Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 216th episode. In this episode I’m bringing you another edition of Bible study content I’m creating for my church. This content is every bit as professionally produced as my normal episodes on MHB — and my intent is to continue cross-publishing them for your benefit. So without further delay I bring you: Summit Bible Study.
Hello friends and thank you for listening to another Bible Study. Today we’re going to finish Genesis chapter 2. So we’ll be in verses 16-25. This chapter has presented what is called the Yahwist account of creation. Genesis 1, which was the subject of our first three studies, is called the Priestly account of creation. The main difference between these two creation accounts is that the Priestly account gives a 30,000 foot view of God’s creating the universe and everything in it in 6 days. The Yahwist account begins on the sixth day and presents a high-resolution examination of the creation of Adam and Eve.
In the previous episode we studied the first 15 verses of chapter 2 which showed us God’s instituting the Sabbath as well as His formation of Adam from the dust of the ground. We talked about how the value for human life is sourced in God because man was dust until God breathed life into him. Without the soul which is given by God our bodies are nothing more than dry bones. We finished the study with a detailed description of the paradisal Garden of Eden including its possible geographical location in the Fertile Crescent of ancient Mesopotamia. God moved Adam from outside the Garden to inside the Garden, and so we discussed the differences between feeling like God’s calling you to move on somewhere as opposed to God simply moving you Himself.
In this study we’ll see God make His first ever covenant with humanity when He prohibits Adam from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God determined it was not good for Adam to be alone, so the remainder of this chapter reveals how God made Eve from the bone of Adam. The man and woman are joined in a union which represents the very first human marriage. The closing verse of this chapter reminds us that at this moment before the Fall, the man and woman were both naked and were not ashamed. Let’s begin our study by reading verses 16-17:
Gen 2:16-17
16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;
17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
In the previous study we mentioned how man cannot live optimally without government. Even nature itself is subject to God’s laws. God gave Adam dominion over the creatures He made, but He also asserted His own authority over Adam when He moved him into the Garden. God set the laws of nature which govern the instincts of brute creatures and in a similar way He’s also given human beings natural instincts. In addition to natural instincts, human beings are also capable of higher-order rational thought and we have a capacity for reason. It is this capacity which represents God’s will to position humanity as authoritative over nature. By the power of our intellect we have subdued the world.
Even while occupying such an honorable position, Adam was obligated to obey God’s commands. I want to reiterate the importance of God’s first commands being issued before the Fall. This means commands from God, by definition, were never meant to diminish the greatness of authority God has given us. They were never meant to make Adam anything less than a very good creation. God’s commands were both instructive for Adam’s happiness and necessary for the security of maintaining paradise.
God’s lordship over Adam and His divine commands both being in place before the Fall ensures us today that God has a right to rule over us and God’s commands are purposed for our best interests. The deception of the serpent was simply to invert this truth and suggest God’s commands were somehow limiting or dishonest. Trust in God and submission to His holy will is the best defense against the subtleties of Satan.
When God grants Adam liberty to eat from every tree in the garden save one, He’s reminding him that Eden is a space of contentment where he can be happy and fulfilled by the delicious fruits of paradise. Adam’s job was to maintain the garden, and God gave him the fruit as recompense for this labor. Paul explicates God’s value of paying the laborer in 1 Corinthians 9 when he says:
“Who at any time serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat the fruit of it? Or who tends a flock and does not use the milk of the flock? I am not speaking these things according to human judgment, am I? Or does not the Law also say these things? For it is written in the Law of Moses, “YOU SHALL NOT MUZZLE THE OX WHILE HE IS THRESHING.” God is not concerned about oxen, is He? Or is He speaking altogether for our sake? Yes, for our sake it was written, because the plowman ought to plow in hope, and the thresher to thresh in hope of sharing the crops.”
This grant of liberty extended to Adam was also the grant of eternal life. If he simply obeyed God, Adam could have lived forever in paradise. We know God included the tree of life in this grant because the tree of life is the only tree named when the grant is later rescinded. God’s reasoning for prohibiting the tree of life after the Fall was that should Adam and Eve eat of it, they would live forever in their sin.
Our situation is markedly different from Adam’s in that we now live in a cursed creation. Unlike in the garden, obedience to God in our world does not have a one-to-one correlation with freedom from suffering. There now exists an element of arbitrary tragedy we must endure. Despite this difference one thing has remained unchanged and never will change: obedience to God is the only path to living in God’s favor. Living in God’s favor is the only way for us to find peace for our souls, the kind of peace which goes beyond comprehension because it transcends even the palpable tragedy of our own existence. It’s possible to be at peace with God even while living in a cursed creation.
