2024-08-28_Self-Consciousness and the Marriage of Man and Woman (Genesis 2:20-25)

There are two important connotations in Adam naming the cattle, the fowls, and the beasts of the field: As discussed before, in the original Hebrew, to name means to impart his own legacy upon. In a sense, Adam naming the animals is like a patriarch blessing a son with his own birthright. What had been promised to the patriarch is being passed down to that son, and any blood curse that falls upon that patriarch will fall upon that son as well. Normally, though, this requires that the patriarch and the son be of the same kind. A patriarch gives his birthright to his blood descendant, or if not that, for whatever reason, then a non-blood descendant who is of the same tribe, or if not that, for whatever reason, then a non-blood descendant who is a man from another tribe. There are lessening degrees of being of the same kind, and then the differences are so great that they are no longer of the same kind. That is the case here, for Adam cannot find a suitable mate among all the animals that he names. Nevertheless, paradoxically, he can and does name them. So how is this possible? It is possible because of the second important connotation in Adam naming the animals, namely, that he knows the animals so well. There is deep intellectual knowledge here on display, which suggests that Adam may have the emotional understanding of a child, but his mind can compute better than any computer thus far created by man’s hands. Adam did not acquire this deep intellectual knowledge on his own, though. What natural science he knows is a byproduct of grace: God put Adam in Eden to exercise dominion over Eden, and to farm the land so that it can be even more a reflection of God than it is already, and, in doing so, God gave Adam the grace to do that. Divine Grace allows man to know, and as a result, to name that which is of a different kind than himself. Man’s first act of dominion testifies to the fact that with God nothing is impossible, and so the lesson is clear: If man is to exercise dominion as God wills, then he must learn to rely on God’s grace, which permits man to be more than he is (in this case, a being capable of knowing and naming that which is of a different kind than himself), instead of finding pride in his own capabilities apart from God’s grace. As we shall see, decay and death will enter into the created order since Adam had imparted his legacy upon the created order, but this is only possible for the reason that Adam is able to know the created order as if the created order is of the same kind as he is, which is to say, another man. In Adam, we see a foreshadowing of the Incarnation of God in Christ Jesus, for that which is intrinsically higher (God/Adam) is able to be of the same kind as that which is intrinsically lower (Man/Animals), and this is done so that that which is now lower is able to share in the life of that which is higher (Man ascends through Christ Jesus into the life of God/Animals ascend into the legacy of Man).

Why does God foreshadow the Incarnation of God, which is the means of man’s salvation, before there is sin? Because God “sees” the beginning and the end as one eternal present. He “knows” everything all at once, so He “knows” the need for salvation at all times. From man’s perspective, being that man exists in chronological time, this then is a case of divine foreshadowing. From God’s perspective, being that God exists in the eternal present except for when Christ Jesus lives as the Incarnation of God in man’s chronological history, there is no such thing as divine foreshadowing, for the reason that foreshadowing implies temporal chronology (time being defined as the past giving way unto the present, and the present as giving way unto the future), and temporal chronology is peculiar to the created order.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep: The Hebrew word for sleep here, tardêmah, implies a mysterious, heavy sleep that can come only from God’s direct intervention. He is causing Adam to sleep in this way to hide from him His divine work. As will be seen, God intends for Adam to see the help meet as coming from Adam, so that Adam will cling to her as a kind of expression of his own emerging self-consciousness. If Adam principally sees the help meet as coming from God’s intervention, then he may not see how she is intrinsically connected to his self-conscious life. God is providing Adam a partner who will be suitable for him, but He is doing so in a way that allows for Adam to continue growing in his self-consciousness. God does not want Adam to squander his innocence, but God wants Adam to be able to be self-consciously innocent, which is to say, self-consciously obedient to God’s will. If Adam sees himself in his help meet, then he will be exhibiting the first glimmers of consciousness of his own humanity – not just that he is different from the animals, for he sees that already, but that he is of the same kind as another human, which is to say, a human in humanity.

And He took one of his ribs: In the original Hebrew, the meaning is not rib but rather out of his side. Woman is one side of Man, and thus without a Woman an integral part of Man will be missing from his life. God intends for mankind to be male/female, which is indicated in Genesis 1:27, for the archetype of each is complimentary of the other. Then, why not create Adam and his help meet at the same time? The reason is that God wants Adam to be aware of what he had been missing before he had his help meet. God does not want Adam to take her for granted. He wants him to long for her because longing is a precursor to clinging, as infatuation is a precursor to love.

And closed the flesh: This does not mean that man now has flesh where before he had this side, but rather that a cavity was prevented by drawing the flesh on the two edges close together. Metaphysically it means that man has no compensation for what was abstracted from him, except in the woman, who is the one side of his nature which he has lost to her.

Made He a woman, and brought her unto the man: Her formation is described as requiring both time and care on the heavenly artificer’s part. Thus, woman here is no casual or hasty production of nature but is the finished result of labor and skill. Finally, she is brought with special honor to the man as the Creator’s last and most perfect work. Every step and stage in this description is intended for the ennoblement of marriage. Woman is not made from the adâmâh, which is to say, the moistened dust from which Adam had been created, but from Adam. She is something that he once had had but has lost; and while for Adam there is simply the closing of the cavity caused by her withdrawal from him, she is molded and re-fashioned, and built up into man’s counterpart. She brings back more than the man parted with, and the Creator Himself leads her by the hand to her husband.

