In the Beginning: Eve

Part One

Eve, the mother of all of us. She is easy to blame for our ills. We are so good at shifting blame. But are we so different? In truth the weakness of our nature has always been. If it hadn’t been Eve, it would have been someone else.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

And so the story unfolds. But there is something present at the beginning of the historical record that requires us to stop and think. This opening statement, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, is followed by a description of something that seems so out of character for our great Creator God.

Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

My first question is about the reasons behind this formless, void, and dark world. I am asking questions to which there may not be answers. And if there are answers, they might not be of any importance—if fact, since God did not choose to explain Himself or His actions, the answers are not necessary to the story.

But I still ask, and speculate. Was this beginning yet another “parable”, an illustration of what the regenerative work of God is all about, why it is needed, what the story to follow is going to be all about? This formless, void, and dark world is about to be reborn through the power of Christ, the Creator God who restores all things. Isn’t that a perfect picture of the regenerative power of Christ in our lives? He turns that which has no purpose, is empty, and dark, into that which has purpose, into that which fulfills His purpose, one that is full, and overflowing with light.

So God goes to work and makes a good world. We often refer to what is described in the early chapters of Genesis  as a perfect world, but I believe that “good” is the correct word. Often, as each day which saw something new and beautiful brought into being at God’s word, the statement is made:

And God saw that it was good.

“Good” is defined as something that is functioning as it was designed to function. When we come to faith in Christ we are reborn, we are declared righteous, good, functioning as we were intended to function. This, of course, applies to men and women. We are not perfect yet. But as we follow Christ, we move toward that ideal—the image of Christ reflected through us, an image that will be perfected one day.

The result of God’s creative genius was a beautiful garden, named Eden. This was a place that we can only imagine, filled with all that was both beautiful and functional, where nature, man, and God lived in harmony.

Everything was as it should have been. And this is how it will be again.

Man was a special part of that creation. I use the word “man” here in the generic sense, including both man and female since that is how it is framed in Scripture.

Then God said, “Let us make man in Our image, after our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it. So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

The command to the first family was to multiply and fill the earth.

The second chapter of Genesis describes the story of creation in more detail, including how man was made and how God Himself breathed life into the man He had formed from the dust of the newly formed earth. Man is connected intimately to the rest of creation.

The second chapter describes the garden, and in particular two special trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The sixth day of creation, during which these two trees were made, was a busy one.

According to Genesis 2 it appears that Adam was created before the garden was planted by God and before the animals were created. The order is important as we shall see. Adam, the first man, (Ish), is placed in the garden to care for it and to live from it. Now, specific instructions are given not to eat the fruit from the tree of good and evil. The consequences of disobedience were clearly set out: death would result, death on more levels than simply the physical.

It would appear from the order here that Eve was not present when these instructions were given.

Now let me introduce you to Eve.

We are still in the sixth day. Adam has been made and life given to him. As an interesting aside, Jesus, described by Paul as the second “Adam” will die on the sixth day of the week bringing new life and hope to His creation, the life and hope that the first Adam would lose through rebellion and disobedience.

The garden has been planted and man is instructed to look after it and to enjoy the fruits of his labour. He is only told not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But man is alone, except for God.

The Lord God also said, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make for him a suitable helper.”

God creates the animals, and sets man the task of naming them. But according to Genesis 2:20, though the animals would have been company for Adam, none was the helper that man needed.

This is fascinating. We assume that God communed with Adam as He later would do with Adam and Eve. But God had created man with the need for community with someone like himself. Even a pet, as loveable and companionable as one can be, is not community. And while the company of God is ultimately enough He never meant to begin and end His creation with one man.

Man needed someone like him, but not the same as him.  He needed an “other.” Eve is meant to be Adam’s “helper” or literally one who helps, a partner. He needed someone with whom he could build a community, a people. She would help him do that as the bearer of the next generation. But “helper” has so many other implications. The word used in the original language for “suitable helper” is ezer kenegdo. It is important to understand what ezer means.

The word is used twenty-one times in the Old Testament. Twice in Genesis it is used for woman. But here’s the interesting part. Three times the word is used to refere to the nations to whom Israel appealed for military aid, and sixteen times the word is used in reference to God as Israel’s helper. Now if you thought that Genesis instructs women, as an expression of being man’s helper, to be submissive to him, you are wrong. The same word, ezer, is used for the strong nations that Israel thought could help them because they were more powerful than its enemies. The same word is used for God who is not submissive to anyone! “Helper” here means much much more than many are willing to attribute to it.  Kenegdo the word translated as “suitable” takes us back to how woman was made—from man. She is part of him, just as he is part of her. They both bear the characteristics of God who made them in His image. They are the same, but different so that they fit together, as some might say, in the same way the North Pole floating sea ice) differs from the South Pole (solid land), but both are equally necessary because both ends working together provide the stability of the planet, the climate, the currents, the atmosphere and the magnetic field.

Perhaps it would be sufficient to say that whatever Adam needed, Eve was meant to come alongside and help him be, and do, all that God required.

So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he slept, He took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the area with flesh. And from the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, He made a woman and brought her to him.

Just as man is intimately connected to the land, so is woman intimately connected to man. Adam recognized this in a most profound way. It is recorded that when the woman was brought to him, he said:

“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man she was taken.”

We slip over this statement. But perhaps we need to pick it apart a little. What is the ideal in the relationship between a man and a woman? What was God’s intent? She was to be man’s helper, but how does that connect with this more intimate description?

Let’s look at what some Biblical scholars have to say about Adam’s statement.

Ellicott writes in his commentary:

Thus bone of my bones means “my very own self,” while flesh of my flesh adds the more tender and gentle qualities. She shall be called Woman (Ishah), because she was taken out of Man (Ish).—Adam, who knew that he was an Ish…, called the woman a “female Ish.”

Notice what is said here. The man is an Ish, the Hebrew word for man. The woman taken from man is an Isha, a wo-man, or literally a she-man.

Benson writes:

Genesis 2:23. This is now bone of my bone — Probably it was revealed to Adam in a vision, when he was asleep that this lovely creature, now presented to him, was a piece of himself, and was to be his companion, and the wife of his covenant. In token of his acceptance of her, he gave her a name, not peculiar to her, but common to her sex: she shall be called woman, isha, a she-man, differing from man in sex only, not in nature; made of man, and joined to man.

She is part of him and Paul would write that she was to be loved just as man loved his own body because she was part of that body—the “one flesh.” To denigrate her is to denigrate oneself, to diminish oneself.

We remember that Adam made this statement about the nature of his companion prior to the fall. There would be consequences after the fall, adjustments to the order of things. But we look at this statement and take it at its face value in the context in which it was written. The differences are physical but both man and woman are the same in every other way. Eve is a she-man. They are different, distinct, but they are one.

As mentioned Paul will write that a husband should love his wife as he loves his own body. By extension, we could say that man should also love the earth as he loves his own body. Both the earth and the woman are to be cared for, a logical application of this truth from the creation story. She was to be as treasured as the garden into which they both were placed. For she, and the creation, are part of man just as he is part of them.

The passage in Ephesians 5 which addresses the relationship, post fall, of husbands and wives, gives us a clue as to what might have been reality prior to the fall.

This relationship is likened to the relationship between Christ and His church. He loves His church. He gives everything, including himself, to “sanctify her” and to present her “holy and blameless.” He loves her as He loves Himself. He "nourishes and cherishes” her. She respects him and helps him to be all that he can be.

Adam, upon receiving his bride from God, declares her to be part of him, literally part of his own flesh.

Part Two: Unpacking Eve