Genesis 2 and Ecclesiastes 4 · Passage · Loneliness
It Is Not Good to Be Alone
Genesis 2:18 and Ecclesiastes 4:9 to 12 weigh the life of one person by himself against the life of two.
The Hebrew word for the helper God promised the first man is the word of Psalm 121:2, “My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
The LORD God also said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make for him a suitable helper.”
- The passage
- Genesis 2:18 to 23, Ecclesiastes 4:7 to 12, 1 Corinthians 7:7 to 8, 1 Corinthians 7:32 to 35
- Books
- Genesis, Ecclesiastes, 1 Corinthians
- Hold in memory
- Genesis 2:18, Ecclesiastes 4:9
Summary
Genesis 2:18 names a need God built into people before anything had gone wrong, and God answered it Himself with a helper fit for the man. Ecclesiastes 4 looks at the same need from the other side. It describes a man with no son or brother who toils for wealth he cannot share. Against him it sets the gains of two over one, and it ends with a cord of three strands.
- God saw His works as good six times and as very good once in Genesis 1, and the man alone in Genesis 2:18 is the first thing He calls not good.
- The helper of Genesis 2:18 is ezer kenegdo, help that stands facing the man as his counterpart.
- Paul, writing as an unmarried man, says each believer has his own gift from God.
The First Thing Called Not Good
God's verdict on the man alone comes with a promise of help.
It Is Not Good to Be Alone studies Genesis 2:18 and Ecclesiastes 4:9 to 12. In Genesis God first names the need of one person for another, and in Ecclesiastes the Preacher praises two over one. It belongs to the trial of loneliness, the pain of being alone or of having no one who cares.
The question it answers is what Scripture means when it says a person should not be alone, and what that means for those who are. It reads the Hebrew of Genesis 2:18, sets out what Ecclesiastes 4 says of two and of one, and gives Paul's word to the unmarried. It also sets out how teachers have read the helper and the cord of three strands.
The Hebrew for not good sets the negative before tov, and the word for alone is levaddo, a form of the noun bad, which Strong's glosses “properly, separation”.
God's answer is ezer kenegdo. Ezer, help or aid, stands in 21 verses of the Old Testament, and kenegdo is built on neged, “a front, i.e. part opposite”.
God brought the beasts and the birds to the man to be named, “But for Adam no suitable helper was found” (Genesis 2:20). Then God made the woman from the man's rib and brought her to him, and the man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23).
Two and One in Ecclesiastes 4
The Preacher names labor, falling, cold and attack.
Every gain of two in Ecclesiastes 4:9 to 12 is set against a loss of the one who is alone.
| The gain | What two have | What the one alone has |
|---|---|---|
| A return for labor | “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9) | No one shares the return of his labor. |
| A hand to lift | “For if one falls down, his companion can lift him up” (Ecclesiastes 4:10) | “but pity the one who falls without another to help him up!” (Ecclesiastes 4:10) |
| Warmth | “Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm” (Ecclesiastes 4:11) | “but how can one keep warm alone?” (Ecclesiastes 4:11) |
| Defence | “two can resist” (Ecclesiastes 4:12) | “And though one may be overpowered” (Ecclesiastes 4:12) |
| The cord | “Moreover, a cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12) | The line moves from two to three and leaves the one alone behind. |
The two who resist the attacker stand negdo, before him, the same Hebrew word that stands in kenegdo in Genesis 2:18.
The Man All Alone
Ecclesiastes 4:7 to 8 describes the man whom the praise of two answers.
Ecclesiastes 4:7 opens, “Again, I saw futility under the sun.”
In Ecclesiastes 4:8 a man is “all alone, without even a son or brother”, and he asks, “For whom do I toil and bereave my soul of enjoyment?”
Genesis 2:18 and the Single Believer
The New Testament sets the single life beside the need that Genesis 2:18 names.
Paul tells the unmarried and widows, “It is good for them to remain unmarried, as I am” (1 Corinthians 7:8). In 1 Corinthians 7:32 to 35 he gives his reason: the unmarried man “is concerned about the work of the Lord”, and Paul seeks for them “undivided devotion to the Lord”.
Jesus spoke of some who “live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12).
So the need of Genesis 2:18 reaches the single believer as a claim on the company of the church, and his unmarried state is a calling from God.
Made for Company
God named the need Himself and answered it Himself.
The man did not ask for a companion. The psalmist says of the same God, “God settles the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:6).
Where loneliness weighs on the mind or the body, the help of a pastor and of a doctor belongs beside prayer and never in its place.
How Teachers Have Read the Verdict
Teachers of the early church read the two texts as words against a life lived alone.
died 379 · Basil of Caesarea
Basil of Caesarea taught that God made people to need one another. In The Long Rules he wrote that “God the Creator decreed that we should require the help of one another”.
died 395 · Gregory of Nyssa
Gregory of Nyssa taught that no one should set out on the way to God without a guide. In On Virginity he applied Ecclesiastes 4:10 to that way and wrote that “a single one is easily vanquished by the foe who infests the path which leads to God”.
The Helper and the Third Strand
Readers differ over whom the helper of Genesis 2:18 serves and over what the third strand is.
Genesis 2:18 speaks of marriageAugustine of Hippo; Adam Clarke
Augustine read the verse of marriage and children. In On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis he concluded that the woman was made a helper “for the sake of bearing children”. Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible (1832), read ezer kenegdo as “a help, a counterpart of himself”. On Ecclesiastes 4:9 he wrote, “Married life is infinitely to be preferred to this kind of life.” John Gill reports that the Targum reads the warmth of Ecclesiastes 4:11 “of a man and his wife”.
The objection: Ecclesiastes 4:8 to 12 answers the same need with a brother and a companion.
Genesis 2:18 speaks of human companyJohn Gill; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown
Gill, in his Exposition of the Old Testament, wrote on Ecclesiastes 4:9 that “man is a sociable creature, was made to be so”, and he cited Genesis 2:18 for it. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, in their Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), read the two of the same verse as “Ties of union, marriage, friendship, religious communion”.
The objection: Genesis 2:24 draws marriage out of the verse at once, “and they will become one flesh”.
The third strand as a proverb of manyJamieson, Fausset and Brown; Matthew Henry
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown called the threefold cord “proverbial for a combination of many”. Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), also called it a proverb and likened it to “a bundle of arrows”.
The objection: the verse moves from two to three and names no third person, which leaves the reader asking what the third strand is.
The third strand as a figure of faith in the TrinityGregory the Great
Gregory the Great, in his Morals on the Book of Job, read the cord as “the faith in truth that is woven by the mouth of preachers from the knowledge of the Trinity”.
The objection: Ecclesiastes 4:9 to 12 speaks of labor, warmth and defence and names no doctrine.
The Need God Named
Loneliness is an ache God Himself named, and company is His gift.
The lonely reader may bring that ache to God without shame and seek the company of two and of the many in God's household.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, the tagged Hebrew Bible (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible brief lexicon of Extended Strongs for Hebrew (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, with the Strong's glosses.
- Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, chapter 23 (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, volume 5)
- Basil of Caesarea, The Long Rules, question 7, on Ecclesiastes 4:10.
- Augustine of Hippo, On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, 9.5.9, in an English translation whose translator the store row does not name.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Genesis 2:18 and Ecclesiastes 4:9.
- John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748 to 1763), on Ecclesiastes 4:9 and Ecclesiastes 4:11.
- Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Ecclesiastes 4:9 and Ecclesiastes 4:12.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Ecclesiastes 4:7 to 12.
- Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, Book 33, section 18.
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