A helper fit for him

I will make him a helper fit for him. The word ezer — helper — is most often used in the Hebrew Bible not of subordinates but of God himself. Here it is used of Eve.

Genesis 2:18–23 narrates the creation of Eve. The word translated "helper" — ezer — appears twenty-one times in the Hebrew Bible. Of those, sixteen refer to God as the helper of Israel. It is not a servile term. The qualifying phrase kenegdo ("fit for him" or "corresponding to him") indicates a counterpart, a match. Adam names her ishshah ("woman") and recognizes her as bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, the strongest biblical expression of shared nature. Complementarian readers treat Genesis 2 as establishing a created order with Adam as head; egalitarian readers note that nothing in the text itself makes Adam the authority — he is created first, but "first created" does not carry rank anywhere else in scripture.