Dominic Bnonn Tennant (the B is silent)

Genesis 2

7

And Yahweh God formed the adam of dirt from the ground and breathed into his nose the breath of life, and the adam became a living lifebreath.

16

And Yahweh God commanded the adam,1 saying, “From every tree of the garden thou eating eatest,

17

and from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad2 thou eatest not from it; in that in the day thou eatest from it, thou shalt dying die.”

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And Yahweh God said, “Not good, the adam to be by himself;3 I shall make for him an aid4 as unto his opposite.”5

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And Yahweh God formed from the ground every living thing of the field, and every flyer6 of the heavens, and ‹brought in› unto the adam to see what he would call to it; and what ever the adam called to it, the living lifebreath, that was its name.

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And the adam called names to every beast, and to the flyer of the heavens, and to every living thing of the field—and to the adam was not found an aid as unto his opposite.

Footnotes

  1. commanded the adam. Literally “commanded upon the man;” hence Young, “laid a charge on the man.” ↩

  2. bad (ra’). Not “evil,” as traditionally rendered; like tov, “good,” ra’ is broader than moral categories. Translating it “evil” over-explains the text. ↩

  3. by himself (bad). This is a prepositional construct, not an adjective. ↩

  4. an aid (ezer). Like the NET, I think the word “help” or “helper” somewhat misses the mark (however their rendering of “companion” is typical dynamic nonsense; ezer is often a verb, which “companion” cannot be). In English, “help” suggests a subordinate role; mere assistance with a task one can do oneself. But while Eve is certainly created subordinate to Adam, we do not learn this from what ezer denotes: to supply what one cannot do for oneself. For example, in the psalms, it is almost exclusively used of God coming to the aid of his people as an ally without whom they would certainly fail. (Cf. Peter Leithart’s whimsical but overwrought rendering of “battle-mate.”) A similar concept is in view here, though cast in a teleological rather than salvific frame. It is “not good” that the man should be by himself, because alone he is unable to fulfill the purpose of dominion for which God made him. Eve is an ezer because she is the one who does what Adam cannot—but this is almost the opposite of what “helper” suggests in English. Separately, Adam lacks nothing in his individual manner of imaging God; but how he images him is distinct to his sex, and thus incomplete with respect to the purpose of humanity taken as a whole—i.e., not just forming, but filling the world in God’s stead. Eve gives aid by supplying what Adam lacks in this regard. ↩

  5. as unto his opposite (k’negdo). Slightly more dynamically, “as unto his counterpart.” The term is a vexed one for translating into English because it originates in nagad, “to be apparent;” used prepositionally it refers to something right in front of you. This can usually be translated “opposite,” or sometimes “before.” From here it comes to connote a thing that answers to or goes along with another—i.e., correspondence. It is vital to understand “opposite” here in these terms: Adam and Eve are two “opposites” not in that they disagree with each other, but rather in that they agree like a key and a lock, or matching pieces of a jigsaw. More than that, the picture is of two facing parts that are functional and complete in themselves, yet also fit together in such a way as to become a greater whole. ↩

  6. flyer (’oph). This is not equivalent to the English “bird;” the root is ’uph, “to fly.” ↩