Chapter Two
The divine rest of the seventh day
The first three verses of the second chapter, by their content, are wholly continuous with the preceding chapter, serving as the natural conclusion to the account of the creation of the world set forth in it.
Thus the heaven and the earth were completed
In this way the work of the creation of the entire universe was finished and completed.
and all their army.
that is, the army of heaven and the army of earth.
The first expression is quite common in the Bible and serves to designate either the angels surrounding the heavenly throne of God the Almighty, evidently by analogy with the guards around the throne of earthly rulers (Josh 5:14; 1 Sam 22:19), or else the stars, burning on the heavenly vault and by the regularity of their arrangement reminding one of the orderly ranks of troops (Deut 4:19; 2 Sam 17:16; Isa 40:26; Jer 8:2; Dan 8:10 and others). The expression “the army of the earth,” on the other hand, does not appear elsewhere in Scripture, although some analogy to it is found in the book of Nehemiah (Nehem 9:6) and in the prophet Isaiah (Isa 34:1), where there is mention of the highest representatives of the earth, that is, of humans and animals.
Thus, under “the army of heaven and earth” is understood all that is highest and best in one realm or the other, and that which, consequently, serves as, as it were, the adornment of each of them. The Greek LXX and the Latin translation of the Bible express this last thought beautifully, where the Hebrew word zeba (army) is rendered by corresponding synonyms: κόσμος and ornatus, meaning “adornment.”
Genesis 2:2. And God completed on the seventh day the works that He had done, This day is called differently in our Russian and Slavonic Bibles: in the first it is the seventh, and in the second the sixth day. This is due to the difference in the original texts from which these translations were made: namely, in the Hebrew text, as well as in the Vulgate and the Arabic translation, the “seventh” day is indicated, but in the Greek translation of the LXX (with the exception of certain verses), as well as in Josephus and in the Syriac and Samaritan texts, the “sixth” day is given. The context of the discourse, in which mention of the “seventh day” occurs further on, and where, apparently, the day of the completion of creation is distinguished from the day of its beginning, most favors the latter reading, as confirmed also by the authority of the ancient Samaritan text. and rested on the seventh day from all His works that He had done. Rested is expressed in the Hebrew text by the word sabat. From this, the seventh day of the week, dedicated to the commemoration of this divine rest, has retained among the Hebrews the name of Sabbath (for us, however, the significance of this day has passed to Sunday, and the very content of the commemoration has been changed). How then are we to understand this “rest” of God, when the Lord Jesus Christ Himself said: “My Father works even now, and I work” (John 5:17)? The answer to this is found in the very text we are considering, where it is clearly stated what work God rested from on the seventh day: it is precisely His creative-formative activity of the six preceding days; “God rested from all the work that He had done,” and which had just been described at length before this – “He ceased from creating things like those just created,” as the Arabic paraphrase of the Bible clarifies the text. “God rested,” says the blessed Augustine, “from the creation of new kinds of creatures, because He no longer created any new species of them.” “He rested,” says the holy John Chrysostom, “means He ceased from creating and bringing forth from non-being into being.” But, ceasing from creation, God never abandoned His providential activity with respect to the world and humanity (Ps 103:28; Eccl 12:7; Isa 57:16; Jer 38:16; Nehem 9:6; John 5:17; Heb 4:9-10).
Genesis 2:3. And God blessed the seventh day, “When a day is blessed,” says Metropolitan Philaret, “then it is made a partaker of a certain special good, worthy of joy and preservation amid the very changes of time,” understanding, we add, by virtue of the importance and significance of the commemoration connected with it. and sanctified it, because on it He rested from all His works that God had made and created. The primary meaning of the Hebrew verb standing here in the Masoretic text contains the idea “of setting apart” for some higher purpose, and from this already the concept of sanctification, that is, of designation for the sanctuary and God. In particular, the sanctification of times, according to biblical usage, is their appointment for worship (2 Sam 10:20; Nehem 8:9). This blessing and setting apart of the seventh day as a day of grateful and joyful rest, dedicated to the commemoration of creation and the praise of the Creator, had meaning only for rational beings, that is, humans, who probably from this time began to observe the Sabbath in imitation of God’s creative rest. Although, strictly speaking, the Sabbath received the character of a specific commandment only in the legislation of Moses (Exod 20:8; Deut 5:12), yet there is a whole series of strong proofs showing that in the form of a pious custom it was practiced long before Moses, and that its origin in this sense is scarcely later than the very beginning of human history (proof see in the dissertation of A. Pokrovskii “Biblical Teaching on the First Religion,” pp. 49–53).
