Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Leviral marriage

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Leviral marriage
  • Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 17:38:28 -0500

Dear Peter,

>>And I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your
>>arms ...

I have noticed that some translators go weak at the knees with this
verse. I'll only cite one, the NASB:-

8.`I also gave you your master's house and your master's wives into
your care,

>Hmmm, care? How polite!

Actually it seems that ESV's "arms" is the polite version. The word is
XEYQ, "bosom". Of course the word has metaphorical senses, but they
relate not to anything sexual, but to care. The same word is used in
verse 3 of how the lamb slept in the poor man's bosom, which clearly
implies care rather than bestiality, cf. also Isaiah 40:11. So, while
NASB is unusually non-literal here, this is a justifiable explanation of
the metaphor.

It is worth remembering that Saul's wives would probably have been
rather old by the time David succeeded Saul, old enough to be David's
mother and including the mother of his friend Jonathan. David already
had his own nubile young wives. Why would he have taken Saul's wives to
be his own wives? It makes much more sense that he took on caring for
them as widows.

HH: That is an admirable line of thought with some cogency except for the fact that the verse is about what God gave David. It is not about responsibilities that He loaded on him. Remember the rest of the verse:

2Sam. 12:8 I gave your master's house to you, and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.

HH: So having Saul's wives in his bosom would have had to be a personal blessing to David. One thing you may be overlooking is that older men could marry much younger women. Like I said, it may be that Saul only had one wife, Ahinoam. But if he had more, they could have been half his age. The fact that David had other wives would not necessarily deter him. David ended up with a lot of wives, and Solomon with even more. It really seems naive to me to think that the phrase did not have sexual overtones. Perhaps it is as naive as my thinking Saul only had one wife. As I think about God's words, that seems less and less likely, since God would not have expressed Himself with the plural "wives" in that case, it seems (unless he was speaking abstractly in Near Eastern terms about the rights of the new king with respect to the deceased king).

HH: I would remind you, too, that in Nathan's story about the rich man, the poor man, and the little lamb, the little lamb represented Bathsheba. The poor man's holding the lamb in his bosom represented Uriah's marriage love with Bathsheba. So there is a sexual undertone to Nathan's tale.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page