Marriage and Eden

As the king said in Alice in Wonderland, "Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end, then stop."  Marriage in the Bible begins at the beginning of creation and ends at the wedding feast of the Lamb in eternity in Revelation, so let us begin at the beginning and see where it goes.

In Genesis 2 we are told of the creation of man and the Lord placing him in the garden the Lord had planted to work and keep it.  In verse 18 of that chapter we see some surprising words, "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone...'"  In Genesis 1 there is a pattern of creation and God seeing that what He had done was good so now God sees Adam alone and determines that is not good.  (Good is an incredibly important concept in those first three chapters and then right through to the end, including what we know as Good Friday but which certainly wasn't good to anyone other than God the Father at the time.)  


The Lord's plan for remedying that "not good" is to "make him a helper fit for him.” What happens next though isn't the creation of woman, but rather the parade of animals whom Adam is to name.  The naming of a thing was considered to be an act of dominion.  In the same way, we name our domestic animals and therefore have dominion over them, they won't respond the same way to being called something other than their names and our children are also under our dominion in the same way.


At the end of the day, there was no helper among the animals "fit" for man.  Adam now saw too that it was not good for him to be alone in the world without a helper, a companion or complement.  The word is used of God in the Old Testament, for instance, in Psalm 46.1 the Psalmist wrote, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble."  If God is our helper then the word certainly doesn't mean an inferior or subordinate.  Adam simply had no one like him to share his life and his labor.  The animals most certainly were breeding pairs, just as Noah took breeding pairs into the ark so that the new creation, after the flood, would be self-sustaining and renewed in full.


Adam sleeps and the Lord takes a rib from him to form Eve.  Adam is formed of the dust of the ground but Eve is not, she is like Adam in every way and Adam's song of joy and celebration expresses that reality, "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.”  


Right there in Genesis 2 we get the first reference to marriage, " Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."  The idea of one flesh is that in the sex act and in life together they are in perfect union.  Adam and Eve were literally one flesh from the beginning, she was formed from his flesh.


Joy is found in God's seeing that the situation of "alone" was not good even when Adam could have had no concept of companionship other than seeing the animals together.  He couldn't possibly have imagined woman.  The Lord, however, provided Adam with a delight beyond his imagination and his song proves that he agreed wholeheartedly that things were now very good indeed.