NOTES for Gen 2:20-25

An interesting situation develops with the names (or labels? the corresponding Hebrew word allows both translations) that the human being gives to the animals around him during the search for a helper "corresponding to him." The definition itself matters: the corresponding Hebrew expression literally means "a helper standing face to face," as an equal, as a conversation partner with whom one can communicate. It is no surprise that no one equal to the human being is found in the animal world.

But it is precisely here that the human being makes broad use of his ability to give names. There is nothing surprising in this: to give a name, or to name a thing, meant first of all to define its place in the human world, and also to extend to it the authority that an owner has over what belongs to him. But none of those with whom the human being establishes this kind of relationship can, naturally, become the helper he is seeking: what is needed here is a relationship of equals, in which questions about who is the master and who belongs to whom automatically lose their meaning.

And to the one in whom the human being sees his equal, to the woman given to him by God as his wife, he gives no name at all. Even the term itself, "woman, wife," comes from the same root as "human being" or "man": the two receive one name that unites them. Thus the human being finds another human being, a helper "standing opposite." The one whom he will treat not as a thing, not as an object, even a living one, but as a neighbor. Without this, a human being cannot become human.