New Living Translation and The Message: Good Work!
Captain Sensible writes: In the interests of research, I attended a singles conference on Monday, where I had the unpleasant experience of hearing all about how singles should be "content" with their singleness, just like Adam was before God brought him his wife.
This got a couple of us pondering about just how "content" Adam really was being single.
Turning to Genesis 2: 23, I re-read Adam's words when he saw Eve.
The NIV states it as follows:
'The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman, 'for she was taken out of man."'
The King James has this:
'And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.'
This got us thinking about the significance of the word "now". Doesn't that imply some sense of relief? That he actually was -- perish the thought -- feeling quite discontent? Like he had been looking for a helper, but wasn't able to find one from amongst the other creatures God has created?
Out of interest, I then thought I'd see what the dodgy Living Translation has done with this, expecting it to say something along the lines of: "Despite being delighted with his gift of singleness, Adam reluctantly, and under duress, duly accepted the wife that God had foisted upon him." ;) So you can imagine my surprise when I saw that The Living Translation actually says this:
'“At last!” the man exclaimed.
“This one is bone from my bone,
and flesh from my flesh!
She will be called ‘woman,’
because she was taken from ‘man."'
"At last!"??? The man "exclaimed"??? Doesn't that strongly suggest some discontent going on before? That he was actively looking for a suitable, wife-like creature, but wasn't having much success because God hadn't made Eve yet?
Bolstered by this, I then looked at The Message, culprit of the "gift of the single life" nonsense. Well whaddya know? Here's The Message:
'The Man said, "Finally! Bone of my bone,
flesh of my flesh!
Name her Woman
for she was made from Man."'
"Finally!" indeed!
So, my question is this - was Adam discontent, even in the pre-fall Garden of Eden where he was in perfect communion with God, because he needed a wife? God knew it, but what's more, did even Adam know it?
"Now" I have a wife! "Now" I can be happy and whole!
This got a couple of us pondering about just how "content" Adam really was being single.
Turning to Genesis 2: 23, I re-read Adam's words when he saw Eve.
The NIV states it as follows:
'The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman, 'for she was taken out of man."'
The King James has this:
'And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.'
This got us thinking about the significance of the word "now". Doesn't that imply some sense of relief? That he actually was -- perish the thought -- feeling quite discontent? Like he had been looking for a helper, but wasn't able to find one from amongst the other creatures God has created?
Out of interest, I then thought I'd see what the dodgy Living Translation has done with this, expecting it to say something along the lines of: "Despite being delighted with his gift of singleness, Adam reluctantly, and under duress, duly accepted the wife that God had foisted upon him." ;) So you can imagine my surprise when I saw that The Living Translation actually says this:
'“At last!” the man exclaimed.
“This one is bone from my bone,
and flesh from my flesh!
She will be called ‘woman,’
because she was taken from ‘man."'
"At last!"??? The man "exclaimed"??? Doesn't that strongly suggest some discontent going on before? That he was actively looking for a suitable, wife-like creature, but wasn't having much success because God hadn't made Eve yet?
Bolstered by this, I then looked at The Message, culprit of the "gift of the single life" nonsense. Well whaddya know? Here's The Message:
'The Man said, "Finally! Bone of my bone,
flesh of my flesh!
Name her Woman
for she was made from Man."'
"Finally!" indeed!
So, my question is this - was Adam discontent, even in the pre-fall Garden of Eden where he was in perfect communion with God, because he needed a wife? God knew it, but what's more, did even Adam know it?
"Now" I have a wife! "Now" I can be happy and whole!
posted by Captain Sensible at 5:48 AM
6 Comments:
Clearly things weren't perfect in Eden until God made Eve. (Gasp! Blasphemy! But everything God made was good!) Yes, everything God made was good. But it wasn't perfect, it wasn't complete, until it was made whole by the culmination of God's expression of His self-image in the dual creation of humanity: man and woman.
The Bible uses a clever three-part litarary buildup to show the LACK that existed before the creation of Eve. (Everything in drama comes in threes, and Adam meets three kinds of life before his own is made complete.)
