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b-hebrew - Re: BETHULAH - virgin

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  • From: "George Athas" <gathas AT globalfreeway.com.au>
  • To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: BETHULAH - virgin
  • Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 11:18:40 +1100


| George, Joel 1:8 refers to the betrothed woman.
| The "husband of your youth" is the husband whom you
| are betrothed to. The point here is that she was
| betrothed but never married, i.e., still virginal.
|
| Liz

Oh, I would very much disagree, Liz. The word for her husband here is her
"BAAL" which
means "husband" or "owner/master" -- very much the result of a marriage. The
word for
betrothal comes from the root aleph-resh-sin. The reference to "youth" in
Joel 1:8
indicates that it was a short lived marriage and that her husband died when
he and she
were both still young, evidently without having had children. Considering
that marriages
in antiquity were expected to produce children within a year (cf. the one
year abstention
from war for grooms), the tragedy of the situation in Joel 1:8 is not just
that the
woman's husband died in his prime, but also that he had no posterity. Such a
marriage
would have been very shortlived indeed.

Best regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
(Sydney, Australia)
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