“For the Lord God Will Help Me”

Alan C. Miner

We find in Jacob 7 some of the writings of Isaiah (compare Isaiah 50). Here the Lord compares His covenant relationship to the house of Israel with the marriage covenant between a man and a wife. He initially states: "have I put thee away, or have I cast thee off forever? . . . Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement? . . . Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away. In a subsequent verse we find the faithful servant of God (Christ) saying: "For the Lord God will help me, therefore shall I not be confounded. Therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed" (2 Nephi 7:7).

According to Donna Nielsen, a knowledge of the biblical marriage imagery can greatly enrich our understanding of how God relates to us through covenants. In Hebrew, the word for "helper" is ezar. This word is used twenty-one times throughout the scriptures:

(a) In sixteen places, it refers to God, who acts as Israel's "mighty helper"

(b) Three times it refers to vital human assistance in time of extreme need. For example, it describes the action of someone who gives water to a person dying of thirst, or places a tourniquet on the arm of a bleeding man, thereby saving his life. In one of it's verbal forms, it sometimes refers to a person who offers testimony in law court, and thus provides grounds for the defendant's exoneration and acquittal (Terrien 10)

(c) It is also interesting to note that twice it refers to Eve as the first woman. So perhaps there is no basis in the idea that to become a man's wife is an inferior position.

[Donna B. Nielsen, Beloved Bridegroom: Finding Christ in Ancient Jewish Marriage and Family Customs, pp. 2, 8]

Step by Step Through the Book of Mormon: A Cultural Commentary

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