So I think on and off about how there is no dedicated word in the bible for "husband" or "wife" but the word is always "man" or "woman". I know it has to mean something, because it's that way in Hebrew and in Greek. I usually settle with "I guess the people just had to use their context cues about whether or not the woman that they were talking about was a wife or not... since they don't have a flippin' word for it"
Last night I saw it from a different angle though. I've been thinking of it all this time from an english perspective, as though the english language were the proper and precise way to describe a thing. Anyways, my thought was, they do have a word for wife, it's isha (or gunaika). Which is to say, a woman doesn't become a wife when she's married. She simply is a wife from birth. (I call to mind Gen 24:5) In like vein a male is simply born a husband.
Like a pizza is a pizza whether it's been sold or not: but the purpose of the pizza was to be delivered and eaten whether or not it's ever purchased.
Which I think follows from the "be fruitful and multiply" commandment. It works its way into the culture, with that understanding being cemented by the language. Jephthah's daughter mourned her virginity when she found she must die. Presumably she didn't want to die, but it was her virginity she mourned, because she was a wife that had never been given to a husband.
I think modernity has given rise to attitudes enforced by our own language, in which marriage is something we might do, if we really want; instead of a more proper understanding: That marriage is our identity and our purpose from birth. We are husbands and wives all, by nature and design.*
*Eunuchs and saints with advanced self-control notwithstanding
Last night I saw it from a different angle though. I've been thinking of it all this time from an english perspective, as though the english language were the proper and precise way to describe a thing. Anyways, my thought was, they do have a word for wife, it's isha (or gunaika). Which is to say, a woman doesn't become a wife when she's married. She simply is a wife from birth. (I call to mind Gen 24:5) In like vein a male is simply born a husband.
Like a pizza is a pizza whether it's been sold or not: but the purpose of the pizza was to be delivered and eaten whether or not it's ever purchased.
Which I think follows from the "be fruitful and multiply" commandment. It works its way into the culture, with that understanding being cemented by the language. Jephthah's daughter mourned her virginity when she found she must die. Presumably she didn't want to die, but it was her virginity she mourned, because she was a wife that had never been given to a husband.
I think modernity has given rise to attitudes enforced by our own language, in which marriage is something we might do, if we really want; instead of a more proper understanding: That marriage is our identity and our purpose from birth. We are husbands and wives all, by nature and design.*
*Eunuchs and saints with advanced self-control notwithstanding
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