The Producing of a Couple

Merely to have a tree with a river flowing issuing in three kinds of materials to illustrate God’s purpose in creating man is not adequate. Following this, the divine record speaks of God’s producing a couple (Gen. 2:18-24). For the reproduction and continuation of man, there is the need of the female. God produced the female in a different way. He did not form a female person from the dust of the ground as He did with Adam. God put Adam to sleep, opened up his side, took a rib, and built a woman with that rib (vv. 21-22). When Adam awoke and saw the woman, he said, “This time this is bone of my bones, / And flesh of my flesh” (v. 23). She was one with Adam as his counterpart, his match, his mate. Jehovah God built a woman with the rib of Adam as his wife to match him as his counterpart, signifying that the church was constituted with the resurrection life of Christ to be His counterpart (Eph. 5:23-32). This is the completion of God’s creation of man.

Is this the story of man or of God? We may have the concept that this is the story of man. But actually, this is not merely man’s story of how he was created but God’s story of how He created man. This is God’s history in creating man.

This short part of the history of God in Genesis 1 and 2 is a miniature of the entire Bible. In Genesis 2 there are three materials to be built up into something. Then there is a couple, a husband and a wife. At the end of the Bible there is a built-up city with three precious materials—gold, pearls, and precious stones. This building is the wife (Rev. 21:2), and the Builder is the Husband (Heb. 11:10). This built-up city at the conclusion of the divine revelation is not a material, lifeless city but a corporate living person as the wife, having Christ, such a wonderful person, as her Husband.