Women of the Bible: Eve created as suitable helper, not subordinate
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A woman once expressed in a question-and-answer session with apologist Ravi Zacharias that she struggled with the God of the Bible because of God's words to Eve in Genesis Chapter 3. She said, "I can't believe in a God who doesn't believe in me as a woman."
The third chapter of Genesis is on the third page of the little Bible I keep on my desk.
This poor young woman couldn't make it past the third page of the Bible to discover a God who values and loves women. There has been a tragic mischaracterization of what God says about women in the Bible. For centuries, men have wrongly misinterpreted the Bible — either from ignorance or malice — as justifying a belittling attitude toward women.
To begin to correct this, I want take a close look at Eve. Even in the first three pages of the Bible, we can find a high view of women that sets the tone for the way God interacts with both genders in the rest of the Bible.
In the first chapter of Genesis, God creates humans after having created everything else. To accomplish that, "God created man(kind) in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27). The text seems explicitly clear that men and women equally share an identity as image-bearers of the creator and an equal responsibility in administering creation. Whatever we read in the rest of the Bible about the relationship between men, women and God must be informed by this foundational context.
On to Page Two.
Something startling happens in Genesis 2 when the Bible describes in detail the way God created humans on the sixth day. To this point, God has evaluated each aspect of creation as "good." But in Genesis 2:18, having made the man some time before the woman, he said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him." That "suitable helper" was Eve, the first woman.
The first thing in all of creation that God calls "not good" is the dire need for women. This is the first hint that the "suitable helper" God creates is not subordinate, but absolutely necessary. Before sin corrupted the relationship between the sexes, God seems to regard women as necessary as men.
The Hebrew phrase for "suitable helper" is "ezer knegdow." The word "knegdow" is most translated as "suitable," refers to an exactly corresponding counterpart. Literally, it refers to "standing opposite to." Here it seems to imply that both genders are incomplete without the other. Each has qualities and inherent general characteristics the other lacks and depends on the other to contribute.
The word "ezer" is often translated "helper." When western eyes see the word "helper," we often think of an inferior who might make a task easier, but is not necessary to accomplishment. But everywhere else in the Bible outside of the second chapter of Genesis, it exclusively describes the way God himself helps his people. It is not incidental help. It's the kind of help the tow truck driver gives to the stranded motorist. Without the tow truck driver's "help," he is stuck on the side of the road going nowhere.
Feminist and educator Irina Dunn famously said, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." What is clear by the second page of the Bible is that men needs women like fish need water.
The man and the woman, complete together, lived in the garden until both Adam and Eve broke God's only rule by obeying Satan and the war of the sexes began. Then God pronounced the curse, and this is where the young woman's difficulty with God began.
In Genesis 3:16, God declares to Eve that he will make childbearing more painful and that "(her) desire will be for (her) husband, and he will rule over (her)."
We understand one part of this verse well: that husbands will tend to claim a right to tyrannical rule over their spouses.
However, this does not contrast the "desire" of the woman. The word "desire" is not sexual or relational. It is, as in the very next chapter of Genesis, the desire like that of a beast to devour its prey. This verse describes relational dysfunction caused by both sexes equally.
Additionally, while God causes the pain in childbearing for the woman, he does not cause the relationship problem. It is incidental to their mutual sin, and history has borne this out.
Finally, in focusing on the curse, we often miss the promise that immediately precedes it. God promised to use the woman's seed to finally defeat evil. In Semitic culture, the "seed" was generally thought of as the exclusive contribution of the man. The woman was wrongly seen as just the container for the thing that the man made. However, Genesis 3:15 confronts that wrong understanding when God tells the snake, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He will crush your head and you will strike his heel." It will be the contribution of woman, independent of any man, that will finally solve sin in the person of Jesus. (This is why the virgin birth is so important. It's one of God's very first promises to us.)
After Adam and Eve leave the garden, and their oldest son Cain killed their youngest son Abel — the first "man of faith" — they had Seth. Eve watched her son Cain go and establish his own sinful city of increasingly violent people who did not know, follow or love God. The only "man of faith" in the second generation of humans had been killed, so "she gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, for, she said, 'God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel, for Cain killed him.' To Seth ... also a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord" (Genesis 4:25-26). Eve named him, not Adam. Eve wanted people who would call on God and had apparently prayed for it. God's obvious answer to prayer is to a woman's prayer. Seth means, "granted."