“Moses […] asked the LORD, ‘Why have you brought this trouble on your servant? What have I done to displease you that you put the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors?”
— Numbers 11:10-12
NIV Study Bible notes on v. 12:
Did I conceive all these people? The implication is that the Lord conceived the people of Israel, that he was their nurse and that their promises were his. Moses asks that he be relieved of his mediatorial office, for “the burden is too heavy for me”[…].
God is our ultimate nurse. And He’s gifted women the ability to partake in this attribute to give of themselves for others’ benefit, because salvation definitely has a motherly component. Jesus spread his wings and covered us like a mother hen covers its chicks (Lk. 13:34).
“God made women a little more vulnerable,” remarked a female friend from an old church. And I’d like to add that a good man would cover those vulnerabilities the same way Christ covered His Bride’s sins on the Cross.
In a sinless world, everyone would point everyone else to God. In essence, every human being would be a “little Christ,” or would image the Savior, to every other human being. Parents, teachers, pastors, and even the government, are meant to be Christ figures, but this divine imaging is designed to be strongest in the marriage relationship, and it takes a unique physical form in sexual intimacy.
Thus, when nursing him, a woman is “saving” her husband. When sympathetically listening to her worries, a man “saves” his wife. In both instances, each spouse sacrificially gives him or herself to the other.
When they have sex, husband and wife are “saving” each other.
Sexual intimacy and breastfeeding are physical representations of spiritual realities. The spiritual reality of being joined together forever, permanently united into one flesh.
“Husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his body. As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”c This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself”
— Ephesians 5:28-33
“Let her nipples satiate you.”
— God, Proverbs 5:19, Interlinear Hebrew Bible, Scripture4all.org
Christ-centered ANR 