Genesis Deeper ⑪ It Is Not Good to Be Alone · Is a Helper a Position Below? (Genesis 2:18~20)
A series that takes one Bible passage at a time and looks a little deeper. Every post comes with images you are free to use in worship, class, or on social media.
Yahweh God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.” Out of the ground Yahweh God formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them… The man gave names to all livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field; but for man there was not found a helper comparable to him.
Genesis 2:18~20 (World English Bible)
1. Seven times he said it was good. Then he says something else
Read through Genesis 1 and the same line keeps coming back.
“…God saw that it was good.”
Count them and there are seven in chapter 1: verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25 and 31. The last one goes a step further than the other six.
“God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good…” (1:31)
Reading that is a comfortable thing. He makes, he looks, he calls it good. He makes again, he looks again, he calls it good again. That is the rhythm of the creation story.
Then, at 2:18, the rhythm breaks. For the first time God says “not good”.
“…It is not good for the man to be alone…”
Look at what he calls not good. It is not something the man did wrong. Sin has not even entered the story yet. The one thing God calls not good is that the man is by himself.
And straight away he speaks of the one who will fill that place. The older English versions call this one a “help meet”; most modern ones say “a helper comparable to him”.
2. But the word ‘helper’ is where people get stuck
Some readers feel uneasy at this point, and it is usually the wording that does it.
In everyday English a helper is someone who assists. A helper in the kitchen, a helper in the office. Somebody else is doing the main work, and the helper stands beside them, one rank down.
The old phrase ‘help meet’ does not clear things up either. It is archaic enough that most people no longer hear anything in it at all.
So when the two words are put together, a picture forms: there is a lead, and there is someone alongside to assist.
There is a second thing that catches. Verse 19 is strange.
God has just said it is not good for the man to be alone. And the very next thing he does is make animals and birds and bring them to the man. Animals cannot be the answer to a man being alone. God would hardly be unaware of that.
So why is verse 19 here at all? And does ‘helper’ really name a position below him?
3. Going deeper · Not a place beneath him, a place facing him
Three words, one at a time. All three are narrower and clearer in Hebrew than in English.
First, “not good”.
In Hebrew, lo tov (לֹא־טוֹב). It is the same ‘good’ that rang seven times in chapter 1, with a negative in front of it.
All fifty chapters of Genesis were searched for it. It occurs exactly once, at 2:18. In the whole book, this is the only time God calls anything not good.
So what does that one occurrence mean? It helps to notice when the ‘good’ of chapter 1 arrives. It comes after a day’s work is finished. He makes light, and it is good. He gathers the waters, and it is good.
Which means “not good” is not saying something is broken. It is saying this is not finished yet. A man on his own was not, in God’s sight, a completed thing.
Second, “helper”.
In Hebrew, ezer (עֵזֶר). There is a simple way to test whether this word points downward: look at who the Bible uses it for.
All thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Bible were searched. The book where this word appears most often is Psalms, with twenty-five places. Here is one of them.
“I will lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from Yahweh, who made heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1~2)
The word translated ‘help’ there is this word. It sits in the place a person looks up toward.
It turns up in a name as well. Moses’ second son was called Eliezer, which joins ‘my God’ to ‘help’. Exodus writes the meaning out for us.
“…My father’s God was my help and delivered me from Pharaoh’s sword.” (Exodus 18:4)
So ezer is not a word for a lower position. In the Bible it is often God himself who is called by it. For what it is worth, in all fifty chapters of Genesis the word occurs in just two places, 2:18 and 2:20.
Third, “comparable to him”.
This is the key to the passage. In Hebrew, kenegdo (כְּנֶגְדּוֹ).
The word is built from three pieces: ke, meaning ‘like’, neged, meaning ‘opposite’ or ‘in front of’, and an ending meaning ‘him’. Put together it says “like one standing face to face with him”.
What kind of word neged is can be heard in a verse everybody knows.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…” (Psalm 23:5)
The phrase ‘in the presence of’ is that word. It means the space directly opposite, the place across from you. Not above, not below.
