Warrior of Eden: How Curiosity and Questions Lead to Understanding God's Call for WomenSample

Getting Back to the Original Design

The Old Testament uses the word ezer in three distinct ways, twenty-one different times:

• To define woman, as we saw in yesterday’s devotional (Genesis 2:18, 20).
• To describe allied soldiers who assist in battle (Joshua 1:14; 1 Chronicles 12:1-22) and for nations to whom Israel appealed for military aid (Isaiah 30:5; Ezekiel 12:14; Daniel 11:34).
• To describe God, as Israel’s helper (Genesis 49:25; Exodus 18:4; Deuteronomy 33:7; 2 Chronicles 32:8; Psalms 10:14; 20:2; 33:20; 70:5; 89:19; Isaiah 41:10-14).

Ezer is used consistently in a military context. It’s the kind of help you need when the stakes are high and you’re unable to help yourself. Consider this passage from Psalm 121:

I lift my eyes up to the mountains,

Where does my ezer come from?

My ezer comes from YHWH,

The Maker of Heaven and Earth.

The writer of this psalm isn’t asking where his “happy helper” is. He’s asking where his relief, his strength, is coming from.

I’ve gone into this background on ezer because the word says a lot about how God created men and women to interact.

Genesis 1 and 2 paint a picture of the woman as ezer, who provides help man can’t give himself. Then in chapter 3, gender hierarchy appears for the first time. “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). But this distinction comes after the fall! The same fall that fractured our relationship with God and with one another.

I don’t want to emulate that model; that’s the broken one. I want to take my cues on human relationships from the perfect design before sin entered the world.

This can’t be a quest to be better, or else it’s fundamentally not biblical. The Jesus way says we are to outdo one another in showing honor (Romans 12:10) and do nothing from rivalry or conceit but in humility count others more significant than ourselves (Philippians 2:3).

I want to call out women in their glory, with all the beauty they possess. When you see a woman who isn’t striving to be anything other than exactly who she is, a woman who knows her worth, she exudes peace.

Let’s ask God to teach us what He always intended—His original purpose for ezer.

Did you grow up wondering if God preferred men? What feelings stir in you as you consider that God calls women warriors?