In Genesis 2:18a, Yahweh said, “It is not good that the man should be alone...” Few good men would argue this point. Ironically, the Hebrew
term back of “alone” here is bad.
This is fitting. Alone is bad in most cases. The Hebrew here is typically
elastic. The term bad occurs 189
times, being translated by 13 different English words in the AV. It often
connotes separation and alienation; it can mean that deep, hit-you-in-the-soul,
I-have-no-one sense of alone. It means help-less.
Men, thank our God for the next clause! “I will make him an help
(Heb.‛êzer) meet for him” (18b).
If this clause evokes the unfortunate—even oppressive—image
of a woman in the kitchen, pregnant and barefoot; or worse, a “friend with
benefits,” a cohabitator, then this clause is of little concern for you.
However, if you understand, or better intuit and feel, what the first clause
meant (alone in the help-less-ness sense), then “help” is on the way!
As many times as this traditional proof-text for a
barefooted-pregnant wife has been used as such, it has been grossly misused.
And whenever it has been used, it has been out of sheer ignorance—ignorance of
what it really means.
Interestingly, the English word “help” smacks of an
inferior, an assistant, one that supplements those few attributes or abilities
that the man she is “helping” may lack. While such images are better than the
barefoot mama nonsense, they are still miles from the sense of the biblical
term for the wife, ‛êzer. The
corrective to our wrong-headed readings of this concept is a contextual look at
its Old Testament usage.
This word is used a total of 22 times throughout the Old
Testament, always as “help(er)” in the AV. Consequently, it has a relatively
determinate and static semantic range. Setting aside its application to the
wife for a moment, it doesn’t take too long to survey the 19 other occurrences.
Tomorrow, I’ll post part two (see here), which will explore the uses of
êzer in all three parts of the
Tanach, “which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in
the psalms” (Lk. 24:44).
No comments:
Post a Comment