The creation of the first human.
Genesis 2:4. This is the account of the heaven and the earth when they were created, This is nothing other than the general heading of an entire new section of biblical prehistory beginning from here (Gen 2:4) and extending to the next similar heading (Gen 5:1). Proof of this is provided both by the philological analysis of the Hebrew word standing here, toldoth, and by its biblical usage, about which we have already spoken above (see the introduction to the book of Genesis). in the day when the Lord God created the earth and the heaven, The “day” mentioned here (Slavonic Bible) is not the usual astronomical day, for there is no necessary mention of morning and evening here – but rather the entire six-day period of the creation of the world, as is clear from the context in which there is mention of the creation of the entire universe, unified in the concepts of “heaven and earth.” The best translation of this passage is given by the Syriac version (Peshito), which simply says “at that time,” when heaven and earth had been created...
Genesis 2:5. and every shrub of the field which was not yet on the earth, and every plant of the field which had not yet sprouted, because the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no human to till the ground, All this introductory sentence serves to determine the moment of the creation of the human – the special subject of this narrative. In this way the chronicler intends to prove the deep antiquity of humanity and the complete absence of any trace of human existence on earth before the creation of the first pair – Adam and Eve. He carries out this idea through a general picture of the newly created earth before the moment of the appearance of humanity upon it, in which he notes two main characteristics: a) the absence of any trace of human culture and in general of the products of field cultivation, and b) the presence of unfavorable atmospheric conditions that made even inconceivable any culture and any human existence. All this, according to the chronicler’s intention, definitively established the fact that on earth before the creation of Adam there was no culture, and consequently there was no human being. Here is the best biblical refutation of rationalistic theories of preadamism, that is, the opinion about the existence of humans preceding the creation of Adam. the Lord God Here for the first time in the Hebrew text we encounter the word “Jehovah,” a more correct translation of which would be “The One Who Is” (Exod 3:14). This is the characteristic name of the God of the Covenant, the God of Providence and Redemption (Gen 4:6; Exod 6:20; Num 26:59 and in preferred usage among all the prophets). In this sense it is distinguished from another common word “Elohim,” meaning God as the Almighty Creator of the universe. On the basis of this distinction of the divine names, negative criticism (“hypothesis of sources,” “fragment theory,” “documentary hypothesis,” and others) seeks to establish a chronological distinction in the origin of different parts of the Bible (older Elohistic from later Jehovistic) and thereby to undermine faith in the authenticity of the Pentateuch of Moses. But at the present time biblical scholarship increasingly and firmly establishes the fact of the deep antiquity of this divine name and those sections of the Bible in which it is used; especially valuable service in this regard is rendered by biblical apologetic data on the “Chaldean Genesis” (see on this in the dissertation of A. Pokrovskii “Biblical Teaching on Primitive Religion,” pp. 424–427).
