The disciples of Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai asked him: Why does the Torah command a woman after childbirth to bring an offering?
He answered them: When she crouches to give birth, she determinedly swears that she will no longer have relations with her husband; therefore, the Torah says that she must bring an offering. (Nidda 31b)
Ramban explains as follows:
Our Sages taught (Nidda 31b) that when a woman crouches to give birth, she determinedly swears: “I shall no longer have relations with my husband.” What this means, in essence, is that because her pain drives her to utter this oath, and her oath is not possible to honor anyway, since she is obligated to her husband, therefore the Torah seeks to offer her atonement for that passing mood. The thoughts of the blessed God are deep, and His mercy is abundant, in seeking to exonerate His creatures.
Ramban understands the sin as the uttering of an oath that she is unable to fulfill. However, from the Gemara it would seem that the sin lies in the woman’s very thought of separating from her husband or avoiding giving birth to any more children.
This raises an obvious question: how can it be known in advance that every woman, during childbirth, will swear that she will no longer have intimate relations with her husband? This certainly represents a possible situation, but surely it is not necessarily and inevitably true! This being the case, why is the commandment not limited to those women who declare such an oath?
Furthermore, even a woman who makes such an oath during childbirth would probably not invoke God’s Name, such that her oath has no validity in any case. Why, then, is her utterance regarded in such a severe light – to the extent that it requires a sin offering for atonement?
A different explanation for the obligation is offered by Abarbanel:
… Since there is no-one who undergoes pain and suffering in this world without having sinned… and the birthing mother suffers pain and danger while she is upon the birthing stones; therefore, she would bring a sin offering….[4]
Abarbanel suggests that the sin has nothing to do with what the woman says or does during the birth. Rather, the pain of childbirth itself testifies that she has somehow transgressed, and the sin offering is meant to atone for this sin.
This approach raises several difficulties. Firstly, taken to its logical conclusion, it implies that anyone who undergoes suffering must bring a sin offering for the (unknown) sin that is the cause of his suffering. However, the Torah makes no such demand. Why, then, is the birthing mother singled out in her suffering and required to bring the sacrifice?
Secondly, we may point out that according to the Torah, a person who is saved from danger is obligated to bring an offering of thanksgiving. Hence, it would seem more appropriate that the woman who has emerged safely from childbirth should bring an offering of thanksgiving, not a sin offering! (Today, a woman who has given birth recites the ha-gomel blessing, which expresses the same idea that was represented by the thanksgiving sacrifice.)
A third difficulty with Abarbanel’s explanation is that the Torah tells us that the pain of childbirth is not associated with the sin of a particular woman, but rather was decreed for all women at the time of the sin of Adam and Chava.
Indeed, Recanati (commenting on verse 6) asserts that the sin offering is not brought as an atonement for the personal sin of the woman who has given birth, but rather as atonement for the sin of Adam and Chava. The same view is adopted by Rabbeinu Bechaye, who writes: