Most of my early music influences came via my Christmas
stocking. Christmas morning my parents
often left some musical delight (cassettes at the time) for my enjoyment in the
upcoming new year. Memorable ones include
my introduction to early Robert-Johnson-esque- blues via Eric Clapton’s
“Unplugged” album. Louis Armstrong’s
“Greatest Hits” was my all-time favorite as it introduced me into the wonderful
world of jazz. I can still remember ol’
Satchmo’s grinning mug on the cover clutching his fabled horn. One Christmas I received one entitled Elvis’
“Greatest Hits.” The cover showed a close-up of the young slim Elvis with a
bright red background behind. I wasn’t
initially interested, but I ended up catching the appeal and enjoying all of the songs from “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock” to “Suspicious Minds.” I soon
learned to sing along and was imitating the king’s famous hip moves (not in
public of course).
Fast forward about 25 years from that Christmas to a couple
weeks before Christmas 2016. One Elvis
song in particular popped into my mind as we were in the thick of checking the
Bhogoto Bible translation team’s draft of Genesis 2:24. The passage, of course, is well known where
the author Moses gives a pastoral explanatory note at the end of the creation
and presentation of Eve to Adam. It explains the basics of what marriage is all
about. He says,
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother
and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
We checked the first clause of the verse, and after checking
with the back translator it seemed to communicate the correct meaning. But I had a question about what the “and hold
fast to his wife” meant in the next clause.
Literally the translation of the Bhogoto was, “This is why,
a man will leave his father and his mother so that he might sit
with his wife.”
I knew that in Bhogoto ‘sit’ can mean simply ‘to sit’ but
often means ‘to live’. I assumed in my
preparation before the check that this verb would be a problem because the
verb in Hebrew for ‘cleave, hold fast,
etc.’ (dabaq) and the verse in general
means so much more than a man simply changing his address when he gets hitched. I also thought that this “live with” meaning
was what they translated because they translated from a French Bible that (erroneously,
in my humble opinion) translated the verse “in order to live with his wife”.
So, we started to check the next clause, and as usual, one
of the translators read out loud the text in Bhogoto and the back translator
orally translated that into French for me. It was as I expected, “…a man will
leave his father and his mother so that he might sit with his wife.”
I then asked the back translator, “What does this mean in
this passage to you, ‘a man will sit with his wife’? Explain to me what the
text means.” Much to my surprise all of
the translators gave out a nervous chuckle and started sheepishly looking down
at the ground. One of the translators
quickly lifted up his head and our eyes met, he grinned and then made his
eyebrows jump twice, which culturally means, “You know what we’re talking
about.”
My mind starting darting back and forth, because I certainly
didn’t know “what he was talking about.”
What would make these men slightly sheepish that has to do with a man
sitting with his wife…. My mind suddenly
found a cerebral file from my grad school days and I asked them. “In Bhogoto, when a man sits with a woman, is
that a euphemism for something...like sex?”
They all blushed and replied smiling (smiling is more for nervousness in
the culture) “Yes.” The translator
continued “Certainly it can mean literally that a man will literally sit or
live with his wife. But that doesn’t
make sense here in this context and everyone reading or hearing this passage will
think about sex.”
So I then said, “What have you always thought about what
this passage means?”
One of them replied, “It means that this is what you do when
you get married, you have sex. This is
the permitted way to have sex.”
I went on to explain their understanding of sex is certainly
correct but the verse is saying something different about marriage.
I explained, “The verb you translated as ‘sit’ really means
something more like ‘stick’. Like
glue. The man and wife are to be an inseparable
unit that not even the will of a father or mother is to separate.”
Suddenly I heard Elvis intone those love song lyrics that
have apparently been indelibly stamped in my grey matter as I explained to the
team how they should change their translation,
“I’m stuck like glue, yeah yeah because I’m (wait 2 beats)
stuck on you.”
It’s funny how the mind works.
Now, in Central African culture, marriage is an alliance whose
primary goal is to make children to increase the clan. Companionship and mutual
happiness and service are not of much import. If there’s a case of sterility in
either of the partners, then it is assumed that the marriage should end (just
like the Western notion of ‘happiness or bust’ in marriages). We went on and talked about how man and woman
are to be inseparably stuck to one another in covenant no matter what. This is a very different view than the
prevailing culture. Of course, every
culture gets sex and marriage wrong in some way.
After the discussion of the words and the overall theological
import of this passage all the translators quickly said to another, “Ndadhi! A
man will leave his father and mother and ndadhi to his wife.”
“What does ‘ndadhi’ mean?”
I said.
“It’s similar to the Hebrew word actually. First, it’s the word we use for two things
that literally stick together. Like wet
leaves ndadhi to your wet leg. Or we can
say that of relationships. There are blood
covenants and friendships that ndadhi two people or groups permanently.”
This was put into the translation and everyone was happy
with the solution.
We then had a discussion how we can ourselves “stick” to our
wives better and how we can teach this to our friends and neighbors to come
back to the pattern that God laid out for married couples to live.
Because, even Elvis was somewhat on to God’s universal mandate
for what a married couple is supposed to say to each other,
“I’m stuck like glue, yeah yeah because I’m (wait 2 beats)
stuck on you.”
