What comes to mind when you hear the word “helper”? What it has come to mean in the English language is: a relatively unskilled worker who assists a skilled worker by manual labor. A phrase of yet sharper meaning is “the help.” This means people of lower social standing who do ‘the dirty work’ while those of greater social standing do what might be called noble work or things of importance.
These concepts are departures from the dictionary definition of the word “help,” which means to provide assistance, to be of service, to improve the condition of, and to change for the better. There is no idea of one who helps of being less able, less noble, less anything than the one who is helped.
Given our modern mindset of help feeling rather derogatory and the traditional (dictionary) thinking on the term being more neutral, let us consider what the Bible has to say about help, helping, and helpers.
The word “helper” can be found three times in the New Testament. In Acts 13:5 and Acts 19:22 we hear about John, Timothy, and Erastus who were helpers to traveling preachers. It is unclear the exact role and relationship in these cases. The third case is this.
So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”
Hebrews 13:6 NIV
This feels unlike anything we have heard so far. Is God relatively unskilled? Is God of lower social standing? Is God’s place uncertain? Leading up to this verse in Hebrews 13, the people are challenged to love one another as brothers and sisters, show hospitality to strangers, remember those in prison, reject sexual immorality, reject the love of money–a long list of areas people fail frequently. Ending that list the Old Testament is quoted “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (Deut 31:6) Is it a God who is ‘less’ that enables us to overcome things that prove again and again to be areas of natural failing for human beings? No. He helps because is is not subject to those failings and He has abilities we do not.
Then the quote, which is from Psalm 118 “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?” Let’s follow that reference to the Old Testament. Ezekiel 30:8 speaks of the inadequacy of relying nations for help. Nehemiah 4:22 talks of “every man and his helper” when the context was that people were paired up, half the men holding spears while the other half worked for complete the work while being protected from enemies who may appear at any moment.
On we go now to the bulk of the use of the word helper in the Old Testament: Hosea 13:9, Psalm 118:7, Psalm 27:9, Psalm 10:14, Deuteronomy 33:29, and Exodus 18:4 all use the word “helper” to refer to God. He saved me. He defeated the enemies who wanted to kill me. He rescued me from affliction. He brought triumph out of trouble. In Hosea, it speaks of how Israel rejected their helper and because they did, they were destroyed.
The overwhelming sense of “helper” in the Bible is of someone who is powerful, skilled, and able and who uses their power, skill, and ability to aid someone who would not be able to succeed without them.
Now, at last, we can look at the first two references to “helper” in the Bible.
18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found.
21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
Genesis 2:18-20 NIV
If we study the world and what it has come to think of helpers and we look at the woman as only a piece taken out of a man we will conclude the woman to be something less than man. We will think of helper in the sense of lower and relatively less skilled. We want to class the woman with the animals that God created or perhaps just a little above them.
If we study the Bible and what it has to say about helpers and how the bulk of what a helper is in being someone who does what oneself cannot possibly do, we look at the man and see that he has inadequacies that will not be filled by taking a piece out of him and simply animating it but by God instead forming a new creation, refining someone that is powerful, skilled, and able to stand alongside the man and compensate for his inadequacies. The woman is neither the magnitude of helper that is God himself nor is she some lesser being come to be subject to the whims of man but she is exactly what God says she is, a helper. She provides assistance to, serves, improves the condition of , and changes for the better that which she comes alongside. None of these words are demeaning. They are recognitions of a needs that exist and the capability and activity to fulfill the needs.
Let the use of the word helper and the idea of womanhood be redeemed in every mind.
Leave a Reply