Genesis 2 and Paul: Women’s Equality Unveiled

The Undifferentiated Adam

No other literature has shaped our world quite like Genesis 2 and 3. These two chapters have generated extensive analysis, and people approach them from diverse perspectives. Some assert that the story underpins the idea of women’s ontological inferiority, arguing that “God made the woman for the man.” In contrast, many readers draw entirely different conclusions from the same text. In this piece, I will demonstrate why I believe Genesis 2 does not teach the inferiority or subordination of women.

These chapters tell the famous story of the creation of Adam and Eve, the first human parents in the narrative world of Genesis. It will benefit readers to keep a few things in mind as we proceed. The word adam is borrowed from the Hebrew language. In the passages we will explore, adam has multiple roles. Sometimes, it refers to the male human in the passage. Other times, it refers to the couple, the man and the woman. It also can refer to the undifferentiated, genderless human – the being from whom Eve was formed. In this entry, I shall use the pronoun “it” to describe the adam, except where gender is implied. The other thing to watch out for is this passage’s narrator’s use of wordplay, significantly contributing to the message. Two instances of paronomasia would prove critical to understanding the narrative. Let’s begin where the actions start in Genesis 2:

Genesis 2:5-6 ESV
[5] When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, [6] and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—

The description here is reminiscent of Genesis 1:9-10 when the dry land separates from the primal body of water. However, more is going on here. These verses introduce the first narrative tension in the passage, requiring satisfactory resolution. The narrator, with the benefit of hindsight, provides the reasons for the barrenness of the land: no rain and no human, adam, to work the land. The necessity of rain for vegetation is easily understandable but not a human requirement. Vegetations grow in the wild all the time without needing human input. The human requirement makes sense only if the land and vegetation in question are not referring to the wild but a cultivated garden (Middleton, 147). Indeed, that is what the narrative goes on to state explicitly:

Genesis 2:7-9 ESV
[7] then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. [8] And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. [9] And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Here is our first wordplay. The man (Hebrew, adam) was formed from the ground (Hebrew adamah). To use an Aristotelian description, the material cause of the human is the ground. This communicates the human’s dependence on dirt and suggests a reason for the adam to take care of the ground: its sustenance depends on it. A real adamah-adam relationship must be attended to for continued flourishing.

In verse 8, we see that what was previously only hinted is made explicit. The human’s task is to tend the garden of God. We also get a resolution to the first narrative tension. Whereas the narrator earlier says the absence of rain and a human were the explanations for the barrenness of the land, God resolves both – but not the way the narrator leads us to anticipate. First, instead of rain, a mist from the ground provides the needed water. Second, though God has created the human, God himself, not the adam, caused every pleasant tree to grow from the adamah. So, God kickstarted the project for the man. Two reasons seem apparent. First, God wants the human immediately provided for. Besides, God seems particularly interested in two of the trees, among many others, as the narrative will soon make clear. These are trees the human cannot possibly plant, even if he wanted to.

Genesis 2:16-17 ESV
[16] And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, [17] but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

So, the human is forbidden from eating from only one tree among many others. This implies that the human can eat from the other named tree in the garden, the tree of life. These trees appear to serve opposite roles in the narrative. Whereas the tree of life imparts life to the eater, the tree of knowledge of good and evil imparts death. Hence, the narrative would seem to imply that the human was not created immortal. The adam needs the tree of life for continuing sustenance. (If the human were immortal, the tree would serve no apparent purpose.) So, the human would later die, not because it sinned, per se, but because it was prevented from continuing access to the tree of life, guarded by cherubim with a flashing sword (Genesis 3:22-24).

Considering what the rest of the Bible has to say, some readers, Jewish and Christians alike, have maintained that the prohibition of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is temporary. Indeed, as Middleton notes, this is the position of the Eastern Orthodox church (160). “Knowing good and evil” concerns the human’s ability to make ethical judgments, which is a good human attribute. Consider the following verses from the Hebrew Bible:

1 Kings 3:9 ESV
Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?”

That is the famous prayer Solomon said to God, something God deemed so appropriate that he not only granted Solomon an answer to that prayer but also included a bonus of material wealth. To “discern between good and evil” here is the same as knowing/knowledge of good and evil.

Deuteronomy 1:39 ESV
[39] And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there. And to them I will give it, and they shall possess it.

