Why Did God Make Eve from Part of Adam?
00:00:00.000 | Well, why did God need part of Adam to make Eve when he made Adam from the dust?
00:00:11.000 | It's a Bible question from a female listener to the podcast.
00:00:14.560 | We don't have her name, but we have her question.
00:00:16.600 | "Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:17.680 | I was just wondering why God chose to do surgery on Adam to remove one of his ribs to craft
00:00:22.520 | Eve, when as God, he could have just made Eve entirely from dust in the same way he
00:00:27.640 | made Adam.
00:00:28.640 | I am very intrigued by this fact in Genesis and wonder if you have any thoughts to explain
00:00:33.440 | why it was done this way and if it carries any particular meaning that he did it in such
00:00:38.360 | a way.
00:00:39.360 | Thank you."
00:00:40.360 | Well, it is intriguing, and there are things to see in the text that we might miss that
00:00:48.760 | would make it even more intriguing if we didn't read more slowly.
00:00:53.720 | So let's read the passage that she's referring to, and then I'll point out some maybe surprising
00:01:01.840 | conclusions.
00:01:02.840 | "Then the Lord God said," I'm reading in Genesis 2, verse 18 to 25.
00:01:10.600 | "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone.'"
00:01:19.400 | So God is going to finish his creation so as to make it completely good.
00:01:27.440 | That's the setup at the beginning of the paragraph.
00:01:29.760 | I'm going to make this completely good.
00:01:32.200 | It's not yet finished.
00:01:33.840 | I will make him a helper fit for him.
00:01:39.280 | That word fit means suitable, proper, corresponding to.
00:01:44.840 | Verse 19, "Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed," or formed, "every beast."
00:01:54.200 | I think it's important to notice that he's looking for a helper fit for Adam to complete
00:02:03.160 | his creation, and he starts by making from the ground animals of the field and every
00:02:11.200 | bird of the heavens, and he brought them to the man.
00:02:15.200 | That phrase is going to turn up again when he says he brought the woman to the man.
00:02:19.880 | So hang on to that.
00:02:21.440 | To see what he would call them.
00:02:24.600 | So the man's going to name these animals in order to discern their nature, which means
00:02:31.320 | their fitness for being a suitable counterpart to him.
00:02:37.440 | And he's going to wind up naming this woman as well.
00:02:39.880 | So we've got this parallel between—let's start with the animals and see what happens,
00:02:44.960 | and then move from there.
00:02:46.840 | And whatever the man called every living creature, that was his name, its name.
00:02:51.040 | The man names the beast, discerning its nature, its fitness to be his partner.
00:02:55.240 | The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the heavens, and to the beasts
00:03:00.520 | of the field.
00:03:02.000 | But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him, the text says.
00:03:10.760 | So his first step that he took was to produce a suitable helper in animals, and that totally
00:03:16.800 | failed.
00:03:18.400 | We need to ask, why would God do that?
00:03:21.760 | Why would God enter on a process of making animals when he knew that's not going to work?
00:03:27.200 | That's not going to find a suitable partner.
00:03:30.640 | So verse 21, "So the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept,
00:03:37.080 | took one of his ribs," the word can mean side, so not from his foot and not from his head,
00:03:45.240 | but from his side, "and closed it up in its place," closed up the flesh.
00:03:51.000 | So he really did surgery.
00:03:52.800 | He opened the skin and took out a rib and he closed it.
00:03:56.960 | And the rib that the Lord had taken from the man he made, literally he built, into a woman
00:04:04.480 | and brought her to the man, just like it says he had brought the animals to the man.
00:04:11.480 | And then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
00:04:20.660 | She shall be called," and that's a reference back to the naming of the animals.
00:04:26.400 | So I've found now an essence, a reality, a character, a being like me.
00:04:34.080 | She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
00:04:39.580 | She shall be called Isha because she was taken out of Ish in the Hebrew.
00:04:43.840 | Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and
00:04:48.320 | they shall become one flesh.
00:04:49.840 | The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed."
00:04:53.560 | Now our friend asks about the significance of the woman being made from the man's side
00:05:00.440 | or rib and not from the ground.
00:05:04.120 | And I would say that's not an incidental part of the text.
00:05:07.520 | She's right to ask.
00:05:08.880 | To see the significance, we need to follow what's happening.
00:05:13.560 | First Adam is said to be alone, and that's not good.
00:05:17.720 | So the text is designed to tell us how God makes his creation finally good, namely with
00:05:23.680 | Adam not being alone.
00:05:26.540 | But the next thing that happens is odd, namely making all the animals or the pointing out
00:05:32.440 | that God had made all the animals and brings them to the man.
00:05:37.440 | So note three things.
00:05:40.040 | One, he says explicitly that they were made from the ground.
00:05:44.920 | Second, they were brought to the man for naming.
00:05:48.720 | And third, his naming is connected with whether the animals are fit or suitable helpers for
00:05:55.680 | him.
