Day 16 – Genesis 2:23-24

²³ The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” ²⁴ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. ^[1]

We know the creation narrative well by now. In chapter one we are told God created humans, male and female he made them. In chapter two there is a second account, some would argue just a fuller, more in depth account. Either way we are presented with a crucial picture of God’s own design. It begins with a search through the animals already created for a companion for Adam. Finding none, God causes Adam to fall into a deep sleep and taking one of his ribs creates a helper suitable for Adam. In everything that God had created there was nothing found fit for Adam. God had given to His creation a specific purpose (1:28) that could not fulfilled alone, and the only way God could solve the dilemma was to take a part of the man to make a woman.

The writer of Genesis is very specific at this point, as if this is something we are not to miss. With the same deliberate attention God gives to creating humanity in the first place, forming him from the dust of the ground (2:7), He employs creating Eve. The uniqueness of this creation is then seen in Adam’s response to what he sees the first time he gazes upon this new creature. Instinctively he knows that she is vastly different from anything else he has seen, He looks at her and realizes that she is that part that was taken out of him, and with his responsibility to name every creature, he calls her woman because she was taken out of him.

Note the manner in which he receives her, with a love poem. Proverbs 18:22 says, “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the LORD.” I prefer the KJV for this verse because it calls her a “good thing.” Adam is so enthralled with what he sees that he voluntarily leaves behind his former existence to follow, cling to, and adhere to his wife. The two become one-flesh, no longer two separate beings, but now interdependent, a unit designed to fulfill God’s mandated purpose. The most critical piece of this new reality is that Adam had to leave his former reality in order to fully embrace it. It is what my wife always says, “The secret to cleaving is leaving.” Marriage is complicated, and handicapped when those entering it cannot leave behind their former realities. A marriage is a road down which one has never traveled, even if it is not their first. Refusal to leave the past (I wish I had time to really engage this topic) handicaps a marriage, renders it ineffective and completely impotent.

Father, just as Adam left his former reality, allow us to leave our own, whether it is our parent’s home and influence, the baggage of past relationships, or the habit of living alone. Prepare those who desire to be married to receive the one You bring to them with the same excitement Adam first expressed. Restore that excitement to those who have been long married that our marriages might give You honor and praise, and be a witness to a lost and dying world jaded about marriage. Amen.