by Kenneth Sheets with Rebecca Miller
God’s Preparation of Adam for the Creation of Eve
The Creator’s written record of His creation of the first two human beings indicates that He first created the man and placed him in the garden to “dress and keep it,” and, of course, this also placed Adam in proximity to “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” God then stated to Adam His prohibition against eating from this tree, thus providing the man with all that he needed to keep him from experiencing the undesirable and irreversible condition expressed by the words “dying you will die.” The only action required of Adam to avoid this undesirable result was that he not eat from the tree. With Adam in the garden and properly refusing to eat of “the tree,” the Creator proceeded to bring into existence Adam’s “helper corresponding to him.” To prepare the mind of His man for this new being who would be essential to his fulfillment of every function and interaction of God’s design for his existence, the Creator then brought all of the animals to him to allow the man to begin exercising his authority over them by naming them. This action on Adam’s part would have expressed to him the fact that the animals occurred in pairs, a male and his accompanying female. This may have aroused in the man the knowledge that he himself did not have an accompanying female, but, in his perfect relationship to God, he would not have questioned the propriety of that condition; Adam maintained his thinking within the design of the Creator.
God’s Creation of the Woman and the Perfect Interactions Between Her and Her Man
God, however, had never intended the man to exist alone in his headship and management of the creation. Thus, He created His “woman,” His “repetition” of the man, and the man, with his perfect knowledge, immediately recognized the nature of this new being; she was indeed his “pa`am,” his “repetition, his “helper corresponding to him,” and he used his perfect language to identify her. He was iysh, an individual male human being, and she was ishah, an individual female human being, and no alienation or miscommunications of any kind existed between them. They were both within the design of God for their existence, and thus, their interactions were in full accord with His design; the man made no misstatements to the woman, and the woman made no misstatements to the man. Any discussion, then, between the man and the woman regarding God’s prohibition of eating from “the tree” would have been entirely factual and perfectly representative of God’s original statement.
Eve’s Intellectual and Analytical Abilities
With God’s written record containing no direct indication of how the woman came to know the actual wording of the prohibition, some interpreters have suggested that she received it directly from God in her own communications with Him. This is not likely, however, because the man and the woman would have been essentially inseparable from one another in all their activities, and the communications of God with one of them would have been communications with the other at the same time. Accordingly, the Scriptures give no indication that the woman actually received any wording that included a prohibition from even touching “the tree,” but the woman certainly possessed no less intellect and analytical ability than did the man. She was able to formulate her own thinking in regard to fulfilling God’s design criteria and His prohibition, and, in her perfect mind, she had obviously recognized that since eating from “the tree” was prohibited, then no reason would exist for even touching it.
Eve’s Exceeding of the Bounds of God’s Design for Her Analytical Abilities
God did not actually state in His prohibition that the humans were not to touch “the tree,” but the woman did just as every other human has done in life. She knew what God had said, but she went beyond His words and added her own criteria in an attempt to keep herself from violating what God had said.[1] She could accurately perceive that unnecessary proximity to “the tree,” especially by touching it, could arouse a desire to eat, and, indeed, she must have already seen the fruit and recognized its desirability. In her logic, a logic designed into her by the Creator, since eating would necessarily involve touching, the Creator’s prohibition must also have forbidden touching. This was logical; this was her understanding of the implications of God’s actual statement, but, like all humans since that first day, she, by her own will, was attributing to God her own expansion, her own extrapolation, of His specific wording. The Creator had most certainly designed His humans to make such expansions and extrapolations, but they were always to remain within the bounds of what He had actually revealed. In her humanity, the woman thought she was right in adding protective criteria, but her very thought process in reaching such a conclusion had taken her outside the bounds of the LORD God’s perfect design. Never was a human to attribute his or her limited human perceptions to the mind of the unlimited transcendent Creator of all that exists; every attribution to the Creator was to be only in perfect correspondence to what He actually expressed.
The Character and Nature of Adam’s Expression of the Prohibition to Eve
God’s choice to use the indirect method of communicating His prohibition to the woman through the man in no way changed its character or its authority. The words and the meaning they were intended to communicate were determined not by the created being who transmitted them but by the person and nature of the One from whom they originated. When God’s words were accurately attributed to Him and communicated from the man to the woman, they would have possessed no less power and effect than if He had expressed them directly to the woman just as He had done to the man, and the man, in his perfect pre-violation condition, would have known this. Adam’s communication to Eve would have been in full accord with the Creator’s original statement; if they had not been of this nature, then Adam’s failure to do so would have been his first violation of God’s design. Adam, however, had not violated in his expression of the prohibition to Eve, and thus, the words still possessed all of their original authority, and, therefore, the indirect means of God’s communication did not cause or contribute to Eve’s violation; the woman’s violation was an expression of her own human will.
