Predigt (26. Sonntag Jahrekreis B)
[Man] will not live until he loves, giving himself away to another on his own level.” Isolation is not the divine norm for human beings; community is the creation of God. The commissioning of man and woman to reign over the good land (1:28) involves procreation, and only together can they achieve their destiny. This unity, however, is not merely sexual; it involves sharing spiritual, intellectual, and emotional dimensions as well. Jewish sentiment noted this: “Whoever has no wife exists without goodness, without a helpmate, without joy, without blessing, without atonement … without well-being, without a full life; … indeed, such a one reduces the representation of the divine image [on earth]
She is called Adam’s “helper” (ʿēzer), which defines the role that the woman will play. In what way would Eve become a “helper” to the man? The term means “help” in the sense of aid and support and is used of the Lord’s aiding his people in the face of enemies (Pss 20:2 [3]; 121:1–2; 124:8). Moses spoke of God as his “helper” who delivered him from Pharaoh (Exod 18:4), and it is often associated with “shield” in describing God’s protective care of his people.
“Helper,” as we have seen from its Old Testament usage, means the woman will play an integral part, in this case, in human survival and success. What the man lacks, the woman accomplishes.
The woman makes it possible for the man to achieve the blessing that he otherwise could not do “alone.” And, obviously, the woman cannot achieve it apart from the man.
First, the descriptive language of the animals’ creation echoes the man’s creation (v. 7). God “formed” both the man and the creatures out of the same substance (“from the ground”), and both are said to be “living beings/creatures” (vv. 7, 19). The animal world is a foil for the creation of the woman to distinguish her from the animals; her source is traced to the man himself and not to the “ground.” She is the first of creation to come from a living being. God creates the man first and derives the woman from the man to insure that she is his equal in substance and to maintain the unity of the human family
She is not of the order of the animals over whom the man is to dominate (see 2:23 discussion); she will share in the responsibility of dominating the created order
The woman was taken from the man’s side to show that she was of the same substance as the man and to underscore the unity of the human family, having one source
Perhaps the best-known explication is Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (1a, 92, 3c): “For since the woman should not have ‘authority over the man’ (1 Tim 2:12) it would not have been fitting for her to have been formed from his head, nor since she is not to be despised by the man, as if she were but his servile subject, would it have been fitting for her to be formed from his feet.”
The symbolic significance of the “rib” is that the man and woman are fit for one another as companions sexually and socially
The Lord presents his special “project” to the man, suggesting by this that she is a gift from the man’s Maker
