Biblical Hebrew Forum

["George Athas" <gathas AT globalfreeway.com.au>]

| 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)
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Tel Dan Inscription Website
http://members.nbci.com/gathas/teldan.htm
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::