In order for Adam to remain at peace with God, he was forbidden to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was humanity’s very first covenant with God. It was an intersection with one road remaining in paradise and the other road leading to death. This stark difference in outcomes would later be reflected in Moses’s blessing or curse speech in Deuteronomy. The final covenant in the blood of Christ, which all of these other covenants were pointing to, represented the same divergent paths: believe in Jesus and receive salvation, reject Jesus and receive condemnation.
In Adam’s case the covenant is presented to him in just two consecutive verses, 16 and 17. The Hebrew in these verses has an element of linguistic symmetry. In verse 16 God grants Adam paradise by saying: eating thou shalt eat. In verse 17 God warns Adam of the consequences should he sin: dying thou shalt die. God’s use of a threat here indicates holy fear was part of a paradisal existence. The fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom, and we’ll continue to have this kind of reverential fear when we pass into the kingdom of heaven. Perhaps especially when we pass into the kingdom of heaven.
We often think of fear as a bad thing which must be overcome. While God does not give us a spirit of fear but of power, fearlessness itself is not a virtue. Even in a secular context fear is a great preserver of life and social order. What some philosophers mistake as inherent human goodness is simply the fear of consequences. It’s not obvious how many people you cross each day who would readily commit heinous acts of evil if they simply had the resources to do so without consequences. It’s hard to say how many people you cross paths with whose only inhibition to ruthless dictatorship is the lack of a standing army. Adam was capable of fearing God even before his fall from grace, and so we may conclude that fearing God is a good thing and was part of a perfect world.
Consuming fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would eliminate Adam’s access to the tree of life. Exchanging one tree for the other was the same as inviting death into the world and into his own life. To rebel against God meant to forfeit whatever paradisal happiness he had at the moment as well as the possibility of future happiness. All of these things would be touched by the new reality of death and all the suffering which precedes it, attends it, and follows it.
The consequences should Adam sin are presented by God as effective immediately. God said, “For in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” We know Adam and Eve didn’t die the moment they ate the fruit — so we know this consequence is referring to their newly discovered mortality. The moment they ate the fruit they became mortals and the tree of life was recalled from them.
The harbingers of death immediately seized them because they went from living in eternity to living in the same condition we all do: with each passing day bringing us closer to death. Our lives have an apocalyptic element to them because whether we’re living in the last days of the world or not, we are with certainty living in the last days of our own worlds. Our own progressively dying lives are coming to an end and each day brings us closer to grief, loss, and ultimately the presence of Jesus Christ — either as our Judge or as our Savior.
What’s interesting about God’s prohibition against eating the fruit is that it’s a kind of “positive” law. The only reason it’s bad is because God says it’s bad. Remember it wasn’t the substance of the tree itself which caused the Fall, it was Adam’s direct disobedience of God. Adam didn’t need other laws governing him against self-evident sins like murder, rape, or theft because Adam by his own very good nature was averse to these things. The forbidden fruit was evil simply because God forbade it. It was this exact subtlety which the serpent exploited when he deceived Eve into consuming it.
In perfect order Adam’s body was ruled by his soul and his soul was ruled by his God. This alignment inoculated Adam against the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life which characterizes those of us who live in sin today. God’s prohibition protected Adam from the temptations of sensitive delights and the ambitions of curious knowledge. The desires of the flesh and the desires of the mind are the two great fountains out of which all of our sins flow. Adam’s alignment of body and soul and his submission of both to God’s lordship composed what we might think of as Adam’s very good nature. This nature was inverted the moment he fell from grace.
And so that gives us an observation of how good God was to Adam. He gave him a life that was easy, happy, and in a state of perfect innocency. In the gospels Jesus says:
[Mat 11:29-30 NASB95] 29 “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. 30 “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
The yoke God gave Adam was easy and his burden was light. The covenant God made with him was gracious and kind. Yet in the final analysis Adam and Eve failed to take seriously their own best interests, and eventually returned to the dust from whence they came. Let’s continue with verses 18-20:
Gen 2:18-20
18 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”
19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.
20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
So God made a covenant with Adam and reminded him that despite his dominion over the natural world, God is the One who has authority over all things — including humanity. God’s is mighty and authoritative, but He is also loving and caring much like a father to his children. We see this in the very next verse after God issues His covenant with Adam. God’s next concern was that it’s not good for Adam to be alone, and he needed a helper suitable for him. Scripture says God remembers our frame, He knows that we are dust. A major feature of God’s character is to command obedience while at the same time paying attention to human well-being. Indeed in many instances obedience to God is directly correlated with human flourishing.
