WORD STUDY – GOOD THING – TOV טוב

Proverbs 18:22: “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD.”

Practically every modern translation joins in lock step with the KJV and says that finding a wife is finding a good thing. This is obviously translated by men. “Finds a good thing?” Makes it sound like finding a wife is like locating a decent used car. Only a male translator would render a wife as a thing, you know just like another household appliance. How women since the KJV of 1611 have stood for being called a thing is beyond me. With verses like this calling woman a thing it is no wonder they were considered second class citizens. How many weddings have you attended where the male preacher quotes Proverbs 18:22 declaring that finding a wife is finding a good thing? I’ll bet if it was a female preacher she would find an alternative rendering. Is it any wonder why women were barred from attending seminary and going in the ministry? My gosh teach them Hebrew and they would learn the secret that women are not things. Even in modern times if a woman attends seminary they study missions or Christian Education which effectively steers them away from the Biblical languages where they would have learned the reality of alternative renderings. Women just obediently read their English translations and said; “My gosh, if the Bible calls me a thing then I guess that is what I am.”

Let’s get one thing straight, the word thing is not in the original Hebrew. Literally, in the Hebrew this is matsa’ ‘isha matsa’ tov ie, find a wife find a good. Yet these word have many secondary and alternative renderings that need to be explored. For instance the word ‘isha rendered here as wife also means woman, female, each, every, one, together or many. In the Akkadian it is the word ‘anesh which means soft and delicate. But wait that is the Christian lexicons telling us that. Rabbi Samson Hirsch, the nineteenth century Jewish linguist and Hebrew master trances the word to its Semitic origins as a word used for one who nourishes, who creates, one who withstands and a supporting pillar. Whoever finds a wife who creates, nourishes, withstands and is a supporting pillar has found, in the words of Ken Taylor the Living Bible one translator brave enough to put this into its proper context, a treasure.

But you must find matsa’ this treasure. Matsa’ also has many different meanings and we must consider this in its cultural context. Marriages were arranged in those days. Sometimes even at birth a male child would be matched to a female child. Marriages were arranged to form alliances between families and treaties between nations. People did not marry out of love. The Hebrews believed that two people learned to love each other. Jacob may have loved Rachel but her father was not moved by that. He had the authority to determine who his daughter would marry and he decided to marry off the oldest daughter. Love had nothing to do with it, you would learn to love each other.

Throughout the ages marriages were arranged even up to the time of Shakespeare marriages were still arranged and the idea of falling in love was a scandal. I mean Shakespeare was the E.L. James of his time. In fact one nation in the Middle Ages made it a capital crime for falling in love and getting married against a father’s wishes. Even today it is considered proper for a young man to ask a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage even before he proposes to the young lady.

So this whole idea of finding a wife just does not fit the cultural context. A man did not find a wife, he had nothing to do with finding a wife, his father, family or a matchmaker found the wife. By the first century the idea of a betrothal had become a custom built out of the idea that love was important, not the reason to marry but a chance must be given to fall in love. The couple who often barely knew each other were formally married but then were not allowed to live together or consummate that marriage for one year. During that time the family would support the couple so the bridegroom would not have to work and could spend all his time getting to know his bride without a sexual relationship. In those days love was not physical but emotional. You had sex to fulfill your love, not to fall in love. The couple would fall in love during this time together even though their marriage was the result of an election between families. Which, by the way, is where Paul get this idea of election in Salvation. From the beginning of our lives we were elected to be the bride of Christ. Each one of us are the personal bride of Christ within our own personal time line. In that day if a bride did not want to be married to the man that was elected for her she would have to leave the family, banish herself from her community and somehow survive alone which in those days were nearly impossible but it was done. So too, we are all elected to be the bride of Christ, but for whatever reason, many people do not like their bridegroom and prefer to make it on their own. The result, as with the woman escaping an arranged marriage, is usually death, so too it is spiritual death for a person to flee from his election.

So what about this idea of finding a wife if a man could not culturally find a wife and the wife was picked for him? It is interesting that this verb matsa’ to find is in an imperfect or future tense, “if a man will find (his) wife.” Matsa’ like other Hebrew words have a wide range of meaning and you must apply the context not only textually, but culturally and emotionally as well to know the proper English word to apply. Matsa’ really has the idea of obtaining knowledge, discovering or finding out. Here would be a word to fit the context, “whoever discovers (his) wife obtains knowledge of a good.” In other word this is not referring to before marriage but after marriage. If a man searches his wife’s heart and discovers all the good that God has put into her he discovers a good tov. Note the word tov is generally translated as good. But as one rabbi once told me good is always in harmony with God. Thus he who discovers that his wife is has been given the natural instincts that God put in them, creativity, nurturing, withstanding and being pillar of support he has found a treasure, someone who can bring him into harmony with God. God created these instincts in every woman as shown how every woman, no matter what her background, no matter how feminist she may be has these very traits as a mother. It is up to the husband to love and care for his wife so he can discover these traits, nurture them and bring them out in his home.