Genesis 2:6. but a mist rose from the earth and watered the entire surface of the ground In the Slavonic Bible, following the text of the LXX, it says “fountain”; but in the Hebrew text is found the word ed, a more accurate translation of which is given by our Russian text – “mist, vapor,” as the Targums of Jonathan and Onkelos explain it. Gen 2:7. To establish more clearly the connection of this verse with the preceding ones, one should place the word “then” at its beginning, after which the entire period will assume a fully complete and definite form in the following way: “at that time, when heaven and earth had already been created, but no field plants and grain had yet appeared, since there was no rain, and there was as yet no human being, but a thick mist hung over all the earth – then the Lord God created the human.” the Lord God Here, as in many subsequent sections of the Bible (Gen 3:1 and others), both disputed (of course, only from the viewpoint of rationalists) names of God – Jehovah and Elohim (from Hebrew) – are combined together, by which any thought of their fundamental difference is eliminated, as those who are enemies of the Bible (that is, representatives of negative, rationalistic criticism) are eager to prove. And the Lord God formed the human from the dust of the ground, The fact of the creation of the human had already been mentioned earlier (Gen 1:27) in the history of the creation of the world, but merely mentioned in this general history of the universe, as one of its constituent parts; here, however, it is set forth in detail as a separate, independent subject of narrative. “Having mentioned at the beginning of Chapter II what had already been said, Moses expounds at length what had not been fully explained,” says the holy Ephrem the Syrian in his commentary on this passage. The very idea of the creation of the human – more precisely the outer form of the human, or his body, from earth, or more closely following the original – “from the dust of the earth,” is common to many places in both the Old and New Testament Scripture (Gen 3:19; Job 10:9; Ps 29:10; Eccl 3:20; Sir 17:1; 1 Cor 15:47-49; 2 Cor 5:1-4 and others). In the creation of the human body from earthly dust is contained the idea of kinship between the human and all visible nature, most directly with the animal kingdom, which arose by the creative command from the same earth (Gen 1:24). On the other hand, in the characteristic of the materiality of the physical nature of the human is given the idea of its destructibility or mortality. All this, according to John Chrysostom, teaches an excellent moral lesson of humility: “in order to teach us in the very form of our creation a constant lesson not to think more highly of ourselves than we should, for this reason Moses recounts everything with such care and says: ‘the Lord God formed the human from the dust of the ground’” (Homily on Genesis XIII, St. Petersburg 1898, p. 103). and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, Or, according to a more exact translation from the Hebrew – “breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives.” Like the preceding formation of the human body from earth, this present ensoulment by God cannot be understood in a crudely sensual sense: in the manner that God first molded a human figure out of clay and then took it in his hands and breathed upon it. All such passages, according to the advice of the blessed Theodoret, should be interpreted “in a manner befitting God” (θεοπρεπως), that is, in accordance with the majesty, holiness, and spirituality of God. In particular, this passage should be interpreted thus: the external form of the human came into being from the earth by the creative word of the Almighty. The idea underlying the entire biblical account of the creation of the human consists in the intention to present the human as the link between two worlds – the world of the visible, physical and the world of the invisible, spiritual – and to represent him as the king of nature and the image of God himself on earth, and to establish the truth of the immortality of the human soul; the language in which this abstract and elevated idea is expressed – this is the language of images and pictures, on which only in such cases did the most ancient humanity think. The very idea that the human partakes of divine life finds its parallels in other places of Scripture (Job 33:4; Eccl 12:7; Acts 17:25 and others). and the human became a living soul. The union of the highest divine principle (the breath of God) with the lowest material element (dust from the earth) resulted in the human as a living soul, that is, as a conscious personality endowed with reason and free will. But at the same time the human, this “living soul,” is infinitely distinguished from God, Who is “the quickening Spirit” (1 Cor 15:45) and is related to Him as a pale copy to its incomparable original.
A description of paradise.
Genesis 2:8. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden Having created the first human, God does not leave him to chance, but cares for him; this is first and foremost expressed in the fact that He settles him in a specially prepared, finest location on earth, “in the garden of Eden” (gan Eden in Hebrew), or in the “garden of delights” according to the Greek and Slavonic texts. This difference comes about because the LXX took the Hebrew word Eden, which is a proper noun meaning a country, for a homonym with a different meaning, which they then translated as “pleasure or delight.” Similarly, the Hebrew word gan, which means an enclosed place, from there “garden” (Deut 11:10; Isa 51:3; Jer 31:12), the LXX replaced with the Greek word παράδεισος, taken in turn from the Persian language and meaning an earthen or stone embankment surrounding a place of promenade, and from there the place itself, that is, “garden or park.” In other places in the Bible the paradise is called “the garden of God” (Gen 13:10; Ezek 28:13; Ezek 31:8), or “the garden of Eden” (Gen 2:15; Joel 2:3), or finally, “Eden” itself (Isa 51:3; Ezek 31:9 and others). in the east, Some biblical translators replace this geographical indication with a chronological one, translating the Hebrew term miqqedem (miqqedem) as “in the beginning” (Vulgate, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion). But the Greek, Syriac, and both our translations more correctly render it as “in the east,” since in other places in the Bible this term ordinarily denotes a place rather than a time (Gen 3:24). The country of Eden, which, according to the indication of other sacred books (Isa 37:12; Ezek 27:23), should be sought near Mesopotamia in the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates, actually lay to the east of Palestine, the place in which the author of the Pentateuch lived and acted, where he recorded this divine revelation about paradise. and placed there the human whom he had created. Consequently, the first human was created outside of paradise, to which he was introduced only later.
