A Theology of Adoption, Part Two

Historical Context: Adoption in the Ancient Near East

The main motivation behind adoption in the Ancient Near East stemmed from property rights in the case of infertility. The concern, then, was not with the reality of fatherless children but with the problem of childless fathers.1 High infant mortality rates, combined with extended family units (the clan being the normative community) resulted in fewer numbers of what we would today consider ‘orphans.’2 There were cases of couples adopting children, though, and even rare instances of infant adoption. In many cases, one spouse would legally adopt the child of the other spouse, such as Sarah facilitating the birth of Ishmael, or Rachel considering Bilhah’s children as her own.(Gen 30:3). But for the most part, adoption was an economic transaction between adults. The majority of adoption cases involved childless couples adopting adult males who most likely had living biological parents.3

Adoption in the Ancient Near East served, therefore, not to help abandoned children, but to secure the passing on of property and the care of elderly couples who had no children to take responsibility for them. This is evident from ancient adoption contracts: “Usually the adoptee stands to receive property through inheritance, while the adopter may receive an adoption payment...the text may describe the monthly and annual rations which are to be delivered by the adoptee to support his new father until his death.”4 Ancient adoption was, in fact, so tied to property concerns that an adopted son would lose rights to the property if a natural son were born to the adoptive couple. A biblical example of this lies in the stories of Eliezer of Damascus and Ishmael, who both lost their rights to Abraham’s property after the birth of Isaac.(Gen 15:2; 21:10)

Most adoptions in the Ancient Near East were of adults in order to secure succession of property. Yet there were certainly ‘unwanted’ babies and children orphaned by disease or warfare that today would be candidates for adoption. In ancient society, however, the most common practice to deal with such children was either exposure (unwanted babies were often simply abandoned to the elements to die)5 or ‘adoption’ into slavery or prostitution (depending on the age of the child).6 Slaves were occasionally adopted by their owners (as with Eliezer of Damascus) when the owners had no children to whom to pass inheritance.7 But again, this practice served the interests of the adopting couple rather than those of the adopted slave, and would be revoked in the case of the birth of natural children.

Tomorrow’s post will examine the ways in which Israel differed from surrounding nations in regards to adoption, and will highlight some of the biblical examples of adoption in the Old Testament.

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1. Elizabeth C. Stone, “Adoption in Old Babylonian Nippur” in Adoption in Old Babylonian Nippur and the Archive of Mannum-mesu-lissur, Elizabeth C. Stone and David I. Owen, (Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1991), 2.
2. Howard F. Vos, Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Manners and Customs, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), 68.
3. Vos, 39.
4. Stone, 3.
5. Vos, 271.
6. Laura D. Steele, “Women and Gender in Babylonia” in The Babylonian World, ed. Gwendolyn Leick (New York: Routledge Press, 2007), 307.
7. Vos, 316.