Thoughts about Genesis (15)

Genesis 2:18-21
¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
¹⁹ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
²¹ So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

Welcome back to the garden in Eden. Today, we will examine God’s task for “the man.” Once again, I’ll be tossing traditional theology to the curb to show you what the Bible actually says. Be prepared to be surprised as you see just how wrong traditional theology is.

Genesis 2:18a
Then the Lord God said,

The combined phrase YHWH Elohim emphasizes a personal yet benevolent God. First, YHWH is a proper noun, the personal name of God. Second, Elohim is a common noun, used to refer to general deity. The name YHWH cannot be readily interpreted.¹ Because the context looks backward and forward, it is legitimate to translate it as “I am who I am.” In other words, God is declaring, “I was God, I will be God, and I always and forever am God.”² By joining YHWH with Elohim, the author conjoins the concept of a personal God who rules over Israel, is at the same time the universal God (Elohim) who rules over all.³

Genesis 2:18b
… It is not good that the man should be alone.

This statement begs the question: why? Why is it not good for the man to be alone? To answer this question, we must look at the nature of God, especially God made man in his image. God has a triune nature that we refer to as the Trinity. Scripture teaches that the Father is God, the Son is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God.

Furthermore, Scripture teaches that the Father is not the Son or the Spirit, that the Son is not the Father or the Spirit, and that the Spirit is not the Father or the Son.⁴ This triune nature, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, is challenging to explain, and no analogy does it service. However, the thing to understand is that God is not alone; therefore, man should not be alone. The phrase “It is not good” does not indicate an imperfection in God’s creation. This phrase is not a qualitative statement but rather an ethical statement (because it goes against the nature of God, who is never alone). God already understood that man should not be alone, but man had not yet learned that lesson, and he needed to.

The diagram on the left is a clumsy attempt at showing the nature of God and how the Trinity interacts. Each person in the Godhead is God. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. They are not three Gods but one God with three distinct aspects or natures. The diagram on the right is a clumsy attempt at showing the nature of the family and how they interact. Each person in the family is part of that family. The Father is family, the mother is family, and the children are family. There are not three families, but one with three distinct aspects or natures.

At this point (verse 18), Adam is alone. He is not experiencing a family relationship. That aspect is missing in his life. But Adam does not know that it is missing. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. God will have to teach Adam that something is missing in his life. But God has an ingenious plan that He will implement very soon.

Genesis 2:18c
… I will make him a helper fit for him.”

The word helper (Strong’s H5828 ezer in Hebrew) means help, support, mutual assistance.⁵ The word is used to describe someone who comes running when the people cry out for help. It is a person who drops everything to save those in need. Everyone needs a drop-everything friend, and Adam was no different.

The word ezer (helper), shows up twenty-one times in the Old Testament:

•  2 times to describe Eve (Genesis 2:18 & Genesis 2:20)
•  1 time to explain that the Hebrew people would not be considered a helper to Egypt (Isaiah 30:5)
•  1 time to explain how the Prince of Jerusalem would be removed and taken to Babylon, and his helpers scattered to the wind (Ezekiel 12:14)
•  17 times helper was used as a descriptor of YHWH himself

God was not creating a servant for Adam here. He made a helper (supporter, assistant) and a defender (shield). Ergo, the same can be said of a woman. Being an ezer had nothing to do with being subservient; an ezer was not a docile assistant or submissive sidekick. We would never describe God in these terms, nor should women be given these labels.

Women should take this role seriously as helpers, supporters, and assistants. The feminist movement sought to destroy this image and place the woman not as an equal but entirely in charge. They destroyed the alliance, the need to support, and the reason to assist. In short, they sought to destroy what God set up so that they could be God instead.

The word fit (Strong’s H5048) is an interesting word (preposition) consisting of two parts: ke-negdo. The first part, negdo, means in front of, before, opposite.⁶ The second part, ke, means like, equal to.⁷ Many Bibles translate this word as suitable. The KJV awkwardly translates it as help meet. (I’m no expert in Middle English, but I have no idea what help meet even means.) Here are some examples of how the word ke-negdo is used in other verses.

•  Hagar sat down opposite her son to watch him die (Genesis 21:15-19).
•  Three months after leaving Egypt, the Hebrew people camped in front of Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:1-2).
•  Scripture was read before the assembly of people (Deuteronomy 31:11, Joshua 8:33, 35, Nehemiah 8:1-3).

The term ke-negdo is, therefore, difficult to translate into English using only one word. A word-for-word translation causes us to miss the imagery of the phrase. God will make a helper, supporter, and assistant equal to and in front of Adam. But what does that look like? Picture a man standing. A woman is standing in front of him. However, she is not facing away from him; instead, she is facing him. However, even though making an ezer is what God said he would do, it was not the first thing on his “to-do” list.

Genesis 2:19
… Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

It is interesting that the phrase out of the ground (land) is used to describe where the birds and animals came from. The word out (Strong’s H4480) is the Hebrew word min being used as a preposition. As such, it can be translated as from, out of.⁸ It expresses a separation. Something is separating from (or) out of the land.

Because of the difference between Hebrew and English grammar, we run into an interesting problem. If you focus on the first part of the sentence Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed, we see that God formed the ground (land). If we focus on the second part of the sentence formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens, we see that God formed the birds and animals “out of the (ground) land.”

