Blogtext: Adams quandary: no good on his own.

Biting the bullet: What is wrong in the world?

"Apart from these instructions God also took note of Adam's solitariness and said: this is not good enough. Out of the same ground that Adam was formed God now formed every living being, of the air, the earth and the sea, and watching Adam intently God wondered what Adam would call them. 


Sharing in God's creative act Adam named them one by one, but not one of them was good enough to be a suitable and complimentary match for Adam. God spoke them into being, Adam spoke them into recognition. But not one animal passed muster regarding the task of alleviating Adams lack of completeness. For Adam no help was to be found among them all.

So God anesthesized Adam and withdrew organic matter from his side and shaped another being, the woman, suitable to meet all that which was not good in Adams alone-ness, and brought this being to Adam, again to see what he would call it. "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 the sake of this union every man must grow out of his dependence upon his own parents, become a selfsubsistent and independent being and then join himself inextricably to his wife: only in this manner can they become one vital  living unit. (Gen 2:18-24 paraphrase by me)

History makes a trillion comments on the unsuitability of man alone to fulfill the role for which mankind was created. What then is the role determined?

First: a role of being. "In the day that God created mankind, He made them to be a reliable witness to God himself, to represent the true being of God, yet within the limitations of that temporal earthly form of  male and female. This two component humanity God called 'adam' and it was composed of the 'ish' and the 'isha' the man and the woman. "  Adam was formed out of the earth and in his physical being he is of the earth to the extent of having the same composing elements of the natural soil of which Adam was formed. 


Earth is 'edom', man is 'adam'. He is adam, it is not primarily a name but a description of origin. But man is not only a product of the earth, that only gives man the temporal physical frame, or the tabernacle, the tent in which he will live all the days on earth. Or in other words: he did not evolve out of the earth into life, the life giving endowment came not from the organic but from the supernatural. "And the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Gen 2:7  Soul does not come from soil. However similar they sound.


Calling mankind "Adam" is then not exclusive of the woman. The woman was not made from scratchings of the earth like man, but all that woman is and ever will be was there in the man, in the "ish" but as yet undeclared and potential only. Not until the organic and living matter, "the rib", was taken out of his side and the modifications were done to make her suitable and complementary to offset and balance the weakness of man, i.e.  the insufficiency on his own to be true 'man' and therefore neither enough to be the real likeness of God. Out of man woman was formed. The "isha" is impossible without the "ish". To become the likeness of God both the male and female entities need to be fully recognized and accounted for as being of one essence but also being individual entities. The union is not possible before there is the prescribed separation. Union involves choice and willing cooperation. That is reflected in the marriage idea right through history.


The two become one flesh from there separateness. While "ish" is alone the "isha" is out of sight and ineffective to be any help at all. And only in the  union of the male and female is there a complete image of God on earth. So the first reason for the weakness of male alone is one of being. He cant be what only he and she are meant to be together!

The second weakness is understood when one understands the necessity for communication about the practical task laid up for mankind. "God blessed them and said be fruitful and multiply and populate the earth". Since God created male and female He also determined that for all practical purposes every new life would be a common effort between male and female along the lines of sexual union.


However: notice this: Adam was not a product of a sexual act. Neither was Eve. Neither was Jesus Christ! Sex is never the answer to the problems caused by sex. In the case of Jesus Christ there are two non-sexual 'begettings'. "I will declare the decree: the Lord has said to me, thou art my son, this day have i begotten thee." (Psa 2) Before the foundation of the world, before anything was made that is made there was a non sexual begetting.  When the time came for the Messiah to be born, this was not 'by the will of man, nor by the normal actions of the flesh." (John 1:13) "Behold a virgin did conceive.. and she knew that such things never happened unless it was an previously unheard of action by the Lord and life-giver himself, The holy Spirit shall overshadow thee.."


Further: to rule over the world's animals, to tend to nurse and to convert the wild, wild creation into the likeness of the very garden into which God put them, needs also the creativity of all of God in them and through them both. To attest the immense effect of what mankind can produce as both elements of the mankind cooperate we just need to look around. Elimination of either is the end of both. And yet what we have accomplished as sinners is but a pale shadow of what we were destined to do together as one mankind in two forms joined by the unbreakable bonds of God's love.


"A suitable help for Adam"? The hebrew words here used are found in this manner only a few times (some 30) in the scriptures. "Ezer knegedo"  'suitable help' is related to a general word 'azar' meaning to help, assist etc etc. Although it is the very female woman who thus is produced for that purpose of helping man in his 'weakness' the very word for 'helper', "ezer" is not a female but a male noun. Thus it is likely that the emphasis is not on the 'female' that is the suitable help, but the fact that this help is made by 'Him', that is, woman is God's help to make mankind out of the man! Most often when the word is used in the scriptures it refers to Gods help in times when no human help is found. Sometimes it points to military assistance. Although the Holy Spirit makes it plain that the woman is the 'weaker' sex in some undefined manner it is to be noted that the "weaker" is related not to the "strong" but to the also "weak".


