And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
God Himself, with Christ acting as Commander, caused deep sleep to fall on Adam, took a rib from his side, formed the woman from it, and brought her to him as his fitting helper. She was taken from his side to stand beside him as his equal to be loved and protected, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, his second self in close union and affection, neither to control him as head nor to be trampled as inferior. In making the woman after the man and presenting her to him, with angels as witnesses, God instituted and celebrated the first marriage, joining family with the Sabbath as Eden gifts carried beyond the fall. That beginning ordained one man joined to one wife, she to respect and reverence her husband and he to love and cherish his wife, cheering, encouraging, blessing, softening and completing one another as one flesh. Christ affirmed that creation order, coming not to destroy marriage but to restore it to its original sanctity and blessing for the purity, happiness, and elevation of the race.
Making and Bringing Woman
Christ Himself, present at creation as Commander in the heavenly courts, caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, took a rib from him, made the woman from it, and brought her to Adam as his help meet, with Adam appointed to be monarch of the world under the supervision of God. The woman being formed from a rib taken from the man's side means she was not to control him as head nor to be trampled underfoot as an inferior, but to stand by his side as an equal to be loved and protected by him. As part of man, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, she was his second self, showing the close union and affectionate attachment that belongs to this relation.
Woman was originally designed to fill the position of her husband's equal, with distinctive duties more sacred and more holy than those of man, and the world needs mothers who are mothers not merely in name but in every sense the word implies. The human race was made male and female on the principle of a division of labor, the sexes differing in faculties, capacities, duties and adaptations for duty, in vital form, locality and function from crown to sole, and in aesthetical and spiritual endowments. Each sex is not the other but the complement of the other, and it takes both to complete either, with unlikeness as remarkable as likeness and contrast as much as comparison, so that not all business, pursuits and professions are a common arena where both wrestle for the prizes of life. The distinction is to remain universal and unmistakable, including in costume, where garments guard the wearer as a perpetual restraining monitor.
In creating the first parents it was designed that every human being should stand related to the rest as part of the web of humanity, with reciprocal action and mutual relation of all animated beings connected together and the whole connected to God, so that each part depends on the other, nothing is independent, and none can be dropped without affecting the whole. The setting is Eden in holy innocence, where humanity's first parents enjoyed communion with God and sinless angels. The Garden was made for human happiness and was an emblem of heaven and of God's love, with flowers of beauty, loveliness and grateful fragrance, fruit trees bearing precious treasures for man's good, and birds caroling songs of praise to God in which Adam and Eve in untainted purity delighted. Those sights and sounds are what men and women should rejoice in today, for it is not in order that people be crowded into cities huddled in terraces and tenements, and even though sin has marred God's purpose and brought care and anguish that rends hearts, His people can be a joyful people by reposing in Him and realizing His goodness, mercy and love, while His image is again impressed on souls and angels fill hearts with the peace of heaven.
The presentation of Adam in his Eden innocence shows the height from which Christ humbled Himself, since taking human nature would already have been a great humiliation even compared with humanity as first possessed, and He accepted it further weakened by four thousand years of sin. The Eden home given to Adam and Eve at the beginning was lost by transgression of God's law, but through the price paid to ransom from Satan, perfect obedience to all God's requirements, overcoming as Christ overcame by keeping His Father's commandments, bends footsteps heavenward back to that Eden home and points others there. Eve was made to be Adam's companion and given to him in love as his joy and as part of himself, a gift valued above every other blessing, even above the companionship of God and holy angels and the high destiny opened to the race. So strong was Adam's love that after she disobeyed he feared losing her and chose to share her fate and die with her rather than endure separation, letting love to her overbear love, gratitude and loyalty to the Creator, and not realizing that the same Infinite Power who had made him a living, beautiful form from dust and had made Eve for him could supply her place.
Marriage Ordained in Eden
God Himself instituted and celebrated the first marriage when He made the woman after the man and presented her to Adam, with angels as witnesses to the ceremony. Marriage therefore has for its originator the Creator of the universe, and the family, like the Sabbath, was instituted in Eden, with God's purpose linking them together. It is a sacred and holy institution, sealed by God and first celebrated in Eden, a precious domestic arrangement for creating homes. It is honorable, one of the first gifts of God to man and one of the two institutions Adam brought with him beyond the gates of Paradise after the fall.
