One Flesh

The woman was taken from the man and built, and God brought her to him. Adam looked at her and said, “This now is bone of my bones and flesh (basar בָּשָׂר baw-sawr') of my flesh (basar).” The very next verse draws a conclusion from that scene, and it is one of the most quoted sentences in the whole Bible.

Genesis 2:24 Therefore a man (ish אִישׁ eesh) shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his woman (ishah אִשָּׁה ish-shaw'), and they shall become one flesh (basar).

Because its first word is “therefore,” what it says about marriage is not a rule laid on top of creation from outside. It follows from the way the woman was made. Because she was taken from the man, the man and the woman are joined again into one.

Three Words

The first of its three key words is azav (עָזַב), “leave.” A man shall leave his father and his mother. It is a strong word, the verb for leaving something behind or forsaking it. The verse does not tell a man to stop honoring his parents, which the Torah commands elsewhere. It tells him that in marriage he goes out from one household to begin another with his wife.

The second is davaq (דָּבַק), “cleave.” It means to stick fast, to cling tightly, to hold on so closely that the two cannot easily be pulled apart. Moses uses the same verb for the bond that Israel was to keep with God Himself.

Deuteronomy 10:20 The LORD your God you shall fear; Him you shall serve (avad עָבַד aw-bad'); and to Him you shall cleave, and by His name you shall swear.

Joshua 23:8 but to the LORD your God you shall cleave, as you have done to this day.

So the bond Scripture asks of a man toward his wife and the bond it asks of Israel toward the LORD are described with one verb. The book of Ruth uses it too, of Ruth holding on to Naomi when Orpah turned back: “but Ruth clung to her” (Ruth 1:14). Davaq is the word of a loyalty that will not let go.

The third is the phrase basar echad (בָּשָׂר אֶחָד), “one flesh.” Basar is flesh, the word Adam had just used: “flesh (basar) of my flesh (basar).” Echad is “one.” It is the same word that will later stand in Israel’s confession of faith.

Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD one.

“The LORD our God, the LORD one.” The word that tells Israel that their God is one is the word that tells a man and a woman that they have become one flesh. The two are not merged into one person, and God is not described as being made of parts. But the same small Hebrew word stands in both verses: the oneness of husband and wife, and the oneness of God.

More Than the Body

It is fair to ask whether “one flesh” describes only a union of bodies. Marriage plainly involves the body, and Genesis says “flesh.” Yet the verse has already joined that word to “cleave,” the word of Israel’s loyalty to God, and to “one,” the word of the Shema. From the first page, the Bible speaks of this union in words that reach beyond the body, and the rest of Scripture follows where those words point.

What Yeshua Said About It

Centuries later, when Pharisees came to Yeshua with a question about divorce, He went back to Genesis.

Matthew 19:4-6 And He answered and said: "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said: 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh)'? So they are no longer two but one sarx(flesh) — what therefore God has joined together, let no one separate."

Yeshua answers by joining two verses, “male and female” from Genesis 1 and “a man shall leave his father and mother” from Genesis 2. From them He draws His own conclusion: the joining is God’s work. The man leaves and cleaves, but it is God who has joined them, and Yeshua treats the words of Genesis 2:24 as the word of the beginning that still stands.

The Great Mystery

Paul quotes the same verse in his letter to the Ephesians. He is writing to husbands and wives, and he begins with the love the husband owes his wife.

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay(love) your wives, just as Messiah also agaped(loved) the ekklesia ἐκκλησία ek-klay-see'-ah(called-out community) and gave Himself up for her,

The model for the husband is Messiah, who “agaped(loved) the ekklesia(called-out community) and gave Himself up for her.” The love Paul asks of a husband is the love that gives itself up for another, the love Yeshua described when He said that there is no greater agape than to lay down one’s soul for one’s friends (John 15:13). Before Paul says a word about one flesh, he has already said what kind of love holds it together.

Ephesians 5:28-32 So husbands ought also to agape(love) their own wives as their own bodies; he who agapes(loves) his own wife agapes(loves) himself; for no one ever hated his own sarx(flesh), but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord also does the ekklesia(called-out community), because we are members of His body, of His sarx(flesh) and of His bones. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one sarx(flesh). This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Messiah and the ekklesia(called-out community).

The words of Genesis come back one after another. Adam had said of the woman, “bone of my bones and flesh (basar) of my flesh (basar).” Paul says of Messiah’s people that they are “of His sarx(flesh) and of His bones.” Then he quotes Genesis 2:24 in full, and right after it he opens the whole picture: “This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Messiah and the ekklesia(called-out community).”

A mystery in Paul’s letters is something that was hidden and has now been made known. What Paul makes known here is what Genesis 2:24 was pointing to from the beginning. The bone of my bones, the cleaving, the one flesh, were always pointing toward the union of Messiah and His called-out people. Paul did not invent a comparison later to explain the ekklesia, and later readers did not add this meaning to the text; it is what the apostle himself says the text means.

Both Halves Stand

Paul does not let the picture swallow up the marriage it was drawn from. In the very next verse he comes back to husbands and wives.

Ephesians 5:33 Nevertheless, as for you individually, each husband is to agape(love) his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

The mystery is about Messiah and the ekklesia, and the command is still for each husband and each wife. The picture does not cancel the marriage. A husband who loves his wife is living out, in his own house, the love with which Messiah loved the ekklesia and gave Himself up for her.

What the Verse Holds

From the beginning, then, marriage was made to carry a message larger than itself. God made the union of a man and a woman to show, in a form everyone could see, what He wanted with a people joined to Him.

Genesis says “one flesh,” but Scripture does not stop at the flesh. A later page of Genesis shows it quietly, and the prophet Malachi and the apostle Paul speak openly of a oneness of spirit as well: between a husband and his wife, and between the one who joins himself to the Lord and the Lord Himself.