Step 1. Plants. The backdrop is set in Genesis 2: An empty stage. God forms the man and breathes life into him. Having planted a garden (the first other kind of life that Adam meets), God puts him there to work the plants.
But there's something missing, right? And in case that's lost on anyone, God says it for the audience: "It's not good for the man to be alone." (Funny, Adam has God, right? But God is the one who says, That's not enough.)
So, Step 2 in the Dramatic Device comes into play: Animal life. Adam meets the second kind of living creature, and names each one.
But again, just in case it's lost on anyone that there's STILL SOMETHING MISSING, the narrator says, "But for Adam no suitable helper was found."
And at this point it's clear that there's a void. It's palpable. It's troubling. Things are good -- the garden is beautiful, the animals are named, and the man has work to do, but something is wrong. God Himself has identified the problem, and now there's no evident solution.
But God makes the solution. God steps in and solves the problem. He made the man from the earth, and the earth from nothing; He makes woman from man. And when Adam wakes up, the Third Phase of the Dramatic Device takes effect, and the Device is made complete: Adam meets the third kind of living being: his own kind. He meets woman. Humankind. Eve.
And creation is truly perfected. Everything is whole. And the first poetry spoken by humanity comes from Adam's lips. (The first poetry recorded in Scripture also relates to the creation of man and woman, but that comes from the narrator's voice; it's significant that humakind's first poem comes from Adam, and it's about Eve.)
Judging by the narrative of Genesis 2, then, (and I'm reading from my NIV), I would say that it's pretty clear that all of CREATION recognized that something was missing. Something was incomplete. There may not have been words at that time for "content" or "discontent," but there were words for "good" and "not good." Up until that point, everything in creation God had deemed "good"; but when it came to Adam, God proclaimed his solitude "not good."
How much clearer can you get? Throw out garbage words like contentment, and look at the story. The entire structure of the story says that something was wrong. The dramatic setup points to the lack, the missing-ness, of the man in his solitude. And the truth of the matter is that Adam, even though he named the animals, COULDN'T WORK THE GARDEN until he had Eve. As Mark Greene's article says, Eve is necessary, vital, to the execution of Adam's task. She is divinely ordained for him. There's no getting around it. So it wasn't like Adam was la-dee-daaing around, doing his work, praising God, until Eve showed up like a lovely, random, just-because-God-loves-you birthday present; he was hamstringed until God handed him his wife.
The word contentment, then, has no meaning in this context. A pointless red herring to distract from the true meaning of the story. Marriage is what makes the whole thing work. It was that way from the beginning. It's the same today.
Since I read and understand the Hebrew, please let me provide you with an alternate translation and point of view.
Verse 18: God said -- these famous words -- "It is not good for man to be alone, I will make a helper comparable to him" and in verses 19 and 20, the Lord proceeds to form the animals and to bring them before Adam. Verse 20b: "But for Adam, God did not find a helper comparable to him" (or alternatively, "But for Adam, a helper comparable to him was not found").
And so the Lord puts Adam to sleep, creates a woman, and brings her before him (verses 21-22)...
Then, Adam says "This time, it's bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh... ...therefore a man will leave his mother and father and will stick to his wife, and will become one flesh".
Meaning: after the Lord created and paraded every single animal before Adam, finally, "this time" out of all the other times, the Lord succeeded in making a helper comparable to him.
I think the strongest argument for marriage is the Lord saying "It is not good for man to be alone, I will make a helper comparable to him", and then telling us that, for this reason, for the sake of having a helper comparable to him, a man will leave his father and mother.
Adam and Eve had no parents... yet for posterity's sake, the Lord saw fit to mention that.
I think the emphasis needs to be on what the Lord desired to create (a helpmate for Adam), because when Adam said "this time"... he was really just going along with the Lord's plans for his life.
Sarah - That was beautiful! It just all makes so much sense! None of this struggling to beat our God-given desire for marriage out of us!
Jennifer - Thanks, it is helpful to have a Hebrew speaker amongst us!
