child, who will be the common ancestor of all humanity, is named explicitly as a replacement for the deceased child. Even as Shet’s naming is one window into the grief experience of the progenitors of the world, perhaps we are to understand that child loss is an unavoidable part of the fabric of humanity.
Child loss is unthinkable. It is the most pain one can endure as a parent. One never wants to think it can happen to them.
But it is not “unnatural.”
Revealing that he, too, is a bereaved parent who buried two of his own children, Rev. Smyth writes,
Newly-bereaved parents become inducted to the community of others by hearing, "welcome to the club no one ever wanted to belong to." And while it's true, and that our shared experience as bereaved parents makes us each others' chief consolers, we aren't alone. We were never alone. Even the First Parents in biblical history were members, too. Adam and Chava—they did have to carry the burden alone. Perhaps, in re-reading them into the story, and into the "club," we can compensate for their loneliness, and our own.
[1] The striking (and long!) full title of this book is Solace for Bereaved Parents; or Infants Die to Live. With an Historical Account of the Doctrine of Infant Salvation. Also, Very Full Selections from Various Authors, in Prose and Poetry. by the Rev. Thomas Smyth, D.D. New York: Robert Carter, 1852.
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