We’ve looked at the process by which God created Adam a suitable helpmeet in our study of Genesis 2, but why did He do it? Or for that matter, why would God join them together in marriage? This is the very point where so many people are mistaken.
Most people would answer the question by quoting from Genesis 2:18, where God said, “It is not good that man should be alone,” and they would surmise that Adam was lonely. This must be the reason for the creation of the woman, they would postulate. “Aha!” they say. “Adam was lonely. Therefore, God must have created marriage for companionship.” They might extend the answer to include sexual intimacy.
Jay Adams, for one, takes that position. He writes:
“The reason for marriage is to solve the problem of loneliness. Marriage was established because Adam was alone, and that was not good. Companionship, therefore, is the essence of marriage.”
That sounds reasonable, but is it true? No! I disagree with that answer. Yes, God did say, “It is not good that man should be alone,” but why did He say it? Was it really because Adam was lonely?
No! The reason God gave was that Adam needed a helper, not a playmate or a buddy. If all Adam needed was a companion, dogs were around. Rover could make a good companion. A woman’s best friend is a diamond, they claim, while a man’s best friend is a dog. That doesn’t sound fair since we have to feed ours, and we have to pay for theirs. But Adam could have spent time with his dog.
Or, if it was only to solve loneliness, God could have made another man for Adam to go bowling with, or fishing. It could have been Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve, or it could have been his good buddy Frank. That could have cured his loneliness.
But Adam wasn’t drooping around all overcome by loneliness. How could he be? He met with God face to face regularly. They would walk together in the cool of the day. Adam was alone, not lonely. He needed a suitable helper, a woman comparable to him.
Remember? God gave Adam a task, a task he couldn’t do alone. Genesis 1:28 says:
“Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
Adam had a task that, without Eve, he couldn’t fulfill. Adam couldn’t “be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth” alone.
The book of Malachi reinforces this reason for the creation of the woman. Malachi 2:15 says,
“But did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring.”
This obviously refers back to creation where Genesis 2:24 says,
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
Why did God join the man and the woman, Adam and Eve as well as every man and woman, in marriage? God “seeks godly offspring.” Adam couldn’t produce them alone. It required his suitable helpmeet, his Eve. Marriage has and will always be, in God’s plan, one man and one woman united as one for life for the purpose of bearing and raising children.
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