000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

Proper 22 [27]/Year B 191
compare, contrast, and enter into critical conversation with the different
perspectives.
The biblical redactors used Genesis 2:4b–24 to supplement the majestic
theology of creation in Genesis 1:1–2:4a and (as part of the literary unit
Genesis 2:4b–3:24) to explain how the universe changed from covenantal
community in Genesis 1:1–2:4a to the more unjust and even violent life
of Genesis 4:1ff. (see Trinity Sunday/Year A and Lent 1/Year A).
As Genesis 2:4b–14 begins, the earth is bare, but as the text unfolds,
God causes water to flow so that it becomes fertile. Working like a potter,
God forms the first human being (adam) out of the dust of the ground
(adamah). The human being and the ground are thus intimately interconnected.
Verse 7 gives no explicit indication that the first human being
was a male; sexual differentiation becomes explicit only in verse 23. The
four rivers that flowed from Eden watered the whole earth, thus revealing
that God intended for the entire creation to manifest the fecundity of
Eden. God placed one limitation on the human being: not to eat of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil (see Lent 1/Year A).
In 2:18–20, God forms the nonhuman creatures. In antiquity, to know
the name of another was to have a certain power over the other; the fact
that the human being names the nonhuman creatures demonstrates this
fact. However, with Genesis 1:26–28 in the background, the reader realizes
that this power is for the purpose of helping all creatures live in
covenant (see Trinity Sunday/Year A).
Genesis 2:18 gives the reason for the creation of woman: “It is not good
that the human being should be alone.” Human beings most fully manifest
the purposes of God when living together in covenant with one
another and nature as in Genesis 1:1–2:24.
The New Revised Standard Version moves toward the character of the
relationship between the two human beings in the phrase “a helper as [the
human being’s] partner” (2:18). The term “helper” does not imply secondary
status, for elsewhere it refers to the help that God gives Israel (e.g.,
Exod. 18:4; Deut. 33:7, 29) and to forms of assistance in which the helper
has the superior resources of the two (e.g., Ezek. 12:14; Dan. 11:34).
None of the animals are “a helper as [the human being’s] partner.” To
make such a helper, God puts the human being to sleep. The human being
has no say in the creation of this partner. There is nothing in symbolism
of the rib in antiquity or in the narrative itself to suggest that the second
human being is subordinate to the first.
In verse 23a, the first human being explains the relationship between
the two human beings. God made the second human being not from the