God summoned Adam to give an account, it indicated a primary
responsibility for Adam in the conduct of his family. This is similar to
the situation in Genesis 2:15-17, where God had given commands to
Adam alone before the Fall, indicating there also Adam’s primary
responsibility. By contrast, the serpent spoke to Eve first (Gen. 3:1),
trying to get her to take responsibility for leading the family into sin,
thus inverting the order that God had established at creation.
- The purpose.Eve was created as a helper for Adam, not Adam as
a helper for Eve. After God had created Adam and had given him
directions concerning his life in the Garden of Eden, we read that the
Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will
make him a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18).
It is true that the Hebrew word here translated “helper” (‘∑zer) is
often used of God as our helper (e.g., Ps. 33:20; 70:5; 115:9). But the
word “helper” does not by itself decide the issue of what God
intended the relationship between Adam and Eve to be. “Helping” can
be done by someone who has greater authority, someone who has
equal authority, or someone who has lesser authority than the person
being helped. For example, I can help my son do his homework.^19 Or
I can help my neighbor move his sofa. Or my son can help me clean
the garage. Yet the fact remains that the person doing the helping puts
himself in a subordinate role to the person who has primary respon-
sibility for carrying out the activity. Thus, even if I help my son with
his homework, the primary responsibility for the homework remains
his and not mine. I am the helper. And even when God helps us, with
respect to the specific task at hand, He still holds us primarily respon-
sible for the activity and accountable for what we do.
But Genesis 2 does not merely say that Eve functions as Adam’s
“helper” in one or two specific events. Rather, it says that God made
Eve for the purpose of providing Adam with a helper, one who by
virtue of creation would function as Adam’s helper. “Then the Lord
God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him
a helper fit for him’” (Gen. 2:18). The Hebrew text can be translated
quite literally as, “I will make for him(Hebrew lô) a helper fit for him.”
The apostle Paul understands this accurately, because in 1 Corinthians
The Key Issues in the Manhood-Womanhood Controversy 39