Motherhood provides a crucial place for exploring human life and its meaning. Within motherhood lies a deep tension between the pain, crisis, and association with death in motherhood and the joy, transformation, and life in motherhood. Few metaphors in Scripture (or in life) stand so firmly between life and death, love and loss, and joy and deep pain. After all, motherhood's meaning in part comes again and again at these crucial crossroads. Thus, motherhood has powerful implications for our biblical and theological understanding.

Bringing together Jewish and ecumenical Christian scholars from North America, Oceania, and South America, this edited volume provides biblical and theological perspectives on understanding motherhood. The authors reflect upon a selection of biblical texts, systematic theologians, and Christian spiritual traditions to dialogue with the experience of maternity in its diverse manifestations. The purpose of the book is to provide essays that--through these biblical and theological lenses--engage the question of motherhood today, from the experience of pregnancy and birth, to raising children, to losing children and coping with grief. In this way, this volume helps to "make sense" of the complexity of motherhood.