Loneliness

“At last this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of man.”  Genesis 2:23 NASB

At last this – Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote, “To understand himself, man must confide in another.  Only woman, who is an independent person with her own I-awareness, can liberate the man from loneliness.”[1]  Adam expressed this ontological truth when he said, “zo’t happa’am” “This now.”  Most men wait all their lives to say these words.

There are some implications here that should not be overlooked.  First, “Hebrew paʿam is a blend of Ugaritic pʾm ‘time’ and pʿn (Phoenician pʿm) ‘foot’”^[2]  Doesn’t that strike you as strange?  What does “foot” have to do with an expression of time?  We know that Hebrew has no abstract term for time.  Everything about the Hebrew conception of time is linked to temporal experience.  And what could be more experiential than walking?  Each step moves you toward something a “foot” at a time.  “Now” is just where you happened to step at this moment.  “Then” is where you stepped before this moment.  When Adam exclaims, “zo’t happa’am,” he acknowledges that before this moment life wasn’t complete, but now it is.

Secondly, Soloveitchik reminds us that:

“Loneliness is . . . an ontological experience, that is, one that relates to the essence of one’s being.  Loneliness is a ‘spiritual human situation’ of ‘ontological insecurity,’ that is, a sense of the incompleteness of one’s being.  Only a being who meditates and experiences estrangement from nature can be lonely.”[3]

We might think that Adam’s experience in the Garden before the creation of the woman was idyllic.  He had a perfect relationship with the Creator, seeing Him face to face.  He had a perfect relationship with other sentient beings and with nature itself.  But when God assessed this “perfect” environment, He concluded that it was not good.  Man faced the creation alone.  I don’t mean that he was by himself.  I mean that he was cut off from his own critical awareness; an awareness that can only be found in relation to other people.  He was, as Jacob would learn at the brook, lĕbado, abandoned.  When the woman was presented to Adam, he immediately realized that his intuitive sense of abandonment was removed.  zo’t happa’am is the expression of a man who discovers not only another who is a companion but, at the same time, the solution to that sense of uncomfortableness in the world.  The ‘ezer kenegdo is a savior in the deepest psychological sense a man can know for she redeems him from his own emptiness.  Thank God for her.

Topical Index: zo’t happa’am, this now, lĕbado, ‘ezer kenegdo, Soloveitchik, Genesis 2:23

[1] David Shatz and Joel B. Wolowelsky in Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed: Essays on Family Relationships (KTAV Publishing House, 2000), p. xx.

^[2] Hamilton, V. P. (1999). 1793 פָּעַם. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 730). Chicago: Moody Press.

[3] David Shatz and Joel B. Wolowelsky in Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed: Essays on Family Relationships (KTAV Publishing House, 2000), p. xx.