Karen Langton is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut. Her publications include YHWH as a Woman in Labour: The Controlled Pregnant Female Body in Labour and Bringing to Birth: Relationship with YHWH. Her current research engages material religion explored through textiles.

"In this erudite analysis, Langton turns tired scholarly assumptions on their head. She confronts us viscerally and compellingly with the pregnant, laboring, delivering body that has been so readily rendered mere metaphor or simple simile, requiring us to think again. Familiar texts are rendered unfamiliar as she compels readers to consider afresh how and why womb, labour, birthing, and issues of control are key to exploring the YHWH/human relationship." - Deryn Guest, Honorary Lecturer, University of Birmingham."Karen Langton’s book The Womb and the Simile of The Woman in Labor in the Hebrew Bible: Embodying Relationship with YHWH focuses our readerly attention on the pregnant body and the pregnant woman as presented in its full narrative context and the larger semantic field of figurative language for the womb in the Hebrew Bible. By using Benjamin Harshav’s theory of Integrational Semantics, Langton maps a greater range of meanings for womb and labor imagery in the Bible. Whether it is Job’s struggle with YHWH, the psalmists’ entreaties to YHWH, a warrior’s experience of violence on the battlefield, or Isaiah’s imagining the power of YHWH as a warrior, Langton uncovers the dynamic power and creative force of the language of pregnancy and birth. Langton’s book makes an important contribution to the study of womb imagery in the Bible by showing how ancient biblical writers turned to the image of the pregnant and laboring body to express the multifaceted, sometimes controlled and sometimes uncontrolled, human relationship to the divine." - Cynthia R. Chapman, The Adelia A.F. Johnston and Harry Thomas Frank Professor of Religion, Oberlin College."In this book Langton demonstrates how the image of the womb as communicated through visceral imagery, key metaphors, and similes in the Biblical ancient Levantine material is often highly complex and inconsistent. Langton’s key contribution is to emphasise the inseparability of the womb from the woman's body more globally." - Katherine Southwood, Associate Professor in Old Testament, Oxford University.

• Introduction; 1: Methodology; Section I: The Womb; 2: The Womb in Job; 3: Psalm 139; 4: Brought Forth from the Womb in Psalms 22 and 71; Section II: A Woman in Labor; 5: Non-Biblical ANE Texts – A Woman in Labor; 6: Isaiah Like a Woman in Labor; 7: YHWH Like a Woman in Labor; Conclusion: The Interconnectivity.

Karen Langton is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut. Her publications include YHWH as a Woman in Labour: The Controlled Pregnant Female Body in Labour and Bringing to Birth: Relationship with YHWH. Her current research engages material religion explored through textiles.

"In this erudite analysis, Langton turns tired scholarly assumptions on their head. She confronts us viscerally and compellingly with the pregnant, laboring, delivering body that has been so readily rendered mere metaphor or simple simile, requiring us to think again. Familiar texts are rendered unfamiliar as she compels readers to consider afresh how and why womb, labour, birthing, and issues of control are key to exploring the YHWH/human relationship." - Deryn Guest, Honorary Lecturer, University of Birmingham."Karen Langton’s book The Womb and the Simile of The Woman in Labor in the Hebrew Bible: Embodying Relationship with YHWH focuses our readerly attention on the pregnant body and the pregnant woman as presented in its full narrative context and the larger semantic field of figurative language for the womb in the Hebrew Bible. By using Benjamin Harshav’s theory of Integrational Semantics, Langton maps a greater range of meanings for womb and labor imagery in the Bible. Whether it is Job’s struggle with YHWH, the psalmists’ entreaties to YHWH, a warrior’s experience of violence on the battlefield, or Isaiah’s imagining the power of YHWH as a warrior, Langton uncovers the dynamic power and creative force of the language of pregnancy and birth. Langton’s book makes an important contribution to the study of womb imagery in the Bible by showing how ancient biblical writers turned to the image of the pregnant and laboring body to express the multifaceted, sometimes controlled and sometimes uncontrolled, human relationship to the divine." - Cynthia R. Chapman, The Adelia A.F. Johnston and Harry Thomas Frank Professor of Religion, Oberlin College."In this book Langton demonstrates how the image of the womb as communicated through visceral imagery, key metaphors, and similes in the Biblical ancient Levantine material is often highly complex and inconsistent. Langton’s key contribution is to emphasise the inseparability of the womb from the woman's body more globally." - Katherine Southwood, Associate Professor in Old Testament, Oxford University.

• Introduction; 1: Methodology; Section I: The Womb; 2: The Womb in Job; 3: Psalm 139; 4: Brought Forth from the Womb in Psalms 22 and 71; Section II: A Woman in Labor; 5: Non-Biblical ANE Texts – A Woman in Labor; 6: Isaiah Like a Woman in Labor; 7: YHWH Like a Woman in Labor; Conclusion: The Interconnectivity.

Karen Langton is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut. Her publications include YHWH as a Woman in Labour: The Controlled Pregnant Female Body in Labour and Bringing to Birth: Relationship with YHWH. Her current research engages material religion explored through textiles.

"In this erudite analysis, Langton turns tired scholarly assumptions on their head. She confronts us viscerally and compellingly with the pregnant, laboring, delivering body that has been so readily rendered mere metaphor or simple simile, requiring us to think again. Familiar texts are rendered unfamiliar as she compels readers to consider afresh how and why womb, labour, birthing, and issues of control are key to exploring the YHWH/human relationship." - Deryn Guest, Honorary Lecturer, University of Birmingham."Karen Langton’s book The Womb and the Simile of The Woman in Labor in the Hebrew Bible: Embodying Relationship with YHWH focuses our readerly attention on the pregnant body and the pregnant woman as presented in its full narrative context and the larger semantic field of figurative language for the womb in the Hebrew Bible. By using Benjamin Harshav’s theory of Integrational Semantics, Langton maps a greater range of meanings for womb and labor imagery in the Bible. Whether it is Job’s struggle with YHWH, the psalmists’ entreaties to YHWH, a warrior’s experience of violence on the battlefield, or Isaiah’s imagining the power of YHWH as a warrior, Langton uncovers the dynamic power and creative force of the language of pregnancy and birth. Langton’s book makes an important contribution to the study of womb imagery in the Bible by showing how ancient biblical writers turned to the image of the pregnant and laboring body to express the multifaceted, sometimes controlled and sometimes uncontrolled, human relationship to the divine." - Cynthia R. Chapman, The Adelia A.F. Johnston and Harry Thomas Frank Professor of Religion, Oberlin College."In this book Langton demonstrates how the image of the womb as communicated through visceral imagery, key metaphors, and similes in the Biblical ancient Levantine material is often highly complex and inconsistent. Langton’s key contribution is to emphasise the inseparability of the womb from the woman's body more globally." - Katherine Southwood, Associate Professor in Old Testament, Oxford University.

• Introduction; 1: Methodology; Section I: The Womb; 2: The Womb in Job; 3: Psalm 139; 4: Brought Forth from the Womb in Psalms 22 and 71; Section II: A Woman in Labor; 5: Non-Biblical ANE Texts – A Woman in Labor; 6: Isaiah Like a Woman in Labor; 7: YHWH Like a Woman in Labor; Conclusion: The Interconnectivity.