God’s Extended Purpose in Using Adam to Communicate the Prohibition to Eve
Many readers and interpreters of Scripture have questioned God’s choice to use an indirect means of communicating His prohibition to the woman. In their finite, limited human perspective, they think that a direct communication would have been “better,” “more effective,” for helping Eve to avoid her future violation, but, in their ignorance, these individuals have failed to see that God was doing far more than simply communicating a prohibition. The Creator’s choice of the indirect method could be no less than a perfect expression of His perfect person and, thus, His perfect design and purpose in His every action. Every aspect of the Creator’s perfect design has always been perfectly integral with every other aspect for the purpose of clarifying and confirming every point of His design. Though this truth of integration is often missed, it is no less true, and is demonstrated in God’s choice of an indirect means in communicating His prohibition to the woman. In this manner, He was also expressing His design for the hierarchy which was to exist between the man and his woman. Adam was the primary representative of the Creator to the creation, and Eve was his “helper” in fulfilling that role. The role of each was perfectly designed for each to act individually, but their roles were also perfectly designed for them to act integrally, corporately, each one needing the other to completely fulfill the Creator’s design. Though each possessed specific authorities delegated by God, they were not equal in authority. Each possessed the authority to completely fulfill the Creator’s design in every function and interaction of human existence, and, in some aspects, the woman possessed authority over the man, especially in her authority over her man’s body.[2]
Human Misuse of God’s Perfect Hierarchy
This was God’s design for the hierarchy in man-woman relationships: the man is the head of the woman. Certainly, in typical human fashion, many have perverted God’s perfect design in this matter, wrongly interpreting and wrongly applying it, and, in the present day, its misuse has combined with ignorance of the person and nature of God to make the Creator’s headship of the man appear to be anything but valid and proper. So many have violated and misused the concept, and the sense of it which is integral in every human, to obtain their own unGodly and selfish desires that few, even believers, will seek to apply it as God intended. Some, in great error, have interpreted the “male headship” design to indicate that the woman was not to have her own personal relationship with the Creator. Stated differently, the obvious hierarchy of the man as the head of the woman has been misunderstood to signify that the man was to function in some way as an intermediary between God and the woman. This misinterpretation has taken various forms, even being used to minimize the need and value of women becoming involved in intensive analytical study of God and His design. Men, and few of them, are seen as “needing” this sort of study, especially for leading assemblies of believers, but not women.
The Erroneous Thinking Underlying the Failure to Provide Intensive Study for Women
The mindset that minimizes or denies the need and value of intensive Biblical study by women, though it is prevalent in most assemblies of believers, is totally contrary to the design of God. This sort of thinking, at whatever level and perception of its existence, has compounded the weakness of women in ministering as God designed them to do, and the same sort of thinking has done the same to men. In most assemblies, a truly deep theological soundness is neither sought nor encouraged for men, that is, the men need only to be “faithful” in doing whatever “church leadership” considers needful. Their study of Scripture needs only to conform to the typical superficial studies and messages made available by “the leadership,” and they have no need of developing a theology and perception which comes only through intensive analytical study using the Biblical languages. This thinking instructs the women to ask their husbands at home, but the husbands do not possess the knowledge needed for answering in true conformity to the design of God, and, if the men do not need intensive training, then certainly, the women need no such thing, since, after all, they are merely “cooks, cleaners, and caretakers of children.” For them, intensive analytical study would “only generate more questions than it answers”; they need only more “practical” training in the “duties” and “externals” which someone “thinks” should comprise the life of a “Godly” woman, with perhaps a few “devotional” studies to “help them cope” with the daily tasks of being “Godly wives and mothers.” The men are too ignorant to provide proper leadership, and they are too lazy or improperly focused to seek the knowledge of God and His relationship to all that exists, and in their ignorance and unGodly desires, they restrain the women, even those who clearly desire more intensive Biblical learning, from obtaining the knowledge and understanding which is absolutely essential in God’s design.[3]
The Mistaken Concept That Women Do Not Need Intensive Theological Study
Eventually, in such “churches,” the women tend to become sufficiently “dumbed down” to accept the idea that their “cooking, cleaning, and caring for the children” is the extent of God’s design for their existence, or they feel trapped, unappreciated, used, by those in leadership who relegate them to positions of servitude in order to accomplish the goals that will make the leaders appear successful. Though the ladies are the primary communicators of God and His design to the children and youth of their assemblies, little or no regard is given to properly developing the women of the assembly theologically, and thus, these undeveloped women often convey erroneous ideas about God and His design to those they touch. In these assemblies, it is as though God does not communicate with women directly, but the Scriptures indicate this to be a false concept. Godly women, two in particular, Rebekah and Mary, the mother of Jesus, both possessed not only a great knowledge of God, but their knowledge was not all received through another human. Rebekah sought understanding directly from God regarding her pregnancy with twins, and God responded directly to her. Mary conversed directly with the messenger of God who told her of her future bearing of Jesus. These Godly women needed no intermediary in these matters; they experienced direct, personal interactions with the Creator.[4]
[1] Note that this is the error of all legalism and all other humanistic understandings of God’s actual wording where humans have “more specifically” expressed the criteria of God’s design, e.g., by adding “convictions,” “standards,” etc., to which individuals must conform in order to be “righteous” in some way or to some degree.
[2] 1 Corinthians 7:1-5.
[3] See “Where Are the “Marys”?”, https://scriptureresearchassociates.org/seeking-%26-finding/f/where-are-the-marys.
[4] Genesis 25:20-23 and Luke 1, respectively.