God's order at the beginning establishes monogamy, that Adam was given one wife and one man is to have one wife. A plurality of wives and polygamy are contrary to that order, introduced early after the fall when men followed carnal and sinful desires. Departure from it increased wickedness and unhappiness, with rapidly increasing crime and wretchedness until the marriage relation was no longer respected. God made woman from man to be his companion and helpmeet, one with him, to cheer, encourage, and bless him, while the husband in turn is to be her strong helper. God ordained perfect love and harmony, the wife to respect and reverence her husband and the husband to love and cherish his wife, the husband obtaining the pure affections of her heart and the wife softening, improving, and completing his character, blending heart with heart as one flesh and, where Christ abides, one mind.
True unity in marriage is not made by the ceremony and spoken vow alone but requires the later blending of the two lives through true heart affection, with husband and wife no longer living for self alone. That blending glorifies God with mind, heart, soul, and strength by consulting together, praying together, and searching the Scriptures together, and in this way God carries forward His work in the world. When divine principles are recognized and obeyed, marriage is a blessing that guards the purity and happiness of the race, provides for man's social needs, and elevates the physical, intellectual, and moral nature. It carries responsibilities beyond mutual love, including providing for a family and concern for the physical health and mental and moral strength of children and for the family's influence on society.
Christ affirmed the creation of the first pair as establishing marriage, came not to destroy it but to declare it sacred and to restore it to its original sanctity and elevation and to restore the moral image of God in man. He began His work by sanctioning the marriage relation, for He who made the first pair and created a paradise for them put His seal on marriage amid the singing of the morning stars and the shouting of the sons of God for joy. Marrying is lawful and not sinful in itself but the fulfillment of duty, marvelously adapted to meet the nature of man. The sin in Noah's day, and again in the days when the Son of man shall be revealed, was not marrying itself but perverting what in itself was lawful, corrupting God's gift by using it to minister to selfish desires and making marrying and giving in marriage a supreme object of life with indulgence of appetite and base passion until imaginations became altogether corrupt.
God Himself, with Christ acting as Commander, caused deep sleep to fall on Adam, took a rib from his side, formed the woman from it, and brought her to him as his fitting helper. She was taken from his side to stand beside him as his equal to be loved and protected, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, his second self in close union and affection, neither to control him as head nor to be trampled as inferior. In making the woman after the man and presenting her to him, with angels as witnesses, God instituted and celebrated the first marriage, joining family with the Sabbath as Eden gifts carried beyond the fall. That beginning ordained one man joined to one wife, she to respect and reverence her husband and he to love and cherish his wife, cheering, encouraging, blessing, softening and completing one another as one flesh. Christ affirmed that creation order, coming not to destroy marriage but to restore it to its original sanctity and blessing for the purity, happiness, and elevation of the race.
Making and Bringing Woman
Christ Himself, present at creation as Commander in the heavenly courts, caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, took a rib from him, made the woman from it, and brought her to Adam as his help meet, with Adam appointed to be monarch of the world under the supervision of God. The woman being formed from a rib taken from the man's side means she was not to control him as head nor to be trampled underfoot as an inferior, but to stand by his side as an equal to be loved and protected by him. As part of man, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, she was his second self, showing the close union and affectionate attachment that belongs to this relation.
Woman was originally designed to fill the position of her husband's equal, with distinctive duties more sacred and more holy than those of man, and the world needs mothers who are mothers not merely in name but in every sense the word implies. The human race was made male and female on the principle of a division of labor, the sexes differing in faculties, capacities, duties and adaptations for duty, in vital form, locality and function from crown to sole, and in aesthetical and spiritual endowments. Each sex is not the other but the complement of the other, and it takes both to complete either, with unlikeness as remarkable as likeness and contrast as much as comparison, so that not all business, pursuits and professions are a common arena where both wrestle for the prizes of life. The distinction is to remain universal and unmistakable, including in costume, where garments guard the wearer as a perpetual restraining monitor.