When God said it wasn’t good for the man to be alone, He meant it wasn’t good for the man to be the only individual of his kind. Adam had God and the animals to keep him company, but he needed someone who shared in his nature. This truth is reflected in the Trinity itself. God, who is entirely self-actualized and needs nothing, lives in eternal, perfect communion within the triune Godhead. Many times you’ve heard tropes that God created humanity because He needed someone to love. This is patently false. God gained nothing by creating humanity and He needed nothing before they existed. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in perfect loving communion with each other. They share the highest, purest, most archetypal communion the likes of which human beings aspire to.
But Adam was not part of a holy trinity and so he needed the addition of Eve in order to exchange knowledge, affection, and love with someone who was like himself. Being his Creator, God knew what was best for Adam even more than Adam himself did. God knew solitude was suboptimal for Adam’s comforts as a social creature. Adam needed to love and be loved. You can see that relationship in community has been part of God’s design for humanity since the very beginning. It’s not optional if we want to embrace God’s best for our lives.
This truth is one of the reasons why selfishness is such a bad strategy. Being selfish inappropriately discounts the value of your relationship to others. Selfish people often accept this discount blindly, and it’s not until they’ve driven off their loved ones that they recognize, tragically, they cannot be happy without the love of others. Human beings are so dependent on social interaction that for millennia we’ve used solitary confinement as a punishment of punishments.
As if being locked in prison is not enough punishment, we deprive human contact from those exceptionally heinous criminals and even the most anti-social individuals can’t survive it for long. Your grip on sanity depends in no small part on observing the verbal, physical, and emotional feedback you get from others when you express yourself. To be perfectly isolated from other people would drive you insane and likely kill you. Loneliness turns a paradise into a desert, and a palace into a dungeon.
God could have simply created all human beings who would ever live all at the same time. He could have populated the entire earth much the same as He spoke the stars into existence (whose total number human populations will never come close to). But instead God chose to do it through successive generations — be fruitful and multiply, as it were. We’ve already spoken about how God chooses to use second and third order causes to advance His work even though He Himself is not bound by these natural causes. In order for there to be a succession of generations, there needed to be a marriage union between one man and one woman. And that is why the woman is called Eve whose name means, “The mother of all living.”
In designing the woman Eve, God expressed the importance of her being suitable for Adam. Another way of thinking about this is a helper who is like him or shares his nature. She should be near him and cohabit with him. Adam should be able to look upon her with pleasure and delight. So you understand that beauty and attraction between men and women is part of God’s design and an important part of a biblical marriage.
Some of the radical purity groups who have emerged in holiness traditions of Christianity misunderstood sexual attraction as being inherently sinful. This dangerous false teaching is likely responsible for many divorces. It is good to be attracted to your husband or wife and sexual intimacy is a good, godly part of a biblical marriage. This was certainly the case with Adam and Eve and God designed it that way.
When scripture calls Eve a helper or help-meet, it’s pointing to a crucial part of why biblical marriages are advantageous for living a good life. We all need help. Even when we’re performing at our best, we can’t sustain it without the help and support of others. The apostle Paul describes our dependence on each other in 1 Corinthians 12 when he says,
[1Co 12:13-27 NASB95] 13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 14 For the body is not one member, but many. 15 If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired. 19 If they were all one member, where would the body be? 20 But now there are many members, but one body. 21 And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; or again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; 23 and those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, 24 whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, 25 so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. 27 Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it.
Accepting your dependence on the help of others as being a divine truth of scripture therefore means we should be glad to receive help from others and to offer help as there is occasion. And remember we don’t view community, relationship, or help from others as distinct from help from God Himself. God uses the assistance of other human beings to help us when we need it. Listen to Paul as he thanks the Philippians for their generosity to him in supplying what he needs:
[Phl 4:15-20 NASB95] 15 You yourselves also know, Philippians, that at the first preaching of the gospel, after I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving but you alone; 16 for even in Thessalonica you sent a gift more than once for my needs. 17 Not that I seek the gift itself, but I seek for the profit which increases to your account. 18 But I have received everything in full and have an abundance; I am amply supplied, having received from Epaphroditus what you have sent, a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God. 19 And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. 20 Now to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Always remember suitable help brought into your life in the form of human relationships is a provision from God. In this way, a suitable spouse whose union with yourself supplies necessary help for your needs is also a gift from God. There’s a very important principle to be learned here. God’s gift of family is a redress sufficient for the grievance of loneliness. This means if you have a good wife, a good family, and a good God — yet you are still discontent — the problem is certainly with yourself. This is not a void any new person can fill for you. It’s a spiritual abnormality which must be healed through repentance, and submission to spiritual sanctification. Throwing away what God has called good in exchange for a fantasy is precisely the sin which resulted in the Fall of man. If you’re always fantasizing of what might be better, then even life in paradise would not be enough to satisfy you.
