Ishah! - Day 4
“I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvelous works. I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy name, O thou most High.” Psalm 9:22
The wonder of God in His creation of Eve. If there was something worthy of a joyful shout of exclamation it was right here when God first brought Eve “unto the man.” (Genesis 2:22) We previously learned that God brought all the animals He created to Adam so he could give them their names. Now we see that Adam also named the woman. Genesis 2:22-23 says, “And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’” The Hebrew word for the man, the male, or also the husband, is “Ish”. The counterpart to this, referring to the woman, the female, or the wife, is “Ishah”. It is easy to imagine Adam’s first word of exclamation when he saw Eve: “Ishah!”.
When Adam said “this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh…”, it is apparent that he fully grasped the truth if what God instituted here, the marriage covenant. Adam was literally born that very day. But he had wisdom far beyond his age. He was given perfect understanding given by God and not yet tainted by sin. And there was significance to the meaning of why Eve was made from one of Adam’s ribs. The woman was made from his side, under his arm, to be embraced as his equal, with love and affection. Genesis 2:24 says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
Only God! Only God can make two individuals one. There are a couple of points to mention in this verse. There are no divided loyalties with the marriage covenant. Leaving father and mother speaks of becoming a mature man capable of providing for his own family. This does not mean rejecting parents, because God commands us to honor our father and mother. But men cannot live in undivided loyalty to their own wife and children if they are not gainfully employed and continue to depend on parents for their needs.
The other point is that the word “cleave” means to cling to, join or stay. This speaks of permanence, the one flesh relationship. This is not spoken of the woman but the man. It is the manly thing to do. In this light, it is no wonder the depth of pain that is caused by severing this union. To do so does violence to both the man and the woman. But in God’s great love He gave us a fantastical wondrous gift, the marriage covenant and one-flesh relationship.
“Thank you, Father, for such a wonderful relationship, your gift to me, especially the gift of your awesome love. Amen.”
