As stated in the last lesson, the account of how God “formed” the man and “made” the woman is found in chapter 2. In Genesis 2:4 we find, “This is the history of when God created the heavens and the earth, and then the time He made (restored) the earth and the heavens (to their present state).” Then, when we get to verse 7 we see how the birth of the first man took place. “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives and man became a living soul.”
This is important. Even though the first man, Adam (this formal name is first found in 2:7, the Hebrew ha adam, literally, “the man” as distinguished from adam, which should be translated “mankind”) had no father or mother and was not the product of conception, he was the result of a real birth. You must understand this principle: birth is not simply defined by conception, gestation and the time the baby passes through the mother’s birth canal. Birth is a personal action taken by God Himself!
First, we’ll look at the key words found in Genesis 2:7. “Lord God” is Jehovah Elohim, a reference to God the Son, the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ of Whom it is said in John 1:3, “All things came into existence by Him; and without Him not a single thing was made that has come into existence.” The word “formed” is jatsar, meaning “to form, mold or squeeze into shape”.
Then “man” found in most translations is actually “the man” (ha adam) Adam, as explained above. “Dust” is aphar, earth, mud, dust, and a word that generally is used to describe the common elements found in soil.
The next word is “breathed”, translated from naphach, which means, “to blow or inflate”. Then “nostrils” is aph and is usually translated face or nose. “Breath” is neshamah, a word used often in Scripture (and in this case) the breath of God or the spark of life. And finally, “lives” is chayim, wrongly translated “life” in most translations. Chayim is plural and is used here indicating that God gave Adam two kinds of life: the first was soul life that gave his body the ability to live independently (the autonomic nervous system); the second was spiritual life that gave the man the ability to have a relationship with God.
Then the last part of the verse sums up what had taken place, “and man became a living soul”. Here, “living soul” is chay, literally, “able to sustain life”, used with nephesh, a word that is always translated “soul” when referring to mankind (the man now had a soul and was, therefore, able to sustain life).
Animal life is always distinguished from human life in Scripture. Animal life is described in terms of blood (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:10, 11, 14), while human life is connected to the eternal soul that comes from the hand of God (Genesis 2:7). The opposite of this is also true; while human life begins when God places the soul in the body, physical death takes place when the soul departs the body (Job 27:8, Luke 12:20). The body can be killed, but the soul cannot (Matthew 10:28).
As I had mentioned before, the Doctrine of Precedence, sometimes called the Law of First Mention is something that has to be applied here. In this case it means that God established a principle or pattern when He gave the first man life and He will follow that pattern for all others who will come after that. Everyone is born in the same way Adam was born, except for these two obvious differences: 1) God does not form our bodies out of the dust, they are formed by our parents according to the genetic boundaries He established in the first man and woman, remember “after their kind”; and 2) because Adam sinned and the resulting spiritual death was passed down to every succeeding generation (see Romans 5:12, 14 and 17-19 where “death” is a clear reference to “spiritual death”, separation from God); we are not born spiritually alive as he was, so we must experience a spiritual birth (John 3:3-8).
Therefore, birth is the time when God places the soul He has created into the body that has been formed and it is the same for every man and woman who has ever lived (Job 10:18, 33:4; Psalms 22:9; Isaiah 46:3 are a few examples). For a more detailed explanation see the article “Grace, Faith and the Plan of God”, the section titled “God Gives Us Life”. My body was formed through conception, but my soul did not come as a result of anything my parents could do – it came at the moment of my birth from the God Who created it.
Now we’ll skip a few verses to get down to where the first woman comes into the picture. Genesis 2:18 says, “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make a help meet for him.” The word translated “help meet” is neged and means, “counterpart”, or in this context, literally, “opposite part that fits”. While he was alone, Adam was not complete physically, emotionally or intellectually. This was a fact that had not gone unnoticed by the man. In verses 19-20, God brought all the animals to Adam, so he could name them. We don’t know how long that took, but Adam (being the smart guy that he was) obviously noticed that these animals were both male and female. Thus, the last part of verse 20 reads, “but for Adam there was not found a help meet for him”.
Which brings us to verses 21-22. “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to come upon Adam, so he slept. Then He took one of Adam’s ribs and closed the place (from which it came) with flesh. Then the Lord made the woman from the rib He had taken from the man, and then He presented her to the man.”
We’ll look at just a few key words here. “Deep sleep” is tardemah, literally, a “trance”. And “rib” is tselah. This is an interesting word because it is a feminine noun with a third person masculine, singular suffix attached. What does all that mean? It illustrates two things: 1) that the rib did, indeed, belong to Adam; and 2) that it was the feminine part inside of him all along. As usual, God always has a plan, it’s always complete in detail and He carries it out when He’s ready. Then, there is the word “made”. Banah means, “to build”. Actually, it’s a little more definite than that; “to build for a specific purpose” would be a better rendering.
And here the Doctrine of Precedence comes into play again. The Scriptures have already explained how God gave life to the man, so it is assumed that we will remember and understand He did the same thing with the woman. The last part of verse 22 tells us the Lord brought her to the man, who then responded in the same way he had when God had previously brought him the animals – he gave her a name. In verse 23 “woman” is ishshah, usually translated “woman” or “wife”. The word illustrates the principle of neged (opposite part that fits). As explained in the last part of the verse, ishshah was so named because she came out of ish. The woman completes the man. Adam doesn’t call her Eve (life-giver) until Genesis 3:20.
Just one more thing, there is a principle illustrated here that can’t be ignored. Contrary to popular world opinion (and practice), it has always been God’s intention that there be one woman for one man. God did not “make” several women and bring them to the man with instructions to take as many as he wanted or take them all. He brought one woman. The principle illustrated in verse 24 is monogamy, one man for one woman for life.
This is a little off the subject, but maybe not so much. God established four principles for the protection of the man, the woman and their children in the coming generations. These principles have been largely ignored, which has been the cause of much destruction and abuse down through the ages. They are as follows: 1) volition is the right to decide (free will), literally the opportunity to agree with God and benefit from it; 2) marriage (monogamy) is one man with one woman; 3) family, gives parents the responsibility to raise (instruct, discipline, love) their own children; and 4) nationalism gives groups of people the opportunity to guard their own freedom and protect themselves from any outside interference of those who would take their freedoms from them. These principles are illustrated throughout Scripture.
Here there are a few questions that beg to be asked. Does life begin at conception as most religions claim? The answer is no (again, I refer you to the article “Grace, Faith and the Plan of God”. Can unborn babies learn while still in the womb? Again, the answer is no. An unborn fetus has no rational, functioning soul. Is abortion wrong? Here the answer is a resounding yes! Abortion is the end of a potential life that God would have completed. Yet, the obvious answer is that aborted lives are fortunate in that the eternal soul never leaves the presence of God and there’s never a life that must decide to serve Him or ignore Him and suffer the consequences.