7 - Les Feldick Bible Study-7: Lesson 2 Part 3 Book 1 – Adam/Eve Created – 1:6 – 2:7

Adam and Eve Created – The Three Circles
Genesis 1:6 – 2:7
We left off last week in Genesis chapter 1 verse 27. Remember, I made reference to it in the last lesson that both the male and the female almost had to have been within Adam when he was created. The reason I take that approach is that when salvation comes by virtue of the Savior, the plan of redemption, it is not just limited to the male of the species but everyone comes under that plan of redemption.

In that plan of redemption, it is obvious that all the so-called blame, if I may use that word, is placed on Adam and never on Eve. We will be looking at this more when we get to chapter 3. But, just to tide you over until we get there, just look at it this way. I say Eve had to be IN Adam even before she was created at a later verse. Not as we understand the woman physically, but nevertheless, the very concept of the woman had to be in Adam, otherwise God would have had to provide a separate Savior, a separate Redeemer for the female of the species rather than just one.

I like to use this analogy. We have no emphasis in Scripture of angels having an opportunity for salvation. If an angel rebels, if an angel falls, he’s done. There is no plan of redemption for them. The reason for that is that every angel is a specific creation. In other words, if God was going to provide a plan of redemption for the angels, He would have to have as many Saviors or as many Redeemers as He has angels. Now that would be ridiculous.

Bring that right down into the human realm. Eve had to be in Adam from the very beginning, so that Adam could be the head of the human race. The Federal Head is the word we use. Adam is the Federal Head of the whole human race, both men and women. Consequently, there was only a need for one Redeemer. So this is why in chapter 1 verse 27, I like to emphasize this even though Eve is not on the scene, but will be coming on the scene in a later verse.

Genesis 1:27

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

In the last lesson, I took you back to chapter 5. Let’s look at it again, just for a quick review. Genesis chapter 5 verse 2. This is a recap. This is a summarization.

Genesis 5:2

“Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.”

He doesn’t refer to the woman. He doesn’t refer to Eve, He merely says He created THEM and called THEIR name Adam. They were both in Adam.

Come back and let’s pick up the creation of woman. Turn to chapter 2. We will come back to the earlier verses, but just to pick up the appearance of the woman. She won’t be called Eve until after the fall, she is only referred to as the woman.

Now in chapter 2, Adam has just given names to all the other living creatures and as I mentioned, then he must have had an inkling of what it would be like to have a help meet as he saw all of these creatures already with the female and the male and their mates.

God realized that He needed a help meet, such as up in verse 18. Now in verse 21 after Adam has named all the species of the animal kingdom and the birds and what have you, it says:

Genesis 2:21-22

“And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: (first instance of anesthesia, isn’t it? So he put Adam to sleep and is going to do some surgery on the old boy!) and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22. And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”

I, for one, like to take the Scripture as logically as we possibly can. I know that we take it by faith, and I don’t want anybody to come up and say you can’t take Scripture logically. I think a lot of times we can. And, especially from the scientific side. There is so much pure science in Scripture that most people miss.

The word translated “rib” in the Hebrew is the word “Tsela” and I think some 19 times the Tsela which is here, referred to as rib, is translated “side” or especially when it made reference to the Ark it was translated as “the chamber”. So I like to use that, the “side chamber” is the word Tsela because they all come out of the same root.

Now if you will read it in that light. Let’s go back and look at it that way.

Genesis 2:21-22

“And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, (a side chamber) and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22. And the rib (the side chamber), which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”

This may be stretching the point a little bit for some of you, but I put these things out just to help people contemplate and study a little bit more and take this whole thing into perspective. Because, the reason we are doing this is to understand the plan of redemption, that it is just as much appropriate for the woman as it is for the man. And that, the woman’s fall was not precipitated by Eve’s eating of the fruit. Never! It was Adam who ate and the whole human race fell!

We have to see here that Eve was part of that fall because she came out of Adam, just the same as you and I came from our parents. Eve came from Adam.

Let me show you something else that’s interesting. Go all the way back to the New Testament in Luke chapter 3, to the genealogy that we have here in Luke. Most are agreed that this is the genealogy of Mary and not of Joseph. We are not going to read all the way through the whole family tree but I just want you to go to the end of the genealogy in Luke chapter 3 verse 38.

We started, of course, up there at the time of Mary, herself at the very birth of Christ and have come all the way down that family tree to verse 38, where it says Cainan up there in verse 37:

Luke 3:38

“Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, (not Adam and Eve but the son of Adam) which was the son of God.”

