Well, why did God need part of Adam to make Eve when he made Adam from the dust? It's a Bible question from a female listener to the podcast. We don't have her name, but we have her question. "Hello, Pastor John. I was just wondering why God chose to do surgery on Adam to remove one of his ribs to craft Eve, when as God, he could have just made Eve entirely from dust in the same way he made Adam.

I am very intrigued by this fact in Genesis and wonder if you have any thoughts to explain why it was done this way and if it carries any particular meaning that he did it in such a way. Thank you." Well, it is intriguing, and there are things to see in the text that we might miss that would make it even more intriguing if we didn't read more slowly.

So let's read the passage that she's referring to, and then I'll point out some maybe surprising conclusions. "Then the Lord God said," I'm reading in Genesis 2, verse 18 to 25. "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone.'" So God is going to finish his creation so as to make it completely good.

That's the setup at the beginning of the paragraph. I'm going to make this completely good. It's not yet finished. I will make him a helper fit for him. That word fit means suitable, proper, corresponding to. Verse 19, "Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed," or formed, "every beast." I think it's important to notice that he's looking for a helper fit for Adam to complete his creation, and he starts by making from the ground animals of the field and every bird of the heavens, and he brought them to the man.

That phrase is going to turn up again when he says he brought the woman to the man. So hang on to that. To see what he would call them. So the man's going to name these animals in order to discern their nature, which means their fitness for being a suitable counterpart to him.

And he's going to wind up naming this woman as well. So we've got this parallel between—let's start with the animals and see what happens, and then move from there. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was his name, its name. The man names the beast, discerning its nature, its fitness to be his partner.

The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the heavens, and to the beasts of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him, the text says. So his first step that he took was to produce a suitable helper in animals, and that totally failed.

We need to ask, why would God do that? Why would God enter on a process of making animals when he knew that's not going to work? That's not going to find a suitable partner. So verse 21, "So the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs," the word can mean side, so not from his foot and not from his head, but from his side, "and closed it up in its place," closed up the flesh.

So he really did surgery. He opened the skin and took out a rib and he closed it. And the rib that the Lord had taken from the man he made, literally he built, into a woman and brought her to the man, just like it says he had brought the animals to the man.

And then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called," and that's a reference back to the naming of the animals. So I've found now an essence, a reality, a character, a being like me. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

She shall be called Isha because she was taken out of Ish in the Hebrew. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." Now our friend asks about the significance of the woman being made from the man's side or rib and not from the ground.

And I would say that's not an incidental part of the text. She's right to ask. To see the significance, we need to follow what's happening. First Adam is said to be alone, and that's not good. So the text is designed to tell us how God makes his creation finally good, namely with Adam not being alone.

But the next thing that happens is odd, namely making all the animals or the pointing out that God had made all the animals and brings them to the man. So note three things. One, he says explicitly that they were made from the ground. Second, they were brought to the man for naming.

And third, his naming is connected with whether the animals are fit or suitable helpers for him. So Adam, in naming the animals, is in fact identifying their nature, their fitness, or suitability for him as a kind of partner that would make creation finally and fully good. And one might ask, why did God parade the animals before Adam in search of a helper fit for him since God knew he wouldn't find one?

And my answer is, he did it precisely because he knew he wouldn't find one. In other words, to make crystal clear to Adam, you will not find what I have designed for you in my mind. You're not going to find it among the animals. Don't even think that you could find what I have prepared among the animals.

The kind of helper that I have in mind for you, Adam, isn't that kind. Verse 20, "But for Adam there was not found among all those animals a helper fit suitable for him." So having made that crystal clear, God puts Adam to sleep and really does surgery. He opens his side, takes a rib, closes up the side, and then it says, "God built the rib from his side into a woman." And the word is ishah, and the generic word for Adam is ish, man, ish.

Then it says, and here he uses the very same words from earlier when he brought the animals to Adam to be named. He says he brought her, he brought her to the man, and so we wait to see what he will name her. That is, what nature he will find in her that corresponds to his own nature or not.

And here's what he says, "This at last is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called ishah because she was taken out of ish." So unlike the naming of the animals, this creature's name shows she is of the very nature of the man. The animals were not of the very nature, and that's probably why he took them out of the ground and took her out of me.

Adam said, "He took her from me, therefore I name her ishah because she was taken out of ish." That is, she is the suitable helper. She fits, she corresponds, she is not an animal. She's my unique kind. She's human like me. She's one flesh with me. Therefore this concept of helper is not impersonal like an animal, like oxen can be helpers to farmers.

She's different. She will be essentially personal and human like me. She is like me and yet perfectly unlike me so as to be the exact suitable counterpart for me. And that I think is true not only anatomically for the sake of sexual relations, but far deeper than that in profound personal psychological ways they are each other's perfect God-designed complements.

Together they are good. Now it's good. Creation is good that man and woman are now both created in the image of God of the same human nature, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, and he could have said a lot more, I think. Then the next verse takes this complementary perfect correspondence into marriage and says this, "Therefore, because they were made bone of bone and flesh of flesh, therefore this profound oneness of nature is going to be found in marriage.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, hold fast to his wife, they shall become one flesh." So he just said she is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, and now in marriage they become one flesh. The marriage union takes the unity of male and female to its deepest physical psychological personal level, and that becomes a picture, a drama, the New Testament says, of Christ and the church.

Now there's a lot more to say about the implications of man being made first, the woman being made from man and for his perfectly suited helper, and the woman becoming in Genesis 3.20 the mother of all the living, and Paul draws out these implications in 1 Corinthians 11, 8 to 12, but for now I would say God's aim in not making the woman from the ground like the animals, but from Adam's rib, his side, was to make clear to him and to us that she is radically, gloriously, profoundly human like Adam over against all the animals who were utterly unsuited for man.

Glorious fellow heirs of eternity and potential queens of heaven. Thank you, Pastor John, for rehearsing the glories of biblical womanhood on the podcast once again. Great Bible question. Keep those coming in. If you have a great Bible question, send it to us via our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohnJohn. We look forward to hearing all of your questions.

I'm your host Tony Renku. We'll be back here on Wednesday. We'll see you then. 1 1