The Meaning of Helpmeet

Last time, we talked about the meaning of respect in the negative, meaning we talked about what it didn't mean for a wife to respect her husband. It is not servitude. So much of the confusion comes from a misinterpretation of the meaning of the word helper, or helpmeet, in Genesis 2:18. When God announced He would create the woman, He said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him." The wife was created by God to be a comparable helper.

But what does that mean? I once heard Chuck Swindall speaking on this passage, and he quoted from the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary:

helper - n : one that helps, esp: a relatively unskilled worker who assists a skilled worker, usually by manual labor.

Now that's not very complimentary. Some feminists might even call them fightin' words. And the fact that some men have treated their wives like they believe it gives this verse a bad reputation. Chuck Swindall, of course, was using the definition as a bad example. He wasn't endorsing it. Anyway, that's what Webster said, not God. Unfortunately, too many people think that is what a helpmeet is.

The Hebrew meaning is so much better. It means someone who assists another to reach complete fulfillment; to complement, to fill up. The word is often used in Hebrew for a rescuer. Now doesn't that sound better? God adds, in Genesis 2:18, that that this helper is comparable, or suitable. She is the one God specifically designed for man. She is one corresponding to her husband. The definition of the word that I like best is completer. MY helpmeet is the one who helps me become all that I am intended to be.

Men, your wife was designed to complete you, to help you become all you should be, all God intended you to be. She wasn't intended to be a cheap servant or a slave, nor to be a mousy doormat. Rather, if you remember Genesis 1:28, she was intended to be our co-regent jointly taking dominion of the earth with us. We are to walk shoulder to shoulder as husband and wife. That's the way God created us. That's how marriage was intended to be, and good marriages still operate that way as the husband and wife complement each other.

My wife certainly does that for me. But she doesn't do it by sitting back silently like a wallflower. Nor by nodding agreeable every time I say something stupid like one of those dashboard ornaments with the head on a spring so it continually bounces up and down. What do they call them. Bobble heads, I think.

When I am in the wrong, my wife tells me. I was a science major in college and totally indoctrinated with evolution, zero population growth, radical environmentalism, you name it, everything else our godless higher educational system passes off as the truth. And I bought it - hook, line, and sinker. But then I met the girl I would marry. When I would spout off with that propaganda, she'd ask, "Do you really believe that?" Then she would tell me what common sense would say. She made me examine my views and beliefs critically, and I came to my senses. She helped me out of that deception.

A wife is no helper if she sits quietly back and lets her husband head off a cliff, to their mutual destruction. That's not respect. She is no helper if she sits back and lets her husband make a fool of himself. That's not being a helper. It isn't showing love. I don't know what you would call that except maybe stupid. Respect involves esteem and admiration, It involves proper acceptance and courtesy of the other person. It involves treating them like we would want to be treated. Hey, that's the Golden Rule, isn't it? It involves godly reverence. And, since the husband is to represent Christ in the relationship as the wife represents the church, reverence is a good word to describe the respect that a wife should have for her husband. A husband properly fulfilling his role will be revered by his wife.