And Jehovah Elohim said, It is not good that Man should be alone; I will make him a helpmate, his like.
In this chapter God plants a garden, gives man work, and sets one rule. Then the first thing He calls "not good" is Adam by himself. That raises the questions this verse turns on. Why is being alone a fault in a world with nothing yet wrong? What sort of "helper" does God intend? And why does He announce the plan before He carries it out?
A judgment about man's comfort
Up to this point in the chapter God has issued commands. Here He gives a considered judgment about what is best for the man He made.
Here in Genesis 2 the LORD God is both moral Governor and Creator. He enters with kind care into the daily life and comfort of man on earth. He has a kind and wise mind about man's well-being. He also speaks it out, so that man may know it as His. This is not a command, as in verses 16 and 17. It is the kind judgment of One who knew everything and overflowed with favour toward man. "Then the LORD God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone.'" Exchange of affection and interest is good for man. No wonder that solitude is the harshest punishment short of death.
A gift, not a repair
Adam had lost nothing and done nothing wrong. What follows is added goodness on top of an already generous provision.
The love that had blessed with so much had further good in store, and that in the form of one who should be worthy of the object of such love and goodness.
The gift met more than Adam's need for a working partner.
For Adam, where everything was still right, here was a spiritual being he could share thought and feeling with — the exchange our whole being craves. She was also an object for his heart. She was a pledge of his Creator's love. In her, love served him where he could see it, and drew out his own love. She rescued him from isolation, and from being wrapped up in himself.
Discovering the lack
God states the need in verse 18, then parades the animals before Adam in the verses that follow. The order is deliberate.
God did not create man to be self-sufficient. He needed more than company. He needed a "helper fit for him," a counterpart. We see the goodness of God as well as His wisdom in the way the counterpart came into being. God's aim was Adam's own good. So He brought the whole range of beasts and birds before Adam. That way Adam saw for himself that no such counterpart existed among them.
The root of marriage
Every marriage since traces back to the word spoken here. It also traces back to something in man that mirrors God Himself.
"A marriage" carries us back at once to Eden, and to the word by which God set it up: "It is not good that the man should be alone." God made man for communion. The gift of language shows it — man can speak, and can be spoken to. In this he shows not only a creature's need. He also shows the likeness of his Creator. In the very preface to his creation the words "Let us make man" speak of communion.
God supplied the need in one particular way. That makes this verse the measure of every later departure from it. The first on record is Lamech, who took two wives.
It was "not good that the man should be alone." But His provision was not two or more. It was one woman, "a helper fit for him," his counterpart. Self-will kept growing. In the end it did not hesitate to cross God's mind, which His act had shown plainly to those who fear Him: "And Lamech took two wives." From the beginning it was not so.
Why not a second man
God's answer to Adam's aloneness was not simply another human being. One writer asks why.
The man was created first, and it was not good for him that he should be alone. The woman was created in view of this need. Why a woman for that reason, and not another man? Because another man would not have given the help she gave.
A larger loneliness answered
One writer reads the same words as God's thought about Christ, answered in the church.
In eternity past God looked forward and saw the risen, glorified Son. He was saying, It is not good for Him to be alone. I will build a helper suitable for Him. God thought it; God said it; and God has done it. All of it is of God. Think of the predestined glory of the church. Whatever Adam was, that was every particle of Eve. Whatever Christ is, as the risen man from among the dead, such shall be, such is, His bride.
Summary
- Not good — In a world God had called good, the one fault He names is Adam being alone. He says it as kind judgment about man's comfort, not as a command.
- Gift — The remedy is added goodness, not repair. God gives a counterpart who draws out Adam's heart and rescues him from himself.
- Discovery — God announces the need, then lets Adam name the animals and find no match, so the gift lands on a felt lack.
- Institution — Marriage rests on this word. One woman for one man is the shape of God's provision. Lamech's two wives are the first break with it.
- Fulfilment — Read forward, the same sentence is God's thought about His Son. The answer is a bride who shares everything He is.