The Meaning of Matrix

Am I the last person in the English-speaking world to learn that the
primary definition of the word, "matrix," is "the womb"? I was
reading in Exodus this morning and came to a phrase, "the first
offspring of every womb," that I wanted to look up in the King James
translation and then the original Hebrew. The King James renders that
phrase, "all that open the matrix." Who knew that you could find the
word, "matrix," in the King James? Sure enough, my Hebrew/Greek
concordance defined "matrix" as "the womb."

This certainly adds a layer of depth to the 1999 sci-fi movie of the
same name. It also makes me chuckle that in the youth
entrepreneurship program I used to run, we called our entrepreneurial
assessment tool "The MATRIX." Having gone to b-school, I always
thought that a matrix was a grid of rows and columns, and so when we
decided such a grid to track our students' progress (entrepreneurship
success categories in the rows, stages of development in the columns),
it only seemed natural to call the thing, "The MATRIX."

This word in the Hebrew, "rechem," is certainly an interesting one.
(As an aside, isn't Biblical Hebrew, in general, just more interesting
than its English translation? I can see why they make seminarians
learn it, because it makes the Bible a much more expressive and vivid
read.) It comes from the root word, "racham," which means "to fondle,
love," and which is often translated in English versions of the Old
Testament as "mercy." How rich an image, then, that God's mercy is in
the same realm as a mother's womb.

Mercy is a common concept in the Christian tradition, one that is easy
to gloss over. But thanks to a little probing this morning, I now
have a deeper understanding of the concept. I just need to make sure
that when I think about mercy, I don't conjure up images of sleek
heroes in all black or of green letters and symbols cascading down the
screen.