In Eden, God Did Not Divide Tasks

Introduction

The man of valor I was also looking for

How many times have you heard that the man is the provider and the woman is the one who takes care of the home and the children? Maybe you heard it at church, maybe at home, maybe you simply saw it happen, without anyone needing to say a word. For many of us, that sentence arrived looking like a Bible verse.

I have always talked a lot about the woman of valor. But I need to confess something: I was also looking for a man of valor. Someone who knew who he was, who knew in whom he believed, and for whom God mattered more than anything else. I had already encountered God, and I knew that when we encounter Him, we begin to love the other person intensely, the way He loves us. That would be security for me.

And God gave me the grace of meeting Caio. A man who complements me, and whom I complement. In more than twenty-five years, we have never seen each other as superior or inferior to one another.

In the first study on this blog, we discovered that ezer kenegdo does not describe a fragile or secondary woman, but a corresponding strength, a help face to face.

In the second, we saw that there is not just one way for a woman to live her purpose. Now I want to talk about a question that runs through many homes, including mine:

Did God determine that the man provides and the woman cares? Or did He give the two of them a shared mission?

To answer honestly, we will need to separate three things that usually arrive mixed together: what God designed in the beginning, what the fall wounded, and what history and culture added later.

Genesis 2:18–24 · Ezer kenegdo

Face to face: the help God designed

Genesis 2 tells the same creation story through a closer lens. God forms the man from the dust of the ground, places him in the garden, and then makes a surprising statement:

In everything God had created until then, the refrain was "and God saw that it was good". This is the first time something is "not good". The man alone does not complete the mission.

The Hebrew expression we studied in the first article is ezer kenegdo. Ezer is a word used most of the time for God himself, as the help of his people ("My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth", Psalm 121:2). Kenegdo means "as in front of him", someone at the same level, face to face. Neither above nor below.

And right after that comes a verse that often goes unnoticed:

In that ancient world, it was the woman who left her father's house to live with her husband's family. The text reverses the direction: it is the man who leaves. And the verb "to be united" is the same one used for the loyalty of a covenant. The design of Eden is covenant, not a hierarchy of roles.

Genesis 3:16–19

What the fall describes, and what it does not command

Then we come to Genesis 3, the chapter of the rupture. After sin, God announces the consequences:

Read it again and notice the word that repeats: pain, painful toil. In Hebrew it is the same root, itsavon, for both of them. The woman suffers in bringing forth; the man suffers in cultivating. Both parts of the mission of Genesis 1, bringing forth life and caring for the earth, now carry pain.

The text is not creating a division of realms ("children for her, provision for him"). It is showing that the whole mission was wounded. And the archaeologist Carol Meyers reminds us that, in an agricultural society like ancient Israel, the woman also worked hard in the fields. She gave birth and she cultivated, both with toil.

And there is the most delicate sentence: "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you". The word translated as desire, teshuqah, appears only three times in the Old Testament. One of them is in the very next chapter, when God speaks to Cain about sin: "it desires to have you, but you must rule over it" (Genesis 4:7). The construction is the same. That is why many scholars understand Genesis 3:16 as describing the beginning of a power struggle between man and woman, something that did not exist before.

Here is a point that brought me a lot of freedom: the man's rule over the woman appears for the first time in the Bible after sin, as a consequence, and not in Genesis 1 and 2, as design.

And it is a description, not a command. It is like the pain of childbirth and the thorns of the ground. Nobody thinks they are disobeying God when they use anesthesia in childbirth or pull weeds from the garden. When Jesus was questioned about marriage, He himself pointed back to before the fall: "it was not this way from the beginning" (Matthew 19:8). The beginning is the reference.

I want to make this clear: Genesis 1:27 celebrates difference, "male and female he created them". The problem is not that we are different. It is what sin did to the way we relate to each other.

Proverbs 31 · Ruth 2 and 3

The woman of valor and the man of valor

If there is one text often used to define "the woman's role", it is Proverbs 31. And that is exactly where the Bible surprises us.

English translations have rendered this verse in different ways, from "a virtuous woman" to "a wife of noble character". These words help, but none of them can carry the full weight of the Hebrew word chayil. Chayil means strength, valor, capability. It is the word used for valiant warriors, for armies and even for wealth. "Woman of valor" or "woman of strength" may be the most faithful translation.

And what does this woman do?

