From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (I)

It's always struck me that Genesis 2:18 is the first time in all the Bible when God says that something "isn't good." The verse stands out all the more starkly because throughout Chapter 1, God kept saying things were good-- the sea and dry land (1:10), the sun, moon and stars (1:18), the sea creatures and birds (1:21), and the beasts of the field (1:25).

But here, for the first time, something's explicitly and specifically not good. And what a thing it is: the 'adam is alone! God forms a human creature, places him in the garden on the mission of imaging God to the world, and in 2:18 we find out that the male 'adam all on his own is not good, not complete, not able to accomplish God's purposes for him.

A couple of incidentals: 1) this explains why the story has God making the female 'adam out of the male 'adam's rib. It's not to suggest that the woman is in any sense inferior or subsequent to the man. It's so we could see the helpless (and according to 2:18 he is, quite literally help-less) male all alone, and recognize with God how not-good that state of affairs is. 2) We have to read this in light of Gen 1:27, where it says that God made the 'adam in his own image, male and female, he created them. On his own the male 'adam can't Image God; it takes male and female together to do that. Rather than being archaically patriarchal, this text actually underscores the man and woman's interdependence in radical ways.

But all that is incidental to my main thought here.  Because the solution to this "not-good" situation is for God to give the male a helping hand. And what a helping hand he had in mind! The Hebrew phrase in 2:18 is "etzer chenaged," and a lot of theological ink had been spilled over this one. Literally it means something like "a help that is compatible/fitting/completing and/or equal to him."

Often scholars point out that etzer (help) is the word the Bible uses when it wants to talk about how God is Israel's "help." In other words, the woman is not the man's "help" the way Robin is a "helper" to Batman; more in the way a search and rescue team is a "help" to the lost and stranded hiker. And this morning I find myself deeply grateful for the "etzer chenaged"-- the "fitting help" that God has given me in the many godly women he has placed in my life, who together have kept me from trying to "image God" alone in my "help-less" maleness. But in particular, of course, I'm thanking him for that one woman he caused my heart to cleave to, my wife. Through her help, I've come to appreciate how true the flip side of Genesis 2:18 is, that it is good for the man to be not alone.