Genesis 2:20
And Adam called all the beasts by their names, and all the fowls of the air, and all the cattle of the field: but for Adam there was not found a helper like himself.
Open Genesis 2:20 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Appellavitque Adam nominibus suis cuncta animantia, et universa volatilia cæli, et omnes bestias terræ : Adæ vero non inveniebatur adjutor similis ejus.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ ἐκάλεσεν Ἀδὰμ ὀνόματα πᾶσιν τοῖς κτήνεσιν καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς πετεινοῖς τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς θηρίοις τοῦ ἀγροῦ· τῷ τε Ἀδὰμ οὐχ εὑρέθη βοηθὸς ὅμοιος αὐτῷ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיִּקְרָ֨א הָֽאָדָ֜ם שֵׁמ֗וֹת לְכָל הַבְּהֵמָה֙ וּלְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וּלְכֹ֖ל חַיַּ֣ת הַשָּׂדֶ֑ה וּלְאָדָ֕ם לֹֽא מָצָ֥א עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ
Haydock's commentary
Names, probably in the Hebrew language, in which the names of things, frequently designate their nature and quality. See Bochart.
(Calmet)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Tertullian On the Veiling of Virgins, Chapter V
When this kind of second human being was made by God for man’s assistance, that female was forthwith named woman ; still happy, still worthy of paradise, still virgin . “She shall be called,” said (Adam), “Woman.” And accordingly you have the name, I say, not already common to a virgin , but, proper (to her; a name) which from the beginning was allotted to a virgin . But some ingeniously will have it that it was said of the future , “She shall be called woman ,” as if she were destined to be so when she had resigned her virginity; since he added withal: “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and be conglutinated to his own woman ; and the two shall be one flesh.” Let them therefore among whom that subtlety obtains show us first, if she were surnamed woman with a future reference, what name she meantime received. …
St Augustine On the Holy Trinity, The Opinion of Those Who Have Thought that the Mind Was Signified by the Man, the Bodily Sense by the Woman
20. Nor does it escape me, that some who before us were eminent defenders of the Catholic faith and expounders of the word of God, while they looked for these two things in one human being, whose entire soul they perceived to be a sort of excellent paradise, asserted that the man was the mind, but that the woman was the bodily sense. And according to this distribution, by which the man is assumed to be the mind, but the woman the bodily sense, all things seem aptly to agree together if they are handled with due attention: unless that it is written, that in all the beasts and flying things there was not found for man an helpmate like to himself; and then the woman was made out of his side. …
St Gregory of Nyssa Answer to Eunomius' Second Book
All his argument, then, in opposition to the doctrine of conception I think it best to pass over, though he charge with madness those who think that the name of God, as used by mankind to indicate the Supreme Being, is the result of this conception. For what he is thinking of when he considers himself bound to revile that doctrine, all who will may learn from his own words. What opinion we ourselves hold on the use of words we have already stated, viz. that, things being as they are in regard to their nature, the rational faculty implanted in our nature by God invented words indicative of those actual things. And if any one ascribe their origin to the Giver of the faculty, we would not contradict him, for we too maintain that motion, and sight, and the rest of the operations carried on by the senses are effected by Him Who endowed us with such faculties. …
St Ambrose On the Duties of the Clergy, Chapter XXVIII. A community rests upon justice and good-will. Two parts of the former, revenge and private possession, are not recognized by Christians. What the Stoics say about common property and mutual help has been borrowed from the sacred writings. The greatness of the glory of justice, and what hinders access to it
134. That man was made for the sake of man we find stated also in the books of Moses, when the Lord says: “It is not good that man should be alone, let us make him an helpmeet for him.” Thus the woman was given to the man to help him. She should bear him children, that one man might always be a help to another. Again, before the woman was formed, it was said of Adam: “There was not found an help-meet for him.” For one man could not have proper help but from another. Amongst all the living creatures, therefore, there was none meet for him, or, to put it plainly, none to be his helper. Hence a woman was looked for to help him.