What do the women Tamar, Bathsheba, Ruth and Rahab have in common? Let’s look at their common traits. Rahab and Tamar both at one time worked as prostitutes. Ruth and Rahab were gentile outsiders, citizens of enemy nations of Israel. Bathsheba and Ruth were both married more than once. Bathsheba and Tamar had children with men that were not their husbands. So what connects them all? In the first chapter of Matthew they are all listed in the genealogy of Jesus. This is unusual because ordinarily women were not mentioned in Jewish genealogies. But these were not ordinary women. They each had a unique, and at times an unsavory history. It goes to show us how God can use anyone to do his will. Even when we have not been perfect and might be rejected by others, God still find ways to use us.
Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...
Comments
Post a Comment