Genesis Diaries: 2:18-25

There is always a slight hesitancy to write these blog entries. Sometimes it keeps me away for a week or two because I am deeply aware that I am speaking about ancient, foundational things; the “Deep Magic” Aslan refers to in the “Chronicles of Narnia“. This is not Sunday picnic conversation topics. Actually, maybe they should be Sunday picnic conversation topics, but these things we find in Genesis affect absolutely everything that comes after it in the scriptures. I don’t want to get commentary on these things wrong. But then again…how can we mortals do it accurately, without any risk? The LORD’s call is a dangerous quest, a daring proposition. We see through a dirty window. Of course we can only guess at what lie beyond; we will never understand the full importance, the full ramifications of what we are reading. We understand in part. And yet we are called to work it out with fear and trembling, awe and excitement.

“Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

Given the omniscience of God, this is not a new revelation for Him. He knew from before Adam’s creation that the man was incomplete. There was something missing, not by accident, but by design. This speech of the LORD God’s is for our benefit many, many thousands of years later. But God does a peculiar thing. He could absolutely have just dropped down to Earth again, got His hands dirty, and made a woman out of the dirt and mud. Indeed, many ancient, Jewish, religious scholars have suggested that God did just this, creating a fully independent female human named Lilith who didn’t have enough middle fingers for God or Adam and was banished for refusing to submit to either. The tale is slightly more technical than that, but I don’t give the tale much credence so I’ll leave it at that.

What the canon of scripture does say is that God, instead, parades every animal in the air and on the Earth in front of Adam. God gives Adam an amazing privilege. Divine God lets mortal man name each of God’s creations. It says that God does this to “see what he would call them”. As if He didn’t already know. :). The real reason for God’s animal parade is revealed in the next verse which says, “But for Adam there was not a helper fit for him.”

God knew Adam’s need. Adam needed to know Adam’s need.

Why? I think it is so that Adam wouldn’t end up treating Eve like an accessory.

When we are given something we don’t think we need we are fascinated for a while but eventually throw it on the heap of stuff we don’t need. Eventually, when a need for an object we have been given arises we have an “a-ha” moment and dig through boxes to find it. We use it for its purpose and then put it back into the box until we might need it again. If, however, we have a recognized need for something, we receive it with great gratitude, and tend to put it in a place of honor; not with useless things.

Eve was not a luxury. She was a necessity.

Personally, I find my wife to be both a luxury and a necessity, a helper and an attractive best friend/companion/lover. Given Adam’s reaction to Eve I’d say that he felt the same, as well.

“But what about the horrible patriarchal culture that was every ancient culture, but historically/specifically the Jewish culture?” I can already hear people saying with chronological snobbery echoing in their dissenting voices. This, of course needs to be addressed. I can only say one thing about this with certainty and another with qualified acknowledgment.

The last first. There is scholarly work that has recently come out that has revealed that the negative attitudes that men showed women in Jewish society were the result of a specific rabbi popular a century or two before Jesus. Much of Jesus’ attitudes towards women appear to be in direct conflict with this rabbi’s teachings…almost as if the Holy One had a specific grudge to settle. It’s interesting to me how much of these negative opinions of women has bled over into Modern American Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity. I haven’t yet read the book on this that was recommended, but I know the one who did the recommending reads this blog and I ask that she post the title in the comments below. It is very important, and I need to get to reading it but I have only had so much time.

The first last. Because Jewish societal norms became a particular thing does not mean that it was what God intended, nor that it is God’s express opinion on a particular matter. The entirety of both the Old and New Testaments has been a push and pull of God and His people. The Prophets: “Israel! You guys are going off the rails. God didn’t approve that, doesn’t want that, He was clear. This is you pretending that your fleshy wants are what God says is “ok”. It’s not. Stop!” Temple prostitutes, unclean offerings, cheating the poor, abusing the transient, having idols of other Gods in the same temple and sacrificing to them. The Epistles: “Church! You guys are going off the rails…” Gossiping, defrauding, snobbery, prostitution, a man marrying his own mother…etc.