Genesis 2:9. And the Lord God caused to grow from the earth every tree pleasant to look at and good for food, and the tree of life in the middle of the garden, Among all the trees of paradise, which delighted to the eye and nourished the body of the human, stood one which possessed miraculous power – the power to grant immortality to anyone who ate of its fruit (Gen 3:22), for which reason it received its name “tree of life.” The specified characteristic of this tree was not, without doubt, its natural property, but represented one kind of special, supernatural action of divine grace connected with eating of its fruit, as with its external symbolic sign. Aside from its actual historical existence (Rev 2:7), the tree of life, both in Scripture itself and among the Fathers of the Church, acquired a mystical-typological meaning, pointing mainly to the cross of Christ, by which the Lord restored to us spiritual life, and to the mystery of the Eucharist as the saving fruit of this sacrifice on the cross (John 6:51-58 and others), leading to eternal life. and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was another famous tree of paradise, standing in the neighborhood of the first (Gen 3:3), but possessing, as was later revealed, properties directly opposite to it (Gen 3:17). God chose this tree as a means to test the faith and love of Adam, as well as his gratitude toward his heavenly Father, for which purpose He gave him the commandment not to eat of the fruit of this tree. From this commandment it probably received its name. “The tree of knowledge,” says Metropolitan Philaret, “being chosen as an instrument of testing, presented to the human on one hand a continually increasing knowledge and enjoyment of good in obedience to God, on the other – knowledge and feeling of evil in disobedience.” Since in general the commandment attached to this tree was intended for the development of the higher faculties of the human as a rational being, the name “tree of understanding” or “tree of knowledge” easily could be transferred to the tree itself. And since, according to the Old Testament view, all knowledge generally had a moral character, “good and evil” are taken here as two opposite poles of all knowledge in general. Gen 2:10-12. The general rather enigmatic character of the biblical account of paradise, in particular the existence in it of some mysterious trees, and especially the tree of knowledge, have served both for ancient heretics and for modern rationalists as a pretext for considering the entire biblical narrative about it as pure allegory. As if to forestall the very possibility of such false interpretation of facts, the chronicler not without purpose indicates the exact and rather detailed topography of paradise, thereby attesting to its former real existence on earth (the fact of its complete reality). From Eden came forth a river to water the garden; and it was divided from there into four rivers. This is the first essential geographical characteristic of paradise. In the Hebrew text this river is not named, since the word nahar means in general a great river, an entire water basin, which is why it is sometimes even applied to the ocean (Job 22:16; Ps 23:2; Ps 45 and so on). And since among the great rivers the Hebrews of Moses’ time were best acquainted with the river nearest to them, the Euphrates, it is not surprising that they called it especially by the name “nahar,” with all the tributaries flowing into it and the branches flowing out of it (Gen 15:18; Exod 23:31; Mic 7:12 and others). This river, having its source in the land of Eden (that is, in northern Mesopotamia or on the southern slope of the mountains of Armenia), passed through the entire garden and, on leaving it, branched into four main channels. The name of one is Pishon: it winds through the entire land of Havila, where the gold is; and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and onyx stone. “Pishon” – such was the name of the first of these channels. Ancient geography has not preserved for us the name of this river, as well as of those mentioned below, but modern scholars, it seems, have found some traces of it: we mean the discovery in Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions of the word “pisanu,” meaning “channel, bed, canal” (Delitzsch and Professor Yakimov). And since the cognate ancient Assyrian biblical name “Pishon” in literal translation means “full of water,” those same scholars construct the clever conjecture that under the name of the first river of paradise is meant nothing other than one of the largest and most abundant channels of ancient Mesopotamia, serving to conduct water from the Euphrates directly into the sea and more known among ancient Greek authors under the name of Pallacopa. By the very circumstance that here into the biblical description of paradise a canal is introduced, that is, already an artificial structure created by humans, one should not be especially troubled, since Moses, judging by the entire context, was describing not the primordial but the contemporary topography of the former paradise. And this all the more so since the very canal Pallacopa, according to the conclusion of an authoritative geographer (Ritter), was conducted along the dried bed of a river that actually existed but had dried up. Determining more precisely the position of the Pishon river, Moses indicates that it winds through the entire land of Havila, which was famous for its high-quality gold, fragrant resin (bdellium) (Num 11:7) and precious stones. The Bible knows two countries with this name: one – Hamitic (that is, populated by Hamites) in the northeastern corner of Egypt (Gen 10:7), another – Semitic, located to the northwest of Mesopotamia, otherwise also called Joctan’s land (Gen 10:29). Basing ourselves on the context, we must recognize that here the discourse concerns precisely this latter, Semitic Havila, all the more so since this coincides with the data of the latest scientific researches, which have discovered in cuneiform texts a name cognate with the biblical designation “sandy land” Ard-el-Havila, or Halat, lying in the neighborhood of the Persian Gulf.
