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The Seventh Commandment II
“Bone of my Bones”
Three weeks ago we began our look at the Seventh Commandment, which reads simply, “You will not commit adultery.” This commandment has to do with the nature of marriage and sexuality, with marital faithfulness, sexual purity, divorce, and remarriage. These issues have been at the front burner of concern for all humankind since the beginning. Jesus often addressed these issues. At one time the Pharisees asked him a hard question about divorce, trying to trip him up, trying to get him to contradict Moses or alienate the people. In answering their question, Jesus goes all the way back to the beginning, to the words of Genesis 1 and 2.
Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?" "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
It is significant that Jesus does not quote from the law of Moses. Rather, He goes back to creation, and to God’s original plan and intention for marriage and sexuality. He even uses the word “ Creator,” as if to underline how foundational his teaching was. “Do you not know that in the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and the Creator said, “for this reason....”
We are followers of Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ. Our view of Scripture is formed by His view of Scripture. When he quotes from Genesis as the very word of God, we must heed His example. If, when asked about the issues of marriage and divorce and marital faithfulness he says, in effect, that we must go back to the beginning to understand it, then we must do as he says and heed that word given at the beginning.
And so three weeks ago we looked at the passage which Jesus quotes in Genesis 1, the verse about the Creator “making them male and female.” This week we will turn to Genesis chapter 2. So open if you would to Genesis 2, verse 18.
The Lord God said, it is not good for man to be alone.
There was the man. God had formed him out of the dust of the ground. God had breathed the breath of life into his body, and that man whom we now call Adam had become the first living soul. God had planted a garden, and into that garden he placed Adam. God commissioned the man to work and to take care of the garden. He told him that he may eat of any tree of the garden, except the one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
So there is Adam, alone in the garden. God surveys the situation which he has made, and he says, “It is not good.”
This is very striking. Six times we read in Genesis chapter 1 “And God saw that it was good.” And one time, after the creation of man and woman, after the six days are complete, it says that God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.
And so this negative word in 2:18 is surprising. There is Adam, newly created, full of the breath of life, walking in the midst of the most beautiful garden ever planted, and God says, “it is not good.” “It is not good for the man to be alone.”
God’s work was not yet complete, and in its incompleteness, it was not yet good. The man was alone. There was no one to work with him in tending the garden. There was no one corresponding to him with whom he could have relationship, and so the image of God in Him could not come to fruition. God had made the man to be not complete in himself.
And God says, “I will make a helper suitable for him.”
Perhaps we are familiar with the words in the King James, “I will make an help meet for him.”
The word “meet” is a now archaic word which means fitting, proper, suitable, appropriate. There is really no such word as “helpmeet.” “Helpmeet” is a word which came about from a misreading of the KJ sentence, which really says “I will make a help who is ‘meet’ or suitable for him.” This is why the NIV and other translations rightly do not use the word “meet,” for it is not part of our English language anymore.
What God is saying is that he will make a help, a companion, who is like Adam, who is of the same stuff, who corresponds to Him. That is, God is saying that he will make a suitable companion for the man, one who will come along side and help him in his work tending the garden.
We pick up the story in verse 19:
Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
God brings the animals before the man. He brings all these potential suitable companions, these potential helpers. Adam begins relating to other creatures, and in his insight he gives appropriate names to each creature, exercising his rightful dominion over God’s creation. I would have loved to have been there, to have seen the animals approaching the man, to see them looking over each other, at ease, without fear. I hold to a view which C. S. Lewis once articulated in his book The Problem of Pain, that just as man finds his highest fulfillment in relation to God, in some way the creatures reach their greatest created fullness in relation to man, and one day, in the New Heaven and New Earth, we will see again mankind and he beasts living together in harmony with no mutual fear.
But that’s another story. For our purposes, we read at the end of verse 20:
But for Adam no suitable helper was found.
Despite the diversity, the glory, and the beauty of the beasts, there is no help suitable, no creature corresponding to him.
And so how we have the man in his created glory, in the garden of Eden, populated by the creatures and beasts which he has named, and he is still alone, and it is still not good.
Verse 21:
So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh.
God causes Adam to fall into a deep, a supernatural sleep. There he is, helpless, passive, and God takes one of his ribs out, and closes up the missing place with flesh. The first surgery. God’s gentleness is poignant.
The word translated as “rib” as you know can also mean side. It is right to translate it as rib, for it says that the Lord took “one” of the ribs out, and you wouldn’t take one of the “sides” out, and then filled the space with soft tissue, with flesh, leaving the man with one less rib on one side of his body. And out of this rib, taken out of the man, God forms another creature, verse 22:
Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
As he had formed the man from the dust of the ground, God now forms the woman from the rib of the man.