In creating the first parents it was designed that every human being should stand related to the rest as part of the web of humanity, with reciprocal action and mutual relation of all animated beings connected together and the whole connected to God, so that each part depends on the other, nothing is independent, and none can be dropped without affecting the whole. The setting is Eden in holy innocence, where humanity's first parents enjoyed communion with God and sinless angels. The Garden was made for human happiness and was an emblem of heaven and of God's love, with flowers of beauty, loveliness and grateful fragrance, fruit trees bearing precious treasures for man's good, and birds caroling songs of praise to God in which Adam and Eve in untainted purity delighted. Those sights and sounds are what men and women should rejoice in today, for it is not in order that people be crowded into cities huddled in terraces and tenements, and even though sin has marred God's purpose and brought care and anguish that rends hearts, His people can be a joyful people by reposing in Him and realizing His goodness, mercy and love, while His image is again impressed on souls and angels fill hearts with the peace of heaven.
The presentation of Adam in his Eden innocence shows the height from which Christ humbled Himself, since taking human nature would already have been a great humiliation even compared with humanity as first possessed, and He accepted it further weakened by four thousand years of sin. The Eden home given to Adam and Eve at the beginning was lost by transgression of God's law, but through the price paid to ransom from Satan, perfect obedience to all God's requirements, overcoming as Christ overcame by keeping His Father's commandments, bends footsteps heavenward back to that Eden home and points others there. Eve was made to be Adam's companion and given to him in love as his joy and as part of himself, a gift valued above every other blessing, even above the companionship of God and holy angels and the high destiny opened to the race. So strong was Adam's love that after she disobeyed he feared losing her and chose to share her fate and die with her rather than endure separation, letting love to her overbear love, gratitude and loyalty to the Creator, and not realizing that the same Infinite Power who had made him a living, beautiful form from dust and had made Eve for him could supply her place.
Marriage Ordained in Eden
God Himself instituted and celebrated the first marriage when He made the woman after the man and presented her to Adam, with angels as witnesses to the ceremony. Marriage therefore has for its originator the Creator of the universe, and the family, like the Sabbath, was instituted in Eden, with God's purpose linking them together. It is a sacred and holy institution, sealed by God and first celebrated in Eden, a precious domestic arrangement for creating homes. It is honorable, one of the first gifts of God to man and one of the two institutions Adam brought with him beyond the gates of Paradise after the fall.
God's order at the beginning establishes monogamy, that Adam was given one wife and one man is to have one wife. A plurality of wives and polygamy are contrary to that order, introduced early after the fall when men followed carnal and sinful desires. Departure from it increased wickedness and unhappiness, with rapidly increasing crime and wretchedness until the marriage relation was no longer respected. God made woman from man to be his companion and helpmeet, one with him, to cheer, encourage, and bless him, while the husband in turn is to be her strong helper. God ordained perfect love and harmony, the wife to respect and reverence her husband and the husband to love and cherish his wife, the husband obtaining the pure affections of her heart and the wife softening, improving, and completing his character, blending heart with heart as one flesh and, where Christ abides, one mind.
True unity in marriage is not made by the ceremony and spoken vow alone but requires the later blending of the two lives through true heart affection, with husband and wife no longer living for self alone. That blending glorifies God with mind, heart, soul, and strength by consulting together, praying together, and searching the Scriptures together, and in this way God carries forward His work in the world. When divine principles are recognized and obeyed, marriage is a blessing that guards the purity and happiness of the race, provides for man's social needs, and elevates the physical, intellectual, and moral nature. It carries responsibilities beyond mutual love, including providing for a family and concern for the physical health and mental and moral strength of children and for the family's influence on society.
Christ affirmed the creation of the first pair as establishing marriage, came not to destroy it but to declare it sacred and to restore it to its original sanctity and elevation and to restore the moral image of God in man. He began His work by sanctioning the marriage relation, for He who made the first pair and created a paradise for them put His seal on marriage amid the singing of the morning stars and the shouting of the sons of God for joy. Marrying is lawful and not sinful in itself but the fulfillment of duty, marvelously adapted to meet the nature of man. The sin in Noah's day, and again in the days when the Son of man shall be revealed, was not marrying itself but perverting what in itself was lawful, corrupting God's gift by using it to minister to selfish desires and making marrying and giving in marriage a supreme object of life with indulgence of appetite and base passion until imaginations became altogether corrupt.