Our Lady of the Rib: Genesis 2:18-25

Genesis 2:18-25

There is a unique joy to naming something. I have wondered how often the biggest appeal to getting a pet or buying a boat is the opportunity to name it. Pilots name their planes, and others name their cars or even their plants. It’s an expression of our creativity, our connection to the thing being named, and even our ownership or dominion of it. There’s a lot of little pieces to our text. As always, we want to connect them to Christ and the gospel, but through it all is this strange thread of the assigning of names.

Need

In Gen. 1, we saw the broad brushstrokes of day 6 in the creation week. God made all the land creatures and then made man and woman in His image. Gen. 1:27-28, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” It was very good when it was done.

Now in Gen. 2, we’re seeing the finer details of day 6. In my previous article, we saw God form Adam from the dust. God placed him in the garden to work and keep it as a priest-king in a garden-temple. It looks like a hermit’s paradise with an all-you-can-eat fruit tree buffet.

But God looks upon man in this scene and proclaims that it is not good. Something, or multiple somethings, were missing. It is not good for man, for Adam, to be alone. A lot of commentators and theologians highlight the reproductive need of the human race. Even if Adam never dies, he can’t very well fill the earth without bearing children, which he cannot do alone. Since humans don’t reproduce like snails, he’s going to need a mate. But that’s not the main focus here, since we’re taken through a survey of the animals for a companion.

There’s also the element that God made us social creatures. The triune God has relationship within Himself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are created in his image, and need relationships with more than just cats and dogs, some more than others. If you put a man alone in the woods, even if all of his other needs are met, he will get strange. As Solomon said in Eccl. 4:9-11, “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?”

Kidner describes how this passage “poignantly reveals him as a social being, made for fellowship, not power: he will not live until he loves, giving himself away to another on his own level. So the woman is presented wholly as his partner and counterpart; nothing is yet said of her as child-bearer. She is valued for herself alone.”

Yet the language here does point to something more. God plans to make for Adam a helpmate. Most literally translated, it is a help opposite him or in front of him. In other words, Adam needs something distinct from him and complementary that can stand in front of him to help him fulfill his role in the creation, the intelligent glorifying of God. He needed something that completed him, but also something visible in front of him for his well being. And Ross clarifies that “helper is not a demeaning term; it is often used in Scripture to describe God Almighty e.g., Ps 33:20, 70:5, 115:9…” So let’s leave that question of what kind of help Adam needs lingering in our minds for now, since that’s what the text does.

Before moving on, though, it’s important that we articulate what God is saying and why. God isn’t surprised that Adam is incomplete, nor is He dissatisfied with His own work. God could have made Adam self-sufficient, at least in terms of reproduction and relationship, but He chose to make Adam with this need. God is speaking here as to an audience of Adam, angels, and us. It’s like a teacher at the whiteboard drawing Adam and then saying, “do you see that he needs something else?” Then the professor will show some things that won’t work before revealing the solution He intended all along.

Taxonomy

Next, God parades the birds and land animals past Adam to be named and implicitly to show how none of them can fill this role of helpmate. This act of naming is part of Adam’s exercise of dominion. We have seen a number of times already in Genesis how God is giving us vocabulary and paradigms that we will need for the rest of the Bible. To give something or someone a name is an act of dominion or sovereignty. Only God can cause things to exist by naming them, but Adam in God’s image can exercise dominion in naming. This is Adam as king. We need to understand that principle in later passages, like when God renames Abram to Abraham or Jacob to Israel. It’s an act and expression of a loving dominion.

The peaceful submission of lions and bears to this naming parade without them mauling Adam is showing us the dominion of Adam in God’s image as well as God’s dominion over everything. And as many commentators point out, it’s a bizarre foreshadowing of God bringing each kind of animal to Noah before the great diluvian reset of the world.

So whatever these names for the animals were, they lasted as the taxonomy labels at least until Babel, but that’s a ways down the Genesis road. Logistically, this is baffling at first, to think of one man coming up with names for every animal in part of one day. But we don’t know how extensive this taxonomy is. Is Adam calling out “cat” for tigers, lions, and Siamese felines? And how much diversification takes place later in history? We’re also seeing the ease of pre-fall, sinless work. We can only imagine and guess at human efficiency before the fall. But when all of this process is done, no suitable helper has been found.

Surgery

So what does God do? He performs the first surgery in history, beginning with divine anesthesia. God put Adam into a deep sleep. Matthew Henry writes, “Adam slept while his wife was in making, that no room might be left to imagine that he had herein directed the Spirit of the Lord, or been his counsellor, Isa. 40:13.” We do actually find this unique term of “deep sleep” a few other times in the Old Testament, often emphasizing God’s involvement.

Gen. 15:12-13, “As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, ‘Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.’”