Matthew Henry’s words have stood the test of time.
God did not make the woman “out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”
Adam had nothing to do with the making of the woman. The creation of the woman was God’s idea. She is not the creation of man. Adam was asleep, passive. But Adam awakes, and like a father of the bride, God leads the woman to the man.
The man cries with delight, with joyous astonishment, with sheer happiness. No longer is he alone. Finally he has a companion suitable for him, to know, to love, to share life with, to join with in the work of caring for the garden, to join with in physical union and from that union multiply and fill the earth.
“This one before me,” says the man, “this one you have brought to me” (verse 23):
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ishha
for she was taken out of ish”
Bone of my bones -- of the same stuff as me! This one corresponds to me, this one is suitable to me, this one is fitting! She will be called “ishha,” or in English now “woman,” for she is taken out of “ish,” or in English, “man.”
Adam and Eve are of the same stuff. The are each human beings, made in God’s image. Yet, they are not the same. This one -- this one is not the same as ish. This one, this one is like me; but this one is different. She matches me. Now I am not alone!
The same, but different. Corresponding, but complementary. Like, but not like.
Creation is now finished. It is complete. It, finally, is good, indeed, it is very good!
Adam and Eve are of the same stuff. They are both human beings made in God’s image. This is the first truth about each of them. But in their maleness and femaleness they are different and they complement each other. Maleness and femaleness is the second truth about them.
But now, with two, there is community, and with community there must be order, there must be a structure. This is very important, for we will see in a moment that after their fall into sin, the relationship between the man and the woman changed terribly, and for the worse. Indeed such a strain came into being that a state of affairs now exists in our fallen state that Paul is led to say, “It is good for a man not to marry.”
Before the fall it says “it is not good for the man to be alone.” After the fall, because the nature of the relationship has changed so much, “it is good for the man to be alone.”
But even in the unfallen state there must be an order, a structure to the relationship, a kind of hierarchy.
As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:3:
Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
and in verse 8 and 9:
For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.
There are two very important points I would mention from Paul’s inspired commentary.
First, there is an order in the relationship. Man is head of the woman in the way that God the Father is head of Christ. Fundamentally the relationship is one of equality, yet there is a functional ordering. Within the godhead there are the most perfect and beautiful of relationships, relationships which are to be modeled in human relationships, and in the marriage relationship. This relationship within the godhead is between equals, equal in glory, equal in honor. Yet within the godhead, not as a matter of essence but as a matter of function or purpose; particularly in their role in creation and redemption, there is an order. The Father is head of the Son. The Father sends the son.
Likewise the woman and the man, in their essence, in the most important things that can be said about either, are equal as bearers of the divine image, yet, in their relation to each other, in their united role in tending for the garden, there is an order. The man is head of the woman.
This is so hard to understand for us, and hard for so many to swallow, because we look at this from the standpoint of fallen men and woman and fallen marriages. But if we could see the relationship expressed in its pristine unfallen condition, this ordering would be no more bothersome for a man or woman than the ordering within the godhead is bothersome for the Father or Son or Holy Spirit.
What is it about the relationship that makes the man head. It is not that the woman is created last, for both man and woman are created after the beasts and yet have dominion over them. The priority is not in the use of the word help, as if to say the one who helps is lesser in some way, because most often in the Old Testament it is God who is said to be the helper of man. Rather, it is this, that the woman is made for the man, as an answer to his need, to keep him from being alone, and to be his companion in the work of ruling over the earth. This indeed is the order of creation, first Adam, then Eve, and Eve as a suitable help for Adam. The woman receives both her generic name, “ishha,” and her personal name “Eve,” from the man.
But lest man misunderstand or be a bloated or a domineering head, it is also true, as Paul reflects in 1 Cor. 11:11-12, that:
In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.
Well, let us go back to Genesis 2, to the Magna Carta of marriage, finally getting to the words Jesus quotes to the Pharisees.
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
I would like to note three aspects of this verse -- leaving, cleaving, and becoming one flesh.
The man takes the initiative in setting up a new household. But to do this he must leave his old household, just as the woman will also have to do. Marriage is a community reality. This leaving of one household to set up a new family unit, a new household, provides the foundational order of culture, and when a society abandons this foundational ordering, it pays a terrible price.
Marriage was a community reality, a corporate happening even before the fall. After the fall, with so many forces at work to undermine marriage, it is even more important to have the weight and accountability of the community behind a marriage. Marriage isn’t meant to be a private personal thing only.
The man leaves father and mother before cleaving to his wife. This means that he sets up a new unit, he marries, before he cleaves. Marriage is and was always to precede intercourse. Marriage is the only place God has prepared for cleaving together. Marriage is the only setting where the complimentariness of man and woman can come together in fullness.