God said it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, but Adam himself was not found complaining of it. Adam walked in the presence of God and this provided the foundation of a healthy spirit. This is what set Adam in the correct perspective to receive Eve. In the same way, if you’re single and lonely and you discount your relationship with God as being secondary to your future spouse — you’re setting yourself up for painful idolatry. The optimal condition for a betrothed person is to live in total dependence on God while looking forward to accepting a spouse as a welcome and worthy addition. Those who are most satisfied in God are postured in the best possible way to receive God’s favor and His gifts — which include marriage. Your spouse cannot be your savior, your spouse should be your helper as you both seek to serve and glorify God.
God brought every beast of the field and every fowl of the air to Adam. It’s possible God did this Himself, employed a ministry of angels, or simply gave the animals a special instinct to do it themselves. Perhaps He made the animals familiar with Adam in the same way a dog knows his master. Whatever the case we know God brought the animals to Adam and gave Adam dominion over the creatures.
The first step in expressing this dominion was to name them. Naming the animals would prove Adam was a person endowed with the faculties of reason and speech. Scripture says God has taught man more than the beasts of the earth and has made us wiser than the birds of the air. Our high capacity for reason is part of what it means to be made in the image of God. Naming the animals was also a symbol of authority over them. In the book of Daniel, one of the commanders of the officials renames Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah as an expression of his power over them. Receiving a new name was an act of subjection one might use to swear fealty to his master. For example when God changes Abram’s name to Abraham or Jacob’s name to Israel.
Since Adam had dominion over the animals and gave them names, it’s reasonable to expect they might have responded to his call at any time and answered to their names. This is true of the cosmos itself, which remains in a state of constant obedience to God and which God calls by name. Scripture remarks how God calls each star in the universe by its name, and this is given to indicate God’s supreme authority over the entire universe. God could have named the animals Himself and kept them under His own sovereignty, but He chose to give this dominion to Adam because Adam was made in God’s image. It was a way of conferring honor upon Adam as is appropriate for a creature made in God’s image.
Once the animals were brought together in subjection to Adam, it was discovered there were no creatures suitable to be a one-to-one companion with him. We can surmise whether this insufficiency was pointed out by Adam or observed by God Himself. I tend to think it was God Himself as He was shaping what Adam’s life in paradise would be like. None of the animals were suitable for Adam because the dignity and excellency of human nature set him apart from them. None of them could match him.
The parallel we might underscore here is that no amount of worldly vanity will serve as a replacement for loving relationship. All of the possessions, status, and power in the world mean nothing to men if women are unavailable. This true of men at the top of social hierarchies as well as at the bottom. They all need women and there is nothing suitable as a replacement for women. So God created a new thing and that thing was the seed of a woman. Let’s continue with verses 21-25:
Gen 2:21-25
21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.
22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.”
24 For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
This final passage of chapter two reveals the creation of woman from the bone of man. This creative miracle would have happened on the sixth day, the same day Adam was placed in the garden. In the Priestly Account of creation, this was the same event described in Genesis 1:27 which reads:
[Gen 1:27 NASB95] 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
This next observation won’t be popular in 21st century egalitarian culture, but it really is the most honest interpretation of the text. Adam was made first and then Eve. Both Adam and Eve rebelled against God, but it was Eve who accepted discourse with the serpent and was consequently deceived. Eve originated in Adam, whereas Adam did not originate in Eve. It’s also true that Eve was made for Adam and Adam was not made for Eve. Paul points out the ramifications of these observations in his letter to Timothy when he writes:
[1Ti 2:8-15 NASB95] 8 Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension. 9 Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, 10 but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. 11 A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. 12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. 14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. 15 But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.
The dynamic of Eve’s creation means it’s only appropriate for women to be submissive to male leadership. In order for women to have healthy marriages, they must give reverence and respect to their husbands. These are not bad things. The culture has done its work to convince us this dynamic is chauvinistic, but this is in fact God’s design. As men and women have accepted the false doctrine of culture and rejected God’s design, we’ve watched marriages deteriorate at alarming rates and a mental health crisis emerge in both men and women concerning how they should treat each other. Adam was made last of all God’s ex nihilo creations and he was the most excellent of all that God had made. Woman was made from the bone of this most excellent creation and so honor was conferred upon women as well. Scripture says man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man.
