What is a helpmeet?

Words convey powerful images, and fix an image in your mind. Take, for example, the word helper, say, a painter’s helper. The helper carries the bags, lays out the paints, puts down the canvas to protect the floor, cleans the brushes, does the dirty work. OK, a good helper may even do some preliminary sketches for the artist, but let’s face it, the helper is inferior to the painter.

That’s exactly the mental image you get when you read Genesis 2 and discover that Eve was “a helper suitable for him”— meaning, Adam. OK, it looks like Adam is the boss, and Eve is the – yes, helper! And that has been the mentality of men for centuries. But is that what God intended us to believe?

Remember she is of the same substance as Adam – neither better nor inferior. Now please remember that God is repeatedly called man’s helper, which is a position of honor, not weakness. It is the image of a father helping his son across a difficult ravine, or a mother helping her child learn his alphabet. God certainly is not on man’s level, and man isn’t equal to God, though some really think they are.

Adam recognized Eve – as an equal, as part of himself, one who stood alongside him, who would walk hand in hand with him – not as an inferior, a servant to do his bidding.

Together they would meet each other’s needs, each possessing what the other lacked, and as “one flesh” – to use the term found five times in the Bible, they would reproduce themselves in a family. God’s intention was that together they would form an indissoluble union, standing against the winds of changing cultural ideas and difficulties. Marriage is a living relationship, not simply an agreement two people make signing a paper called a marriage license.