This month, we will explore the rhetorical and theological significance of the metaphor of divine adoption in the Hebrew Bible and its tokolocigal soteriology imported in the Letter to the Hebrews. In Eze. 16:1-14, Ps 22:10–11 and Ps 71:6–9 God is not only presented as Mother (Dea Mater), Midwife (Dea Obstetrix) but in a context in which many mothers all too often died in childbirth, the newborn is cast upon God who steps in as the adoptive mother (Dea Nutrix or Omenet). This idea of divine adoption is further found in Psalm 68:5 when God is described as the “Father of orphans . . . [who] gives the desolate a home to live in”. And in Psalm 27:9–10, God is praised by the psalmist as “God of my salvation!” saying that “if my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me up”.  In a context in which fathers and mothers either have died or have forsaken their children, God is thus portrayed as the adoptive parent who, as evident in the creative reinterpretation of Ps 68:5 becomes “Mother to the motherless, and father to the fatherless”. I argue that when it is important to keep in mind the complexities associated with this metaphor, which includes not only the multiple layers of trauma associated with the origin and reception of this metaphor but also the trauma associated with the adoptive process and the ongoing relationship between parent and adopted child that may be fraught with ambiguity.