Genesis 2:13. The name of the second river is Gihon [Gibon]: it winds through the entire land of Cush. The location of the second river of paradise is equally rather disputed and therefore it is better to start with determining the country which it wound through. In the Hebrew original this country is called “the land of Cush,” that is, the dwelling place of the Cushites, descendants of the younger son of Ham – Cush, or Hus (Gen 10:5-8). The LXX translated this as “Ethiopia,” which gave many the occasion to seek the country in the northeastern corner of Africa, in the neighborhood with Hisle, where the Hamites indeed subsequently settled (Jer 2:18). But the original homeland of these Cushites, according to the testimony of the biblical genealogical table (Gen 10:6-10) and monuments of cuneiform literature (Kasdim), was the eastern bank of the lower course of the Tigris and the northeastern corner of the Persian Gulf, namely that very valley of Shinar, in which, according to the biblical account, there settled the descendants of the various nations remaining after the confusion of Babel; uniting in one cultural-civic union under the predominant influence of Cushites, they formed a special nation known in science under the name of the Sumero-Akkadian, and in cuneiform texts under the name Kassu, which is very much like the biblical “Cush.” “If Cush is the same as Kassu,” says Professor Delitzsch, “then Gihon can be identified with Guhana, a Mesopotamian branch of the Euphrates.”
Genesis 2:14. The name of the third river is Hiddekel [Tigris]: it flows toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. The names of the two latter rivers present no difficulties, since under those same names they are known at the present time. Here only the direction of the Tigris as indicated to the east (or as the LXX inaccurately, and our Slavonic following them, translate – “toward”) from Assyria, when Assyria itself lies almost entirely to the east of the Tigris, can raise some bewilderment! This bewilderment is easily removed by the assumption that by “Assyria” here is meant not so much the entire country as the very city which bears its name and the ruins of which are now discovered, actually, on the eastern bank of the Tigris (the place Kileh-Sherga). Thus, comparing the biblical data with the discoveries of modern Assyriology, the position of the biblical paradise is most appropriately determined in the southern part of the Mesopotamian plain, between Babylon to the north and the Persian Gulf to the south. According to the conclusion of a whole series of distinguished scholars (Rawlinson, Schrader, Delitzsch, Yakimov, and others), the biblical gan-Eden is identical with the gan-idimi of the Assyrian cuneiform texts, and consequently lay in the region of southern Babylon. The undeniable reality of the earthly paradise is also established by many passages of Scripture itself (Gen 13:10; Ezek 31:8-9 and others).
Genesis 2:15. And the Lord God took the human [whom He had created] and placed him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. The best interpretation of this passage is given by the holy John Chrysostom, who says: “since the life in paradise gave the human complete enjoyment, bringing both pleasure from contemplation (‘of the beauty of paradise’) and delight from eating (‘of the foods of paradise’); so that the human from excessive pleasure would not become dissolute (‘idleness,” it is said, “has taught many bad things,” Sir 33:28), God commanded him to work and keep the garden, that is, to till its soil and cultivate various plants on it, and also to protect it from irrational animals, which, wandering into the garden, could introduce disorder and damage into it. This is the first divine commandment concerning human labor, excluding the pagan idealization of the so-called “golden age” and giving meaning to human existence. Light, unburdensome, and pleasant labor was an excellent means for the exercise of the human’s physical and partly mental powers.
