“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone (ləbddo); I will make him a helper fit (kənegdo) for him.’”
Man’s ‘being alone’ is actually related to the important ‘separating’ (root bdl) that God does ‘in the beginning’. Man has been separated out, but has no complement, as light has darkness and the sea has the land. Therefore man’s definition is incomplete; he is an anomaly without a creature ‘fit’ for him. This fundamental incompleteness of the human person is at the root of the characteristic drive of desire to find one fitting for ourselves—one who, in being opposite to us, matches the aching loneliness and fills it. We discover eventually that this desire is for God, in Whose image we were created and Whose temples we are meant to be. In the present, the sacrament of marriage produces the best analogy to the union of God and the soul. At last, Adam rejoices in seeing not merely flesh of flesh and bone of bone, but subject to subject, desire to desire.