The LORD creates Eve.

Genesis 2.18-24.

Continuing the second creation story. In the first story, God created the birds on day five and the land animals on day six, and humans right after the animals. In the second, God creates the male human, “Adam,” first. Then makes him a garden to tend, puts him in it, and tells him all the trees are his to eat from—except the one, which’ll kill him.

And then—part of the same Hebrew paragraph—God decides Adam needs a partner, because when humans are alone, we get weird. It’s not just when Christians skip church. Everything God created is good, Ge 1.31 but this particular situation is not good.

Genesis 2.18-24 KWL

18The god YHWH said, “It’s not good

that the human is all by himself.

I will make for him a helper,

like his counterpart.”

19The god YHWH shaped from the soil

every wild living creature

and every bird of the skies.

He brought them to the human

to see what the human called them.

Whatever the human called each living soul,

that was its name.

20The human called the names

of every beast, bird of the sky,

and every wild living creature.

As for the human, he didn’t find a helper,

like his counterpart.

21The god YHWH made

a deep sleep fall upon the human,

and he slept.

God took one of his ribs

and filled in the flesh under it.

22The god YHWH built the rib,

which he took from the human,

into a woman,

and brought her to the human.

23The human said,

“Now this is a bone from my bones,

flesh from my flesh.

For this person will be called woman,

for this person was taken out of man.”

24This is why a man will leave his father and his mother

and cling to his woman.

They become one flesh.

The author of Genesis (who isn’t Moses, but for convenience, I call him “Moe”) tells us right away in verse 24 the reason for this story: It’s why women and men pair up. It’s why women and men have a closer relationship with one another than between parents and children. We’re fully compatible. We’re partners. The woman was created as “a helper, like his counterpart.” She was meant to be Adam’s equal.

No, not a subordinate. Sexists will insist women are created to serve men. It is true we humans are created to serve one another, but that’s regardless of race or gender: White men like me are created to also serve women and nonwhites. (And not by bossing them around; that’s just a devilish redefinition of service.) Men serve women; women serve men. But sexists wanna find biblical reasons for their godless attitudes, and they’ll distort Genesis to justify it.

The bonkers thing is, Genesis was written in a sexist, patriarchal culture, where women were likewise considered subordinate to men. And even then, the writer of Genesis doesn’t describe God creating women to serve men. She’s an עֵ֖זֶר/etsér, “help, aid, rescue.” When the man can’t do it alone, the woman helps. Same as the man—when the woman can’t do it alone, the man helps. Same as God—when we can’t do it alone, the Holy Spirit helps. She’s his counterpart, his partner, his advocate, his friend, his love. They complete one another.

Any interpretation which doesn’t affirm their equal status and mutual service, is exploitative. And is wholly inappropriate for Christians.

Incompatibility with the first creation story.

Yeah, there are gonna be biblical literalists who think we’re meant to interpret these creation stories literally. So they’re gonna be weirded out by how their order of events don’t sync up at all. Or try to argue no, really, they do sync up—even though we can easily see they don’t.

Gleason Archer Jr.’s Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties is an aggravating read sometimes. Dude was so determined to defend traditional views—and claim they’re part of “biblical inerrancy,” even though the belief Moses wrote Genesis has nothing whatsoever to do with inerrancy—that he rejected what everyone can clearly see in the bible right in front of them, and tried to gaslight his readers into thinking no, it’s really not.

Doesn’t Genesis 2 present a different creation order than Genesis 1?

Genesis 2 does not present a creation account at all but presupposes the completion of God’s work of creation as set forth in chapter 1. The first three verses of Genesis 2 simply carry the narrative of chapter 1 to its final and logical conclusion, using the same vocabulary and style as employed in the previous chapter. It sets forth the completion of the whole primal work of creation and the special sanctity conferred on the seventh day as a symbol and memorial of God’s creative work. Verse 4 then sums up the whole sequence that has just been surveyed by saying, “These are the generations of heaven and earth when they were created, in the day that Yahweh God made heaven and earth.”

Having finished the overall survey of the subject, the author then develops in detail one important feature that has already been mentioned: the creation of man. Archer, “Genesis”

Okay. Archer deliberately misinterpreted the meaning of this question. When we say “Genesis 2,” we usually mean the second creation story, which starts in chapter 2, at verse 4. We know the first creation story concludes in verses 1-3, in which God takes a sabbath. But Archer pretended “Genesis 2” literally means the second chapter of Genesis. Well he was a literalist after all.

