And God saw that it was good….And God saw that it was good…. And God saw that it was good…. God saw all that He had made, and it was very good…. Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 1:18, 21, 25, 31, 2:18, CSB).

Seven times in Genesis 1, God observed His creation to be good. In Genesis 1:4 after He had spoken light into existence, God declared it to be good. In vs. 1:10 after separating the water from the land, God called that good. After creating plant life in vs. 1:12 God saw that it was good. In vs. 1:18 after setting the solar system in place and spinning the earth on its axis to create seasons and night and day, God calls that good. In vs. 1:21 after creating animals to populate the water and the air, God determined that to be good. In vs. 1:25 after populating the land with animals and insects, God calls that good as well.

Then, after creating humanity as the capstone of His creation (vs. 1:26–30), God observed all He had made and declared it to be not just good but very good.

The Hebrew word translated as good in English is tov. The term rendered very good is hennah tov, which could be translated as “certainly good” or “surely good.” But, what God meant by good is never really defined in these opening chapters of the Bible.

Observing that all these various components of creation were good indicates that God had a design and purpose in mind for His creation and that each of these elements of creation met His approval. In other words, God judged them to be effective for serving His purpose.

God’s declaration of good embodies a sense of fidelity with its purpose, or as some scholars have described it, in harmony. God declared these products of creation as good because they were effective for fulfilling the function or purpose for which He designed them.

But with all the good things God created, He did not call it good when He created the man. In fact, in vs. 2:18 God calls it not good. While all of creation was very good, it was not good that the man should be alone.

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean it was bad. It just means that the man’s solitude was not in harmony with God’s plan for humanity. In other words, it was incomplete!

The man was alone in God’s creation because there was no one like him–no being “corresponding to him” (vs. 2:18). And, we know that God didn’t plan for there to be just one human being on earth. God’s plan was for human beings to “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it” (vs 1:18).

To fulfill this destiny, the man needed a suitable helper–one that corresponded to or was like him. So, God paraded all the species of animals in front of the man, ostensibly to find a corresponding helper. When no suitable helper was identified from all the pairs of animals, God put the man into a deep sleep and created another human being, not from the ground like the man but from the man’s side.

Among the many “firsts” in Genesis 1 and 2, the naming of the animals may describe the first lesson learned in human history–that like begets like. The man learned from naming the animals what would (and would not) be a suitable helper that corresponded to him: “This one, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called woman, for she was taken from man” (vs. 23).

The woman was built from the man and so became the man’s corresponding helper–his complement. Then, together in a marital relationship the man and woman fulfill God’s purpose to multiply and fill the earth: “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh” (vs. 24).

God created a wondrous world with a great diversity of life forms–plants, animals and humans. The natural and moral order established by God for His creation is that men and women–male and female–complement and complete one another to fulfill God’s plans and purpose for His created order.

In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. (Ephesians 5:28, CSB)