mother: the woman who bears and raises a child, and by extension any source from which others spring
At its core this is the ordinary family word for a mother, the counterpart to father. It names the woman who gives birth, nurses, and raises a child, and it carries the weight the Bible attaches to that bond: a mother is to be honored, her authority shielded by law, and striking or cursing her is a capital crime alongside the same act against a father.
From that root sense the word stretches in two natural directions. Because a mother is the one others come from, she stands for a whole line of descendants, so Eve is called the mother of all who live and a city or nation is called the mother of its people. And because a mother is where branches join into one source, the word can name a parent point in the world of things: the place where a road splits is called its mother. These are not different words but the same picture of origin and source applied to people, peoples, and places.
The figurative uses never lose their tie to the literal one. When a prophet calls a person or a city a mother, the force comes from everything a real mother is: the one who gives life, the one others belong to, the one whose loss is mourned. So the senses below sort the same word by what it points at, not by a change in meaning.