Isaiah 41:8 “But thou, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen. The seed of Abraham my friend.”
James 2:23 “And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” and he was called the friend of God.”
II Chronicles 20:7 “Didst not thou, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before Thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham Thy Friend forever?
Years ago when I was teaching in a Junior High school we had a transfer student come to our school in the middle of the year. Her name was Janet and she was a fourteen year old foster child, very pretty, quite intelligent and very socially backward. I was just told by the principal that she had to change foster homes and schools because someone from the foster home she came from had sexually abused her. That is all I was told and I found out later I was not even supposed to know that much except something happened which made it necessary for us to have that information. There was some student in our school who had a friend who had a friend from the school where Janet transferred from and she started the rumor that Janet was a prostitute. We were a small school and something like that could really alienate a kid. I remember I had a student come up to me as if he was going to share some confidential information and he said: “You know Janet is a prostitute.” I took this kid aside and told him in no uncertain terms that if I ever heard him say those slanderous lies to anyone I would personally see that he was expelled. Needless to say that was one student who never took me into his confidence again. But I had been observing Janet and I saw how she was friendless, shunned by everyone. The whole thing snow balled no matter how the faculty tried to stop the lies. I never saw her with anyone, she was always alone. As if she did not have enough to bear as a foster child and the abuse now she faced the cruel taunts from her peers.
One day when I had lunchroom duty I noticed Janet off in the corner by herself, as usual, but I noticed she was crying. I went up to her and asked if she was alright. Struggling to hold back her tears she looked at me and said, “It is not true what they say about me, it’s not.” I told her I knew it was not and that we have been dealing with the students spreading the malicious gossip. Then she said, “Can I ask you something?” I told it was alright and she asked, “All I want is just one friend, a best friend like everyone else. Is there any other girl here who has no friends and needs a friend? I can be a good friend, I can be a good best friend.”
I could not help but think that this lonely, frightened and friendless girl probably understood what friendship really was. She probably understood what friendship was more than any of the other students and even the faculty, myself included.
You know it is really curious that the Bible three times refers to Abraham as a friend of God. Only Abraham is referred to in name as a friend of God. In the New Testament we are called not servants but friends. But Abraham is mentioned by name. The Greek word used in James for friend is philo which is a word for love that we call friendship love. However the passage in Isaiah and II Chronicles uses the word ahav which is the Hebrew word for love. Abraham was God’s lover. Yeah, that sounds a little creepy because we hear the English word lover and we immediately give it a sexual context. The Septuagint uses the Greek word which comes from the word hetariors and not the word philo. Odd that James does not use that word but the word philo. Hetariors is a word in Greek which means a friend or companion. There is really no sexual element to hetariors. Curious that the translators of the Septuagint would use a word that meant a partner or companion for the Hebrew word ahav which is commonly rendered as love. The word in Hebrew for friend should be ra’ah or dodi. Yet Isaiah uses ahav which means love or lover and the Septuagint uses a word meaning a companion.
I have a theory as to why the Septuagint uses hetariors which means a companion. Hetariors carries the idea of a close friendship without any sexual overtones. Ahav generally does not have sexual overtones, but it could. The translators of the Septuagint wanted to show an intimate relationship with God without someone getting all creepy about it. Let’s face it the Greeks were sexual maniacs, almost worse than our Western culture. Like our modern culture the word love carries a strong sexual connotation. I mean call a sexual relationship making love. We are so sexually conscious today we are afraid to use that word love without feeling some fear that it will be interpreted by some as something sexual. I believe the translators of the Septuagint knew that they had to be careful with the word the chose from the Greek so they chose a word that simply means a companion and a friend. Yet, the Hebrew word ahav expresses a much deeper affection. But just as there is no word in English to express this affection without someone thinking of a sexual implication, hetariors was the closest Greek word the translators could get that would not be misconstrued by the sexually preoccupied Greeks.
The ancient Hebrews saw the sexual relationship as an act of knowing a person intimately. A man would share a part of himself with his wife that he would share with no one else. That is why the sexual relationship is expressed with the word yadah, which is a word for knowing.
The English word friendship has also gone through many changes. I mean Chaim Bentorah has almost a thousand friends on Facebook. I have never met 95% of these friends but they are listed as friends. We have so watered down the idea of friendship or filled it with so much sexual innuendos that we, like the Greek translators, are really at a loss to plug in a Greek or an English word which best describes what ahav was intended to describe in the context of Abraham’s relationship to God. Ahav can be love, friendship or companionship, I mean you really need to look at the context. Our English translations say that Abraham was a friend of God. That is true but by what definition of friend? What was Isaiah trying to tell us about the relationship Abraham had with God. Do we really have a word in English to describe both ahav and hetariors in one word? These two words, Greek and Hebrew, together tell us what Abraham’s relationship with God really was, but we have no one English word for it.
But soft, when I think of Janet’s desperate hunger for a friend, I wonder if that might just explain what the writer intended for us to understand about ahav. Janet was not looking for a sexual companion, or just a casual online type friend. She wanted someone she could share her secrets with, someone she could share her heart with and someone who would share their secrets and heart with her. She wanted someone to go to the movies with, stop off at McDonalds with, someone to call at night and talk all through the night sharing her dreams, hopes, sorrows, she wanted an ahav hetariors. Do you have an English word for that? If so please share it with me. Our modern understanding of the word friend does not fit, give me another word.
For you see that is the relationship God desires with Abraham and with us, do you desire that with him. Can you be a good friend, a good best friend to God? Someone you want to share your secrets, your heart, your dreams with? Someone you can talk to all through the night. Someone that will go with you everywhere you go?
Like Janet I sense God is asking us, “Do you know anyone who needs a friend? I can be a good friend, I can be a best friend.”
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