Chapter Summary 2

SERIES 2: God And the Garden

 

God rests from His creative work (2:1-3), and the author returns to look in depth at the creation of mankind. This is not a second Creation account, but a close-up look at the most significant of God’s works (vv. 4-7). Note how carefully God shapes Eden, to permit Adam to use those capacities of personhood the Lord shared with him, such as: a love of beauty (v. 9), delight in meaningful work (v. 15), moral responsibility (vv. 16-17), and even a capacity for invention (vv. 19-20). Yet despite these fulfilling gifts, Adam gradually realizes something is lacking, and so God makes Eve, a “suitable helper” for him (vv. 18, 20). God’s method, taking a rib from Adam, teaches that man and woman share a common identity: they are equals, each fully participating in God’s gift of His image and likeness (vv. 21-23). Yet they are different, so that a man and woman can bond together as husband and wife, and so meet each other’s deepest needs for intimacy, lifelong commitment, and mutual support (vv. 24-25).

 

Key Verse 2:23: Woman shares fully in all that man is.

 

Personal Application: What needs can be met only by the lifelong commitment God intended marriage to be?

 

Eden. Eden lay somewhere along the Tigris/ Euphrates Rivers, possibly in the mountains of Armenia. In later Scriptures Eden stands for a “delightful place” (Isa. 51:3; Ezek. 28:13; Joel 2:3).

 

Dust and breath. The Creation account reminds us that we human beings are spiritual as well as biological creatures. When God breathed life into Adam, He made him a spiritual being. Man is no animal, but is God’s direct, special creation.

 

Adam/mankind. “Adam” is a Heb. word, the name of the first man, but also the Bible’s term for humanity. Man alone was: (1) directly, personally shaped by the Lord and given breath by Him, Gen. 2:7, (2) created in God’s image and likeness, 1:26-27, (3) granted the right to rule Creation as God’s representative, 1:26, 28-30, (4) morally responsible to obey God’s commands, 2:16-17, and (5) given a nature which requires intimate, lifelong relationships with others as well as with God. Thus persons have infinite worth and value.

 

Flesh. The Heb. term, basar, has a wide variety of meanings, ranging from the physical body, to the self, to all living creatures, to family relationships. Yet when used of human nature, “flesh” draws attention to our mortal life; the life we presently live in the material universe. Thus 2:24  is affirmation that a married couple become “one flesh” implies more than sexual union. It indicates that God intends a husband and wife to share the joys and sorrows that life in this world holds. To be “one flesh” is to be bonded together in a loving, supportive union that not only lasts but becomes deeper and more significant as the years pass.

 

Marriage. The phrase “suitable helper” has often been misunderstood, and used to support a distorted view of marriage. Helper here is `ezer, and means “a support,” “a helper,” or “an assistant.” It does not imply subordination, for the same word is used to describe God as man’s helper. The concept strongly supports equality of women. Only one who is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” and thus fully shares the human identity, could possibly meet anyone’s deeper needs. In its original conception, then, marriage was the union of equals, each respecting as well as caring for the other, and each committed to be the other’s helper.

 

Adam’s rib. A lovely Jewish tradition notes that God did not take Eve from Adam’s foot, lest he try to dominate her, or from his head, lest she see herself as above him. Instead God took Eve from Adam’s rib, that the two might go through life side by side.