INDEED death alone separates!

11 years ago on May 26, Chad and I said, "yes with the help of God" and God has indeed helped us and we are celebrating that He has remained faithful and we have enjoyed 11 years of marriage!

In the Spring semester leading up to our wedding I was a Hebrew baby in my first Hebrew reading class and we were translating the book of Ruth. There is so much you can learn by the grammar and syntax used! That sounded real nerdy.

My favorite part of the the book was when we translated Ruth 1:16-17. Most translations render the last part of 17, "May the LORD do so to me and more if anything but death separates us." But I found out something really cool and chose, with the approval and blessing of my Hebrew professor, to write an entire paper on the construct of this statement. It is an oath statement that ends with "may the LORD do so to me and more" and the rest of the verse is an emphatic statement, "indeed death alone separates you and me." This is so cool because I had always thought the "if" added some kind of condition to the statement, such as if anything but death separates you you broke the oath and you have asked God to hold you accountable, so I always thought it was adding this element of you better stay married so you won't break your oath. But the "death alone separates you and me" is not part of the oath, it is not a condition, it is an emphatic statement that Ruth makes because she loves Naomi so that "indeed! death alone!"

All that to say it was my joy 11 years ago to make the same emphatic statement, "indeed, death alone separates you and me!"