Bible Talks - Sunday Night Church
Series: The Book of Promise · Talk No. 3
Man, woman and work
Sunday, 02 July 2006
Genesis 2 ESV or NIV
Two weeks ago Chris led us through a look at Creation from Genesis 1, last week Neil led us as we examined what it means when we say we were made in the image of God. This week we’re looking at Man, Woman and Work from Genesis 2.
The section actually starts in Genesis 2:4, “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.” Up to 2 verse 3 we have the board brush description of the great cosmic events of creation, now we turn to taking a closer, more personal, more intimately homely look at man in the garden.
In the first chapter the story moves from the natural world towards the world of animals and finally people. In this section the story is told in terms of Man’s relationship to the natural environment then moves on to Man’s relationship with the animals and finally with people.
When we read the creation account in chapter 1 and move on to chapter 2 the change in style is quite apparent and there is even a shift in the name given to God. In our NIV translation in Ch 2 he is called “the LORD God” while in Ch 1 he was called just “God”. This reflects the shift from one Hebrew name for God Elohim to another Yahweh. Elohim is a very general name of God meaning something like “the supreme deity” or “the creator of everything.” While Yahweh is God’s actual name. It’s the name later by which he makes himself known in covenant relationship with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and through Moses the people of Israel.
Scholars have tried to make a big thing of this shift in names suggesting that various sections of Genesis were written at different times by different authors then brought together much later by an editor. I’m going to just stick with what we’ve got before us in the bible.
Genesis 2 and 3 concern the place of human beings in God's world, human creatureliness and human limits; God’s requirement of obedience and the reality of our disobedience and its consequences which I’ll talk about next week. But this week is basically about relationship and order.
“When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens—5and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground,”
In chapter 2 we see God working for the benefit of Man. The universe, earth, the garden were made as the place in which man is to dwell. But God doesn’t just plonk man down in the middle of it all and say “There it is. Go to it.” Back in Chapter 1 we’re told:
“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
29Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.”
Man, mankind, was made in the image of God with a purpose, or role. To have dominion or rule or control over creation. Man is God’s gardener, park keeper, estate manager. His task is not just to exploit but to conserve to manage for his ongoing benefit.
But man is still of the earth. Shaped by God and life breathed into him by God but still of the same stuff as the animals and the soil. In one sense if you don’t count the gold fillings in our teeth we are about 50c worth of chemicals and even that’s mostly water. But we are more than just the chemicals from which we are made. We bear the image of God, and one aspect of this is we are personal beings who enter into relationships. Man is more than just some sort of superior animal. He is special in God's sight.
This differentiation is born out in the section that talks about finding a suitable partner for man. Our translation calls this person, “a helper suitable for him”. The Hebrew implies a helper matching him, a helper sharing his distinctiveness, someone who is fit to stand beside him, opposite him, as his counterpart, companion and complement. There is no sense of inferiority, no sense of subordination, or servitude. If you want to find support for an attitude of male superiority you won’t find it here.
Just to make sure that when the man gets his helper he really gets the right one, God causes all the animals to parade before him, cattle, birds, beasts, everything from aardvarks to zebras.
The man had the wonderful job of naming them all. Let’s see aardvarks, bears, cats, dogs, elephants, flamingos, geese, horses, ibex, jumbucks, koalas, lemurs, mice, numbats, ocelots, pandas, quokkas, rabbits, (too many of them in china, better build a wall), snakes, tortoises, unicorns (don’t see them around these days), vicunas, wombats, xenus (look that one up in your Funk & Wagnall’s), zebras.
Naming the animals was part of man exercising his rule or dominion. Man the cataloguer, the scientist, he doesn’t create, that’s God's job but he does bring order and understanding. In this process he didn’t find his companion and perhaps he felt the loneliness of rule. He didn’t have anyone he could turn to and say, “Darling what will we call this cute little fellow/ He looks like his name should start with a G but giraffe, gorilla, gerbil, gibbon, and goat are all used up. Maybe we should call him a gremlin?”
And at the end of the naming process the animals pair up and move off, the man is still alone. None of the animals were suitable. There is still one “not good” for God to remedy. Surely God had something better in mind.
“So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
Adam is put to sleep. As one commentator said, “God's miraculous creating permits no watching. Man cannot perceive God in the act, cannot observe his miracles in their genesis; he can revere God’s creativity only as an actually accomplished fact.”
The climax of creation has finally arrived. God provides a woman. One like a man but different, complementary. One from his side to be by his side. As “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.”
As another commentator said, “Not made out of his head to top him, not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected and near his heart to be loved.” OOOOH.
Whatever else we learn about the relationship between the sexes, Genesis 1 & 2 make the equality of men and women, women and men, as the co-bearers of the image of God abundantly clear. Neither is complete without the other, equal and complementary.
There is even a difference in the way the man names the woman compared with his naming of the animals. In fact the man doesn’t name the woman until Chapter 3 verse 20. At this point he simply states that she will be called woman because she was taken out of man.
One of the problems with our English translations of the bible is that often we don’t catch some of the subtle nuances of the original languages. Up until this point the word used for man is HAADAM that is THE MAN which derives from ADAMAH which means earth and reflects the fact that God made THE MAN, out of the earth and breathed life into him.
In this passage the word used for man is ISH and woman ISHAH which are as close as Hebrew gets to MAN and WOMAN. In chapter 3 THE MAN names the WOMAN EVE which means mother because she became the mother of everyone else.
Now let’s summarize what these first two chapters of the Bible tell us about our human-ness
- God made mankind in his own image. Male and female he made them
- We all have value and preciousness as persons. There is no room for racism, sexism, ageism. Religion, marital status, even sexual orientation do not devalue us as humans in God's sight.
- The bible affirms body life. That is we are physical beings, with bodies. We are not souls or spirits who happen to live in bodies. You can’t be a person without a body. If you like we are simultaneously ensouled bodies and embodied souls. The idea of body, soul and spirit is a Greek philosophical idea not a biblical idea.
- Personal relationships are important. It’s not good to be alone.
- Sexual complematarity. Male dominance/female subservience on the one hand and the feminist reaction to it on the other are both sinful distortions.
Which brings us to the verse 24, the second last verse of chapter 2 of Genesis.
24For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”
The characteristic biblical understanding of marriage is that of a covenant. Time and again the relationship between God and his people and the relationship between husband and wife are used as analogies of each other. That is sometimes the husband wife relationship is likened to the relationship between God and his people or Christ and the church. At other times the relationship between God and his people is described in terms of a faithful marriage relationship. This verse is quoted a number of times, not least by Jesus in Matthew 19:5 and the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:31.
The verse itself is an editorial comment by the author of Genesis and points to the establishment of a new family unit. That’s the leaving bit and the establishment of a new exclusive relationship of unity and sharing. That’s the cleaving bit.
One flesh is not specifically referring to the sexual union though it does include it. It is actually a phrase referring to the sharing of every aspect of their lives. Husband and wife in effect become one entity before God.
All that leaves us is the final verse but I’ll speak about that next week.
Let us pray.
