Role-- Reversal

I love my Old Testament professor to death. Dr. William Lyons. He’s an amazing guy; brilliant, hilarious, and infinitely knowledgeable and passionate about the Old Testament. A few weeks ago we were talking after class, and I was telling him how I found it fascinating that in Genesis, God saw the people building the Tower of Babel and quickly and decisively put a stop to it, whereas in the Babylonian Creation story, Enuma Elish, the gods actually commissioned the building of the tower for themselves. He seemed impressed that I caught that, and then he told me he had something else that would fascinate me. It is this:

Within my circle of acquaintances, there are many who take the English Bible at face value. They use verses from the Bible to support a male supremacist viewpoint, and by far a favorite is Genesis 2:18, “The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."” Men like to point to the English translation, saying, “women are to be HELPERS, not in actual authority.”

However, the interesting facts are these: men and women both are created in the image of God. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
In the next verse, he gives them joint rulership over the earth. “God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:28)” Notice that this rulership was not given to Adam over Eve and the rest of the world, but to both equally over the entire earth.

Now here’s where the riot starts. Brace yourselves.

The word that translates to “helper”, the word that so many men parade around to prove the inferiority and secondary position of females, is not a word that in the original language evokes images of lowly interns rushing around making coffee in a busy law office. Instead, the word that translates to “helper” is a word that is used in the rest of the Old Testament to refer to God, the quintessential helper. The implication of this word is that the one who helps is stronger than the one who needs the help.

Pretty appalling, huh?

Women were not created to be these weak little things, sitting wringing their hands and their dishrags on the sidelines. Women were created to pull men up by their bootstraps, to be the strength when the man’s runs out. To help, not as a subordinate, but at the very, very least, as an equal.

Check it out: Hamilton, Victor P. Handbook on the Pentateuch. 2nd Ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. 2005. 28-29