Genesis 2:16. And the Lord God commanded the human, saying: from every tree of the garden you may eat, For the development of the higher moral powers of the human, God gave him a special commandment, consisting in abstaining from the fruit of the already known tree of knowledge. This abstinence God appointed to serve as a symbol of obedience and submission to Him on the part of the human, by which the observance of this commandment expressed on the human’s part a feeling of love, gratitude, and devotion to God; whereas the breaking of it, on the contrary, testified to mistrust of God, contempt for His words, and base ingratitude to the Creator, together with the desire to live by one’s own will rather than by the commandments of God. This is why such, apparently, a trifling transgression received such enormous moral significance!
The first commandment in paradise.
Genesis 2:17. but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat from it, because on the day when you eat from it you shall surely die. The word “day” here, as before (Gen 2:1), should be understood in the sense of an indefinite indication of time and translated as: “at that time when.” “You shall surely die” – is one of the common ways in the Hebrew language to emphasize a thought, equivalent to our expression “you will certainly die.” This threat of death (for breaking the commandment) should not be understood as causing immediate destruction to occur right after the fall, but should be understood as the beginning of a slow process of dying as a result of the fall: God sent death (more precisely, deprived of immortality) at that very moment when the human fell; but this death only gradually undermined his strength, expressing itself noticeably in anguish of spirit and ailments of the body. But besides this physical death, Scripture and the Fathers of the Church see here also an indication of spiritual death, consisting in the fact that by the act of his fall the human broke his first covenant with God, severing his connection with the greatest source of life and thereby from that moment condemned himself to spiritual death (Rom 5:12; Eph 4:18).
Genesis 2:18. And the Lord God said: It is not hard to see here a rather close analogy with the words of the divine counsel before the creation of the first human (Gen 1:26) and consequently to find here proof of the importance of the act of which they speak. “It is not good for the human to be alone;” These words do not mean at all that God confesses to an imperfection in His creation and as if makes a correction in it – in the designs of divine providence, without doubt, all this had already been foreseen and foreordained: but they point only to the fact that solitude is difficult and not good for the human, because it deprives him of the most necessary and suitable means for the all-around development of his personality, which happens most successfully, as is known, in communion with his peers. I will make him a helper corresponding to him.” In these words, on one hand, the high dignity of woman is indicated, for she is like the man, that is, just as he does, she bears in herself the image of God; on the other hand, her position, somewhat as if dependent on the man, is noted, in that every helper stands in the social sense a step below his immediate superior. Before proceeding to the detailed account of the history of the creation of the first woman, the chronicler briefly notes one more fact which served as the immediate occasion for this creation.
The naming of the animals.
Genesis 2:19. The Lord God had formed from the ground every animal of the field and every bird of the sky, He formed them, of course, much earlier, namely in the fifth and sixth days of creation (Gen 1:21), but if the chronicler returns here to this fact, he does so only for the sake of the general coherence of the narrative. and brought them to the human, to see what he would call them, and whatever the human would call every living soul, so that was to be its name. By this indication of the chronicler God Himself is placed in the role of observer and supreme director of the first experiment in human speech. “The authority of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the great philologist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt agree with the thought that for humanity there was no other way out of infantile unreasoning babbling than divine Revelation, having given it a ready form for the expression of its thought, or, better to say, having given it both thought and form together” (Vlastov, “Sacred Chronology,” I, p. 30).
Genesis 2:20. And the human gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the sky and to every animal of the field; Since this naming was not random, but was based on acquaintance with the nature of the creatures being named and for the most part contained in its basis an indication of the more characteristic property of the future bearer of that or another name, it testifies to a comparatively high state of the mental development of the first human. Moreover, according to the interpretation of the holy John Chrysostom, Adam’s naming of the animals indicated his dominion over them (Ps 8:6-7): “humans have the custom of placing a sign of their power in the fact that they, having bought themselves slaves, change their names; so God makes Adam, as a master, give names to all the irrational creatures” (John Chrysostom). but for the human there was not found a helper like him. In these words there sounds as if a quiet sadness of the first human, awakened by awareness of his complete solitude on earth, and there is heard a clear and strong desire for the fulfillment of what is lacking, which the merciful Lord did not delay to accomplish soon after.
