This page was migrated in July 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
31 July 2022 Navigate 'up to the Genesis index: index-genesis.
God makes Adam an ezer kenegdo. I don't think the dust has yet settled, in scholarly circles, on how to translate this tricky phrase, which the Revised Version renders by the -- to today's reader's -- unhelpful an help meet for him. As Driver rightly points out:
'Meet' is of course an archaism, meaning adapted, suitable (cf. Ex. viii. 26; Mt. iii. 8 [AV], xv. 26). To speak of a woman (as is sometimes done) as man's 'help-meet' (absolutely) is an error implying strange ignorance of the English language.
I'm not here to propose a solution to the problem. But I will say this. In Hebrew, ezer, often translated as "helper," doesn't imply subordination like the English "helper" often does. Yahweh himself, as the Bible repeatedly reminds us, is the ezer of his people.
The concept of female subordination to men is not found in this particular verse. There are other biblical passages where it comes up. Just not this one.
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