What is the application/meaning of the fact that God created Eve from the rib of Adam in Genesis 2:21-23
Question:
Please explain to me Genesis 2:21-23. It’s about God creating woman by taking one of the ribs in man(adam). It says that God created man from the dust thru the breath of his nostrils. Why did God create woman by taking one of the ribs of the man? What is the purpose or lesson that i could get from that passages?
Answer:
First of all, you are right that Genesis 2:7 describes God creating man (specifically Adam) from the dust of the ground. I am not sure that the meaning is literally that God turned a pile of dust into Adam. I understand it to mean that human beings are made out of physical stuff–that we are made out of physical matter. We are physical beings, as are all creatures. What makes us different is that God "breathed" into us the breath of life. Exactly what this means is not clear. Is he talking about giving Adam a soul? Is it about Adam being spiritual? The Bible does not make this exactly clear, but this "breath" from God is what makes us different from the animals.
Second, the passage in Genesis 2:21-23 does not literally say that God used a rib from Adam. The Hebrew is something like God took something from the "side" of Adam. The word rib is the traditional translation of the Hebrew, but it is not necessarily what the original writer meant. Again, I am not convinced that we are necessarily to take this literally. I am not absolutely convinced that God literally took a chunk of the flesh of Adam and transformed it into the physical body of Eve. This is Near Eastern literature so we should be careful not to read our Western way of thinking into this passage. Whether the creation of Eve was literally from a chunk of flesh cut out of Adam or the meaning is metaphorical is not really important to the meaning of this passage. God is telling us that man and woman are intimately connected from the very beginning. We are the same. We are equal. We have the same nature. We were intended to be one, not separate. We complement one another. We are natural partners. The writer of Genesis makes this application. He says, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The taking of flesh from the "side" of Adam is used to represent the partnership and the unit of a husband and his wife.
John Oakes