If man is considered the head of all creation, then woman is the crown. In this way you might argue women are more excellent than men. Man was shaped from the dust of the ground, but woman was shaped from the bone of the man. This means Adam was refined dust but Eve was double-refined dust. She was one additional step removed from the earth.
Adam was in a deep sleep while God formed the woman Eve. There may be several reasons for this. One is as simple as anesthesia. Scripture says God opened the man and took one of his ribs, then closed the flesh at that place. Adam had not yet sinned, so it was only appropriate that God shield him from any kind of distress or pain. Even today we wouldn’t perform such an operation without general anesthesia.
Such loving care to protect Adam from grievance is still a part of God’s character when He deals with those who have sinned. It’s just more focused on assuaging spiritual agony rather than physical torment. For instance when the Jews faced Babylonian exile, there’s no doubt this came with its share of physical pain. But God, by His grace, is able to quiet and compose the spirits of those who are repentant such that they become durable enough to outlast persecution.
It’s also possible that God put Adam to sleep so as to remove any doubt that Adam had a role in designing Eve. God would not take advice or counsel from Adam concerning what Eve must be like. We can pray that God give us what is best for us according to His will, but God isn’t going to shape His movements on the basis of our own input.
Adam’s sleep also shows us that he’s able to lie down peacefully while God takes up the important creative work. This is what it looks like for a person to cast all of their cares and concerns at the feet of Jesus. Adam trusted himself and his future to His Creator’s will and wisdom. One of the Hebrew names for God is Jehovah-jireh which means “the Lord will provide” or “the Lord sees to it”. This name indicates that if we graciously rest in God, God will graciously work for us and work all for good. God will provide when and whom He pleases according to His infinite wisdom and comprehensive sovereignty.
Many people throughout church history have wondered why God chose to use Adam’s rib bone instead of some other part of his body. I think there’s some symbolism here which may speak into it. Had she been made from his head she might be thought to rule over him. Had she been made from his feet she might be thought to be subjugated by him. Instead she’s made from a bone at his side, which indicates equality with him. The bone comes from under his arm, so that she might be protected by him. And the bone comes from close to his heart, so that she might be loved.
Adam lost a rib in the process but he gained a wife. Many times in our lives we experience difficult or sometimes tragic seasons which take away from who we are. Part of this creation story concerning Adam and Eve reveals God’s modus operandi to restore what was lost plus more. We may have to wait until we pass into glory to see this restoration, but we can be certain God will work it. Job’s story is tragic and terrifying because he’s attacked by Satan himself and loses everything as a result. At one point Job’s life is reduced to him sitting in a pile of ruinous ashes and scraping painful sores on his body with a potsherd. Despite such bleak moments of loss and agony, we know how Job’s story ends. God restores all that was lost plus even more than Job had before the attack.
The symbolism with Adam’s operation goes even deeper than this. One might consider the creation of Eve as symbolic of the union between Christ and His Church. Let me explain: Eve was formed from the bone taken from Adam’s side whilst Adam was deep asleep. In the same way, Christ’s side was pierced with a spear while He was dead on the cross. Blood and water flowed from the opening, the blood by which Christ purchased His bride and water by which He purified her to Himself. Paul calls Christ the second Adam, and part of this title is pointing to the fact that their wives (Eve for Adam, the Church for Christ) were bought with their blood and broken bodies.
When we consider the marriage of Adam and Eve we might think of it as the most honorable marriage to ever exist apart from the marriage of Christ and His Church. Marriage itself is an honorable institution and couples glorify God by submitting themselves to Him in holy matrimony. God’s hand is in every marriage between husband and wife, because God’s hand is sovereign over the creation of both husband and wife. The match is worked by His hand and because of this we may faithfully enter into covenant with the person God has given us. This is why Mark 10:9 is read at nearly every wedding: “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” But the marriage between Adam and Eve was the only marriage to be made in perfect innocence — a marriage completed before either of them had known sin.
