I am a helper and helpmate, a shield of protection I am strength in my weakness when I stand firm on Him I am help to remember the commands of God I am light on a hill when the day seems grim. In Genesis God created Havvah to be Adam’s ezer. Almost every other time that the word “ezer” is used, it’s used about God in that He’s a helper and a shield. That’s not the kind of helper we think about – cooking, cleaning, subservient… This helper is a protector, a place of refuge and provision. All the things that God does in His role of helper are built into the meaning of “ezer.” Those same things are built into who I am as an ezer. Those are some big shoes! But it does shed light on who I am, and who I was made to be. Perhaps that’s why I try to take care of everything and why I “rule the roost.” Havvah was there to point Adam to God and help Him remember the commands of God. That’s an area where I struggle. How can I do that when I struggle to hear God myself?
Genesis 2:18 And the LORD God said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. I have felt recently that I haven’t done a very good job as a wife. I have no idea what I’m doing sometimes as a mom, but I think my ability to be a wife is the bigger issue. My sometimes thoughtless ways have hurt him, even though it wasn’t intentional, and my busy-ness has sometimes bordered on selfishness. I have a hard time stopping what I’m doing to focus on him. Anyway, I wanted to look at how God sees my role, so that’s probably what I’ll do for the next few days. Starting with the basics, I return to my creation. God calls Havah (she’s not really named “Eve”) the “ezer kenegdo” for Adam. The only other ezer in the Bible is God, himself. That doesn’t mean that she was god-like. It means that her purpose is similar to that of God’s – protection, strength, and sometimes conflict. The following is an article from “God’s Word to Women” about what this title means. Word Study EZER KENEGDO Usages of ‘ezer in the Old Testament show that in most cases God is an ‘ezer to human beings, which calls to question if the word “helper” is a valid interpretation of ‘ezer in any instance it is used. “Evidence indicates that the word ‘ezer originally had two roots, each beginning with different guttural sounds. One meant “power” and the other “strength.” As time passed, the two guttural sounds merged, but the meanings remained the same. The article below by William Sulik explains this point quite well. He references R. David Freedman and Biblical Archaeology Review 9 [1983]: 56-58). “She was to be his “helper”–at least that is how most of the translations have interpreted this word. A sample of the translations reads as follows: ‘I shall make a helper fit for him’ (RSV); ‘I will make a fitting helper for him’ (New Jewish Publication Society); ‘I will make an aid fit for him’ (AB); ‘I will make him a helpmate’ (JB); ‘I will make a suitable partner for him’ (NAB); ‘I will make him a helper comparable to him’ (NKJV). However, the customary translation of the two words `ezer kenegdo as “helper fit is almost certainly wrong. Recently R. David Freedman has pointed out that the Hebrew word ezer is a combination of two roots: `-z-r, meaning “to rescue, to save,” and g-z-r, meaning “to be strong.” The difference between the two is the first letter in Hebrew. Today that letter is silent in Hebrew; but in ancient times, it was a guttural sound formed in the back of the throat. The “g” was a ghayyin, and it came to use the same Hebrew symbol as the other sound, `ayin. But the fact that they were pronounced differently is clear from such place names which preserve the “g” sound, such as Gaza or Gomorrah. Some Semitic languages distinguished between these two signs and others did not. For example, Ugaritic did make a distinction between the `ayin and theghayyin; Hebrew did not. (R. David Freedman, “Woman, a Power Equal to a Man,” Biblical Archaeology Review 9 [1983]: 56-58). It would appear that sometime around 1500 B.C., these two signs began to be represented by one sign in Phoenician. Consequently, the two “phonemes” merged into one “grapheme.” What had been two different roots merged into one, much as in English the one word “fast” can refer to a person’s speed, abstinence from food, his or her slyness in a “fast deal,” or the adamant way in which someone holds “fast” to positions. The noun `ezer occurs twenty-one times in the Old Testament. In many of the passages, it is used in parallelism to words that clearly denote strength or power. Some examples are: ”There is none like the God of Jeshurun, The Rider of the Heavens in your strength (`-z-r), and on the clouds in his majesty.” (Deut. 33:26, [author's] translation) “Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is the shield of your strength (`-z-r) and the sword of your majesty.” (Deut. 33:29, [author's] translation) The case that begins to build is that we can be sure that `ezer means “strength” or “power” whenever it is used in parallelism with words for majesty or other words for power such as `oz or `uzzo. In fact, the presence of two names for one king, Azariah and Uzziah, both referring to God’s strength, makes it abundantly clear that the root `ezer meaning “strength” was known in Hebrew. Therefore, could we conclude that Genesis 2:18 be translated as “I will make a power [or strength] corresponding to man.” Freedman even suggests on the basis of later Hebrew that the second word in the Hebrew expression found in this verse should be rendered equal to him. If so, then God makes for the man a woman fully his equal and fully his match. In this way, the man’s loneliness will be assuaged. The same line of reasoning occurs with the apostle Paul, who urged in 1 Corinthians 11:10, “For this reason, a woman must have power [or authority] on her head [that is to say, invested in her].” This line of reasoning, which stresses full equality, is continued in Genesis 2:23 where Adam says of Eve, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” The idiomatic sense of this phrase “bone of my bones” is a “very close relative” to “one of us” or in effect “our equal.” The woman was never meant to be an assistant or “helpmate” to the man. The word “mate” slipped into English since it was so close to the Old English word “meet,” which means “fit to” or “corresponding to” the man which comes from the phrase that likely means “equal to.” What God had intended, then, was to make a “power” or “strength” for the man who would in every way “correspond to him” or even “be his equal.”” The Torah Study for Reform Jews says, “From the time of creation, relationships between spouses have at times been adversarial. In Genesis 2:18, God calls woman an ezer kenegdo, a “helper against him.” The great commentator Rashi takes the term literally to make a wonderful point: “If he [Adam] is worthy, [she will be] a help [ezer]. If he is not worthy [she will be] against him [kenegdo] for strife.” This Jewish study also described man and woman facing each other with arms raised holding an arch between them, giving a beautiful picture of equal responsibility. Another great resource is Skip Moen’s website. Here are three great articles: 1. Double Prepositional-ism 2. The Great Risk 3. A Special Kind of Help There’s more… later!
