Genesis 2:23-24 ~ “The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
This passage in Genesis tells the reader quite a few things. First, it defines the proper order of marriage or how man and woman are joined. Jesus’ reaffirmation of it in Matthew 19 thereby strengthens the biblical position on it. A marriage being the only proper partnership and place for sexual relations that are not considered improper or sexual immorality (Sailhamer- Pentateuch 102). The entire gay marriage issue is a topic unto itself. For the purposes of this series on homosexuality it will suffice to say that any marriage other than that between a single male and single female is unbiblical and therefore disobedience to God's statutes. The bulk of my argument in this series should lead a reader to no other conclusion. The Bible is clear and plain with no wiggle room. To prevent digression from the main intent of this paper I will only be mentioning it here superficially. With the backing of a few additional passages this is not a hard claim to support. If pressed I will do so clearly and articulately to avoid any ambiguities. Therefore any sexual acts outside of marriage are considered sin and outside the boundaries of Gods order for sexual relations.
The second thing this passage tells us is the interesting nature of the woman as opposed to the man. When Adam calls the female "woman" he is not only saying that she is different from him being a woman/man, he uses the word בְּאִשְׁתּ֔וֹ / ishshah in Hebrew (Harris 59-60). It is a word that means specifically: Woman, wife or female. More interestingly it is specifically used as a reference to the gender that is “childbearing” or by inference, the gender that can be impregnated/pregnant in Genesis 3:16, Genesis 25:21, Exodus 2:2, etc. which a male clearly cannot be (Jenni et al 188). This as opposed to the מֵאִ֖ישׁ / ish that specifically means man, husband or the name of the gender that has no childbearing correlation (Harris 38). The inference alone from this passage implies that a gender that can bear a child in the historical context of Genesis is female (no surprise). Therefore it indirectly alludes to the biblical fact that sexual relations need to be male/female or a partnership that can produce an offspring or progeny which is bolstered by God’s command to be “fruitful and multiply” in Genesis 1:28 (Gagnon 746). It also shows that the proper partnership approved by God is male/female obviously...the only way to bear a child.
Same sex partnerships are incapable of producing a child at the time Genesis is written. Only modern medical practices allow this to happen and there still needs to be a surrogate. This passage also shows a Complementarian view of man/woman or husband and wife. In other words, God specifically made men and women different to fulfill different roles. One of which is to emulate the Trinity when the man and woman come together in marriage. In essence it is to be one in person yet distinct in personality. Eve was created to be the helper of Adam. The permanence of this partnership or marriage is alluded to in the fact that the man should leave his parents and joined/cleave to his wife as if they are one flesh (v.24) (Harris 39). This means to break this bond is to effectively perform a type of amputation of oneself or a lessening of oneself. The mentioning of one flesh shows the complete unity of man and woman in marriage. Since this is pre-Fall we know that there is no sin therefore we see a perfect image of marriage being between opposite sexes.
Although this passage on Genesis 2 does not directly
address homosexuality or same-sex intercourse it speaks volumes about what God
and His word deems acceptable in terms of sexual relations as they correlate to marraige. From this passage
alone we can conclusively ascertain the proper order or organization of the
male/female, husband /wife partnership within marriage. As mentioned earlier, further
dynamics, definition, roles and structure of marriage can be gleaned from
Ephesians 5, Proverbs 5, 18 and 31, 1 Corinthians 7, assorted places in the
Gospels and even Hosea but are outside the scope of this paper.
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