Posts of Deborah Byrd RSSThu, 18 Jul 2019 23:38:01 GMTEzer (Azar)We have almost all been to a wedding ceremony sometime in our lives. The bride and groom come up to the front. For most Christian weddings there is a pastor. During the ceremony the pastor will give some sort of message which frequently includes quotes from Genesis chapter 2.Now, I only remember one thing from my first wedding ceremony. It was in a Baptist church building in Port Neches, Texas. The pastor was reading from the KJV in Genesis chapter 2. I was in high school at the time and some family friends were getting married and I ‘had to go’. Starting off the pastor read “it is not good for man to be alone, I will make him a help meet.” That was it. The words ‘help meet’ reverberated in my head as I repeated them over and over. In fact, I did not realize they were two words. I thought it was one word for many years. The words stopped my mind. I could not make any sense of the two words. I had never heard anything like it before. I just decided it was some KJV gibberish that would never be of any concern to me for a long time. However, that time arrived when my son was married. I again reviewed Genesis, this time reading multiple different versions or translations of the Bible, and they all used this same word Helper which again did not make sense in the context i.e. Adam was alone so God made him a helper to take care of a garden?!?!Then about six months before my daughter was to get married, I read some Jewish writings and they use the word “ally” instead of “helper”. This usage immediately sparked my interest again and started a study of this ancient Hebrew word ezer (from the verb azar).Paleo-HebrewThe union spoken of in Genesis 2:18, 20, not only speaks of the events of that moment, but also anticipates the future nature of the relationship between Adam and Eve by the Hebrew word used by the Holy Spirit. “Ezer” , a form of the verb azar (to help).Now remember, Genesis was written by Holy Spirit inspired men ‘after the fact’. I believe the text in ... Read more

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