Genesis 2:4-25

Genesis, as mentioned earlier, contains two creation accounts. Genesis 1 speaks of the creation of all things, with special attention to the creation of humanity in God’s image and likeness. Genesis 2 (which, in fact, is probably the older account) specifically focuses on the creation of man and woman.

Genesis 2 presupposes God’s work in the rest of creation: “When the Lord God made the heavens and the earth” there is still no man. While water is “welling up” there is no vegetation “because there was no man to till the ground.”

Genesis 1 presents God with sovereign authority: “God said,” and there was. Genesis 2 presents God more anthropomorphically, i.e., with human characteristics. God does not aloofly “say” in Genesis 1. He gets his hands dirty, like a workman who “forms” man, in this case out of “the dust of the ground” matter that only gains its form, i.e., its life, when God blows his own breath into the model man. Again, like Genesis 1, man’s life comes from God.

The contrast here, however, could not be greater. It was I think the Biblical exegete Bruce Vawter who noted that the “dust” (עָפָר֙, apar) of which Genesis 2:7 speaks is not even good, solid clay. It’s rather as ephemeral as the kind of dust one sees floating in the air of an old library on a sunny day. But to this dust is joined the breath of the living God.

Having created the male and having noted that flora was lacking “because there was no man to till the ground,” God plants “a garden in Eden” and puts the man there. Paradise does not mean rotting in bed; even before the Fall, the human being is supposed to work, to “cultivate and care” for creation. Work is, therefore, not in itself a punishment. It is part of the very fabric of creation. More on this later.

With man in Eden, Genesis 2 now presents God as creating the animals. Again, it’s a matter of perspective. In Genesis 1, the rest of creation exists for man’s service, under his dominion: God so establishes it. God creates man male and female as a communion of persons.

In Genesis 2, the same points are made in a more “experimental” fashion. God puts the male in Eden but it is God — not the man — who recognizes that “it is not good for the man to be alone.” So, God decides to give him “a suitable helper.”

But the Dr. Doolittle parade of animals does not meet that criterion: none are suitable. It is then that God creates the woman.

Like with the forming of man from the dust, the forming of woman is also presented as a construction task: she is formed from his rib. Like Genesis 1, where “male and female he created them” affirms the common humanity of sexuality differentiated mankind, Genesis 2 also affirms the common humanity of the man and the woman in this body.

Three other points:

• As in Genesis 1:27, the existence of a sexually differentiated but complementary humanity is presented as God’s design and will, not an accident. The sexes are mutually complementary and such is God’s design.
• The creation of this new person occurs while the man is completely passive. It is God who recognizes that ‘it is not good for the man to be alone’ and it is God who remedies the deficiency. Only then, after the fact, does man recognize and affirm what God has done.
• The ‘deep sleep’ into which Adam falls is not God playing anesthesiologist. Again, as Vawter notes, this sleep precedes great moments in salvation history. Abraham falls into a trance when God makes a covenant with him. Joseph is told what to do vis-à-vis Jesus in dreams. And it also affirms that those great moments in salvation history are God’s work. 

Genesis 2 concludes with two remarks. It speaks of marriage as a man leaving his father and mother and clinging to his wife, a passage sometimes read in the marriage liturgy (and affirming what the divine design for marriage is). It also remarks that “the man and his wife were naked but not ashamed.” During his Wednesday audiences on “the theology of the body” back in 1980-81, Pope St. John Paul II developed this idea. Shame is not necessarily a sign of guilt; it is also a protective mechanism. It protects people from being sexually exploited. A husband and wife are normally “naked and not ashamed” because their relationship is characterized by love. And, in a world before sin, where temptations of lust and the itch of concupiscence are absent, the nakedness of the man and woman is “insulated” by their love. We’ll see how that changes.

Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601-1678), a Dutch Baroque painter, illustrates today’s passage. “The Creation of Adam” hangs in the museum of Leuven, Belgium. It’s not full-flower Baroque, though it excels with the man’s physiology — it has a strong landscape component.

The oil painting captures the moment after the man has been called to life. He’s been seated in the lush garden and God is looking for a “suitable” companion for him. Man’s most faithful companions, two dogs, stand at his right. All sorts of useful beasts of burden — a horse, a camel, even a unicorn — gather at the stream bubbling up to water the ground. Various fowl are assembled on the right, one in the tree almost seeming to audition for a more important role. A fox looks on attentively.

“But none proved to be a helper suited to the man.” None of these “furry babies” are his counterpart. And we should not forget the point Phillip Cary makes about a “helper.” Helpers are not cheap, subordinate labor. A “helper” is one who supplies your deficiencies, especially when you are in mortal danger. God is Israel’s “helper.” So are good military allies. And so is woman to man (and vice versa).

Living in a world that dismisses the significance of sexual differentiation and has the man himself deciding on his “suitable companion” (though the original man seemed disinterested in any), Brughel’s painting is a challenge to our times. It reminds us that sexual differentiation and human sexual complementarity are parts of God’s plans for creation and humanity, even if man doesn’t recognize it.