Now where is Eve? Well, she is in Adam. Again I think it makes it so clear that Eve as a part of the human race was already in Adam when Adam was created. So consequently, we can definitely say that Adam is the Federal Head of the whole human race, not just of men but of men and women.

I like to just throw this out, just as a tantalizing thought to make you think about these things. If God simply took a rib from Adam, what would that do to the man? Well, it would leave him one rib short. And believe it or not, I have had people ask me whether men have one less rib than a woman. Well, of course not! Certainly God didn’t take one rib and make out of that rib a woman.

He took the reproductive segment of the woman, we call that the gonad or the germ plasma. He took that reproductive part which was certainly in a side chamber in Adam. Yes, he has the male and the female both. I think the Scripture indicates that and if you think that is preposterous, there are still some creatures in the animal kingdom that are bisexual. Especially among insects. It is not an unknown fact that we have things that are bisexual.

So I think that Adam was bisexual and some of the very early Rabbi’s who where certainly students of the Old Testament, had that concept, that Adam was bisexual, until God removed the female reproduction system from Adam and with that then He created the woman. Doesn’t that make sense?

I just think it is so logical, because you see, the whole reproductive process of not only the human race but of all of God’s creation, is based on those reproductive organs. And that is the very heart of all creation. Reproduction. So he removes that part from Adam and with it, He then surrounds it with the body of the woman and now we have man and woman. As yet she is not called Eve. Remember, she is merely referred to as the woman.

Go down to verse 23. God now has brought this new creature to Adam. His help meet. That is an interesting word, as well. It means a complement. That is spelled with an “e”. The word help meet is the word complement. In other words, it’s that which makes complete. Adam was not complete until God brought him that help meet.

Even the New Testament uses that same word with regard to Christ and you and I, the Church. The Church is the complement. This is why even the Lord, Himself, is looking forward to the day when He will have the Body of Christ with Him. And we become that completion of even Christ, Himself.

There is that correlation then between Adam and Eve, the husband and wife, or husband and wife as we saw it in the last lesson from the Book of Ephesians.

Look at Genesis chapter 2 verse 23.

Genesis 2:23

“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken (what’s the word? Out! See she was taken out of the man.)out of Man.”

And the rib bone doesn’t amount to that much, because it was something more than that. And He took the Woman out of the Man. As I mentioned in the last lesson, what I want to emphasize from this is that all of this points to the fact that Eve was IN Adam and that when Adam sinned, the female of the species came under the condemnation just a much as the man. Alright, I think that is well taken.

Now for verse 24, and remember all of human history has to fall back on what took place in Genesis.

Genesis 2:24

“Therefore, shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be (what’s the word? One.) one flesh.”

We have lost that concept. And I think it is so unfortunate that we have just sort of glossed over what God originally intended. But, if you will, take a look at the word here “cleave”.

I am not going to take credit for it, we were visiting my son one time when he was still in OSU and we went to his Church with him and the Sunday School teacher that morning, I will never forget, explained the word cleave in a way that I have used ever since. I think it was so apropos. The word here in the Hebrew means that once a man and a woman come together in marriage, they should never be able to be separated without causing irreparable damage. Isn’t that what divorce does?

Even those of you that have gone through it and in my consulting work that I have on the telephone, I’ll have folk call from one end of the country to the other, who are going through the awful distress of divorce. I don’t envy people going through divorce. I empathize with them. But you see this is exactly what God had in mind that when man and woman came together and became one flesh, to tear them apart would be doing irreparable damage. So He says “they shall be one flesh“.

Now, I like that next verse. Adam and Eve were so perfect. They were so sinless and even in their naked state, they were perfectly comfortable in God’s presence. That just shows how pure their very mind make up was.

Genesis 2:25

“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”

They were beautiful people and they had everything going for them. Now again, if you will remember a lesson or two ago, that perfect climate. No real intense heat. No intense cold. It was pole to pole perfect climate. No storm clouds. No severe weather. Everything was ideal.

And, they had fellowship with their Creator. God came and walked with them in the cool of the evening. How could anybody want anything more? But you know what? They weren’t satisfied. We get the account of it now as we move on into chapter 3 verse 1.

Genesis 3:1a

“Now the serpent was more subtil…”

I always encourage people to go to a dictionary and look up this word subtle. The last time I looked it up there was about 12 or 14 words to define the word subtle. It means sly. It means cunning. It means with tremendous intelligence. Hey, this creature had everything.

