by Kenneth F. Sheets
The Creator God delegated to the Adam the authority to name the “living souls” which inhabited the earth with him. Though God had created them, He had also designed and built into the Adam both the knowledge and the understanding to provide the names. The Adam was to use his perfect linguistic and reasoning abilities to discern names, and these names would be a reflection of the unfettered relationship between him and the Creator. Thus, when that first human named the woman who had been perfectly designed and built and brought to him to jointly assist him in fulfilling all that God intended him to do, he gave to her a name that reflected not only his own perception but also that of the Creator who built her.
English translations of Genesis 3:20 tend to obscure one important aspect of the actual words which God used there, and that aspect involves understanding the Creator’s definition of the word “mother.” The human concept of a “mother” is typically that of a woman who has physically borne a child, especially a child who survived its birth. Many women exist, however, who have carried a child, some of them even having carried more than one, which did not survive its birth, and still others exist who have never physically borne a child at all. According to the wisdom of the world, those women with no surviving children are not actually “mothers,” because they do not meet the criteria of the world’s definition.
This kind of reasoning, however, is typical of a world at enmity with God. Humans think themselves sufficient in knowledge and authority to define what a “mother” is, but their knowledge is limited, finite, and their seeming authority is not valid. Indeed, the Creator, and the Creator alone, possesses both the knowledge and the authority to define perfectly and accurately any and every thing that exists. When He moved Adam to inscribe the words of Genesis 3:20 in what has become known as the Hebrew language, He expressed the nature of a “mother” using two different nouns but from the same linguistic root, “to live.” The text of this verse could be literally translated:
Thus, that which made “Eve” a “mother” was the fact that she was the vessel which God had designed and constructed to bring all future human life into existence. “Eve” was “Life” in the truest sense of the word, because her function in bringing life was in full and perfect accord with the design of the God Who Exists. Never would there be another like “Eve,” but after her, there would be a great many who fulfilled the design of God not only by actually bearing children but also by seeking to fulfill that design. Their seeking, however, to fulfill that design is not be the determining factor in their actually doing so.
Some 6,000 years ago, in those earliest days after creation, Adam and Eve, the first and head of all humans, had chosen to reject the Creator’s design, and the results of that violation have brought into existence innumerable conditions which interfere with what God originally designed to bring only blessing. These results leave some women seemingly “childless,” but when one recognizes that “life” in the sight of God is not defined or limited by the time of “physical” human existence, even these “childless” women are not “childless” if they have given themselves to bringing others, children or adults, to the true life, that is, to life, eternal life, as the Creator designed it to exist.
Just as true “mothering” in the sight of God, whether of one’s “physical” children or those who are “spiritual,” necessarily involves providing to those children an accurate perspective of God and the means of reconciliation He has provided in His Son, each woman who seeks to present to others evidence sufficient to bring them to the eternal life He designed for them is actually a “mother” to those individuals in the design of God. The term “mother,” then, includes every Godly woman who personally contributes to bringing to God all those whom she can influence for Him.