How to Honor Your Husband: Are You an Ezer?

by Marilynn Chadwick

When we understand honor as a biblical concept, it sheds light on our God-given roles as husband and wife. In college, I was a spiritual skeptic with strong feminist leanings. After I became a follower of Christ, God’s Word opened my eyes to his beautiful and somewhat mysterious plan for marriage.

The Bible talks about Eve as Adam’s helper. The word “helper,” or ezer, means “to support.” The word conveys strength and is closely related to the word for rock. I honor David when I’m strong like a rock in my walk with the Lord. As wives, we respond best to our husbands’ spiritual leadership when we trust God and his design for our marriage. I hope you’ll see that being a strong woman of God, while also submitting to your husband’s spiritual leadership, go hand in hand.

Everything God created was good. But he looked at Adam and said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” Something was missing. So God said: "I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18 NIV). God created woman from the very stuff of man—his same substance: “So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs …Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man” (Genesis 2:20-22).

Marriage was God’s gift to the humans. Eve was Adams’s companion as well as his helper. In Hebrew, ezer is a combination of two roots: "to rescue or save," and "to be strong." Throughout the Old Testament, the word ezer most often refers to God as the helper, usually in times of danger or battle.

When you grasp what it means to be an ezer, you begin to get an image of your role as a rock, not a doormat. Your challenge is to become strong so that you are a source of strength for a husband who will sometimes be weak.

I’ve learned that an important part of showing honor to a strong husband like David is to be his “rock of support” when everything around him feels like it's crashing down. Think about what it means to be strong like a “rock” for our husbands, families, and communities. Lord knows we need more women who are willing to live strong as ezers in this hurting and broken world.

This series is adapted from Marilynn Chadwick’s book, Eight Great Ways to Honor Your Husband. To download your free PDF copy of the book, please visit our website by clicking here!