“For this shall be called woman because this has been taken out of man.” Genesis 2:23

Woman – Word play is an essential part of the structure of Hebrew. We have commented time and again about the ways that Hebrew communicates without punctuation. Using the same or similar consonant structures is just one way that Hebrew draws attention to certain words and ideas. You will remember the word play between “naked” and “crafty” in the story of the Fall. You can probably guess that “man” and “woman” are also related words (ish and ishshah) although you might be surprised to know that they are only related phonetically and structurally. They do not come from the same Hebrew root. Nevertheless, there is certainly a deliberate word play here. What does this tell us?

Phyllis Trible examines these word plays. She makes a powerful observation. “Sexuality originates in play.” The author of this Genesis text actually goes out of the way to pun the words ish and ishshah. Remember that they do not come from the same root. Furthermore, there are other words for “female” that could have been used here. But the author chooses a word play to describe the first occasion of sexual difference. God puts the man in His garden of pleasure and then builds for the man a deliberate designed companion in order that delight may be fulfilled. Before this engineering marvel, Man is the ‘adam from the earth, ‘adamah. Man is not ish, male. The pronoun “he” doesn’t exactly apply because “he” is not male as opposed to female. ‘Adam is sexless. Undifferentiated. But when God produces the ishshah from the ish (significantly, not from the earth), then there is both male and female and play begins.

Not surprisingly, the Church has ignored these implications. It has treated this Hebrew word play in the same way that it converted Song of Songs from a Hebrew erotic love poem into an allegory about the Bride of Christ. We must remember that Hebrew is a language of life – of real people, real problems and real pleasures. Too much cognitive reflection takes a lot of the fun out of living (I am sure you are nodding agreement, especially over all this cognitive discussion). Hebrew is first and foremost about living. Then it is about thinking. Sexuality is at the heart of life and living. We would expect it to take a place on center stage in God’s ordered world. When a culture pushes sexuality into the background or treats it as the equivalent of mortal sin, something is wrong. That is not the biblical view. If sexuality were not so important, it would not show up in a constant stream of metaphors about our relationships to God Himself.

Trible does us a favor by noticing that God puts sexuality in the midst of play at the beginning of our collective story. Sexuality is essential to identity. God made it good. Of course, it is good under His authority, domesticated to His purposes. But it is the first playful element of creation.

Topical Index: ish, ishshah, sexuality, Genesis 3:23, word play