NOT GOOD TO BE ALONE.
Genesis 2:18-24.
Man is not just another animal. Both physically, and morally, ‘Man was made upright’ (Ecclesiastes 7:29). After all, man was made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). God ‘breathed into his nostrils the breath of life’ (Genesis 2:7). (‘Breath’, ‘wind’, and ‘spirit’ are all the same word in Hebrew.)
Man was first made a single male, but is immediately afterwards referred to as a plurality (Genesis 1:27), much as God refers to Himself as a plurality (Genesis 1:26). Man was created with an inbuilt need for company, community, and fellowship (Genesis 2:18).
Our passage takes us back to a time before the ‘all very good’ of Genesis 1:31. It speaks of a time when it was not (yet) all good. Created in the image of God, man craves such companionship as exists within the Trinity. Even those who are called to the single life need the security of community.
Before it is ‘all very good,’ (Genesis 1:31) one thing must be resolved: “It is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). The LORD would make a help meet for man, literally a “helper like opposite him.” Man needed a helper, one like himself but different, opposite, complementary, to stand upright beside him.
Man was given dominion over all other species upon earth (Genesis 1:26; Genesis 1:28; cf. Psalm 8:6-8). Man was blessed with intelligence, and given authority and ability to name the animals (Genesis 2:19-20). But he was not going to find his helper here.
Now, the fact that woman was to be created “for” man (Genesis 2:18) does not in any sense mean that she was to be subjugated and enslaved by him. Rather, the woman was created ‘because of the man’ (1 Corinthians 11:9, my translation), because of his lack, because of his need of a helper.
The word “helper” does not suggest domination, but partnership. The word “helper” does not suggest subservience, but a certain strength and reliability. Interestingly, the word “helper” is used in the Bible more often of God than of anyone else (e.g. Psalm 54:4; Hebrews 13:6).
It is interesting to see God’s method in making/creating woman. First, we see that it was entirely the work of God: the man was passive throughout. If this was a surgical procedure, then God was the surgeon. Man was asleep (Genesis 2:21).
Second, the woman was created out of the man’s side. God took the “rib” and “built” the woman. Then, as the Father of the bride, the LORD God presented her to the man (Genesis 2:22.
Adam’s reaction bordered on the ecstatic. Perhaps we may regard this as the first ever love song: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). It is at least poetic.
In modern idiom, Adam was acknowledging that here at last was his own flesh and blood. Here at last, was “Woman” to stand upright beside “Man.”
The man’s calling his new partner in life “Woman, because she was taken out of Man” was not an exercise of dominion as it had been in the naming of the animals, but an expression of joy at what God had accomplished!
The ordinance of marriage was instituted (Genesis 2:24). Marriage is of a man and a woman, each leaving their parents to cleave to one another, and to become “one flesh.” All was well in the Garden, at least for the time being.
Whatever their respective responsibilities in relation to the fall of mankind, as related in Genesis 3, we can be sure that God already had it covered. The provision was there in the judgment against the serpent, which included a promise pointing directly to Jesus, as THE seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15).
Death was introduced into the world as a consequence of sin; but in faith, Adam now ‘called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living’ (Genesis 3:20). Meanwhile, God in His grace provided skins (requiring the sacrifice of animals) to cover man’s sin (Genesis 3:21).
Finally, ‘In the fulness of time, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman… that we might receive the adoption as sons’ (Galatians 4:4-5).