This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: At last, on waking from his trance, he found one standing by him in whom he recognized his own second self, and he welcomed her joyfully, and exclaimed, “This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:” that is, she is man’s counterpart, not merely in feeling and sense—his flesh—but also in his much higher qualities. In several of the Semitic dialects bone is used for self.

She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man: This begs the question: As Adam had been in a deep sleep when God made his help meet from his side, how does he know that this Woman, whom Adam names Ishah (feminine version of the name that Adam had given himself, which is Ish), indeed, came out from him? First, Adam can see that Ishah is so much more like him than anything else in the created order and that she is therefore of the same kind. His perception and his reason are such that he can discern to some degree the higher works of God, notwithstanding how God had hidden this divine work. In knowing who this Woman is, Adam is probing more deeply the ways of God. His reason is beginning to map out the terra incognita that is knowable only by faith. Secondly, God reveals more to Adam than Adam can discern by his first step into faith. God instills in Adam by grace a first hint of the conjugal marriage that will bind male/female into one flesh. For now, the closest that Adam can get to this one flesh notion is in naming this Woman the feminine of himself (Ishah). What we see here then is that self-consciousness emerges not from fixating on self but from knowing oneself in and through someone else. Self-consciousness is intrinsically tied to love: To know thyself is to love someone other than thyself. Furthermore, we see that faith is born out from reason. There is no such thing as blind faith. Adam uses his reason to ascertain how this Woman is like himself. From that reasoned perception, his acquires the first glimmer of a faith – an assertion that reason alone cannot develop but that is rooted in reasoned perceptions prior to that assertion. In this case, the faith assertion is that Woman came from Man, even though Adam cannot know that by his perception since that fact had been hidden from him at the time. Finally, we see that by God’s grace we can deduce truths much higher than where our faith alone takes us. In this case, Adam glimpses the future of conjugal marriage because God by grace reveals that to him, just as God had handed over this Woman to him like when a bride is handed over to her husband. We can say then that a consciousness born from love (Adam seeing himself in the Woman) allows for a reasoned perception to bloom into a faith assertion, and faith in turn predisposes the faithful man to divine revelation by grace that far surpasses where faith without grace can go. Knowledge of God begins in love and ends in love, and so marriage is given unto man to facilitate this.

Matthew 19:5: And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

Keil & Delitzsch Biblical Commentary: By the leaving of father and mother, which applies to the woman as well as to the man, the conjugal union is shown to be a spiritual oneness, a vital communion of heart as well as of body, in which it finds its consummation. This union is of a totally different nature from that of parents and children, and therefore the marriage between parents and children is entirely opposed to the ordinance of God. Marriage itself, notwithstanding the fact that it demands the leaving of the father and the mother, is a holy appointment of God; hence celibacy is not a higher nor holier state, and the relation of the sexes for a pure and holy man is a pure and holy relation. Their bodies were sanctified by the spirit, which animated them. Shame entered first with sin, which destroyed the normal relation of the spirit to the body, exciting tendencies and lusts which then warred against the soul, and turning the sacred ordinance of God into perverse sensual impulses and the lust of the flesh.

It is important to note that Adam is continuing to speak in Genesis 2:24. Thus, in saying the same words that Our Lord will speak much later, and in expressing what can only be known by him in virtue of God’s revelation by grace, Adam is speaking as a prophet. We see here in this statement the first indication of a prophetic ministry among men. Before this moment, God Himself is the Prophet of Himself in his self-revelation through creation. Now, Adam is speaking as a prophet. The interconnection of a prophetic ministry and marriage is not just happenstance. For a prophet ultimately sees the ways of God, and the community of love of the Three Persons of the Trinity can be expressed in human terms through the idiom of a loving and committed marriage. The prophet sees hints of what God has in store for man in the fullness of time, and the City of God, the New Jerusalem, is a kind of spiritual marriage among the faithful after the passing away of heaven and earth.

Gill’s Exposition of the Holy Bible: Having nothing in them, or on them, or about them, that caused shame; nothing sinful, defective, scandalous or blameworthy; no sin whatsoever in their nature, no guilt on their consciences, or wickedness in their hands or actions; and particularly they were not ashamed of their being naked, no more than children are to see each other naked, or we are to behold them. Besides, they were not only alone, and none to behold them; but their being naked was no disgrace to them but was agreeably to their true nature; and they were not sensible that there was any necessity or occasion to cover themselves, nor would they have had any such sensibility, had they continued in their innocent state. Moreover, there was not the least reason to be ashamed to appear in such a manner since they were but one flesh. The Jerusalem Targum states, “they knew not what shame was not being conscious of any sin, which sooner or later produces shame.’ Thus, Plato describes the first men, who, he says, were produced out of the earth; and for whom the fertile ground and trees brought forth fruit of all kind in sheer abundance of themselves, without any agriculture. Plato describes these first men as "naked and without covering’ for lack of shame and for being whole and complete in their own physical bodies.