1 Sam. 26:12, “So David took the spear and the jar of water from Saul’s head, and they went away. No man saw it or knew it, nor did any awake, for they were all asleep, because a deep sleep from the Lord had fallen upon them.”

Isa. 29:10, “For the Lord has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes (the prophets), and covered your heads (the seers).”

Job 4:13, “Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men,” and 33:15, “In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, while they slumber on their beds.”

God takes a rib from Adam’s side and fills the void with flesh. Then God builds a woman out of it and brings her to Adam as the first wedding ceremony in history. Adam has his help opposite him at last. As Matthew Henry pointed out, “The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust double-refined, one remove further from the earth.”

Remember, God is giving us vocabulary, paradigms, and foreshadowing for the rest of our Bibles. Eph. 5:31-32, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Geoffrey Bromiley says, “As God made man in His own image, so He made earthly marriage in the image of His own eternal marriage with His people.” There is a lot of symbolism embedded in the creation of Adam’s helpmate, so let’s unpack it one piece at a time.

First, we look at the deep sleep. As Adam slept peacefully and painlessly, his side was opened so that a bride could be built for him. But that painless event in a world without sin pointed forward to Christ, whose agonizing death was followed by the opening of His side by a Roman soldier with a spear. John 19:34-37, “But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe. For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken.’ And again another Scripture says, ‘They will look on him whom they have pierced.’”

As William Gurnall says, “The church is taken out of dying Jesus’ side, as Eve out of sleeping Adam’s.” And Claude Chavasse writes, “Christ’s Death and Passion would thus be prefigured by Adam’s sleep, and the opening of his side to take out the rib; his Resurrection, by Adam’s waking again. Round the Rib was built up the new Bride, who may thus be said to have slept and woken again with the new Adam.” Spurgeon wrote, “Adam was laid asleep, and God took a rib, and made it into a help-meet for him. If God shall take anything from you, yea, though it lies near your heart, do not mourn as one that has no hope; in patience possess your soul, rest on the Lord, for He will bring it to pass that out of all this shall come a spiritual life-power, which in after days shall gladden your heart, and make you the joyful parent of much good to others in this world of sin and woe.”

The concept of Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib teaches the principle of gain from loss. He loses a rib to gain a wife. As Adam’s bride was gained from loss, so was Christ’s bride. Christ descended from the glory of heaven, endured the wrath of God, and even surrendered His spirit in death to gain for Himself a people to call His Bride.

Eve being made from a rib showed much being made from little. This was a small matter for the God who spoke and created from nothing, but it is impossible for man to create a hundred-pound anything from something that is only a few ounces. Then God took Adam and Eve and produced the entire human race from them. From Abraham, He produced all of Israel. God produced a church that would span the globe from such unlikely sources as fishermen, a tax collector, and a murdering Pharisee.

The forming of Eve from a rib taught Adam that his completion was outside himself, and vice versa. In Ephesians, we learn from Paul that Jesus counts Himself incomplete without the church. As Daniel Rogers put it, “It is not for nothing that the Lord brought Adam a meet helper for him; that is, not only one created in the same image as he; but made of himself, flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone; woman of man, equal to him in dignity; not of his head, nor his feet or lower parts, but of his sides and ribs, in token of one that was to side with him and agree with him in the married estate.” Matthew Henry famously took this further to say that she isn’t from his foot to be trampled or from his head to lead, but under his arm to be protected and near his heart. The world is filled with people seeking happiness within themselves. They seek wisdom within themselves. They think that they can become complete in and of themselves through self-confidence and ego. Even “religious” people believe that they can save themselves. Yet the Scriptures teach that salvation, abiding joy, and peace that surpass understanding are found in God alone, who is completely other than us.

Eve-from-a-rib means Eve’s identity was derived from Adam. Calvin writes, “In this manner Adam was taught to recognize himself in his wife, as in a mirror,” and in the same way, Eve saw herself in Adam. Likewise, the Church must derive her identity from Christ, just as her existence is derived from Him. Here in Arizona, we have biker and cowboy churches. These kinds of churches tend to derive their identity primarily from one person’s ideology (other than Jesus), philanthropic interests, human heritage, or even ethnicity. A true church should have an identity founded foremost upon her Savior and Husband, Christ. Or, as Michael Horton put it in The Christian Faith: “A local church (or wider body of churches) is not free to develop its identity in continuity simply with the givens of racial, ethnic, socio-economic, or consumer affinities. Each particular expression of the church must seek to exhibit the catholicity that is grounded in God’s electing choice rather than in our own.” The church’s understanding of Jesus in terms of who He is, how He saved her, and how He labors in and through her should shape her identity. The identity of the church is in the very gospel that created her.”

We might even say that, in the absence of a rib, Adam was the more vulnerable as indeed a husband is due to his wife. And so God the Son in flesh was vulnerable unto death in order to gain the church as His bride.

