House: Real Life at Home

Ryrie

• (18) “a helper suitable for him” means “his counterpart.”
• (20) note on 1:10
• (21-22) “Though elsewhere the Hebrew word means 'side,' here it means 'rib' (and doubtless includes the surrounding flesh, cf v 23).”
• (21-22) It is interesting to note that “the NT understands this as actual, factual history.”
• (23) “woman” in Hebrew is “ishshah, similar to ish (man), reflecting the fact that woman was derived from man (though the word itself may come from a root meaning 'to be soft').”
• (24) “This verse emphasizes the complete identification of the two personalities in marriage. The passage tells us that God instituted marriage and that it is to be monogamous, heterosexual, and the complete union of the two persons. Jesus added that it is to be permanent (cf Mark 10:7-9).”
• (25) Shame did not enter the picture until sin did.

Henry

• It's interesting that God saw man as alone despite the angels in heaven, the creatures on earth, and fellowship with even He Himself. God recognized that “there being none of the same nature and rank of beings with himself, none that he could converse familiarly with, he might be truly said to be alone.”
• Why was it not good for man to be alone? Henry identifies at least 2 reasons
  • “It is not for his comfort; for man is a sociable creature. It is a pleasure to him to exchange knowledge and affection with those of his own kind, to inform and to be informed, to love and to be beloved.” Check out Ecclesiastes 4:9
  • “It is not for the increase and continuance of his kind. God could have made a world of men at first, to replenish the earth, as he replenished heaven with a world of angels: but the place would have been too strait for the designed number of men to live together at once; therefore God saw fit to make up that number by a succession of generations, which, as God had formed man, must be from two, and those male and female; one will be ever one.” In other words, He wanted them to work together to populate and tend the earth.
• Henry identifies at least 3 more reasons why this was a good decision on God's part:
  • “In our best state in this world we have need of one another's help; for we are members one of another.”
  • “It is God only who perfectly knows our wants, and is perfectly able to 19 supply them all.”
  • “A suitable wife is a help-meet, and is from the Lord. The relation is then likely to be comfortable when meetness directs and determines the choice, and mutual helpfulness is the constant care and endeavour.”
• “Family-society, if it is agreeable, is a redress sufficient for the grievance of solitude. He that has a good God, a good heart, and a good wife, to converse with, and yet complains he wants conversation, would not have been easy and content in paradise; for Adam himself had no more: yet, even before Eve was created, we do not find that he complained of being alone, knowing that he was not alone, for the Father was with him. Those that are most satisfied in God and his favour are in the best way, and in the best frame, to receive the good things of this life, and shall be sure of them, as far as Infinite Wisdom sees good.” In other words, it reinforces the notion that even the greatest stuff on earth can't satisfy as only God can fully.
• “That Adam was first formed, then Eve (1 Tim. ii. 13), and she was made of the man, and for the man (1 Cor. xi. 8, 9), all which are urged there as reasons for the humility, modesty, silence, and submissiveness, of that sex in general, and particularly the subjection and reverence which wives owe to their own husbands. Yet man being made last of the creatures, as the best and most excellent of all, Eve's being made after Adam, and out of him, puts an honour upon that sex, as the glory of the man, 1 Cor. xi. 7.”
• “If man is the head, she is the crown, a crown to her husband, the crown of the visible creation.”
• “That Adam slept while his wife was in making, that no room might be left to imagine that he had herein directed 20 the Spirit of the Lord, or been his counsellor, Isa. xl. 13.”
• “If we graciously rest in God, God will graciously work for us and work all for good.”
• Henry points out “that the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”
• In Adam's realization that Eve is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” he realizes, “Now I have what I wanted, and which all the creatures could not furnish me with, a help meet for me."
• “In token of his acceptance of her, [Adam] gave her a name, not peculiar to her, but common to her sex: She shall be called woman, Isha, a she-man, differing from man in sex only, not in nature—made of man, and joined to man.”
• “The sabbath and marriage were two ordinances instituted in innocency, the former for the preservation of the church, the latter for the preservation of the world of mankind.”
• “See how necessary it is that children should take their parents' consent along with them in their marriage, and how unjust those are to their parents, as well as undutiful, who marry without it; for they rob them of their right to them, and interest in them, and alienate it to another, fraudulently and unnaturally.” I honestly don't know where this is coming from, but it is wise counsel nonetheless.
• “See what need there is both of prudence and prayer in the choice of this relation, which is so near and so lasting. That had need be well done which is to be done for life.”
• “See how firm the bond of marriage is, not to be divided and weakened by having many wives (Mal. ii. 15) nor to be broken or cut off by divorce, for any cause but fornication, or voluntary desertion.”
• “They were both naked. They needed no clothes for defense against cold nor heat, for neither could be injurious to them. They needed none for ornament. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Nay, they needed none for decency; they were naked, and had no reason to be ashamed. They knew not what shame was, so the Chaldee reads it.”
• “Blushing is now the colour of virtue, but it was not then the colour of innocency. Those that had no sin in their conscience might well have no shame in their faces, though they had no clothes to their backs.”

Reflecting God

• (18-25) “The only full account of the creation of woman in ancient Near Eastern literature.”
• (18) “For the first time in creation something is 'not good.' Without female companionship and a partner in reproduction, the man could not fully realize his humanity.”
• (18) “'Helper' does not imply subordination; indeed, it is often used of God himself (Ps 33:20; 70:5; 121:2).”
• (19) Adam's “first act of dominion over and caretaking of the creatures around him.”
• (19) “In ancient times, to name something or someone implied having dominion or ownership.”
• (24) “A man leaves his parents and, with his wife, establishes a new family unit.”
• (24) “Together [man and woman] were to form an inseparable union, of which 'one flesh' is both a sign and an expression.”
• (25) To be free from shame signified moral innocence.