The union between Adam and Eve also reveals their relationship to God as their Father. God brought the woman to the man, Eve didn’t choose to go there of her own accord. She wasn’t set free to do whatever she wants, she was God’s child, and so her marriage must require God’s blessing. Most of us say we want God’s best for our lives, but not as many of us are willing to submit what it takes to receive that. To receive God’s best we must humble ourselves to a dependence on His providence. We put ourselves under divine conduct so that we may walk in congruence with God’s will. When we’re selecting a husband or wife, the evaluation shouldn’t be predicated on what our flesh lusts for in the present moment. Our evaluation should call into question what attributes may be common to an individual whom God Himself would bring to us.
Adam’s reception of Eve reveals His relationship with God because he accepted God’s gift with humble, thankful acknowledgment. He knew God suited Eve for him and he faithfully received God’s favor in betrothing her to him. He didn’t question God’s design or seek for something better. He knew by faith that Eve was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Finally he had someone suitable to be his companion and to enter into covenant with. As part of his accepting her he gave her a name, “She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.” The name woman acknowledges that Eve is distinct from Adam in biological sex but indistinct in human nature. She was made from man, and she would be joined to man to form one flesh. Such a divine truth is not possible outside of biblical marriage.
Verse 24 of this passage is the official institution of marriage and the settling of it into God’s law. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” There are only two major ordinances of the Church which were instantiated before the Fall: the sabbath and marriage. The sabbath works for the preservation of the Church and marriage works for the preservation of humanity.
The doctrine which commands man to leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife was never an instruction for geographical separation. It’s often misrepresented this way. It was simply an expression of adopting male leadership. You cannot occupy the position of being a child while also successfully occupying the position of being a husband, who must lead his own house. At some point the man must become a man in order for his marriage to succeed.
The laws of nature bind us to our parents in a way that few forces can change. Good parents will have the love of their children for the rest of their lives. Divine ordinance had to be given for the man to become a man so that he might resist idolizing his parents and thus fail to flourish into the person his own family needs him to be. This is one of the reasons why it’s so important for parents to be part of the wedding ceremony. The parents are consenting to a fundamental transformation in their relationship with their child so that their child might cleave to his wife. Such a thing should not be done without parental consent, and doing it without parental consent is failing to honor your parents.
Selecting a spouse is selecting the single relationship which has the most power to determine the rest of your life. This is one reason why polygamy is such a bad idea and was never appropriately considered biblical. You simply can’t divide yourself at such a deep level among multiple wives without suffering painful disintegration. Polygamous sexual behavior, whether in the context of marriage or not, ultimately weakens the bonds of marriage itself because weakening the bonds is the only method of preventing disintegration. If I can’t divide myself three different ways for three different wives — I’ll simply weaken the bonds of marriage and refuse to give myself to any of them. That’s what we inevitably do when we attempt to have a multiplicity of romantic relationships.
Paul instructs husbands to love their wives as they love their own bodies. We should be equally averse to divorce as we are to self-destruction. The affection between husband and wife, when marriage is implemented properly, is such that the two become one flesh.
This chapter finishes with a revelation of the purity and innocence wherein Adam and Eve began their marriage. Scripture says the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. This innocence is analogous to that of a child, which is why a child is able to be naked without shame. Adam and Eve had no sin in them, so they had no reason to be ashamed. The analogy somewhat fails when we understand little children do in fact have sin, it’s simply that they aren’t yet aware of it.
Adam and Eve lived in paradise, and so they had no need for clothing as a defense against the elements. There were no human conventions concerning social status, and so they didn’t need clothing to display as a pretense or an ornament. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Most of all they didn’t have the knowledge of good and evil — which means they weren’t awake to their own vulnerabilities. The moment their eyes were opened they begin to realize how they themselves could be hurt — and simultaneous to this realization is the revelation of how one might hurt someone else.
And that’s what it looked like for the world to fall. It was an awakening of self-consciousness such that I now know what it means to be hurt. I know what causes it. I’m now able to use that knowledge to harm others. And that’s the birth of evil in heart of humanity. It started with a simple lie told by the serpent, and then shared between Eve and her husband. Further advanced by Adam himself when he deceitfully attempts to explain his actions to God. Our first parents fell from grace and doomed all of their posterity to sin. But God, our loving, gracious, all-powerful God, knew this would happen. So he foreordained a beautiful story of redemption — not where we pay for the sins of our first parents, nor where we pay for our own sins. But where Jesus Christ, the second Adam, the spotless, sinless Lamb of God — pays for our sins by taking them upon Himself.
That’s a good place to conclude this study. As always I’m greatly appreciative of you for coming along on this journey. If you’re benefiting from these Bible studies feel free to reach out and let me know. Share it with your friends and family — and together we’ll keep exploring the text to see God has given us.
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