To wit: the distasteful and disastrous interpretation of this verse has led to generations of suppressed women, reduced to mere chattel and tantamount to a status of men's valets and shoe-lickers. Objects for men but not subjects with them. This history is caused by male interpretations serving their self interest and provide another flagrant example of theology turned idiocy. The protests against it have reached flood status and are washing through the churches for good and for extremely bad.


I said that the further reason for the female importance is to be found in the tasks given to them in creation. Reproduction, government and nurture are all impossible for mankind one without the other. Why does the world today give evidence of such miseries and total failures in all those areas? Because you cannot stop in the original storyline and pretend that this primary estate is in some way what we are striving for and achieving. We may have it as a dream, but on the whole we strive for what is irretrievably lost. The world shows the effects of the following chapter: the loss of the vital relationships in four directions. (Genesis 3)


"Adam,  where are you?" Full focus on the male. The female has taken and eaten and Adam stood by and let it happen without a word of protest. And ever after Adam is chided: "because you listened to your wife and did contrary to what I commanded YOU" therefore the very ground from which you were taken is now under a curse and you will eat your bread with toils inumerable."  Note here: there is a down side to every 'helper'. The very intentions of a helper trying to be kind can be disastrous. Who would deny their life partner 'a fruit beautiful to see, nice to taste and on top of it making you wiser than you ever were before?'  Except: it was all a lie from the start.

Let me list to you the calamitous effects of men who without referring to and obediently understanding the Word of God let their wives determine their cause of action:


1. Adam listening to his wife rather than to God tumbled the whole of the human race into the laming effects of sin and death, all for a bowl of figs. (certainly not apples) By one man Adam, sin came into the world, by one man, Jesus Christ, the second Adam the matter was solved.

2. Abram was not yet Abraham when his wife, inspite of the fact that the promise of God was given to them both, a promise God would fulfill in His time, Sarah thought the better of it and suggested the alternative way to solve the issue of barrenness: Take my servant Hagar. Abraham did. The rest is the history of Ishmael and Israel played out on the streets of Jerusalem today. Why Abram did you listen to her? Oh but we have been married so long...


3. King Solomon acquired  thousands of wives into his harem. They came from all over the place and many came from heathen and godless nations, and Solomon loved them all in his way. But some of them led his heart astray from following the Lord, contrary to what his father David had done. Why did  they succeed? Because he listened to them, possibly bedtalk after the act; misguided by his human affections to override the Word of God.

4. Ahab married the daughter of Eth Baal, a zidonian king. Jezebel ate her way into the very heart of the kingdom and was the cause behind Ahab's disasterous reign. She ruled him with an iron rod of deception and ruses and all Israel suffered from it.  "Ahab reared up and altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab erected a phallos statue and did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him." (I Kings 16:33)

Ever heard of "femme fatale"?


The very spirit of Jezebel is today harrowing the christian church into unprecedented calamity. The very phallos symbols Ahab built are now elevated to worship-objects, that is possible because of the post biblical defection from the Word of the Lord. The sexualisation of Love is the opposite of what God decrees. Anything goes once you separate the Love of God from righteousness. "But nontheless I have something against you, you tolerate that woman Jezebel who claims to be a prophetess and who teaches and seduces the church to practice sexual immorality and to eat things dedicated to the idolatry of consumerism. I gave her space and time to repent.. she will not." (Rev 2:20-24)

Adam should never listen to his wife when she does not listen to the word of the Lord. Are the women who are in charge of the churches today speaking the word of God? Honouring God, saying what God has always said? If not, then they should be taught and admonished with severity and love. But where is Adam who heard the Lord speak first hand?

Adam is still in hiding, afraid of God because of his own nakedness. And naked  he is. (The hebrew word for 'nakedness' i e "the male genitals" is a feminine noun.) But who told him that he was naked? His own self consciousness of having forsaken the living God did the task.



Four relationships were lost:
1 - To his Creator and life giver
2 - To his life partner, his own flesh and bone
3 - To his very life environment, the ground on which he was set to till and feed.
4 - To himself, from trusting obedience to the greater One, to a fearful and cowardly hiding from himself and his actions and a shrinking from his responsibility. "The woman of whom I recently and proudly said that she was bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, I now consider to be my enemy and the real culprit! And, come to think of it: it was You who gave her to me, so it's all your fault anyway."
Do the people hear this? Do men understand how far they have fallen away? Do women see how disasterous it is that their ill advised newfangled yet age old Baal worship is sneaked in sideways into church after church?

Nope, neither one nor the other listens any longer to what God has said. They all talk into each other's mouths and have stopped their ears with the wax of that which pleases fallen mankind.


Adam's deficiency and quandary remains to be solved. Or wait a moment? Has not the second Adam already come? "Maranatha, Lord Jesus come!"


He will come again and repay us for our deeds. "Kiss the Son lest he be angry and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all who trust in him!"  Psa 2:12


Teddy Donobauer, Doncaster 1 st day of 2018
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