The Bible

 

Ezekiel 16:1

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1 Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

Commentary

 

Husband

  
Älteres Paar im Kücheninterieur, by Friedrich Friedländer (1825–1901)

In general, men are driven by intellect and women by affections, and because of this men in the Bible generally represent knowledge and truth and women generally represent love and the desire for good. This generally carries over into marriage, where the man's growing knowledge and understanding and the woman's desire to be good and useful are a powerful combination. In many cases in the Bible, then, "husband" refers to things of truth and understanding, much as "man" does. Magnificent things can happen in a true marriage, though, when both partners are looking to the Lord. If a husband opens his heart to his wife, it's as though she can implant her loves inside him, transforming his intellectual urges into a love of growing wise. She in turn can grow in her love of that blooming wisdom, and use it for joy in their married life and in their caring for children and others in their life. Many couples, even in heaven, stay in that state -- called "Spiritual" -- growing deeper and deeper to eternity. There is the potential, though, for the couple to be transformed: through the nurturing love of his wife the husband can pass from a love of growing wise to an actual love of wisdom itself, and the wife can be transformed from the love of her husband's wisdom into the wisdom of that love -- the actual expression of the love of the Lord they have built together. In that state -- called "Celestial" -- the husband represents love and the desire for good, and the wife represents truth and knowledge.

The Bible

 

Ezekiel 4:1-13

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1 You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before yourself, and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem:

2 and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around.

3 Take for yourself an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city: and set your face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.

4 Moreover lie on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity.

5 For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be to you a number of days, even three hundred ninety days: so you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

6 Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah: forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it to you.

7 You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm uncovered; and you shall prophesy against it.

8 Behold, I lay bands on you, and you shall not turn you from one side to the other, until you have accomplished the days of your siege.

9 Take for yourself also wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on your side, even three hundred ninety days, you shall eat of it.

10 Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time you shall eat it.

11 You shall drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin: from time to time you shall drink.

12 You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man.

13 Yahweh said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.