Sense: wife
n. — a married woman; a man’s partner in marriage.
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife [אִשָּׁה], and they become one flesh.
Genesis 2:24 (NRSV)
One challenge when studying the concept of marriage in the Bible is that the words for “husband” and “wife” in Hebrew and Greek are also generic words for “man” and “woman.” The Bible Sense Lexicon captures this alternation in Genesis 2:22–24:
And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman [אִשָּׁה—BSL “woman”] and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman [אִשָּׁה—BSL “woman”], for out of Man this one was taken.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife [אִשָּׁה—BSL “wife”], and they become one flesh.
Imagine that you want to search for texts related to “wives” in the Bible. An original-language search for אִשָּׁה will return many results with the meaning “woman.” If you want to explore further texts related to “wives,” the BSL concordance entry provides a better starting point.
What is the Bible Sense Lexicon?
Sense of the Day is based on content from Logos’ Bible Sense Lexicon, which organizes biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words by meaning based on a variety of semantic relationships. Sense of the Day provides examples of senses in context, along with insight into their application for theology and interpretation.
The Bible Sense Lexicon is a Logos dataset available in Logos 5 Gold and higher base packages. If you’re enrolled in the Logos Academic Discount Program, you can also find the Bible Sense Lexicon in the Biblical Languages base package. Take your studies even further by exploring semantic domains, engaging the biblical text like never before.
Learn more about the Bible Sense Lexicon.