Dust and Bone

Genesis 1 tells us that God made humanity male and female. Genesis 2 slows down and tells us how. The two accounts do not compete with each other. The first gives the whole week of creation in a few lines; the second stops on the sixth day and shows what happened on that day. And what it shows is that the man and the woman were not made in the same way.

Formed from Dust

The man came first.

Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed Adam of dust (aphar עָפָר aw-fawr') from the ground (adamah אֲדָמָה ad-aw-maw'), and breathed into his nostrils the breath (neshamah נְשָׁמָה nesh-aw-maw') of life, and Adam became a living soul (nephesh נֶפֶשׁ neh'-fesh).

The verse rests on three Hebrew words. The first is aphar (עָפָר), “dust,” the fine loose soil of the ground. The man was formed of dust taken from the adamah, the ground, and the name Adam is built on the same letters as adamah. His very name ties him to the ground he came from. The sentence God spoke after the fall uses the same word: “for dust (aphar) you are, and to dust (aphar) you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

The second word is neshamah (נְשָׁמָה), “breath.” The dust did not become a man by being shaped. It became a man when the LORD God “breathed into his nostrils the breath (neshamah) of life.” The life of the first man came from outside him, from the breath of God. That breath will return later in these chapters, on the day of the resurrection, when the risen Yeshua breathed on His disciples.

The third word is nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ), “soul.” The verse ends, “and Adam became a living soul (nephesh).” The YLV keeps this word as soul: when the LORD God had breathed into the dust, Adam became a living soul.

Not Good to Be Alone

Before the woman is made, Genesis tells us something about the man’s condition.

Genesis 2:18-20 And the LORD God said, "It is not good for Adam to be alone; I will make him a helper as his counterpart." And the LORD God formed out of the ground (adamah) every living thing (chai חַי khah'-ee) of the field and every bird of the heavens, and brought it to Adam to see what he would call it; and whatever Adam called it, the living soul (nephesh), that was its name. And Adam called names to all the cattle and to the bird of the heavens and to every living thing (chai) of the field; but for Adam he did not find a helper as his counterpart.

Until now, all through Genesis 1, God looked at what He had made and saw that it was good. Here, for the first time, He says that something is “not good.” It is not good for Adam to be alone. God will make him “a helper as his counterpart,” someone who stands opposite him and corresponds to him.

Then God brings the living creatures to Adam, and Adam names them. He gives a name to every one of them, yet among them all there is not one that answers to him, and the verse ends on that lack.

Built from Bone

Genesis 2:21-23 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up flesh (basar בָּשָׂר baw-sawr') in its place. And the LORD God built the rib which he had taken from Adam into a woman (ishah אִשָּׁה ish-shaw'), and brought her to Adam. And Adam said, "This now is bone of my bones and flesh (basar) of my flesh (basar); for this one it shall be called Woman (ishah), because from Man (ish) this one was taken."

The woman was different. She was not formed from the dust of the ground. She was taken out of the man while he slept, and she was built.

The word for what God took is tsela (צֵלָע), translated “rib.” Elsewhere in the Torah the same word is used for the side of the ark of the covenant and for the side of the tabernacle; it is a side, a part taken from one side of the man.

The verb in verse 22 is banah (בָּנָה), “to build.” It is the ordinary Hebrew word for building, the verb used for building a house, a city or an altar. The man was formed from the ground; the woman was built, as a house is raised from material that is already there. God did not go back to the ground for her. He took what was already living in the man and built from it.

Then God brought her to Adam. She was not found by Adam among the creatures, and she was not taken by him. God took the rib, God built her, and God brought her.

This small detail carries weight. Adam had just looked over every living creature and named each one, and the text says that he found no helper as his counterpart among them. He slept, and when he woke, God Himself brought the woman to him. The man received his wife from the hand of God. The order of the garden is not that the man saw and took what he wanted, but that God built and God brought, and the man received. Scripture will later show what happened when that order was turned around.

Bone of My Bones

Adam speaks at once, and his words are the first that Scripture records from his mouth. “This now is bone of my bones and flesh (basar) of my flesh (basar).”

The word for bone is etsem (עֶצֶם). Among all the creatures he had named, Adam had found none that matched him. Now, looking at the woman, he recognizes at once that she is made of the same bone and the same flesh as himself. “This now,” he says: this one, after all the others.

And then he names her: “for this one it shall be called Woman (ishah), because from Man (ish) this one was taken.” The two names answer each other, ish and ishah, as the two words man and woman answer each other in English. Her name tells where she came from.

Up to this point in the chapter he has been called Adam, the one from the ground. Now, standing before the woman, he names her ishah because she was taken out of ish, so that the two words stand side by side and each finds its meaning beside the other.

Two Ways of Being Made

Dust and the breath of God made the man a living soul; the woman was built from what God took out of him. They came into being in two different ways, and yet the woman came out of the man. They are two, and they are of the same bone and the same flesh. Genesis 1 told us that God created them male and female; Genesis 2 shows that the female was built from the male, so that when the two come together, it is not two strangers meeting, but what was taken out being joined again to what it was taken from.

The Word That Comes Next

Genesis 2:23 ends with Adam’s words. Genesis 2:24 begins with the word “therefore.” Everything that the next verse says about marriage is drawn from what we have just read: that the woman was taken from the man and brought back to him by God. Yeshua Himself would quote that verse, and Paul would call what it describes a great mystery.