H5828

• {"n":"Genesis 2:18","s":"Help meet. Two English words that were never one word, and a Hebrew phrase that says something else again.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=genesis-2-18","r":"Genesis 2:18","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Modern versions read a helper suitable for him, or a helper corresponding to him, or a helper as his complement."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**That is a meet reward.** Meet used to mean fitting. It died, and people who still heard it in the phrase started running the two words together into helpmeet, then helpmate. A word that never existed got invented by ears rather than pens."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"The Hebrew is ezer kenegdo. Ezer is a helper, and the word is used most often in the Hebrew Bible of God himself helping Israel, which is not the sense of assistant. Kenegdo is built on neged, meaning in front of or opposite, so the phrase is a helper corresponding to him, one who stands facing him."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"Two separate problems stack here. English lost the word meet, meaning fitting, so help meet was misheard as helpmeet and then as helpmate, a word that never existed in the text. And English helper carries a junior connotation that the Hebrew ezer does not."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When a King James phrase has become a single familiar word, check whether it was ever one word. English drift produces some of the most confident misreadings in the Bible, and they are invisible to a reader who only has the English."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"There is no real translation dispute here. There is an English-language accident, and then a genuine question about the force of ezer, which every modern version handles slightly differently while none of them says assistant."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e2\u05b5\u05d6\u05b6\u05e8 ezer \u00b7 H5828 \/ \u05e0\u05b6\u05d2\u05b6\u05d3 neged \u00b7 H5048"}],"src":["Occurrences of ezer used of God: Exod 18:4; Deut 33:7, 26, 29; Ps 33:20; 70:5; 115:9-11; 121:1-2; 124:8; 146:5","Oxford English Dictionary on meet, adjective, fitting or proper, and the later formation helpmeet"]}