Day 254: Evil-less Love

"She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life." Proverbs 31:12

"I do not think it means what you think it means."

The original picture I wanted to use for this post I felt might be too disturbing for some readers (not that this is any better), but the message it carried is important nonetheless. It was a simple picture of two skeletons facing each other, locked in a timeless embrace... forever. I think I shall always equate this mental image with that of doing good to my husband for all the days of my life... a thought laden with responsibility and yet guilded with inner joy.

So... why the "demotivational" poster above?

It is hilarious. More so when I realized that over the many years, every time I've read this verse, I've always thought of evil as being the act of doing bad things to your husband. You know, purposefully malevolent acts. Suddenly I discovered; that word does not mean what I thought it meant.

Starting at the beginning, the Hebrew word describing the "good" this woman does to her husband all the days of his life is "towb." This describes good in the broadest, most general sense. All kinds of good; just good in general. Nice stuff.

The word "ra', " or "evil," however, is not the evil I was thinking of. This word - translated as "evil" in the King James Version - has a whole spectrum of meaning. Not only does it have the expected value of bad and natural or moral evil, but "ra' " also refers to a worse or worst, wretchedness, or wrong.

It was the wretchedness of the definition that got me thinking.

I find it so easy to lump my behaviors, especially where my husband is concerned, into this innocuous package which may not have all the expected virtues, but at least I'm not like "that" or I would never consider behaving like "that."

It was upon intropection that I realized the ugly truth. Many of my poor attitudes toward my love monkey, while they do not fall into the moral evil or general badness, do sit smack in the center of wretchedness or wrong. A wretch is a miserable, unhappy, or unfortunate person, thus to be in a state of wretchedness is to be miserable, unhappy, or unfortunate.

I don't believe I have ever really dealt with the true meaning of this verse. I've always kind of skipped over it, patted my brain on the cerebrum and stated for the mental record that I don't have a problem in that area. Yet, how often has a disrespectful response or reluctant behavior, a careless word or a heartless response brought a state of misery to my husband?

This ought not to be. And yet, the woman this man was tasked in finding was one who would do him good - in the complete and generic sense of the word - and not evil - to include inducement of a state of misery or unhappiness - all the days of her life. Not a weekend act, but a lifetime commitment.

I know I will never view this verse the same and I hope the same for each of you. It doesn't matter if you're married or not, these principles still apply. After all, you never know who's looking, now. Do you?

My intention is to shoot higher on the happy meter for my awesome love monkey; he really does deserve a wife who will do him all manner of good and who will refrain from causing grief and misery for as long as she lives.


Definitions and lexicon references taken from scripturetext.com and thefreedictionary.com. Photo courtesy of motifake.com