Marriage was created for the good of mankind. Many couples argue, fuss and fight because of a lack of commitment to each other. When we are not joined properly things don’t run as they should.
Growing up I would watch Saturday morning cartoons. Among them were the Schoolhouse Rock pseudo-commercials such as “I’m Just a Bill” and “Mother Necessity”.
One of those educational cartoons was “Conjunction Junction.” Within the lyrics of the song were grammatical lessons that taught kids how basic conjunctions were used.
Conjunction Junction, what’s your function? Hooking up two boxcars and making ’em run right.
In constructing a sentence in English, you need the right conjunction to join words together and for them to run right. Well, it turns out the same is true in a marriage.
Jesus stated, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Today, the beauty, majesty and holiness of marriage has been diminished and devalued to the point that most young adults will choose not to be married. They will live together with undefined commitments while still having children and sharing expenses.
They might argue that it is not a piece of paper that gives legitimacy to their relationship and therefore unnecessary.
The Joining of Flesh and Spirit
Such a viewpoint marginalizes the very nature of the human experience. Contrary to the secular view taught in today’s schools, men and women were created in the image of God. They have not just a body but a soul and a mind.
Within this construction are what joins a man and a woman to become the one flesh talked about by Jesus. The conjunction is the Lord Himself.
The words of Genesis were originally Hebrew. Hebrew is a picture based language that communicates ideas and concepts that are concrete and active instead of abstract like the Latin and Greek based thinking of English.
Modern thinking makes little allowance for absolutes and truths. But the Lord is truth and he speaks in easily understood and direct word pictures.
The Lord chose the Hebrew word for man, ish, spelled aleph, yod, shin. Woman is the word ishah, spelled aleph, shin, hey.
The Hebrew letter aleph looked like an ox head in the days of Moses. Similar to our english letter A turned upside down but with the cross bar extended into horns, it meant strength or first, it could also mean an ox strangely enough.
The Hebrew letter yod looked similar to a hand in the time Moses used it.
The letter shin looked something like the english letter W but stretched to look like a couple of teeth. It symbolized that which destroys or devourers.
You might have noticed that these Hebrew words share two letters in common, the aleph and the shin. The two letters that are different are the yod and the hey.
What I find incredible are the words that are formed. You see, aleph shin is the Hebrew word for fire, esh. Recall the aleph and the shin? Aleph meaning strong and the shin means devourer, together you have a strong devourer or fire.
While the yod and the hey is part of the Lord’s Divine name. The full name of God is the yod hey vav hey, the hand revealed the arm revealed, that is what Jesus did on the cross.
It is apparent that when the Lord is in the midst of a marriage that the fire that exists does not burn, just as the bush Moses saw was not consumed by the Holy fire of God’s presence.
However, when the Lord is removed you are left with an intense fire. Anytime a Hebrew word is used twice it is powerful, it is multiplied not added. The marriage in this case is then left with two profane and consuming fires and nothing to limit or direct it.