• She works with her hands, with wool and flax (v. 13).
• "She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar" (v. 14).
• She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard (v. 16).
• She sees that her trading is profitable (v. 18).
• She makes linen garments and sells them to the merchants (v. 24).
• She opens her arms to the poor (v. 20) and speaks with wisdom (v. 26).

She buys land, invests, sells, manages and feeds the household. The text that closes the book of wisdom describes a woman who provides. And her husband? He has full confidence in her (v. 11) and praises her: "Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all" (v. 29).

I have always seen the woman of Proverbs 31 as a real woman, possible to live out. And I believe she is. But we need to understand how the text was written: it is an acrostic poem, in which each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, from A to Z. It is a complete portrait of the virtues of a wise woman, not a to-do list to finish before breakfast. In Jewish tradition, this poem is sung by the husband to his wife at the Sabbath table. It is a blessing, not a demand. And its center is not productivity: "a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised" (v. 30).

Now, the discovery that moved me the most in this study.

The same word chayil appears in the book of Ruth. Boaz says to Ruth: "All the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character", an eshet chayil (Ruth 3:11). Ruth, a foreigner, a widow, who worked in the fields to support her mother-in-law.

But the book had already used the word before. When Boaz is introduced, the text calls him ish gibbor chayil, which the NIV translates as "a man of standing" (Ruth 2:1). The same valor. The same strength.

Ruth and Boaz are the couple in which man and woman receive the same title.

When I read this, I thought of my own story. I was looking for a man of valor. And I realized that the Bible does not reserve valor for one side. Both are called to be chayil.

Our story · Ephesians 5

"Call me and I'll change the diapers"

I have always worked. I wanted to build a career, because I wanted, and still want, to fulfill many dreams. Some I have already fulfilled; others, I know, are still to come. And the most beautiful thing in this story is that I found someone who thinks the same way. We discovered early on that building together makes the journey much lighter than walking alone.

There were seasons of withdrawal, like when Filipe was a baby. And even then Caio was always present. In the early hours of the morning, when our little one wanted to nurse, only I could do it. He would get up with me and say: "call me and I'll change the diapers". And so we went, each one helping the other.

I nursed.
He changed the diaper.
Neither of us was fulfilling a role. Both of us were fulfilling a mission.

The curious thing is that I don't remember those nights as a burden. There was joy, not weight, in it. Everything felt lighter.

Years later, Caio went through a job transition and spent some time without a steady job. That did not stop him from being a father. He dedicated himself to being closer to Filipe, taking him to swimming lessons, being with him. And that did not make him any less of a man. Then he went to do an MBA, and I stayed with our son. Then it was my turn, and he stayed. We have always supported each other, with joy in seeing what the other was accomplishing.

Perhaps you are asking: what about Ephesians 5? It is an important text, and I want to treat it with respect. It begins like this: "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Ephesians 5:21). It is from this mutual submission that Paul speaks to wives and husbands. And to the husband he asks something enormous: to love "just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (v. 25). Right after that, he explains that no one ever hated their own body, "but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church" (v. 29).

The Greek verb translated as "care for" (thalpō) carries the image of warming, of holding close in warmth. Paul uses the same word in 1 Thessalonians 2:7 to describe a mother caring for her little children. Of the husband, the Bible asks for a care spoken in the language of a mother's embrace.

Care is a masculine calling too.

1 Peter 3:7 · Romans 8

The body that groans: perimenopause and the "not yet"

When I reached perimenopause, my life turned upside down. The powerful woman I knew seemed broken, as if she had stopped working. Sleep, energy, memory, emotions. Things I used to master seemed to slip through my fingers.

And, once again, I could and can count on Caio. He cheers for me. He looks for things that might help me. He supported my decision to change careers, and today I have my own consultancy and serve on boards. He believes in me, many times, more than I believe in myself.

This season taught me something about ezer that I had not understood before. The one who was created to help also needs to be helped. The help of Eden runs both ways. In the seasons when the woman is more vulnerable, the husband is called to be ezer for her.

Peter wrote something very beautiful about this:

Fragility here is not a reason for diminishment. It is a reason for honor. And both are co-heirs: no one inherits more than the other.

I also need to say this clearly: what the body goes through in these seasons is not spiritual weakness. Pregnancy, the postpartum period, illness, perimenopause and menopause call for medical care, support and real adjustments in the rhythm of the home, not guilt. Faith does not replace that care; it sustains us while we take care.

And the Bible is honest about this. Paul says that "the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time", and that we ourselves groan, "as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:22-23). I confess I was moved to read the word adoption in that text. The redemption of the body is still to come. For now, God's power "is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).