Within many of the biblical stories are multiple layers of interpretation. The Garden of Eden story is no exception. This is why Genesis is no ordinary book of stories. 

This story is the Bible’s first defense of matrimony and its opening critique of bestiality and homosexuality. 

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Aberrant sexual behavior is a topic raised many times in the Torah. “Accursed is one who lies with any animal” (Deuteronomy 27:21) is one of the twelve curses that was recited in a ceremony on Mount Ebal, close to Shechem, when the Jewish people entered the land of Canaan at the time of Joshua. Its timing at the beginning of the conquest of Canaan would indicates that this phenomenon was not a minor concern.

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The Jewish people are warned on several occasions by the Torah to distance themselves from the sexual practices of the Canaanites. Homosexuality is considered an abomination (Leviticus 18:22). In total, it would seem that sexual relationships were fluid among the Canaanites and that matrimony had considerable competition.

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In this respect, it is worth mentioning the Gilgamesh myth, since this was a well-known and popular Mesopotamian myth that was very accepting of a between-male relationship. As such, it provides a window into views of sexuality at that time. This myth was composed well before the Bible was written and was widely known in the Near East. Gilgamesh was, in fact, an historic Sumerian king, although it is doubtful that he participated in any of the greater-than-life adventures described in this epic. 

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The poem is about two men who have manly adventures together and about Gilgamesh’s search for the secret of immortality following the death of his friend Enkidu. Gilgamesh was a half-human half-divine despotic king and Enkidu a half-animal half-human commoner. There is no mention of any sexual encounters between the two, but Gilgamesh becomes absolutely distraught when Enkidu dies and the sentiments he expresses about him are equal to, and even surpass, the feelings most men have for a female love.

 

On the other hand, women are given short thrift in the story. Prior to meeting Enkidu, Gilgamesh has been sleeping with the brides of the city and Enkidu cements his friendship with Gilgamesh by sleeping with a prostitute. One cannot avoid the conclusion that long-lasting relationships between men were more important in this entertaining story than those between men and women.

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The topic of matrimony is not covered as an isolated topic in the Garden of Eden story, but it is interlinked with other themes, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly with man’s relationship with the animal world.  

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In the first creation story, man and woman are formed as sexual beings whose role it is to procreate and populate the world as rulers over a harmonious world in which every living thing has its place and function. However, the second creation story points out that there is more to the man/woman relationship than procreation. In Genesis II, YHWH Elohim, the God of relationships, surveys the world He has created and asserts that man being alone is not ideal and that he needs a helper. In a harmonious world of animal pairs, the loneliness and isolation of man stands out as an imperfection in God’s creation.

 

The relevant passage is as follows:

 

And YHWH Elohim said: “It is not good that man be alone. I will make him a helper corresponding to him.” And YHWH Elohim formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky from the ground and He brought them to man to see what he would call each one (yikra lo), and whatever man called each living creature that remained its name. And man assigned names to all the cattle and to every beast of the field, but as for man he did not find a helper corresponding to him (Genesis 2:18-20).

 

To resolve this imperfection, woman is presented to man as a gift from God:

 

And YHWH Elohim cast a deep sleep upon the man and he slept, and He took one of his sides and He filled in flesh in its place. And YHWH Elohim fashioned the side that He had taken from the man into a woman, and He brought her to man (Genesis 2:21-23).

 

The rational used by the Bible for the creation of woman is a model it will frequently use for other situations. Something of value can only be fully appreciated when its absence is experienced. Hence, Abraham is given a son only after years of infertility. The Jewish people are given freedom from Egypt after years of slavery. Similarly, God’s gift to man of a woman will only be appreciated once Adam has experienced the loneliness of living without a spouse. 

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Moreover, just as Elohim in the first chapter of Genesis bestowed upon man and woman the physical and intellectual attributes that will enable them to assert their rule over the earth, so woman in the Garden of Eden story is also created in a manner that will permit her to perform her role as partner.  

The nature of the allegory describing woman’s creation from a man’s rib is explained by Cassuto:

The story of the rib is an allegory of the relationship of the woman to her husband. Just as the rib is found at the side of the man and is attached to him, even so the good wife, the rib of her husband, stands at his side to be his helper-counterpart, and her soul is bound up with his.1 

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In the next sentence, which can be considered as a comment in parenthesis, the Bible emphasizes that these attributes of woman will remain a permanent feature of the man-woman relationship:

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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24).

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“Becoming one flesh” is not necessarily a description of sex. It may also be the clinging together for companionship of two individuals, male and female, who have different but complementary natures.   

 

After the couple’s sin, the procreative possibilities of a woman become the passport to a parent’s immortality:

 

And the man called his wife’s name Eve (Chava) (חַוָּה), because she had become the mother of all the living (chai) (חָי) (Genesis 3:20).

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The Hebrew word for “living” is built into the name Eve. Death will be proscribed for man, but he will live on not only in his accomplishments but also in the values he passes onto his offspring.

 

As R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch so eloquently points out:

 

Individuals die, mankind lives; and it is through woman that man lives on in children. Adam could well have castigated his wife, yet he names her by the loveliest calling of woman; . . .  She became the savior from death, the dispenser of life, the guarantor of mankind’s immortality. She is not only the physical but the spiritual and intellectual perpetuator of mankind’s higher calling. . . . ”2 

 

References

 

1. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part One, From Adam to Noah by Umberto Cassuto, Fourth paragraph, The Creation of Woman, p134. The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, reprinted 1998.

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2. The Pentateuch, Translation and Commentary by Samson Raphael Hirsch on Genesis 2:24.