Logical Antithesis

Source Text

Genesis 2:18
And the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.”

The emphasis is mine.

Misinterpretation

Considering how English goes, it isn’t surprising how this error occurred. The simple explanation is, that, as “meet” lost its meaning, the phrase was blended together into a new word. This new word is “help-meet”, which I find is used frequently in discussions, or sermons, about marriage. This happened due to natural linguistic tendencies and the frequent abandonment of older words in contemporary English.

Reinterpretation

Genesis 2:18 in Four Translations

King James Version
And the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”

American Standard Version
And Jehovah God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.”

Young’s Literal Translation
And Jehovah God saith, “Not good for the man to be alone, I do make to him an helper — as his counterpart.”

Darby’s Literal Translation
And Jehovah Elohim said, “It is not good that Man should be alone; I will make him a helpmate, his like.”

“Counterpart” or “Helpmate”

Most modern people do not express these two meanings verbally, but allude to the concept of a “help-meet” without bothering to define one. Thanks to the degradation of today’s vernacular these words do not fully retain their original meaning, despite the supposedly universal understanding of the concept. So I’ve used the above translations to define the phrase.

Helpmate is an artificial infusion of words that try to communicate the meaning of the Hebrew. Yet, in spite of its artificiality, helpmate is a decent approximation.

But I prefer the use of counterpart. Since the modern dictionaries are rather ambiguous, and lack good examples, I’ll use Webster’s 1828 Dictionary instead.

COUNTERPART, n. [counter and part.]

1. The correspondent part; the part that answers to another, as the two papers of a contract or indentures; a copy; a duplicate. Also, the part which fits another, as the key of a cipher.

2. In music, the part to be applied to another; as, the base is the counterpart to the treble.

Despite the difficulty in reading Young’s translation, its interpretation comes closest to the meaning: “I make him a helper as his counterpart,” to paraphrase.

“It is not good that Man should be alone…”

The tone of the scriptures here is strong. So strong that, of all the miraculous things God has created, the only thing which was left undone, or incomplete, was Man. Man’s loneliness is accentuated by the fact that he was given the task of naming all the beasts. I doubt it would have taken Adam long to discover that each male of each species had its mate, except him.

Why?

It is my opinion that God wished to teach a weighty and lasting lesson: that the companionship of marriage is a very valuable thing. Why else would He take so much effort to show Adam this lack? If God were to just go, “Poof! here’s your girl, Adam,” at the beginning, then Eve’s value would have been diminished from what was intended. Instead, He reinforced that lack by creating woman last—after man had a chance to learn of it. So, while Adam was created as a complete, adult, intelligent, and reasoning man, he still lacked that final thing. Thus God created woman, and Adam named her Eve.

But the story doesn’t end there, for the first recorded words spoken by Adam are profoundly poetic. What most people don’t understand is that this is actually the naming of “woman”, and is very significant to the poem. Woman, in Hebrew, is pronounced “eesh-shah”; Man is pronounced “eesh”.

Genesis 2:23 (ASV)
And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

And this time his counterpart fit like nothing else. Like the legend to a map, or as a key to its cipher, man(kind) was completed by the creation of woman. And therefore or “because of this,”—

Genesis 2:24 (ASV)
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Marriage is the pattern laid out by Genesis 2. But, what about Paul? Wasn’t he single, and didn’t he encourage every Christian to be single as well?

Paul’s Singleness

1^st Corinthians 7:6-9 (KJV)
But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment.
For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.
I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.
But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

At this time in history the persecution of the church was either rampant or (as yet) off in the distance. Paul was able to, as a single man, do a great deal of work which no married man could have done. (Perhaps would have is a better choice of words.) A married man must care for his wife and children, and Paul was constantly on the move. In addition, he was under constant danger for his life!¹ Paul’s destiny was to be slain to God’s glory, to spread the seed of the Word far and wide. The concerns of a married man would have hindered him greatly.

In Ephesians 4 Paul tells us that not everyone is called to the same end, just as the parable of the body of Christ² tells us we all have different roles. (Even 1^st Corinthians 7:7 echoes this difference in gifts.)

Not everyone is a Paul or a Barnabas.

Proverbs 18:22
Whoso hath found a wife hath found a good thing, and hath obtained favour from Jehovah.

It is Paul that said “all scripture inspired of God,” and it is the Old Testament we have today that he spoke of. As he said in the Corinthians, it wasn’t a commandment but as a willing service to God. In fact, Paul never commanded celibacy, but warned that those who do command it have been seduced by the devil’s doctrine.³ Hence, he did not contradict himself when he encouraged singleness. As he prefaced his desires, “I speak this out of permission…” and not of any commandment. And, if the two persons cannot excercise self-restraint, “let them marry.”

Today isn’t that much different, but for now we are at peace. If I were to make a judgement of my own, I would say that most all men and women were created for marriage, and that only a few are suitable for life-long singleness. The capacity for life-long singleness is a gift of God, just as is the gift of a spouse.

But what about love?!

What about it?

Today’s perception of the word “love” is just the Greek myth of eros, or romantic love. Or, to be more explicit in meaning, eros is a sexual yearning or desire—literally, “sexual love”. So find me in the Bible this sort of love is condoned rather than condemned⁴, and maybe I’ll concede the point.

But I don’t discard love completely. Love is necessary, but it is an act of the will, not a force of romantic or sexual attraction! Will backed by a good heart will never get you where eros and a sick heart will.

In Closing

The term “help meet” should be replaced in daily use by that of counterpart, because its meaning is clearer. Though, as I think I have adequately shown, this isn’t such a hard phrase to understand if you study the Bible a little. And, in my own opinion, this is a very interesting aspect of the Bible that is totally counter-cultural.

If I were to translate Genesis 2:18, I would likely express it as, “And the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his counterpart.’”

Footnotes

¹ 2^nd Corinthians 11:16-33

² Romans 12:5, 1^st Corinthians 12:11-27

³ 1^st Timothy 4:1-3

⁴ 2^nd Samuel 13, Leviticus 18:5-30