Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <cctr114 AT its.canterbury.ac.nz>]

Brent Emery wrote:-

>In the Jan/Feb issue of Biblical Archeology Review (1983) R. David =
>Freedman wrote an article titled "Woman, a power equal to man" in which =
>he dealt with the phrase "ezer kenedgo" in Genesis 2:18. I am wondering =
>if there have been serious challenges to his translation or has it =
>received widespread acceptance? Anyone who has read the article please =
>give me your viewpoint!  Shalom, Brent Emery

I think it fair to consider every other major translation a serious
challenge to this translation. I am always extremely wary of attempts
to impose persent day ideas on Biblical texts. This this not the only
attempt to try to find 20th century feminist thought in the Biblical
texts. There are even people who try to claim that the J strand was
written by a woman because they claim they can find 20th century
stereotypical feminist concerns within it. When that idea was echoed on
this list I asked if there was any evidence of women being trained as
scribes in Bible times, or a genre of women's literature. Unfortunately
no one replied, so I still don't know.

Another thing we need to be aware of is that these aren't newly discovered
texts. There is a long tradition of understanding that goes with them.
If this were the correct way to understand to understand the phrase
it would be in common use already.  

It's difficult for me to see how you could validly translate ezer as
"power" in this context. Helper seems pretty good to me. If you really
want to do the feminist thing you might be able to do something with
"kenedgo" (Is this how it's pronounced? I haven't got a Hebrew Bible
here, but I thought it was kenegdo). On a fairly literal level it's
like-opposite. Opposite in the sense that two towns on the sides of
a valley are opposite each other.


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