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Let Your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen Your precepts. Psalm 119:173 NASB
Help – What a wonderful verb! ʿāzar, “to help, to support.” Could you ask anything more of the Sovereign of the Universe than “help me”? Unspecified help. Whatever-is-needed help. Not even limited to my own perspective. This is help from a God who knows what I need better than I do. The idiom “Your hand” only underscores the practical reality of the request. Help here and now, where it is visible, tangible, and transforming.
But there’s another reason why I love this verb. Its derivative, ʿēzer, is one of the two conjoined words that God uses to describe the role of the woman in Genesis 2. “I will make him a helper suitable for him” is how the NASB translates the Hebrew ʿēzer kenĕgdô, but as I have shown in Guardian Angel, the true relationship between the man and the woman is far more than “suitable.” In fact, since the root is ʿāzar, an attribute of God Himself, God’s choice of this particularly odd combination indicates that she, the woman, plays a semi-divine role in the life of her man. She is his help, his support, his nourisher, his reminder, and his guide. She is the physical representation of the character of God in his life. And Adam, the first man, recognized this astounding fact because he changed his own self-definition when she was presented to him (something you see in Hebrew but not in English).
Notice now that God’s help (and “helper”) is tied directly to the choice to follow the piqqûdîm, much more than simply regulations. As we’ve discovered, piqqûdîm are God’s oversight, His management of life. And thus, the ʿēzer kenĕgdô, God’s representative agent, is designed to provide exactly this management role. How blessed is the man whose wife is his manager for he will draw closer to the Lord!
Of course, this implies an incredible responsibility for the woman. As I argued in Guardian Angel, her personal agenda must also come second. Her primary role, and her divine task, is to manage the relationship according to God’s intentions. Her agenda for the relationship, no matter how lofty, must be submitted to God’s goals. And the only way she can know this is to be intimately connected to the Lord. When the poet asks for God’s ready-at-hand help, he might be asking, at the same time, for a suitable helper, a woman who is fully aware of God’s handiwork in her life and ready to manage the two of them to that end. A man who recognizes this and accepts it is bound to be blessed. “The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain” (Proverbs 31:11 NASB).
Perhaps we should pay more attention to the female characteristics of God. We might discover just how much He mothers those who chose His management.
Topical Index: ʿāzar, ʿēzer kenĕgdô, helper, Proverbs 31:11, Genesis 2:18, Psalm 119:173
The quality and character of one “meet to help” is that of unmitigated commitment to the One whose own character is the fullness of love expressed for the good of the object of His love, man, who was fashioned in the image of God himself. This fullness of love for ‘good’ is retained in God’s own goals for mankind and is sustained only by being intimately connected to them through one’s connection to one’s Creator and Sovereign Lord.
Perhaps man, apart from an intentioned reminder, is by nature prone to overlook his need to submit his life to the consistent management of his responsibilities in relation with God “according to God’s intentions”. Perhaps, too, it is God’s intention that the woman should serve to help the man to meet his task to “subdue, rule and keep” by the presence of God’s loving oversight that is itself manifestly demonstrated by the love of a “suitable helper.”
Thanks be to God for his inexpressible love!
“…hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:5)