Genesis 2:18ESV
Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'
The first lo tov in the Bible. Loneliness, named as a problem before sin existed.
Hebrew word · FaithLabz word study
לא טוב
lo tov
not good
Often translated: not goodno goodnot right
What lo tov means
Lo tov is two Hebrew words. Lo means no, or not. Tov means good. Together they form a single Hebrew phrase that the Bible reserves for moments of unusual weight: not good. It is the phrase God uses for the first time anything in creation is described as less than ideal. After six refrains of 'and God saw that it was good,' Genesis 2:18 hits the pause: 'It is not good (lo tov) that the man should be alone.' Not sinful. Not broken. Just lo tov. Something is missing. The phrase shows up again later in scripture when leaders give bad counsel, when relationships go off, when the conditions of a covenant get violated. Each time it carries the same weight. Lo tov is the Bible's quiet way of saying: this is not how things were meant to be. The phrase is small but freighted. In a Bible that loves repetition, lo tov is what gets said when the rhythm of 'and it was good' stops.
Why this word matters
Most of us were taught the first 'not good' in the Bible was sin. Lo tov pushed back on that. The first not-good was loneliness, before any sin existed. I missed this for a long time. I thought the only thing that grieved God was rebellion. Lo tov said no, the absence of connection grieves him too. If you are reading this and you are alone in a way that you do not want to be, the Bible is on your side. Your loneliness is not a personal failing. God himself called it lo tov before the world ever broke. He has been working to fix it ever since.
Etymology
Lo (לֹא) is the standard Hebrew negation, like English 'not.' Tov (טוֹב) means good, pleasant, beautiful, beneficial. Together they form a fixed expression, like English 'no good.' Used roughly 40 times in the Hebrew Bible. Often in contexts where the speaker wants the listener to feel a problem before they hear the solution.
Key Verses
Where lo tov appears in Scripture, and why each verse showcases it.
Proverbs 25:27ESV
It is not good to eat much honey, nor is it glorious to seek one's own glory.
Lo tov applied to excess. Even good things, taken without limit, can become lo tov.
1 Samuel 26:16ESV
This thing that you have done is not good.
David rebukes Abner with lo tov. The phrase is strong enough to function as a moral indictment.
Proverbs 17:26ESV
To impose a fine on a righteous man is not good, nor to strike the noble for their uprightness.
Lo tov as the Bible's word for civic injustice. The system has gone wrong.
Related Words
Words in the same semantic family.
1 Teaching on lo tov
Every video where Adam teaches on this word, in publication order.
Featured In
This word is studied in depth in the following monthly Bible studies.