From: Genesis 2:7ab, 15b, 18-24
The Creation of Adam
The Creation of Eve
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Commentary:
2:7. As far as his body is concerned, man belongs to the earth. To affirm this,
the sacred writer must have been always conscious of the fact that when a per-
son dies, his/her body will turn into dust, as Genesis 3:19 will in due course tell
us. Or it may be that this sort of account (a special one like the literary genre of
all these chapters) is based on the similarity between the word “adam”, which
means man in general, and “adamah”, which means “reddish soil”; and given
that the words look alike, the sacred writer may have drawn the conclusion that
there is in fact a connection between the two very things (unsophisticated etymo-
logy goes in for this sort of thing). But the fact that man belongs to the earth is
not his most characteristic feature: as the author sees it, animals too are made
up of the stuff of the earth. What makes man different is the fact that he receives
his life from God. Life is depicted here in terms of breathing, because only living
animals: breathe. The fact that God infuses life into man in this way means that
although man on account of his corporeal nature is material, his existence as a
living being comes directly from God, that is, it is animated by a vital principle —
the soul or the spirit—which does not derive from the earth. This principle of life
received from God also endows man’s body with its own dignity and puts it on
a higher level than that of animals.
God is portrayed as a potter who models man’s body in clay; this means that
man is supposed to live in accordance with a source of life that is higher than
that deriving from matter The image of God as a potter shows that man (all of
him) is in God’s hands just like clay in a potter’s hands; he should not resist or
oppose God’s will (cf Is 29:16; Jer 18:6; Rom 9:20-21).
2:18-24. God continues to take care of man, his creature. The sacred writer con-
veys this by means of a human metaphor, depicting God as a potter who realizes
his creation is not yet perfect. The creation of the human being is not yet over: he
needs to be able to live in a full and deep union with another of his kind. The ani-
mals were also created by God, but they cannot provide complete companion-
ship. So God creates woman, giving her the same body as man. From now on it
is possible for the human being to communicate. The creation of woman, there-
fore, marks the climax of God’s love for the human being he created.
This passage also shows us man’s interiority: he is aware of his own aloneness.
Although here loneliness is more a possibility and a fear rather than a real situa-
tion, we are being told that it is through awareness of being alone that man can
appreciate the benefit of communion with others.
2:19-20. Like man, animals are created out of matter, but they are not said to
have received from God the breath of life. Only man is given the breath of life,
and this is what makes him essentially different from animals: man has a form
of life given him directly by God; that is to say, he is animated by a spiritual prin-
ciple which enables him to converse with God and to have real communion with
other human beings. We call this “soul” or “spirit”. It makes man more akin to
God than to animals, even though the human body is made from the earth and
belongs to the earth just as an animal’s body does (cf. the notes on 1:26 and
2:7).
“The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to
be the ‘form’ of the body (cf. Council of Vienne, “Fidei Catholicae”): that is, it is
because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, hu-
man body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their
union forms a single nature” (”Catechism of the Catholic Church”, 365).
2:21-22. This sleep is a kind of death; it is as if God suspended the life he gave
man, in order to re-shape him so that he can begin to live again in another way —
by being two, man and woman, and no longer alone. By describing the creation
of woman as coming from one of Adam’s ribs, the sacred writer is saying that,
contrary to people’s thinking at the time, man and woman have the same nature
and the same dignity, for both have come from the same piece of clay that God
shaped and made into a living being. The Bible is also explaining the mutual at-
traction man and woman have for one another.
2.23 When man—now in the sense of the male human being—recognizes woman
as a person who is his equal, someone who has the same nature as himself, he
discovers in her the fit “helper” God wanted him to have. Now indeed the creation
of the human being is complete, having become “man becomes the image of
God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion”
(Bl. John Paul II, General Audience, 4 November 1979).
The first man’s acclaim for the first woman shows the capacity both have to as-
sociate intimately in marriage. Man’s attitude to woman as it comes across here
is that of husband to wife. “In his wife he sees the fulfillment of God’s intention:
‘It not good that the man should he alone; will make him a helper fit for him,’ and
he makes his own the cry of Adam, the first husband: ‘This at last is bone of my
bones and flesh of my flesh.’ Authentic conjugal love presupposes and requires
that a man have a profound respect for the equal dignity of his wife: ‘You are not
her master,’ writes St Ambrose (”Hexaemeron”, 5, 7, 19) ‘but her husband; she
was not given to you to be your slave, but your wife [...]. Reciprocate her atten-
tiveness to you and be grateful to her for her love”’ (Bl. John Paul II, “Familiaris
Consortio”, 25).
2:24. These words are a comment by the sacred writer in which, having told the
story of the creation of woman, he depicts the institution of marriage as some-
thing established by God at the time when human life began. As Bl. John Paul
II explains, “this conjugal communion sinks its roots in the natural complemen-
tarity that exists between man and woman, and is nurtured through the personal
willingness of the spouses to share their entire life-project, what they have and
what they are: for this reason such communion is the fruit and the sign of a pro-
foundly human need” (”Farniliaris Consortio”, 19).
By joining in marriage, man and woman form a family. Even the earliest trans-
lations of the Bible (Greek and Aramaic), interpreted this passage as meaning
“the two will become one flesh”, thereby indicating that marriage as willed by
God was monogamous. Jesus also referred to this passage about the origin of
man to teach the indissolubility of marriage, drawing the conclusion that “what
God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Mt 19:5 and par.) The Church
teaches the same: “The intimate partnership of life and the love which constitutes
the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with
its own proper laws: it is rooted in the contract of its partners, that is, in their ir-
revocable personal consent. It is an institution confirmed by the divine law and re-
ceiving its stability, even in the eyes of society, from the human act by which the
partners mutually surrender themselves to each other; for the good of the part-
ners, of the children, and of society this sacred bond no longer depends on hu-
man decision alone. For God himself is the author of marriage and has endowed
it with various benefits and with various ends in view” (Vatican II, “Gaudium Et
Spes”, 48,).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.