UNIFORM LESSON FOR September 23, 2018
Scripture passage and lesson focus: Genesis 2:18-24, 4:1-2
The book of Genesis is a book of beginnings. Two composite traditional accounts (Genesis 1:1-2:4a and Genesis 2:4b-25) describe the beginning of the heavens and the earth through the creative power of God. The first creation story unfolds in six creative bursts called days, ending with the creation of human beings on the sixth day. It culminates with the creator (identified as Elohim) resting on the seventh day, thereby declaring the seventh day a holy Sabbath day. This is a central idea in the priestly tradition that shaped this account of creation.
The second account of creation in Genesis begins with God (identified as Jahweh) creating a human being from the dust of the earth. Our translations refer to this human being as “he,” but as Phyllis Trible and other Bible scholars have pointed out, the Hebrew word used here is not gender specific. God breathes life into the human being and places the human in a verdant garden. God commands the human being to till and take care of the garden. The trees of the garden produce fruit for the human to eat. On an ominous note, if the fruit of a particular tree is eaten, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the human being who eats it will die.
Genesis 2:18-20 — God seeks a companion for the human being
By the very act of creating, God demonstrated that being in relationship is a defining characteristic of God’s nature. God chose to be in relationship rather than to exist in solitary splendor. The human being whom God created was also designed to be in relationship. “It is not good that the human being should be alone,” God announces.
So God decides to do something about it. God desires to correct the only thing in creation said to be “not good.” To overcome the human being’s aloneness, God intends to find “a helper as his partner,” according to the NRSV translation. The reference to a “helper” is misleading according to Trible, since a helper would be a subordinate or inferior being, a connotation the Hebrew term lacks. The traditional translation found in the King James Version “helpmeet” only exacerbates the problem.
God’s initial solution to loneliness was not a success. God created all the animals and birds from the ground in the same way as the human being had been created. God presented all these earth-born creatures to the human being, who gave them all a name. None of these creatures proved to be an appropriate partner for the human being.
Genesis 2:21-23 — God creates the appropriate partner
Again God takes the initiative. The human being is put into a deep sleep, a coma. God opens the side (a better translation than “rib”) of the human creature and from that God fashions a female human being, a woman. From now on in the text, the terms for the two distinct human beings are gendered: male and female.
God presents the woman to the man, who is delighted to have a partner who is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Their sexual differentiation is reflected in the masculine and feminine forms of the very similar Hebrew words for a human being.
Genesis 2:24-25 — Male and female become one flesh
The narrator describes the societal consequences of God’s creation of male and female human beings. Leaving their parental homes they come together to form “one flesh.”
A new family is created.
Without any shame or embarrassment, the naked human beings can come together to restore the original unity their sexual differentiation seemed to separate.
Genesis 4:1-2 — The human beings produce children
It comes as no surprise that the uniting of the male and female human beings have the inevitable result: children are born. Using a Hebrew idiom for sexual intercourse, the narrator says that the man “knew” his wife Eve and she conceived a son, Cain. The new mother, Eve, acknowledges God as the power that enabled the birth of her son. A second son, Abel, is also born. He became a keeper of sheep while Cain became a farmer.
For discussion: God gave the first human being a vocation: to till and maintain the earth. Do you think human beings are doing a good job of exercising that vocation? God also placed a limitation on what the human being could eat. What is the significance of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”? Why did God forbid eating fruit from that tree? Why were the animals not a suitable companion for the human being? Does the description of the creation of a female human being imply that females are inferior to males?
