bereaved of her young: left without children or offspring that were born and then taken away
This word describes a mother who has lost her young. It does not mean she never had any. Its whole force is that the offspring existed and were taken from her, usually by death or violence, and the word names what she is left as afterward. Hebrew has separate words for never being able to bear a child, such as barren (עָקָר), and a reader who blends the two loses the point of nearly every verse where this word appears. It is the settled condition that goes with the verb for losing one's children, or for stripping someone else of theirs (שָׁכֹל).
Seven verses use it, and it covers three very different subjects:
- a mother bear whose cubs have been taken, met out in the open country (2 Samuel 17:8; Proverbs 17:12; Hosea 13:8)
- women whose sons have fallen to famine and sword, named in the same breath as widows (Jeremiah 18:21; Isaiah 49:21)
- a flock of ewes of which not one has lost her lamb (Song of Songs 4:2 and 6:6)
The bear is where most readers meet the word. Three times a mother bear robbed of her cubs is the measure of danger: David's hardened men are as dangerous as one, a fool set on his folly is worse than one, and in Hosea God speaks as one. The picture works precisely because the loss is fresh and was inflicted by someone. The fury that follows is blind to whoever gets in the way, which is why the same image can be turned on warriors, on a fool, and on God.
The strangest use is a compliment. In the Song of Songs the woman's teeth are a flock of washed ewes, every one matched by a twin, and not one of them bereaved: no lamb missing at her side, and so no gap in the row. The Hebrew hears a joke in it, because the words for "all of them" and for "bereaved" sound almost the same.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the adjective always means robbed of offspring that were born, or can also mean barren, never having borne at all.
- majorityIt always denotes deprivation of existing offspring: the young were born and then taken away. The bear similes require it, and at Song of Songs 4:2 and 6:6 the ewes have borne twins, so the sense is that none has lost her young.; BDB, s.v. שַׁכּוּל; HALOT, s.v. שַׁכּוּל; DCH, s.v. שׁכל II; J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs (Old Testament Library; Westminster John Knox, 2005)
- minorityAt Song of Songs 4:2 and 6:6 the word means barren, of ewes that have not borne.; Vulgate, sterilis at Canticum 4:2; King James Version, "barren" at Song of Solomon 4:2 and 6:6