It’s Not Good

The First Time Anything Was Called Not Good

The making got good six times, one thing at a time, and none of them on the second day. Then He looked at the whole of it and it was very good. That makes seven over that work. Then this. It is not good.

And look at what He is calling not good. Not a mistake, not something that failed, not something that turned on Him. A man on his own in a perfect garden.

Everything around Adam was right. He was in a garden he had not planted, with a river running through it and trees he had not grown, and he had a work to do in it that God had given him.

And God said this part is not good. The verse does not say He looked, but He said it, and He said it about a man who had everything else right around him.

God Said It Before Adam Did

Adam had not asked for anything. He had not complained, he had not said he was lonely, and there is no record that he felt it at all. God is the one who named the lack.

So being alone was not a weakness in Adam and it was not ingratitude. God said it, and He said it about a man who already had Him.

If you have ever felt that ache and then felt ashamed of it, hear this. God had already called being alone not good long before you or I ever felt the ache of it. And whether Adam had felt it, Genesis does not tell me. What it tells me is that God put the words to it, and God spoke first.

He Built Her, and I Said Built

Built. And I said built, because I think that word carries something.

Back in verse 7 the word for Adam was formed, yatsar, a word used for forming or fashioning, and also used of a potter shaping his work. Here the word is banah, build, a word used for building a house or a city. He formed the man. He built the woman.

And He did not build her separate and apart. He built her from the man. Direct.

The beasts were formed of the ground, and so were the birds, and Adam himself was dust. She was not. She came out of a living man.

And Adam was under a deep sleep for all of it. He did not watch it, he had no hand in it, and he could not advise on it. The verse says God brought her to him. So the first he ever knew of her, she was already made and God was bringing her over.

Adam Did Not Design His Own Ezer

And before this, God brought the animals to him, and here is what happened.

He named every one of them, and there was not found an help meet for him. What he learned from that naming, or did not learn, the text does not tell me. What I see is a man who names creature after creature and says nothing about himself, and then sees her and speaks about himself. That is my reading of the silence.

And these are the words Genesis records. Whether anything came out of him before them I do not know, but this is what was written down. Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh is saying something when it is put that way. It is not just a saying.

Adam is naming what she is made of, and he is right. Same origin. And when I set his words beside what God had already said about a help meet for him, and what verse 24 will say about the two becoming one flesh, the chapter gives me the rest. She is matched to him and joined to him. And Adam did not design his own ezer. God did.

And Solomon has a line about this.

Now I am not going to tell you what is or is not inside that word findeth, because I have not looked it up. What I will do is read the second half, because that part is plain. He obtaineth favour of the LORD. The favour is the LORD’s to give, and the man receives it.

Now Solomon is not writing about Adam and Genesis never calls Eve a favour, so the two do not join themselves. I am joining them. Adam was asleep for the making of her, and God brought her over, and I hear the same thing in both.

She was not merely placed beside him to help him. God built from the man a corresponding help for the man, and brought her back to him as the ezer God had already said he needed.

And that is why the word ezer fits her, and it is used of God Himself. Genesis does not put that word on a parent, so when I say it fits us as parents too, that is my carrying it there. What I can say is that it is the same word.

So What Kind of Help Is That

An assistant is told what to do, and nothing happens until you speak first. And I know a rhythm gets built over time, and a good one starts moving before you open your mouth. But at the start of it, somebody has to say.

My mother never waited to be told. She saw what was needed before anybody asked, and then she moved. Half of what she did for me, I never knew I needed. She was my helper and she was never my subordinate.

And God is the same. You do not instruct Him, you do not hand Him a list and wait.

Bishop is episkopos, an overseer, one who looks over. And I take it as a word about eyes before it is ever a word about rank. And beside it, Shepherd, who does not wait for the sheep to tell him what they need. Now Peter is not defining ezer there, and I am not going to say he is. Shepherd and Bishop are Peter’s words. But that is the kind of help I am trying to describe, and I am the one setting them side by side.

And ezer is the kind of help I mean. Not the same word as Peter’s, because ezer is Hebrew and Shepherd and Bishop are his. But it is the same kind of helping to my ear, and the joining is mine. What Scripture does give me plainly is that ezer is used of God. I have not found God called an assistant anywhere, and I do not expect to.

And We Are the Sheep

A sheep will not stay where it is put. It wanders, and it will not come back on its own.

Every one to his own way, and it still came out as astray. That is the thing about sheep the verse gives me. Our own way does not have to look lost to us for God to call it astray.

And here is the turn I want, and I will say plainly that Genesis never calls Adam an assistant. It calls the woman his ezer kenegdo and it never puts a word like that on him. And what the man in that garden knew before God spoke, Genesis does not tell me. What it tells me is this. He never asked. God spoke first.

Her Function Is Not Only Ezer. It Is Ezer Kenegdo.

God is called ezer through Scripture. Eve in Genesis 2:18 is ezer kenegdo. So I do not want to take the first word by itself and make everything said of God as ezer apply to her. Genesis gives her both words, and that is her function, not the first word on its own. He is our help, and He helps from above, and we receive.

Kenegdo is rendered corresponding to him, suitable for him, a counterpart, and it does carry an over against in it. So the word is about being matched to him.

Now here is what I take that to mean, and it is mine, because the word gives me a correspondence and I am the one turning it into a picture. She was not made to walk behind him or stand off to the side waiting to be useful. She was set in front of him, matched to him, facing him.

And I am going to borrow a line from Amos, so let me say that I am borrowing it. Amos is asking a string of cause and effect questions on his way to something else entirely, and he is not talking about a marriage.

So how can she cleave to him, or be one with him, if one is in the back and one is in the front? One flesh does not walk in single file.

And here is what I take from the two of them sharing a word, and the taking is mine, because a shared word does not settle how a thing is done. I read her as helping the way God helps. But she is ezer kenegdo, and kenegdo is the difference Genesis gives me. She is matched to him, and I see them carrying it together.

And in my picture you cannot carry a thing together from two different heights.

His Success Is Hers

My children are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and I do not leave the care of them behind me. I want them in front of me where I can see them, watching their safety, always. That is not authority over anybody. That is eyes on.

And what I have watched is this. When a wife knows her husband cares for her, she will often turn round and do everything she can to see him succeed. Not merely out of duty, because duty is exactly what people hear when they hear the word helper, and duty is not the picture I am drawing.

His success is hers. Not that she helps him with his. The thing is one thing.

Joined

The word cleave in verse 24 is dabaq. To cling, to stick fast, to hold fast. I picture it as being glued to a thing so it will not come away. And that same word is used of holding fast to God.

The word for a man holding fast to his wife is the word for a person holding fast to the LORD.

He said it is not good. And then He built her, and He brought her over.