Archer pretended the whole chapter is a whole story, a whole unit, in the same style as chapter 1. Which is of course true of the first three verses, but not the rest. He then claimed verse 4 is a summary of the preceding verses. It’s not. “These are the generations…” אֵ֣לֶּה תוֹלְד֧וֹת/elléh tholdót, which I translate “this is the story,” or “this is the history,” is how the author, “Moe,” started his stories. Multiple times! Not just the story of the garden of Eden, Ge 2.4 but of Noah and the flood, Ge 6.9 of Shem’s Ge 10.1 and Terah’s Ge 11.27 and Ishmael’s Ge 25.12 and Esau’s Ge 26.1, 9 descendants, and of Isaac’s Ge 25.19 and Jacob’s Ge 37.2 sons’ sibling rivalries. Nowhere are these summaries of what came before. Archer should have known this, but maybe he skipped that class that day in seminary, or just refused to believe it because it interfered with his beliefs. Verse 4 is a plain-as-day beginning of a whole new story.

And of course it’s a creation account; God explicitly created Adam from dust in verse 7! God planted a garden in verse 8. God created trees for it in verse 9. God created animals in verse 19. God created Eve in verse 22. Archer might argue Moe’s simply giving details about the previous six days of creation, but you do realize this sequence of events is not given in the same order as the six days.

Still, Archer claimed the second story isn’t a creation story, because it doesn’t include all the other stuff God created—the skies and land and seas, the stars and worlds. And of course none of the creation stories talk about when God created the angels and other spirits, because their creation is not relevant to Moe. Might be to us, who wanna know how the devil came to be, and wanna know so bad we’ve made up the craziest myths. Similarly, Archer wants so bad for this to be one single consistent literal young-earth creation story, he’ll grasp at any argument for why it can’t be two. Even stupid ones.

I don’t believe the first story was trying to give a literal order of when God created what. Nor do I believe this second story is doing that either. Moe’s intent was not to say first God made Adam, then plants, then animals and birds, and who cares when he made fish; then Eve. His intent is to say God created Adam, put him in Eden, didn’t want him to be alone in Eden, brought him the animals to show him they couldn’t be adequate counterparts, then made him Eve who absolutely was his counterpart. Whether God made each of these creatures at this time was never the point.

The other points of the story.

There’s a Jewish myth that before God made Eve, he made another woman, either made from dust same as Adam, or made from fire like a djinn, named לִילִית/Lilíth which is actually the Hebrew word the KJV translates “screech owl.” Is 34.14 In the myth, God made her to serve Adam, but she didn’t wanna, so God kicked her out of Eden and made Eve instead. Sexist interpretations of the Eden story have always been around, y’notice—and not for nothing have certain feminists really appreciated the Lilith myth and adopted it. But they don’t need this myth; they just need to understand the actual bible story is not a sexist one. Eve always was Adam’s equal.

Yes, she wasn’t made in the same way Adam was; she was made from his צֵלָע/chelá, “rib” or “side.” There’s another myth that because of this, men have one less rib than women, which not only isn’t true, but is ridiculous: You don’t genetically pass down your surgeries. Abraham’s descendants are still born with foreskins. But the point of this is to show Eve is the very same species as Adam. If she’d been created separately—even if she was created from dust like Adam, and had the breath of life blown into her like Adam, Ge 2.7 —people might insist she was somehow less than human, and insist women today are also less than human. (And not simply treat women as less than human, as sexists do.) Adam, knowing God had extracted a rib from him to make her, immediately recognized her as human like him, “a bone from my bones, flesh from my flesh.” Ge 2.23 And since he’s an אִישׁ/iš, “man,” and she’s obviously not, she should be called an אִשָּׁה/iššá, “woman”—just add an extra -šá sound to the end of the word. (Although we’ve no idea what language the Adamites spoke. Jewish myths insist it was Hebrew; that the Hebrews were the only people to leave Babel Ge 11.1-9 speaking what Adam did. But that’s in no way realistic.)

Some Christians like to jokingly say the creation stories are about God creating progressively greater things: First plants, then birds and sea life, then animals, then men… and then woman. And yeah, plenty of women are greater people than plenty of men. But this idea falls apart when we remember the first creation story has God create male and female simultaneously, Ge 1.27 and the second creation story has God create man, then trees, then animals, then woman… okay maybe it doesn’t fall apart.

Kidding. But in the second story, God does make a point of first showing Adam the animals are inadequate companionship, but the woman is fully adequate. Much as some men insist their dog or horse treats ’em better, so they like them more: This simply goes to show these men are the problem. They can’t find a good woman—likely because they’re looking for the wrong qualities. They can’t accommodate a good woman; they’re too selfish. So they’re happy with animals, who won’t rebuke them. (They just attack instead.)

Oh, and Adam named the animals. This is part of the idea that humans rule the world, and that includes ruling the animals. Ge 1.26 God didn’t name ’em; he lets us do that. And the trees, and the plants, and craters on the moon, and anything else we wanna give a name to. The Creator doesn’t reserve that right for himself; he made that stuff for us, so why not let his kids our new stuff. Let’s just be sure we don’t abuse it, and discourage others from likewise abusing it.