Three posts ago, I talked about the picture of God bringing each of his creations individually to Adam to see what he would name it. God had noticed that Adam was lonely and was trying to find a ‘fitting partner’ for him. Of course, none of the creatures were a fitting partner for the man. I mean dogs are great and all, but they’re not the same as friends or spouses, right? So God decides to perform the world’s first surgery.
Which makes me wonder: when did the idea of cutting someone open to fix whatever was wrong inside and then closing it back up actually occur to people? There is some question as to when exactly the stories of Genesis were written down, but a conservative estimate would be 500 BCE. However, these stories were clearly being told long before then – at least, that is why there are two versions of the creation story, Noah’s story, and others. I’m afraid to google it because I’ll end up down a rabbit hole. Anyway, I have always breezed right by that detail, because surgery is so common now. Humans are amazing, is what I’m saying.
Getting back to God and Adam, God puts Adam to sleep so he won’t feel pain, takes a rib out, closes the skin back up, and makes a woman out of the rib (and soil, I assume). When Adam wakes up (was he groggy? In pain?), he exclaims, ‘Yes! This is it. This is the fitting partner for me.’ The author of Genesis puts it more eloquently: This one finally is bone from my bones / and flesh from my flesh. / She will be called a woman / because from a man she was taken.” (Gen 2:23, CEB). And they lived in the garden – naked and unashamed, because what was there to be ashamed of?
Of course, this is where the Bible starts regulating society – or describing what their society looks like by talking about a man leaving his mother and cleaving to his wife and getting married. Today, most of us have a more expansive view of marriage – probably because having children is not nearly as important now as it was then. Then, it was a survival strategy – kids could help with the work. Not to mention so many people died young. Today, in America, marriage is between two people – any two people.
Now, we have to backtrack, because I skipped a section in order to tell the stories of Adam naming the creatures and Eve being born. Earlier, (verses 16 and 17) God laid down the law: 'Eat your fill from all of the garden’s trees; but don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because on the day you eat from it, you will die!' However, it’s important to point out that Eve was not around then. She only comes onto the scene in verse 23. Adam or God must have told her about this offstage, because when the snake (not Satan!), comes walking over to Eve, remember they have legs at this point, and says, ‘hey, did God really tell you couldn’t eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden,’ she knows the answer.
To her credit, Eve does not freak out about a talking snake, or maybe the animals talked back then. Anyway, she says it’s only the tree in the middle of the garden they’re not allowed to eat from or touch or they’ll die. The serpent spins the truth a little bit and tells her they won’t die. Instead, on the day they eat of it, they will become like divine beings, knowing good and bad. Here is where I have to say I think I have fallen in love with Eve a little bit, because she looks at this tree, and she sees that its fruit is good, that the tree is delightful to look at, and somehow, it doesn’t say how, she knows that that tree is desirable as a source of wisdom. I don’t know; I see Adam is kind of just hanging around tilling the garden and enjoying his life and that’s great. But Eve is pictured here as desiring something more, and all it takes for her to do something about it is that suggestion by the serpent that there is something more.
So, desiring to be wise, she eats some, and she gets her husband – who was with her, and presumably heard this entire conversation and registered zero objections – to eat some as well. I just want to repeat that her husband was with her, heard the conversation, and made no effort to argue or stop her. I think I’m right about Adam’s laziness.
And about Eve’s awesomeness. We’ve seen in recent weeks the misogyny that White Supremacy needs in order to survive. The horrible treatment of soon-to-be Justice Ketani Brown-Jackson. The Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade not on precedent but rather on the basis of historical rights. It makes me sad and angry. I hope it makes you sad and angry too. Because women are also God’s creation. What gives men the right to tell us how to live our lives? Nothing. Unless we give in.
Don’t give in. Let your awesomeness show!
B
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