00:05:56.680 | So Adam, in naming the animals, is in fact identifying their nature, their fitness, or
00:06:03.080 | suitability for him as a kind of partner that would make creation finally and fully good.
00:06:09.800 | And one might ask, why did God parade the animals before Adam in search of a helper
00:06:15.780 | fit for him since God knew he wouldn't find one?
00:06:20.400 | And my answer is, he did it precisely because he knew he wouldn't find one.
00:06:25.900 | In other words, to make crystal clear to Adam, you will not find what I have designed for
00:06:33.640 | you in my mind.
00:06:35.360 | You're not going to find it among the animals.
00:06:38.860 | Don't even think that you could find what I have prepared among the animals.
00:06:44.680 | The kind of helper that I have in mind for you, Adam, isn't that kind.
00:06:51.040 | Verse 20, "But for Adam there was not found among all those animals a helper fit suitable
00:07:00.000 | for him."
00:07:01.340 | So having made that crystal clear, God puts Adam to sleep and really does surgery.
00:07:08.480 | He opens his side, takes a rib, closes up the side, and then it says, "God built the
00:07:13.720 | rib from his side into a woman."
00:07:16.480 | And the word is ishah, and the generic word for Adam is ish, man, ish.
00:07:25.080 | Then it says, and here he uses the very same words from earlier when he brought the animals
00:07:31.060 | to Adam to be named.
00:07:32.780 | He says he brought her, he brought her to the man, and so we wait to see what he will
00:07:40.420 | name her.
00:07:42.280 | That is, what nature he will find in her that corresponds to his own nature or not.
00:07:48.680 | And here's what he says, "This at last is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.
00:07:54.980 | She shall be called ishah because she was taken out of ish."
00:08:01.320 | So unlike the naming of the animals, this creature's name shows she is of the very
00:08:09.380 | nature of the man.
00:08:12.400 | The animals were not of the very nature, and that's probably why he took them out of
00:08:18.800 | the ground and took her out of me.
00:08:22.360 | Adam said, "He took her from me, therefore I name her ishah because she was taken out
00:08:28.660 | of ish."
00:08:29.660 | That is, she is the suitable helper.
00:08:33.300 | She fits, she corresponds, she is not an animal.
00:08:39.060 | She's my unique kind.
00:08:41.620 | She's human like me.
00:08:44.060 | She's one flesh with me.
00:08:47.940 | Therefore this concept of helper is not impersonal like an animal, like oxen can be helpers to
00:08:56.300 | farmers.
00:08:57.300 | She's different.
00:08:58.440 | She will be essentially personal and human like me.
00:09:03.920 | She is like me and yet perfectly unlike me so as to be the exact suitable counterpart
00:09:13.260 | for me.
00:09:14.260 | And that I think is true not only anatomically for the sake of sexual relations, but far
00:09:20.680 | deeper than that in profound personal psychological ways they are each other's perfect God-designed
00:09:32.180 | complements.
00:09:34.860 | Together they are good.
00:09:37.420 | Now it's good.
00:09:38.680 | Creation is good that man and woman are now both created in the image of God of the same
00:09:47.000 | human nature, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, and he could have said a lot more,
00:09:53.340 | I think.
00:09:54.340 | Then the next verse takes this complementary perfect correspondence into marriage and says
00:10:04.540 | this, "Therefore, because they were made bone of bone and flesh of flesh, therefore
00:10:11.920 | this profound oneness of nature is going to be found in marriage.
00:10:17.780 | Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, hold fast to his wife, they shall
00:10:22.380 | become one flesh."
00:10:24.380 | So he just said she is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, and now in marriage they become
00:10:31.660 | one flesh.
00:10:32.780 | The marriage union takes the unity of male and female to its deepest physical psychological
00:10:39.940 | personal level, and that becomes a picture, a drama, the New Testament says, of Christ
00:10:46.820 | and the church.
00:10:48.300 | Now there's a lot more to say about the implications of man being made first, the woman being made
00:10:58.460 | from man and for his perfectly suited helper, and the woman becoming in Genesis 3.20 the
00:11:06.420 | mother of all the living, and Paul draws out these implications in 1 Corinthians 11, 8
00:11:12.340 | to 12, but for now I would say God's aim in not making the woman from the ground like
00:11:19.460 | the animals, but from Adam's rib, his side, was to make clear to him and to us that she
00:11:29.200 | is radically, gloriously, profoundly human like Adam over against all the animals who
00:11:37.060 | were utterly unsuited for man.
00:11:42.100 | Glorious fellow heirs of eternity and potential queens of heaven.
00:11:46.100 | Thank you, Pastor John, for rehearsing the glories of biblical womanhood on the podcast
00:11:49.780 | once again.
00:11:51.180 | Great Bible question.
00:11:52.180 | Keep those coming in.
00:11:53.180 | If you have a great Bible question, send it to us via our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohnJohn.
00:11:59.180 | We look forward to hearing all of your questions.
00:12:03.140 | I'm your host Tony Renku.
00:12:04.140 | We'll be back here on Wednesday.
00:12:05.140 | We'll see you then.
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