Finally, Eve was taken from life to perpetuate life. This woman would be the mother of all living men and women. Therefore, Adam would call her Eve (Gen. 3:20). Her life would produce life. This was to foreshadow how God would use the church to produce new life, spiritual rebirth through the Gospel. Adam is made steward of a gift, which is made clear by God bringing her to Him. Prov. 18:22, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.” This anticipates how the Father gave a people, the sum of the elect as the church, to Christ as a bride, and the Holy Spirit brings her to Him.

And you may have noticed that along the way I’ve been using the phrasing of God “building” the woman. That’s because this is the language in the original text. Bede writes, “Scripture has used a word as a type to express the same mystery, as it does not say ‘made’ (facio) or ‘formed’ (formo) or ‘created’ (creato), as in the previous acts of creation, but it states, ‘The rib that God took from Adam he built (aedificio) into a woman,’ not as a human body but as a house, in ‘which house we are if we firmly maintain faith and the hope of glory up to the end.’” Luther talks about how this points forward to the church-bride often described as a house built up, or even the city built by God. But on the more immediate side, it reminds us that in a world where Adam needed no physical shelter, Eve was his home. So it is in godly marriages.

Proclamations

Adam recognizes God’s extraordinary work in providing a helpmate. She is his own flesh and bone. He is to love her accordingly, as are all husbands. Eph. 5:28-30, “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.”

Adam also names her, but she isn’t Eve yet. She is called woman, or Isha, though the original name might be lost after Babel. What’s important here is the seamless connections of companionship and headship. Isha goes with a name for man, Ish, like our man and woman, expressing how she is an equal companion. But the fact that God has Adam name her shows his headship and her submission. In a world without sin, authority and submission were conflict-free. They were assigned roles without implication of greater and lesser values. They were equals even as Adam led his household.

Then God shows us part of the paradigm He created. In subsequent generations, men will leave the headship of his own father through marriage and become head of his own home, though without abandoning responsibilities to care for his parents.

This proclamation also pointed to the sanctity of marriage, as we see especially through other biblical references to it. Mal. 2:15, “Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.”

Matt. 19:4-6, “He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.’”

But this too is foreshadowing Christ. He left the Father and comfort of heaven to take the church as His bride. He even left Mary, His earthly mother, through the crucifixion, entrusting her to John, as we see in John 19:26-27. Bede writes, “He left his Father because, ‘though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself, taking a form of a servant.’ This is the meaning of ‘he left his Father,’ not because he departed and withdrew from his Father, but because he did not appear in that form to people that he was equal to the Father. How did he leave his mother? By leaving the synagogue of the Jews, from which he was born according to the flesh, and by clinging to the church, which he gathered from all the nations, so that in the peace of the new covenant they could become two in one flesh; because he was God in the presence of the Father through whom we have been made. He has been made our participant through the flesh so that we are able to become the body under his headship.”

So we have seen throughout how God is building a metaphor, even painting a portrait of Christ and the church through the institution of marriage. Godly marriages are an open letter to the world about Christ and the gospel. We can sum all of this up by saying the biggest need that Eve helped Adam with was understanding God’s love for and relationship to His people.

This is why perversions of marriage in terms of sexual immorality are such an offense before God, like an obscene splash of paint across God’s canvas. The pursuit of gratification outside the bounds of the covenant of marriage are sin, whether we’re talking about fornication, adultery, homosexuality, or others. Rom. 1:26-27, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

Unashamed

The last line of our text, when properly understood, leaves us with a sense of longing. Adam and his bride were naked and unashamed. This isn’t callousness or exhibitionism; it’s perfection and innocence. A Jewish Targum reads “they knew not what shame was.” It was very good, but it was lost in the fall.

Fragments of this unashamed nakedness are regained in godly marriages, that intimacy and vulnerability, as we see in Song of Solomon. Yet it was limited. Wherever there is sin, it is diminished. Heb. 13:4, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

As sinners, we should feel our shame before God, the conviction of our sin that would condemn us before our creator. To be sure, there are many in this world who are unashamed of their sin for now, as many of us once were. That will be undone when they stand before their creator on the day of judgment and realize their shame too late. But the Bible teaches us that we must go to Him rather than flee from Him, because it is only in His name like a high tower that we can be safe. As Kidner once said, there is no refuge from God, only refuge in God. In running to Him in repentance and faith, we are clothed in Christ’s righteousness, and then we can rightfully be unashamed.

We started out talking about names, and that’s a thread we can chase down throughout our Bibles. But as we close, it’s good to visit a few of these. In Rev. 2:12, “The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.” And in Rev. 2:17, Jesus tells the church in Pergamum, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’” But even more clearly we see in John 10:3-4, as Jesus introduces the metaphor of Himself as the good shepherd, He says, “The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.” John’s favorite title for himself was “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” There is no name more precious by which we can called than “Christ’s,” because that is a name for those purchased in His blood for eternity.