And sexual intercourse is the consummation of the marriage, the symbol of the fullness of ways that male and female come together to complement the other. Sexual union must not be seen outside of the full manner in which man and woman are to complement each other, outside of full commitment as persons one to another. Sexual union outside of marriage rips at the core of God’s good purpose for his creatures. Sexual union outside of marriage destroys and alienates, it does not complete. It mocks the order God has built into his creation. It suggests the fruit of committed marriage relationship, but it doesn’t deliver. Really it alienates. After extra marital intercourse, it is still true that one is alone.
And so man and woman cleave, they join together in commitment and fellowship, and physically in sexual union.. The idea of the word translated “cleave” is that of being joined together, bound, indivisible, united. This is how man and woman become one flesh, become a new unit of love and work -- they leave and marry, and they cleave.
Somehow in the mystery of this union there are even greater mysteries to be understood. For the Lord Jesus left His Father, and he joined Himself to His church, and with His church he became one in Spirit.
As Jesus would say about the man woman relationship
So they are no longer two but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.
Sometimes I hear people say that they were so young, so lustful , so unwise, so dumb when they got married, that it was not God who joined them, but themselves. Therefore since it wasn’t God that joined them, they may “put themselves asunder.”
If you have married, if for whatever reason God in his providence has let you carry bear the fruit of your own choices, then He has indeed joined you to your spouse, and you are to be committed to him or her and to enter more and more fully in the fullness of the total relationship, into one flesh; that is, as long as it depends on you.
So what is the final word in Genesis 2?
The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
There is perfect ease and peace between the man and woman, an ease and peace and concord and unity which has never been fully realized since then. Completely natural in their openness to one another.
It is as if this sentence echoes the final sentence of the first chapter, “And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
Had there been no disobedience, no fall into sin, I think everyone would have been married. God made each of us as either male or female. Our male and femaleness permeates our being. We are sexual creatures. Male seeks female to be complete if you will, and female male. Every man would have been joined to a woman, every woman to a man. There would have been no blues, no country music, no awkwardness in love, no songs like “When a Man Loves a Woman,” not the intrigue that underlies the Song of Solomon.
This morning I turned on the radio for a few minutes in the car. I heard a love song by Whitney Houston, another by Lionel Richie, and a bluesy sort of love song by Tracy Chapman. They celebrated the beauty and blessing of man-woman love, and yet in each there was a poignant undercurrent of fear lest the love not last, lest it be lost, lest the other not reciprocate. Love celebrated – yes. But no ease, no rest.
But a horrible thing happened while walking in the garden, and Adam and Eve fell into sin and rebellion. Ever since our sexuality has been, in effect, both a curse and a blessing. We see what happens in Genesis 3.
To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."
The woman’s desire for intimacy with her husband will be frustrated. Instead of providing loving headship he will rule over her, which will cause her to seek intimacy elsewhere, in other relationships, which will lead her into adultery and more sin, but never bring the full intimacy she desires. The fundamental brokenness and alienation created by separation from God, from other human beings, from herself within – this can never be filled up by intimacy with a husband. Yet she will never seek to see the intimacy she craves completed in her husband. And the man’s own natural desire for sexual fulfillment will be frustrated. It will turn into a hunger and a craving, and it will look beyond the wife for fulfillment. The mans godly instinct to protect and care for his wife will be perverted into a desire to posses and own and exploit her. His eyes will lead him away from his wife to find sexual pleasure elsewhere, and from there elsewhere, and so on, and yet that emptiness in him, that alienation created by separation from God, from other human beings, from himself within, it will never be filled and satisfied by woman. Not only that, he along with Eve will be frustrated in their work. Exhaustion, pain, grumpiness, pride, sickness, anxiety, fear, will add to the difficulty of the married life. Marriage will prove difficult, and both men and woman in conflict with one another will tear asunder what God has joined.
But even in a broken and fallen world, Genesis shows the way. Given the difficulties of marriage, people now may rightly choose not to be married. As Paul said, “It is good for a man not to be married.” Paul was not married. Jesus was not married. Because of the fall, marriage no longer fulfills or completes our maleness or femaleness as it was meant to, and like Jesus we may choose to be not married.
But if we choose to be married, the foundational teaching of Genesis 1 and 2 shows us the way. We must not listen to other voices, even in the church. This is where we look to have our questions answered about marriage and sexuality. This is where Jesus turned, this is where we turn.
And we rejoice that despite the fallenness we must live with and bear, God gives us glimpses of the fullness he intended in creation. As we grow as couples in Christ, as we are remade in the image of God, as that which was lost comes gradually to be remade in us, then also our marriage relationships come to approximate what God intended for them in the beginning, and in this we rejoice.
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
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