Psalm 119:52 I remembered Your judgments of old, O LORD, And have comforted myself. In Hebrew verbs are the most important part of the sentence. Even God calls Himself, “I AM.” ”Am” is a verb – “to be” in the present tense, ongoing. Anyway, one of the things that Adam was made to do was to remember. His job was to remember what God had said. He failed to do this when his ezer failed to guard him by not believing that God had made her exactly right for her job and thinking that she could do her job better if she just listened to her heart (the one that God had given her). Adam, standing there, could have remembered and stopped her. But, that’s another story. I learned the other day that Hebrew verbs don’t have tenses and that there wasn’t a word for “time” either. Everything was finished or not yet finished. Here’s something that might blow your mind: the word for “of old” is ‘owlam. Here’s what it means (blueletterbible.com): 1) long duration, antiquity, futurity, for ever, ever, everlasting, evermore, perpetual, old, ancient, world a) ancient time, long time (of past) b) (of future) 1) for ever, always 2) continuous existence, perpetual 3) everlasting, indefinite or unending future, eternity Do you see it? This word means both antiquity and futurity, both the past and the future! Interesting how it’s so intertwined… Anyway, David finds comfort in looking back at (remembering) the judgments of God because they remind Him that God is faithful. The covenants that God has made last from the ancient past to the indefinite future. As God has faithfully judged in the past, so He will faithfully judge in the future. God is constantly reminding His people of the things He’s done for them – bringing them out of Egypt, routing their enemies, feeding them with manna from heaven, etc. I can’t always understand the Hebrew way of thinking about things because I am so steeped in the Greek mindset (we almost all are); however, I can look back and remember the faithfulness and judgments of God, and this is comforting. One last note: apparently in Hebrew a thing can’t be separated from its characteristics. For example, in our language we say that the kettle is silver, assuming there’s a kettle and there’s silver and the kettle just happens to be silver. It’s like a coloring book where everything is lines, and we just happened to put some silver crayon in the kettle lines. In Hebrew it’s a silver kettle (there is no word for “is” in Hebrew). If you take away the silver, there is no kettle. There are no lines to be filled up with a little bit of this or that. You can’t separate something from its characteristics or it ceases to be. So, in Hebrew, God and faithfulness are the same thing. Take away faithfulness and there is no more God. Take away God, and there is no more faithfulness… Kind of cool, right? Now think about what that means for Christians and what our characteristics are supposed to be and what we are supposed to do (like obey the commands of God)… That’s kind of scary, huh?
During lunch there’s a group of several girls who usually stay in my room and eat their food. Partially because we work on aspects of the game, and we talk about things pertaining to the class and how it’s going. And sometimes we get into interesting talks. Yesterday we ended up speaking about politics in religion. I think it started when they were speaking about how men had made themselves superior to women, and I told them the story of creation according to the Hebrew Bible, complete with a mini-lesson about the ezer and what Hassah means and how the roles were reversed. And somehow, the discussion ended up at the questions about 2 things: First, how do you know all this stuff? And second, how come you still believe in God if it seems like you’re constantly discovering the Bible’s not accurate? Here’s kind of what I said. I wish I had been clearer. I told them, first, that I grew up believing because it’s what my parents taught me. But eventually I had to figure out what I believed and why, all for myself. After I did that, I kept learning. Today, I’m digging into our Biblical roots so that I have a broader and deeper understanding of who God is and what I believe. As for the second thing…. Well, just because I find that the way I was taught is incorrect doesn’t mean that the Bible is incorrect. The translation we have is not perfect because it was politically influenced, and there are lots of words that we just don’t always know how to translate from Hebrew because Hebrew’s such a rich language with so many descriptive words. But even though I may find inconsistency in translation, underneath the foundational principle on which I rest my faith remains the same: God loves me and Jesus died to remove the guilt of my sin so that relationship could be restored between us. (That’s the part I wish I had been clearer on. Because of the whole “don’t push religion on our kids thing” I didn’t get that far into it. I just said that nothing I had discovered in my learning disproved or discounted the basics of what I believe.) Finding out the truth has made my belief in and understanding of God much deeper and richer. Realizing that the version of the Bible I read is not particularly accurate is frustrating, but not also not completely surprising. I would love to learn Hebrew and Greek so I could read our Bible in it’s original form (I’d like to read the Gospels in their original Hebrew form, but the copy we have of that is pretty rare). So, one day when things seems to be a little less chaotic, I want to study those languages. I want to know more. And I want to be more bold and more direct the next time my students ask me questions. I pray they keep asking.