So you would translate whatever Hebrew word it is that is usually translated as "now" as "this time"?
Even then, I am not sure I would go along with your conclusion that Adam was "just going along with the Lord's plans for his life". To me, even the "this time" kind of implies that he was hoping he might find a suitable helper all along, but without success, until God created Eve for him.
I don't know, the more I look at this passage, the more I think it is saying something very important to us, which with familiarity we have lost.
I hate to ask this but I think an answer would be very helpful:
There are some people out there (and it cringes me to think this) who will use these verses in Genesis to illustrate that men need women more than women need men (in terms of getting married).
For example, someone could claim, since it says it is not good for MAN to be alone, then it shows that men need wives more than wives need husbands (and trust me, someone I know has said to me that a man needs a woman more than a woman needs a man - and yes she is the same woman who told me to be content with my singleness).
I truly would like to know: as a single woman who truly feels that it is not good for me to be alone, what if I come across someone who present this point of view? Because this can be extremely irritating.
Hmm - well, off the top of my head, here's what I think!
I would say that the woman was created for the man. That, after serving God, she was made to serve her husband and her children. So to deny her that primary mission in life -- and what's more scold her for even wanting it! -- is, frankly, cruel.
I also think that the Bible is full of the requirement of men to show leadership. Therefore, the Bible needs to make it clear to men (and it does, if people weren't so blind!) that they should lead the search for a spouse. It's a woman's job to be "found" and the men's job to do the "finding", primarily.
I also think God understands that men are tempted to passivity (witness Adam's passivity when Eve was tempted and then he tried to put all the blame on her! God wasn't having any of that!), and also that they have a tendancy to fear commitment. Hence, the Bible stresses the need for men to find a wife and that it is not good for them to be without one. I don't think women need quite the same push!
But ultimately, men and women were made to love God and also love each other, and contrary to all the nonsense about singles being perfectly "whole" on their own, I actually think they need marriage to complete them, and show that they were made in the image of God, male and female, joined together. How are they joined together? Through marriage!
Jennifer, how wonderful to have a Hebrew-speaker among us! I wish I shared the understanding!
Your insight rather adds to the dramatic tension, too, don't you think?
Add this, then, to Step 2:
Adam meets the second kind of living being -- the animal kingdom. Every kind of vertebrate creature -- livestock, beasts of the field, and birds of the air. God has already declared the He will make a helper comparable to Adam. (My NIV says "I WILL MAKE a helper" in v. 18, and in v. 19 says, "Now God HAD FORMED" the animals -- is there that verb tense difference in the Hebrew? -- which indicates that, even if Adam doesn't know it, God has Eve up his sleeve, and the Parade of Animals is for Adam's education -- both for Adam to name the creatures, and for Adam to realize that they're not what he's looking for.)
So then the Parade of Animals begins. It's like a pageant. Everything in its beauty is on display, and the audience is holding its breath in anticipation, wondering, with Adam, which creature might be a comparable helper for him. Slowly the line dwindles. One by one the animals receive names, and they're beautiful, and glorious, and good; but not one of them is a comparable helpmeet. The tension becomes unbearable. And then there aren't any left. The pageant is over. The stage is once again empty, with just Adam in the garden, alone, probably looking bewildered. His expectations haven't been met: "No helper comparable to Adam was found."
End Act II, with the void, the lack, the twinge of wrongness, of incompletion, but the hint of a promise: "I will make..."
Begin Act III. Where God creates Eve.
Glorious.
And, on Shazia's comment, I'm right there with the Captain. If it's not good for man to be alone, woman was created for man. So people who say that men need women more than women need men are just being silly (to quote Ted Slater). True, women on their own may possess certain natural domestic skills that save them from having a "bachelor pad" (my apartment is the soul of homey); but that's a far cry from having a life that's whole. In the end, the bald truth is that men and women were created for each other, and belong together in the holy union of marriage. That's where we glorify God most, as Captain Sensible notes: Displaying God in his complete nature, in the fullest image of God: male and female.
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