And how rare is kenegdo? All thirty-nine books were counted, and it appears in exactly two verses: Genesis 2:18 and Genesis 2:20. Every occurrence of it in the entire Bible sits inside the passage we are reading right now.
To name this one person, Scripture reached for a word it uses nowhere else.
So here is where that leaves us. What God called not good was the man being alone. And when he named the one who would fill that place, the word he used was not ‘someone to assist from below’ but ‘someone standing face to face’. The thing that caught in section 2 comes loose here.
4. Word notes · not good · helper · face to face · to see
① not good · lo tov (לֹא־טוֹב). The negative lo (לֹא) in front of tov (טוֹב), ‘good’. In fifty chapters of Genesis it appears in one place only, 2:18.
② helper · ezer (עֵזֶר). A noun meaning ‘help’. It does not name a subordinate, and there are many places where God himself is called by it. In Genesis it occurs only at 2:18 and 2:20.
③ comparable to him · kenegdo (כְּנֶגְדּוֹ). Built on neged (נֶגֶד), ‘opposite’, with pieces added front and back. In the whole Hebrew Bible it stands in only two verses, Genesis 2:18 and 2:20. That is why English versions scatter so widely here: help meet, helper suitable, helper comparable, partner. There is no single English word waiting for it.
④ to see · lirot (לִרְאוֹת), from raah (רָאָה), ‘to see’. The reason God brought the animals over in verse 19 is carried in this one word. He did not bring them to check something. He brought them to see what the man would do.
5. God did not hand him the answer first
Now back to verse 19, the one that seemed strange in section 2.
God formed the animals and birds out of the ground. As we saw in an earlier post, that is the same material and the same verb used when he formed the man. So the creatures of verse 19 are very close kin to him.
Those close kin are the ones God leads over to the man. And the text tells us why: “…to see what he would call them…”
The man looks at them one by one. He looks, he gives a name, he looks at the next. Verse 20 reports the result.
“The man gave names to all livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field; but for man there was not found a helper comparable to him.”
Every name was given, and still there was no one to stand face to face with him. It only became clear after he had looked at every one of them.
Something shows here. God did not tell the man the answer first. Instead of announcing that the man was alone, he let the man find it out for himself.
That is what makes the last line of verse 20 heavy. It is not a report of what the man failed to find. It tells us what he had been looking for. The answer of section 3 is confirmed here from the side: what the man needed was not a hand to assist him but a face to look at.
6. For us today
What this passage asks of us today is one thing: where am I putting the person next to me?
We sort people above and below more often than we notice. In a classroom it is the one teaching and the ones being taught. At home it is the one looking after and the one being looked after. Once people are sorted that way, ‘helping’ quietly turns into ‘assisting from underneath’.
But the first time Scripture speaks of a helper, the word it chooses is a place facing you. It is the position you have to meet someone’s eyes to be in. If you are not the same height, one of you has to kneel down.
If you are going to help somebody this week, it may be worth looking at their face first. It is the same for a child and for an adult. Help does not come down from above; it crosses over from a place where two people are facing each other.
That is the kind of place God gave the man first.
“Yahweh God, you called it not good for the man to be alone. Help us remember that you set us in a place facing one another. Change the heart in us that looks down on the person nearby, and let us see their face before we reach out to help. Make us faces to look at for one another, not merely hands that assist. Amen.”
🕊 How to use this in ministry
Opening question
Start with “Tell me about one time someone helped you.” and write a few answers on the board. Then ask a second question: “Where was that person standing? In front of you, or behind you?” Leave the answers unsorted and read Genesis 2:18 together.
Activity
Put up the image of the person and the deer facing each other and ask why the person went down on one knee. Once the answer comes, have everyone pair up and stand facing each other at the same eye level. Where the two are different heights, one of them has to kneel. Holding that position, each says one sentence about the hardest part of their day.
Take-away
Put up the image of the animals being named and ask one question only: “He named every single one. So why was he still alone?” Set it beside the answers on the board and the class will join them up on their own.
🖼️ Today’s four images · long-press or right-click to save
A full world, one person alone |
Not good for the man to be alone |
A place facing each other |
He gave them names |
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