This passage suggests that “knowledge of good or evil” is not an inherent human trait – at least, not after the Fall – but something humans steadily grow in. Sound ethical judgments require experience. So, the idea of the Genesis 2 passage seems to be that the human was to learn and grow by instructions and walking with God to exercise its muscles of ethical decision-making first. If the humans were morally mature at creation, they would not make the flourishing-aborting choice they made. Nevertheless, we should say that the text does not clearly say that the prohibition was temporary, a fact that the crafty snake might have exploited in Genesis 3.

The narrative continues:

Genesis 2:18-20 ESV
[18] Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” [19] Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. [20] The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

Following the flow of the narrative, verse 18 would seem to come after verse 20. Though God had created other creatures from a similar source, the adamah, as the human, none of them was found suitable for the adam. There is something about its makeup that distinguishes it from other creatures. In fact, the human names the other creatures, a detail that suggests that it is superior to the other animals. So, God says he will make a suitable helper for the adam.

One of the unfortunate developments surrounding the word “helper” is that, in the English-speaking world, people tend to imagine housemaids or professional cleaners and the help they offer through their services. But this is a rather deficient image. A helper could also be a superior entity, as in how the United States helps Israel and Ukraine in military matters. Indeed, below is an instructive occurrence of the Hebrew word:

1 Chronicles 12:18 ESV
Then the Spirit clothed Amasai, chief of the thirty, and he said, “We are yours, O David, and with you, O son of Jesse! Peace, peace to you, and peace to your helpers! For your God helps you.” Then David received them and made them officers of his troops.

Both the human “helpers” and the “help” of God here have the same root word: ezer. So, “helper” does not say much about the ontological status of the individual. It is a term that focuses on the task being done. There are other instances, such as Psalms 30:10 and 54:5.

The Lexham English Bible notes that the Hebrew term, kenegdo, variously translated as “suitable for him” or “fit for him,” literally means “as his opposite.” Middleton adds in a footnote that the term “conveys the sense of being face-to-face with an equal” (153). So, just as Yahweh took it upon himself to resolve the first narrative tension we encountered earlier, he also resolves the tension of providing a helper for the adam he had created:

Genesis 2:21-23 ESV
[21] So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. [22] And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

There is no reason to read this literally. It is not a passage on human anatomy. Indeed, the passage uses architectural imagery. The Hebrew word translated as “rib” can refer to a side of a building such as a temple. Furthermore, the verb rendered as “made into” literally means “build” or “construct.” So, this passage may be read as saying God constructed the woman from one side of the human. Since everything told in Genesis 2 until now applies to both male and female humans, verses 21 and 22 may be saying that the human was genderless until now. The human could have been “pre-gendered or androgynous” (Middleton, 155).

But following the architectural surgery, the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.” Here is the first time the Hebrew terms for male, ish, and female, ishsha, humans are used in Genesis 2 and, with it, we get our second wordplay. Just as we have the adamah-adam relationship, we now also see an ishsha-ish relationship. Because the narrator has the human saying that the woman was taken from the man – ish, not adam – one could take ish as a synonym for adam. If we do, then it might mean that the human of the story was male all along. However, we should also note that ish can mean “human being.”

We should briefly revisit verse 18. It is the first time in the creation narrative that something was said to be not good. It was not good that the human was alone. Because the text says God is making a helper for the human so that it will not be lonely, and God proceeds to make a woman from the human, someone might read this to imply that the woman was created to solve the man’s problem of loneliness. That is, the woman was created for the man. She was fashioned to keep the man’s company. But note that this reading equates the human before Eve was fashioned with the residual being after Eve was made. In other words, this reading presupposes that the human was male all along. We need not read the passage that way.

Besides, notice the difference between the presentation of the woman to the man and that of the animals to the human earlier in the chapter. Whereas God brought the animals to the adam to see what it might call them, the purpose of bringing the woman to the man is not stated. The narrator simply says God brought the woman to the man. Rather than naming her here in the story, the man merely recognizes the woman as being suitable for him. However, it is true that after the Fall, the man would name the woman Eve, and this implies power asymmetry in the man-woman relationship. (In typical human experiences, the superior names the inferior.) Prior to the Fall, however, there was no power asymmetry. The man and the woman were equals. Middleton is worth quoting at length here (157):

The very pattern of the text works against the notion of the superiority of the men or the subordination of women. Here we simply need to look at the formal parallel between the human taken from the ground and the woman taken from the man. Given the pattern of derivation and purpose in both cases, we have three choices. If we claim that the woman is subordinate to the man, then humans must be subordinate to the ground. If, on the other hand, we start with the western bias of thinking that humans are superior to the earth, this would imply that women are superior to men. However, perhaps Genesis 2-3 is not advocating superiority at all – in any direction. Rather, the text affirms nothing less than mutuality; just as humanity and the earth are made for each other and need each other, so it is with women and men. That is how creation was meant to function – in mutual harmony and shalom.

