Redeeming Adam (1)

Now the man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.  And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.  Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out with his hand, and take fruit also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—  Genesis 3:20-22  NASB

Named – It’s difficult for me to critique authors that I greatly respect.  I wonder to myself, “How is it possible that I see something they’ve missed?”  Or worse, that they’ve misunderstood.  Unfortunately, this seems to be the case with Rabbi Jonathan Sack’s comments on these verses in his work Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: Genesis: The Book of Beginnings.  Perhaps he is so interested in the Jewish idea that immortality is achieved through children (and how important children are in Judaism) that he overlooks that darker side of these verses and instead attempts to redeem Adam from a flawed and unforgiving character.  Because the verses in this story are so important for understanding the relationship between men and women, I’ve decided to examine his argument in detail.

Here’s Sack’s summary of these verses:

Now we understand that extraordinary sequence of three verses.  Discovering his mortality, Adam knew that he could only live on through his children, born through an act of love.  That was when he realised that immortality cannot be achieved by one alone, but only by the union of two.  For the first time he looked on his wife as a person in her own right, and expressed this by giving her a proper name.  Having done this, he was able to experience God through His proper name, Hashem.[1]

You will notice that the key to his exegesis is the idea of mortality.  He suggests that once Adam realized he was mortal, his wife took on a much more elevated role, providing him a sense of continuance through children.  In fact, he writes that until he realized this, Adam saw his wife as “a mere ezer kenegdo,” an “assistant, not an equal.”  “She was, in his eyes, an extension of himself.”[2]

At first I thought that perhaps he ignored the deeper implications of ezer kenegdo, settling for the mistaken, but typical, “assistant, suitable helper.”  But important rabbinic commentators don’t miss how crucial these words are, so I suspect Sacks didn’t miss them either.  I think his desire to explain the story in terms of the importance of progeny clouded these implications.  Nevertheless, ezer kenegdo already contains the implication that the woman is not an extension of the man but is called to a special role that the man cannot fulfill (and that role is not having children).  When Sacks ignores this, his thinking about Adam is distorted.

The other key mistake is the belief that Adam needed to become aware of his mortality before he could acknowledge the importance of the woman.  He writes: “The words, ‘dust you are and to dust you will return,’ woke Adam, for the first time, to the consciousness of his mortality.” “Suddenly Adam knew that though we die, if we are privileged to have children, something of us will live on: our genes, our influence, our example, our ideals.  That is our immortality.”[3]

But is this true?  Consider the statement God makes after the Fall: “ . . . he might reach out with his hand, and take fruit also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.”  Clearly, death was not inevitable until the Tree of Life was no longer available, that is, after expulsion.  Only then does immortality become impossible.  We may find immortality through our extension in offspring, but this doesn’t mean Adam thought the same thing before God banished them from the Garden.  In fact, it’s difficult to imagine within the context of the story that immortality has anything to do with Adam’s treatment of the woman.  Let me explain.

Sacks claims that once Adam recognized he would die, and that immortality could come about only through the birth of children, then, and only then, he knew that “Without her, he could not have children—and children were his share in eternity. . . Once Adam experienced these thoughts, recrimination ended, for he saw that physical being, ‘nakedness,’ was not simply a source of shame . . . That is when he turned to his wife and for the first time saw her as a person and gave her a personal name, Eve, meaning, ‘she who gives life.’”[4]  Sacks claims that the story takes on a significant shift, that the “The bitter acrimony of the previous verses suddenly dissolves, and instead there is a new tenderness—between Adam and his wife, and between God and the couple.  Rashi is so perplexed by this sudden transformation that he is moved to suggest that the middle verse is out of chronological sequence.”[5]

I’m not surprised Rashi was perplexed.  I would be too if I thought for a moment that Adam showed forgiveness and tenderness in these verses.  There is no indication in the text that he does.  God does, no doubt, but Adam?  Since Sacks is focused on children produced by “love,” he finds in Adam’s character something I don’t see in the text.  In fact, I see just the opposite.  Adam in not acting in loving ways.  He acts in the most unforgiving, bitter way one could imagine, but providing a name to the woman that belittles her, namely Havvah, which the story-telling has to translate for the reader because it does not mean anything obvious.  As you know, Nahum Sarna makes it clear in the JPS Torah Commentary on Genesis that this word has been found in other ancient text where it means “serpent,” not “mother of all living.”  The story-teller has to supply another meaning in order to avoid the vindicative implications of Adam’s naming.

Sacks suggests that naming the woman invests her with personal dignity.  I disagree.  The only other creatures the man names are all those over which he exercises some authority and responsibility.  The verse “all the livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field” uses the term bĕhēmâ, typically understood as domesticated “cattle.”  The second term, ḥayyât, means “living thing” but notice the domain, that is, pasture or open country, not wilderness.  The point of the naming story is that among all these creatures none were able to fill the role God wanted for Man’s companion.  A special creative function was required, not to produce a “suitable helper” but rather an ontological equal, the ezer kenegdo.

More to come.

Topical Index: Jonathan Sacks, Adam, naming, ezer kenegdo, immortality, Genesis 3:20-22

[1] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: Genesis: The Book of Beginnings (Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, 2009), p. 40.

[2] Ibid., p. 36.

[3] Ibid., p. 35.

[4] Ibid., p. 35-36.

[5] Ibid., p. 34.