I like to take the approach and not everyone will agree with me, and that is perfectly alright, but I take the approach that the serpent was probably the most beautiful of all the created creatures. I think it walked upright and I am even going to stick my neck out far enough to say that I think it could speak. I think Eve was not the least bit surprised when this beautiful creature came up to her and was actually speaking in her own language.

The point I like to make is that even to our present day, Satan will always use the very best that he can get his hands on. He will never use that which is of no other good. But, he will always use the best that he can possibly get a hold of. He begins with it right here.

So the serpent, beautiful, upright. The Scripture says the most subtle of all the created beings. Satan is using the best that he can find. Now what does he do?

Genesis 3:1

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”

Well, I am going to have to be remiss. I told you we would go back to these verses we missed in chapter two and we just have to do that, so come back with me to chapter 2 verse 1, and we’ll pick up here in chapter 3 a little later. We need to take this verse by verse if we can.

Genesis 2:1

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.”

This is just after Adam was created and I don’t think Eve is on the scene yet at the end of that sixth day. I think that is going to come sometime later. But, anyway, the six days of creation are now finished and then it says:

Genesis 2:2-3

“And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: (set it apart) because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”

Again I like to bring in a little scientific fact here, if I may, and again maybe not everyone will agree with me. But, I think here when God looked at that beautiful creation and everything that He had put into it that we have here the very first law of thermodynamics.

For those of you who have had any science courses, you will remember that almost in chapter 1 of most chemistry textbooks you are introduced to that law of thermodynamics. Thermo meaning heat and dynamics meaning energy.

In other words, when God had finished creation, He had the law of thermodynamics in place. For those of you who may have forgotten, the first law of thermodynamics says that there is now nothing being created nor destroyed. Got that?

Nothing is being created or destroyed. I think that is what you have here. You have a perfect creation. There is nothing deteriorating. There is nothing dying. There is nothing rotting. The first law of thermodynamics. Nothing needed to be any more created. Everything was here that God knew the coming race of people would need. Everything was perfect, it was good. The first law of thermodynamics.

Now, come down to verse 4.

Genesis 2:4

“These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and they heavens.”

What do you notice in that verse? We have changed from God throughout all of chapter 1 and now all of a sudden we have the introduction of LORD God. That is not a misprint. The translators didn’t make a mistake, but rather, this is all for a purpose.

You see, even the Old Testament is going to show that there is a person of the Godhead who is uniquely in the God of chapter 1 but now He is set apart as someone special. He’s called the LORD God.

Now the LORD is the word that we are going to be later introduced to as “Jehovah”. So it could be read that in the day that the Jehovah God made the earth and the heavens.

The very name Jehovah, and we will look at that more in detail in our next lesson, is that person of the Godhead who is always involved with the human race. It’s that person of the Godhead who is to be the Communicator. He is to be the Redeemer. It’s the one who is going to be the Savior of mankind. It’s the one that is going to fellowship with Adam in the Garden. It’s that person of the Godhead that is going to appear to Abraham and to Moses and various others all the way up through the Old Testament. He is Jehovah God.

And, I’d like to make that point because man has now come into the scene and God knows that man is going to have to be able to identify with his Creator. He is going to have to be able to not only fellowship with Him but be able to know that He is. This is why “God the Son” who is always Jehovah (with only one or two exceptions) – Jehovah is always God the Son.

Get that concept straight. Whenever you see the word LORD in capital letters, it is Jehovah. It is God the Son. Now our translators, I’ve read, used that word “LORD” most of the time out of courtesy to the old Jewish writers because they had such an awe for that name Jehovah, that they wouldn’t even write it. They would leave a blank. But our translators came along and instead of using the word in opposition to that Jewish mentality, they used the word LORD.

So, whenever you see the word LORD capitalized, remember that it is Jehovah. You won’t be doing any harm to Scripture if you will just intersperse those two terms. What you have here then in chapter 2 verse 4 is the introduction to a name of Deity that we have not seen before and it’s the Redeemer.

It’s that person of the Godhead who is going to be the Communicator. It’s going to be the one who is going to make Himself known at various times all the way up through the Old Testament and then as we will see in the next lesson, He’s the one that came on the scene and we know Him in the New Testament as Jesus the Christ.

Just as a recap, we find that Adam was created first with Eve within him. God created, then, the woman out of the man and presented her as his help meet. And, the two became one. God instituted it from the very beginning.

At the same time, God revealed Himself as the one who will be the Redeemer. He’s the one who is going to fellowship with man not only in the Garden but all the way up through human history, until He comes on the scene as God in the flesh. The Lord Jesus Christ. The Jesus of Nazareth. The One who died for us and rose again!