So, before the fall, creation functioned in harmony – although this shalom did not last very long.

What about Paul?

It is often said that Paul teaches the superiority of men in some of his letters. But if the argument presented above that creation functioned in harmony before the Fall is correct, it would be strange for the foremost Apostle who turned the ancient world upside down by preaching that the Jesus event has inaugurated the kingdom of God to have taught a doctrine resulting from the Fall. Now is not the time to delve into Paul’s writings in detail. Indeed, we have done just that elsewhere on this blog. But let me briefly comment on a few examples.

Perhaps many readers might recall the Household Codes passages in Ephesians 5:22-33 and Colossians 3:18 – 25, which encourage wives to submit to their husbands, children to their parents, and slaves to their masters. We may quote from the Ephesians passage:

Ephesians 5:22-24 ESV
[22] Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. [23] For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. [24] Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Paul employs strong language, encouraging wives to submit to their husbands as the church submits to Jesus. Are husbands their wives’ saviors, or what’s going on here?

Long before Jesus put on a body, the Greeks established a household code that they considered naturally binding. Aristotle even provided a series of arguments in his Politics in defense of this code that placed the man as the head of the family, followed by a wife, children, and slaves. The Romans adopted this code. Paul is not prescribing how every Christian home should be ordered unless we want to argue that it is binding on each Christian household to have enslaved persons. On the contrary, Paul takes a normative cultural practice and attempts to baptize it into Jesus. Whereas the Greco-Roman man wielded enormous power over his household, Paul here restricts the influence of Christian Roman men. Just as he finds a church analogy for the wife, he does a more extended version for the men:

Ephesians 5:25-30 ESV
[25] Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, [26] that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, [27] so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. [28] In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. [29] For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, [30] because we are members of his body.

In Paul’s Christologically reinterpreted household rule, we see a transformative shift that gives a voice and dignity to those traditionally seen as inferior. While Paul asks wives to submit to their husbands, he asks husbands to be willing to lay down their lives for their wives—a radical and profound expectation for a first-century Greco-Roman man. This call to sacrifice, which contrasts sharply with the prevailing norms of absolute authority over family members, invites a radical, more profound love and commitment. The traditional Greco-Roman man was not required to love his wife.

Moreover, Paul subtly challenges the existing power dynamics further by addressing his letters to entire congregations, recognizing that they would be read out loud in communal settings. Indeed, Paul explicitly took it for granted that the letter to the Colossians would be so read (4:16). This means that wives, children, and slaves would hear the behavioral expectations placed upon the husband, who had the patria potestas, the father’s power, which inherently diminishes the traditionally held power of the father and husband. It is a remarkable move that encourages a more equitable family dynamic.

Paul’s approach suggests that introducing Jesus into this cultural context with sensitivity and understanding is a more effective way to inspire change than outright condemnation. This reflection is particularly relevant to how we might think about the European missionaries in sub-Saharan Africa and the familial customs they encountered. It highlights the importance of engaging with cultures respectfully and compassionately to foster genuine transformation and connection.

There yet is a nagging question that we must address. Paul explicitly says, “The husband is the head of the wife.” What did he mean? This is very likely a culturally accepted mantra in the Greco-Roman world, which Paul chose not to challenge directly but sought to take captive for Christ subtly. He says something similar to the Corinthian church, but as we argued at length here, it is unclear what it might mean to say the man is the head of the woman – it certainly does not derive from the Genesis narrative. Readers interested in this question should read the entries on the Corinthian correspondence here.

Works Cited

Middleton, J. R. “From Primal Harmony to a Broken World: Distinguishing God’s Intent for Life from the Encroachment of Death in Genesis 2–3.” *Earnest: Interdisciplinary Work Inspired by the Life and Teachings of Benjamin Titus Roberts*, edited by Andrew C. Koehl and David Basinger, chap. 7, Pickwick, 2017, pp. 145–73.

Harris, W. Hall, III, Elliot Ritzema, Rick Brannan, Douglas Mangum, John Dunham, Jeffrey A. Reimer, and Micah Wierenga, eds. 2012. The Lexham English Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.