A Covenant of Purpose

The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.  Genesis 2:22  NASB

Fashioned – If you read the Genesis account of creation within the framework of  covenant commitments, you might notice the following pattern.  God makes a covenant of power with male and female (Genesis 1) and the covenant of promise with the disobedient couple (Genesis 3), but here in this verse we can think of God making a covenant of purpose with the ‘ezer kenegdo.  What is the covenant of purpose?  It is the specific design (“God fashioned”) of the woman to act as the relationship manager of the couple in order to provide the needed help to fulfill the single commandment of obedience.  I have argued this point thoroughly in my book Guardian Angel.

But with a bit of imagination (something always necessary when reading the creation text), we can find another element of this covenant of purpose, an element that helps us understand just how the ‘ezer kenegdo fulfills her role.  God’s covenant of purpose with the woman is also a covenant of prayer.  Let me explain.

The ‘ezer kenegdo is specifically designed to provide the boundary conditions for the fulfillment of the prime commandment.  She must do this by becoming an open channel of God’s will for her man.  In other words, she is required to set aside her personal agenda and communicate to her husband only those things that God intends for her husband.  She cannot do this without constant conversation with the Lord and without continuous submission to the directions of the Lord.  Abraham Heschel’s description of the two poles of Jewish prayer can be equally applied to the role of the ‘ezer kenegdo.

“There is a specific difficulty of Jewish prayer.  There are laws: how to pray, when to pray, what to pray. . . . On the other hand, prayer is worship of the heart, the outpouring of the soul, a matter of kavvanah (inner devotion).  Thus, Jewish prayer is guided by two opposite principles:  order and outburst, regularity and spontaneity, uniformity and individuality, law and freedom, a duty and a prerogative, empathy and self-expression, insight and sensitivity, creed and faith, the word and that which is beyond words.  These principles are the two poles about which Jewish prayer revolves.  Since each of the two moves in the opposite direction, equilibrium can only be maintained if both are of equal force. . . . Polarity is an essential trait of all things in reality, and in Jewish faith the relationship between halacha (law) and agada (inwardness) is one of polarity.  Taken abstractly they seem to be mutually exclusive, yet in actual living they involve each other.”[1]

It seems to me that this is precisely the situation of the ‘ezer kenegdo.  She is both for and against at the same time.  She is intimately locked in covenant responsibility with her man and perfectly attuned toward covenant submission toward her Lord.  She stands in the middle on all issues related to the direction and intention of the couple.  She must set the boundaries with halacha and yet, at the same time, respond to the interactions of the couple with the world, the others and with the Creator with agada, an inwardness sensitivity that approaches spiritual intuition and reaches beyond words.  She is the flow of the Spirit in the fulfillment of the covenant of power.  She is the vehicle of the Spirit in the fulfillment of the covenant of promise.  She is the purpose of God expressed in physical reality.  It is no wonder that the Hebrew account of Creation is the only ancient Near-Eastern account that even includes the fashioning of woman.

Perhaps you have been struggling with how you as a woman take on the responsibility of the ‘ezer kenegdo.  Perhaps, as a man, you have been confused about the role your wife was designed to play in your life.  These issues are not surprising because we are now mixtures of God’s design and personal agenda.  But if we are going to reclaim what God intended for marriage, we can begin by recognizing and honoring the mystery of this polarity – and determine to choose His ways rather than ours.

Topical Index:  ‘ezer kenegdo, woman, prayer, Abraham Heschel, Genesis 2:22