Here we see God’s actual heart for man and woman and their unity in marriage. The term “helper” here has been minimized into meaning something close to “someone who lends a hand”. The closer meaning of the Jewish term “ezer” is one who is strong where the other is weak. The BEMA podcast, which I heartily recommend to you, does an excellent job of talking about this in terms of tent poles. The structure of the entire tent is dependent on the two poles leaning into each other, the tension of one pole meeting the tension of the other. When the wind blows, one pole becomes less effective but the whole structure doesn’t fall down because the other pole takes on the slack. When the wind shifts the poles are in a mirrored situation.

I’ve long believed that the stereotypical (but by no means accurate) way of expressing marriage as the Strong Dominant Male and the Meek Submissive Female was somehow not entirely correct. Of course I speak as someone who clearly doesn’t fit the model. I stay at home, cook, clean (on a good day), homeschool our son and do the laundry. My wife works and brings home the proverbial bacon. I was shocked a few years ago when one of my friends called me “brave” for admitting to this and talking about it in public. Apparently they expected me to be ashamed of the reversal. I’ve had a few people ask me how I square this with the Pauline admonition that “He who doesn’t provide for his family is worse than a non-believer”. Ignoring the context the verse is from, which is important and you should look up, I gently prodded, “Provide what exactly?” The answer for me is and continues to be: Whatever my family needs…cooking, cleaning, a kidney, a good education… And if what we needed was more money then I would, at a drop of a hat, go and get a full time job. All this is just to let you know my bias.

My wife and I have a relationship that has from Day One been this meeting each other’s weakness with each other’s strength. She is amazing at logistics and administration, I am not. I am amazing at cooking and spiritually and philosophically leading, and she is not. We do not expect each other to be self-sufficient. We do not mock each other’s lack of ability in certain areas. Like the poles of a tent we lean into inter-dependency. She relates to our children in a way that amazes me. She is so wonderful and soothing and nurturing. I have never been great at that. However, I am very good at pushing, and encouraging to action, and holding them accountable. This is actually pretty typical mother and father territory. Neither is wrong in their approach. Both are needed. A well-rounded child needs each of them; the soft, “safe space” and the driving to excellence “drill sergeant”.

Adam was incomplete in a specific way. There was no “tension” that he desperately needed. Alone he may have lived his life out lazily. Much of human history tends to be made by males pushed to excellence, or at least responsibility, by females. There is nothing so wounding to a man as when he sees that his wife is disappointed in him or despises him. And I don’t think that’s an accident.

With Adam in full recognition of his need as pairs of animals moved before him, as he saw the physical differences between male and female lion, the behavior differences between male and female horses and the like, God goes to work.

The LORD God doesn’t dig into the dust. He doesn’t form Adam’s “fit” out of clay. He wants them to be more intimately joined than that. The LORD causes Adam to fall asleep, reaches into him, and pulls out a part of his own body. Hence the Hebrew word for woman. “Taken out of man”. They are connected to one another at every level. She is far more than some sort of accessory, a tool, or something to make his life easier, and Adam recognizes this from the start.

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

He recognizes her as not just the same sort of creature as himself. He recognizes that they are an actual part of one another.

In verse 24 we have this statement:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.”

God is very much declaring His ideal for the species right here. We are talking about something more valuable and important than simply sexual union here. It is a recognition that each belongs to the other, that each is needed, that there is an incompleteness when man is without his wife, and when woman is without her husband. There is a translation of the word for “flesh” that could cause this to read “they shall become one self.” I love that, because after 20+ years of marriage I have experienced just that.

Of course from here a debate begins and thoughts and feelings get churned up and statements get made that usually start with, “Well, but the Bible doesn’t say…” But more important than what it doesn’t say is what the Bible does say.

When we take this little aside and place it back into the timeline we see what it says about Adam and Eve coming together this way.

Suddenly creation isn’t just “good”. The scriptures say that now, with all of God’s intention for the cosmos and mankind in place, it is Very Good.

(Thank you once again for reading. If you got all of this way to the end I ask, as I always do, that you might leave a little encouragement, thought, or even smart aleck remark in the comments. If you are a typically busy modern person please consider a like, a subscription, or even a share of it to your social media if you’re feeling particularly daring.)