A Shadow Over Paradise

"The LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

‘This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.’

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” [1]

There are two very practical and very human views of the creation of man and woman. One is the man’s view; the other is the woman’s view. Are you ready? The woman’s view of creation is first. Woman’s view says that God made the man, looked at him, and then He said, “I can do better than that.” So, He made the woman.

The man’s view states that God made the beasts and man, and then He rested. After a while, God created woman. Neither beast nor man has rested since.

Frankly, I relate jokes such as these with a degree of trepidation, because marriage is held in increasingly low esteem today; and even telling a joke can possibly be used to disparage commitment of a man to a woman and of a woman to a man. There are a great number of jokes illustrating the war between the sexes. I wonder if the humour directed at marriage actually masks a deep dissatisfaction, a gnawing resentment we moderns feel at the imposition of what we construe as a hopelessly outmoded institution.

If there is dissatisfaction with marriage, it likely arises out of ignorance of God’s design. Marriage is not the invention of government; candidly, though one could possibly make a case for government intervention to regulate marriage, it is difficult to imagine that government has a role in defining marriage. God performed the first wedding—He created the woman for the man and God brought her to the man. Her purpose was to ensure that man was complete.

God’s assessment of the situation confronting the man He had just created should disturb every careful student of the Word. God said, “It is not good.” Coming after the repeated affirmation of goodness following each step of creation, such a negative assessment should startle the reader. The reader has become used to benedictions at each stage of God’s work, and now there is pronounced a malediction—relatively speaking.

Light was pronounced “good” [GENESIS 1:4]. The earth, the seas and the land were all declared to be “good” by God [GENESIS 1:10]. Vegetation, which lends verdant hues to our world, was pronounced “good” [GENESIS 1:12]. The lights in the heavens—the sun, the moon and the stars—were affirmed as “good” [GENESIS 1:18]. Fish and fowl were confirmed as “good” when God reviewed His work through the fifth day [GENESIS 1:21]. Likewise, the animals, which would populate the land, were seen by God to be “good” [GENESIS 1:25]. In the final analysis the whole of Creation, working as God planned, was pronounced “very good” [GENESIS 1:31]. However, one aspect of God’s Creation brought a negative assessment, and that was man’s lack of one to make him complete—mankind was incomplete.

Out of God’s judgement concerning man’s incompleteness comes the one who is to be Adam’s wife and companion. You will note that the passage continues with this pronouncement: “So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man” [GENESIS 2:21, 22]. Underscore in your mind that woman was made from man. She was made for man. She was given to man—the greatest of God’s gifts at the Creation. We will learn that man named her.

COMPLEMENTARIAN, NOT EGALITARIAN — Despite what Pentagon officials contend, woman is not man’s equal. However, it must be stated that neither is man woman’s equal. The sexes are complementary—they strengthen one another and make each other complete through ensuring that the other is complete, all that the Creator intended. Thus, the biblical position for the roles of male and female, husband and wife, is assuredly complementarian and not egalitarian. This becomes evident when reviewing the biblical account of the creation of the woman.