The creation of the first woman.
Genesis 2:21. And the Lord God caused to fall upon the human a deep sleep; That the sleep that fell upon Adam (in Hebrew: tardemah) was not ordinary and natural, but inspired and ecstatic (έκστασις – LXX), is shown both by the context and by the biblical usage of this word (Gen 15:12; 1 Sam 26:12; Isa 29:10).
Genesis 2:22. And the Lord God built from the rib taken from the human a woman, and brought her to the human. This biblical detail seems offensive to many, and on the basis of it some consider the entire account of the creation of the first woman to be a myth (rationalists), while others interpret it allegorically (even some of the Fathers and teachers of the Church). But the very character of the given biblical narrative, marking with such care all its details, excludes the possibility of allegory here. As for the reference to supposedly obvious improbability and unnaturalness of the given process, where it is a question not of an ordinary phenomenon but of a miraculous, supernatural event, such a reference is, to say the least, out of place. The beginning of humanity was an extraordinary epoch. The spiritual meaning of this narrative is revealed in several places of Scripture (1 Tim 2:11-13; Eph 5:25-26), namely, the fact of the unity of the nature of husband and wife, and through it of all humanity, the foundation of their mutual attraction and the character of their proper mutual relations.
The establishment of marriage.
Genesis 2:23. And the human said: According to the opinion of all the best interpreters, Adam, being in a deep mysterious sleep during which God took from him a rib to create a wife for him, did not lose his consciousness, which is why he could speak these words. “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;” This is a common biblical expression conveying the idea of close physical kinship, which perhaps had its origin in this very primordial fact (Gen 29:14; Judg 9:2; 2 Sam 5:1; 1 Chr 11:1 and others). she shall be called woman, because she was taken from man [her husband].” The Hebrew word for “woman” (isha) is derived from the word “man” (ish) and thereby forever imprinted a clear allusion to the history of her origin.
Genesis 2:24. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother It is scarcely possible to attribute these words to Adam, since he, not knowing any parents as the ancestor of all humanity, had neither need nor even the possibility of speaking of them. In view of this, it is with greater justice to be attributed either to Moses, as the lawgiver of the marriage bond among the Hebrews (Exod 21:1-11; Deut 21:11-17) and author of the book of Genesis, or, which is even better, based on the words of Jesus Christ (Matt 19:5) – to God Himself, who sanctified by this the mystery of the marriage bond and gave it a foundation for all future time. The idea contained in these words, on one hand, attests to the divine institution of marriage, on the other – proclaims two of its fundamental laws – unity and indissolubility, as Scripture itself interprets it (Matt 19:4-5; Mal 2:14-15; 1 Cor 6:16; Eph 5:31 and others). and be joined to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. The word “be joined” in Hebrew is expressed by the verb dabaq, meaning “to be absorbed,” “to assimilate,” “to become like” (Deut 10:20; 1 Sam 11:2), and consequently indicates not so much the physical connection between spouses as the spiritual union of their interests, so intimate that they should represent not two distinct persons but, as it were, one common personality. This intimate spiritual-moral union of spouses, both in Scripture and among the Fathers of the Church, serves as an image of the union of Christ with the Church (Eph 5:30-31), John Chrysostom, Augustine and others.
Genesis 2:25. And they were both naked, Adam and his wife, and they were not ashamed. Before the fall, the first humans had no need for clothing and were not acquainted with the feeling of shame, which is a fruit of sin (Gen 3:7; Rom 6:21). All the spiritual and physical powers of the first humans were in such a wonderful harmony and were so balanced that the natural condition of bodily nakedness did not awaken in them any unclean thoughts and base desires; and their physical nature was so resilient and strong that it did not need any means of protection from atmospheric influences. * * * Notes PESHITO – In the first and second centuries a translation of the sacred books appeared in the Syriac language under the name “Peshito,” meaning “simple, faithful.” For the Orthodox Church these two translations (“Septuagint” and “Peshito”), and for Roman Catholics also the translation made by the holy Jerome, the so-called “Vulgate” (common), are absolutely more authoritative than the modern Hebrew original.