All by Myself
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18 NASB
Alone – Since the publication of Guardian Angel, my work on this chapter in Genesis has been either jubilantly welcomed or vehemently rejected. Those who welcome the exegesis are typically people who have experienced the repression of the Church’s male domination. Those who reject it are typically males who have a vested interest in maintaining their power over women. My explanation of the ‘ezer kenegdo (“helper suitable”) removes the centuries of misogynistic translation not found in the Hebrew text. In the Genesis account, the woman is God’s final creation, His magnum opus, the capstone of humanity. Equipped with an intuitive understanding of the relationship between God and human beings, she is designed to lead her man into those practical steps that will bring about God’s intention for creation. All of this is in the text if we are willing to set aside eighteen hundred years of deliberate miseducation. But we should have known this—right from the start—when we examined the single word bādad.
Recently I read Avivah Zornberg’s commentary on Leviticus (The Hidden Order of Intimacy). While she doesn’t draw out the implications for her exegesis of bādad for the Genesis text, she gives us important insight into the fuller meaning of this word as it is found in Leviticus. Note the following:
“The singular quality of this aloneness is separation, a lone-wolf experience.”[1]
Speaking of Leviticus’ description of the slanderer, she writes:
“His total isolation evokes the effect of his slander on others. Stigmatizing others, he has exploited the implicitly negative power of language to differentiate, define, isolate.”[2]
Remember that this word, the word of separation, is first encountered in the Genesis 2 passage. According to God’s assessment, it is not good for man to be bādad. Zornberg helps us see that this is not simply separation. It is an assessment of a defective condition. Man by himself is not man. He is some form of isolated creature, looking like a homo sapien but not functioning like one. Zornberg describes this defective state as a disease:
“His pathology represents an interruption of life, a kind of limbo, of not-yet-knowing what to think or what to say, of being engrossed, bewildered. In this limbo condition, a space is made for the Real—that which resists definition.”[3]
When God calls the man bādad, He is not merely stating a current condition of isolation. He is noticing a disease; a pathology that interrupts the purpose of life itself. This pathology, applied to Adam, leaves him in a state of confusion and chaos. He is unable to make sense of life, not because he doesn’t have tasks but because he fails to have purpose. Just like the slanderer, this condition cries out for resolution. “His desolation creates a connection with others whose compassion is stirred.”[4] And God responds. “I will make for him an ‘ezer kenegdo.” Zornberg adds:
“ . . . the human being who cries in sympathy is said to be crying kenegdo (in sympathy, in response) and not, . . immo(with him). This is not simply empathy: the disembodied voice creates a ‘neurological’ connection with the body of the listener. As with the phenomenon of mirror neurons, seeing or hearing the suffering Other causes hormonal changes in the body and emotions of the perceiver.”[5]
Given the insight from Leviticus, we discover the true plight of the man without an equal partner. He is sick. He carries a self-isolating illness that keeps him apart from essential community. He is wrapped in chaos, internally unable to find purpose and direction. He is slightly less than human. The creation of the woman is not the creation of a helper, an assistant, or a serving partner. It is the creative response to a fundamental flaw. It is God’s compassionate reply to the desperate condition of a fatal pathology. When the Church stopped being Hebraic, it imported Greek power politics into the text—and left men helplessly unwell.
Topical Index: bādad, ‘ezer kenegdo, slanderer, Leviticus 19:15, Genesis 2:18
[1] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on the Book of Leviticus (Schocken Books, 2022), p. 125.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., p. 127.
[4] Ibid., p. 128.
[5] Ibid., p. 129.
