LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2010, Page 307

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307

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

for obedience to the Creator’s word given prior to the creation of
woman. The subsequent narrative in Genesis 3 indicates that even
this prohibition was meant for the good of God’s human creatures.
The Creator is good and so are His prohibitions.
The answer to the man’s aloneness
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man
should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him”
(Gen 2:18).
Against “the background of all the stately cadences”14 in Genesis 1 pronouncing God’s creation “good,” we now hear a different word from God: “It is not good that the man should be alone.”
The Creator desired to make a world in which everything would fit
properly and correspond to His intent. Before the final “very good”
of the sixth day, the Creator Himself says that something was “not
good”: the man’s aloneness—which Adam himself realized after
naming God’s creatures (2:20). To this profound need, for which
the man himself was able to give no answer, God responds: “I will
make him a helper fit for him” (Gen 2:18).
Understood within the context of God’s desire that His creation
of the man be completely good, “helper” takes on special meaning.
The Hebrew word translated “help” (‘ezer) is itself a fairly general word that is used in a variety of contexts in the Scriptures and
means to “assist and support” another. The word implies that two
individuals share the same goal but that the strength or wherewithal
of the one to be helped is inadequate in some way. The one needs
the help of the other. The word does not imply that the helper is
inferior to the one being helped. In fact, the Scriptures often speak
of God as our “helper,” signifying that God places Himself in the
service of our needs. Nor does the word imply that the helper is
superior. The two parties can be equal, as is the case here (Gen 2:8;
see also Josh 10:3–5). The word focuses on the assistance and support provided by another. To the man’s aloneness, God will bring
a companion devoted to his good, not just a person to keep him
company.
The creation of the woman
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon
the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and
closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the
Lord God had taken from the man he made into a
woman and brought her to the man (Gen 2:21–22).
The answer to the man’s aloneness came to him in a way far beyond what he could envision or would have been able to design. He
would soon discover in awe what was embedded in God’s promise
to make a helper “fit for him” (literally, in Hebrew, “like-his-counterpart”). The man who had just actively named the animals now
became completely passive, immersed in a deep sleep induced by
God. Then like an expert surgeon, the Creator took out one of his
ribs and sewed up his flesh. Since this partner must be “fit for him,”
the Creator appropriately took a rib from his side, the bone closest
to his heart.15 That rib God “made” (or as the Hebrew says, “built”)
into a woman. As an expert builder God constructed the woman.
Then God “brought her to the man” (2:22), prompting the man to
cry “with joyous astonishment”16 and delight:
“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my
flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was
taken out of Man” (Gen 2:23).
These words, the first recorded words uttered by the man, stand
in sharp contrast to what he will say about his wife later in Genesis 3:12. Here he gladly and fully receives her as a precious gift,
another human creature like himself, made of his own substance—
“bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” as he put it. Both the

man and the woman bear God’s image and live in fellowship with
Him.
God created this “helper fit for him” in a distinctive way. Unlike the creation of the man directly from the earth, God created the
woman from the man. God had given Adam the responsibility of
naming the other creatures. Now Adam names his fellow human
being “woman, because she was taken out of man.” This English
translation captures the Hebrew text: “she shall be called ish-shah,
because she was taken out of ish.” The name corresponds to his
prior exclamation: “This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of
my flesh.” Adam rejoices as much in their difference as in their
sameness. Through God’s gift of the woman, the man is enabled
to grow in his understanding of himself as a man. “She is the mirror in which the man will come to know himself as man. The man
and woman have been created toward fellowship, and neither can
come to know the self rightly apart from the other. … [They] know
themselves in relation to one who is other than self.”17
The institution of marriage: husband and wife
The creation of man and woman, in the Creator’s design, now
leads to (“therefore,” Gen 2:24) the creation of marriage.18 The Creator joins one man and one woman in what he intends to be a union
not to be ended until death. This union is a good gift established by
the Creator Himself and designed by Him to be the foundation for
society and the continuation of the human race. The creation narrative now closes with these words:
Therefore a man [ish] shall leave his father and his
mother and hold fast to his wife [ish-shah], and they
shall become one flesh. And the man [adam] and
his wife [ish-shah] were both naked and were not
ashamed (Gen 2:24–25).19
We can now see most clearly the aptness of the tapestry metaphor for picturing the relationship of man and woman as God intended. In the most intimate way, man and woman are intertwined
and interwoven in marriage like the warp and weft threads of a
tapestry. They are joined together in a one-flesh union that is a
profound unity of persons created by God Himself. This truth is
strongly affirmed by Jesus when He said, “‘So they are no longer
two but one flesh.’ What therefore God has joined together, let not
man separate” (Matt 19:6). God joins them together as the husband
and wife give themselves wholly to each other and become one
flesh. Neither two males nor two females can become one flesh, but
only a male and a female.
Sexual intimacy of husband and wife is a good gift from our
Creator, not only for procreation but also for human companionship and enjoyment. It is an expression of their deep love for one
another. Perhaps no book of the Bible displays the goodness of sexual intimacy and the unity of husband and wife more profoundly
than The Song of Songs in the Old Testament. With rich poetry and
compact imagery, the book exuberantly sings of the passionate love
between the man and the woman.20
Man and woman, therefore, belong to and are dependent upon
one another. First, the man was created. Later, the woman was
made from the man’s side as a companion for him. The woman
subsequently gives birth to a man. A man leaves his father and his
mother and “holds fast” to his wife, caring for her. Paradoxically,
their difference gives birth to their interdependence. As the apostle Paul so eloquently stated centuries later: “Nevertheless, in the
Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as
woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And
all things are from God” (1 Cor 11:11–12; see also 1 Cor 11:7–10).

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