Here is my paraphrase of the way the verse should read in English:
Now separating from the land the Lord God had formed, He brought every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens to the man to see what he would call them. (Keep in mind that this is my interpretation and not any authorized version of the Bible.)

Here’s the what if. What if God is not creating anything here? What if God is separating these birds and animals (out of, from) the land and funneling them into Eden, where Adam can name them?

Here’s an interesting question. What day did God create the birds? Answer: on day 5. What day did God create the animals? Answer: on day 6. What was Adam doing on day 5? Answer: naming birds. What was Adam doing on day 6? Answer: naming animals.

Notice that the naming of the creatures is not happening on a haphazard basis. It is very organized. God himself is bringing the birds and animals to Adam. Adam is not simply wandering around; as he sees a new creature, he gives it a name. Adam is not going to the animals; they are coming to him (sounds a little bit like Noah, doesn’t it?). Adam spends a lot of time naming the creatures God is bringing him.

I also get the impression that God is standing right next to Adam as this naming process is happening. God brought the animals to Adam, God did not send them to Adam. That expresses a personal connection. Remember that God is in the process of proving a point to Adam. He is alone. In the process of naming the animals, Adam will get the point of the lesson.

Genesis 2:20
… The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

As Adam gave names to all the male and female creatures, at some point, it dawned on him that he did not have a female. Naming all those creatures must have been a daunting task. At some point, probably on day 6, the proverbial light bulb above his head lit up. He realized he was alone. He realized he could not do this all by himself.

You will notice in 2nd half of the verse that word Adam is capitalized in this verse. This is the first time that the word adam is used as a proper noun. The man made from dust has now officially been given the name Dust (or dirt). Of course Adam sounds better than Dust, so we’ll just keep on using the tradition of not translating the Hebrew name.

Another thing to notice is who was looking for a helper but could not find one. (Hint: it wasn’t God.) God already knew that Adam needed this helper. Adam was the one who came to that conclusion and then realized that the helper he needed was not out there in the animal kingdom. The text does not tell us what happened after Adam realized he was alone. I wonder if he turned to God (who was right there with him) and expressed his need. We’ll never know. All we know is what happened next (after Adam reached his conclusion).

Genesis 2:21
… So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

There is an extremely problematic word in this verse. That word is rib (Strong’s H6763). The word does not mean a human rib bone. There was no word in ancient Hebrew for “rib,” or “rib bone,” or “rib cage.” There is a word for “bone,” but it was not used in this verse. The Hebrew word translated as “rib,” is the Hebrew word tsela. The word tsela means side.⁹ In the Old Testament the word tsela was used to describe the sides of the Ark of the Covenant, the sides of the Tabernacle, and the sides of the temple. If we keep the tsela in context with how it is utilized throughout the Old Testament, then God did not take one of Adam’s ribs; he took a whole side. But what does that mean? He took a whole side.

The word tsela is used consistently in the Old Testament to describe the four sides of a building or thing. Therefore, we must divide Adam into four sides: front, back, left, and right. We have no idea which side God chose to use. As we’ll discover in our next lesson, there was enough of Adam in Eve for Adam to recognize himself in her. Think about it: How would Adam have recognized his rib in Eve if that had been all God had used?

God closed up its place with flesh and restored Adam to normal. The phrase closed up does not mean that God took a side, closed up the wound, and left Adam without that “side.” When Adam woke up, it was as if nothing had happened to his body. Whichever “side.” God took, He completely restored it. The point is that, like Adam, she is handmade. She is special and unique because she was made from Adam.

Final thoughts

So where did the word “rib” come from? It came from translating the Hebrew word into Latin, and then into English. The earliest English Bibles (Coverdale 1535, Tyndale 1537, Geneva Bible 1560, KJV 1611) all translated from the Catholic Vulgate (authorized Bible written in Latin).¹⁰ The English translators only had access to a few Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. The Catholic church guarded their Hebrew manuscripts closely under lock and key and very few people were allowed access to them. It wasn’t until the 1800’s that the Protestant church started to discover other manuscripts that the Catholic church did not have. As more and more manuscripts were discovered, English versions of the Bible no longer had to be translated from the authorized Catholic Latin version. Unfortunately, both the Young’s Concordance (1879), and Strong’s concordance (1890) incorrectly added “rib” as part of the translation. Rib then became the “official” meaning of the word (but only so far as Adam was concerned). No one seemed to be concerned about the context of the word being used in Genesis.

In the past 50 years many Bible scholars have begun to learn what Jewish Torah scholars have known for thousands of years. The word tsela does not mean “rib” at all, it means side. However, tradition is a formidable enemy. Even modern Bibles still use the word rib because it’s traditional to do so. Over 500 years of tradition is difficult to overcome. Fortunately for you (or perhaps unfortunately as the case may be), I am more concerned with accuracy than tradition. As should be evident by now, I have not taught any of the creation story according to tradition but have instead concentrated on accuracy and context.

Below is how I would personally thranslate the scriptures covered in this article:

Genesis 2:18-21
¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper, who provides support and assistance that is equal to him.”
¹⁹ Now separating from the land the Lord God had formed, He brought every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found an ally equal to him.
²¹ So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his sides and closed up its place, completely restoring it with flesh and bones.

© Jan 2025 by Steven P. Wickstrom, all rights reserved.