Wednesday 1st February
Read Genesis 2:18-20
“The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’
19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.” (NIVUK)
The ink spilled over the translation of ‘ezer kenegdo’, even in the last 50 years, is immense. ‘Suitable helper’ and ‘help-meet’ are quite common. It is unfortunate that by using ‘helper’ many conclude that in some way woman is inferior to man, subservient. Unfortunate because that sense does not quite capture the Hebrew. In other passages the phrase ‘ezer’ is used in military contexts, like a ‘side-by-side’ armed supporter or reinforcement in battle! The ‘helper’ is strong. Often the ‘helper’ is God (cf 1 Samuel 7:12-13). There is nothing unequal or inferior there. And the qualifying phrase ‘kenegdo’ seeks to emphasis the similarity between man and woman. Some translations use ‘like to himself’ for ‘suitable’. Literally it is ‘like opposite him’. It implies a perfectly complementary fit. In Eastern religious jargon, a yin and yang perhaps? Balanced, like the Genesis 1 echo ‘male and female He created them’ (v27c).
This is part of the reason we have the long parade of animals that Adam is called to name. It is the exercise of his divine image. Naming is a royal right (cf ‘And He called the…Genesis 1:5, 8, 10) and in exercising that right it was revealed that nothing with the breath of life was ‘like unto him’. There was no perfect companion to whom the human could give of himself and love. There was nothing in creation ‘like to himself’ and he needed to see the breadth of all that was living to realise this. He was lost without the other, without his opposite; ‘no suitable helper was found’ (v20).
The very first thing that was ‘not good’ in creation was the lack of an ‘opposite’ for man. Humanity is most complete, most fulfilled, in relationship with ‘opposites’. The ability to embrace and love ‘the other’ is what makes us truly human and restores goodness.
After all, it is precisely what our Lord did in coming down and loving us, whilst we were still His enemies. Opposing Him in unimaginable ways. Consider these lines from that great Robert Robinson hymn from 1758.
“Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood”
A truly ‘suitable helper’ who sought us when we were lost and rescued us from danger…
