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TITLE: 02/05/2019 Exploration of Male and Female
By Helen Murray
05/02/19
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I can take it. This is my reality check.
God made Adam in His own image. This included Eve. He breathed life into him (Holy Spirit).
He then divided Adam during a deep sleep from which he awoke to discover Eve. The process was more like a division of Adam than just taking Eve from his rib. This invokes in me a picture of God walking through the divided parts of animals as he covenanted with Abraham. The animals were divided down the spine and God walked between the halves. Can we take from this that Adam divided into Adam and Eve have covenanted with God to include Him in their midst. This chills my spine and makes me shiver with fear. – the fear of God.
Adam comes from the Hebrew “ish” meaning strength. Eve comes from Hebrew “Isha” with a different root meaning fragile. So strength and fragility together is marriage.
What does sin do to this relationship? It savagely extricates God from the relationship as He cannot tolerate sin. It makes the whole relationship unviable. This is why Jesus had to become man born of woman (cf the original Adam that included male and female, and called the second Adam,) and of the Holy Spirit (God) to re-instate God in the life of mankind.
The name Eve suggests fragility (The weaker vessel, the one who must be able to trust the man, while the man must prove trustworthy. That is the secret to manhood - proving trustworthy.) The most beautiful (eg china) is fragile compared to the beholder, so the beholder must not under-rate the value of the woman but have the capacity to value her rightly and treat her accordingly. Otherwise she breaks and then he also breaks because they are only half of each other.
Feminism tries to suggest that the woman is less fragile and more aggressively strong and self-supporting, not needing the male.
Jesus Himself had all the sensitivities of woman (treating them with the same dignity as men) as well as the strength of men and the Spirit of God. He was complete in Himself as the second Adam, unadulterated and filled with the Life of the Spirit. He did not re-instate women as leaders among His disciples – perhaps because they are too fragile? I think there are a FEW women who can take their place with men as did Jael who killed the enemy spiking him through the head as he rested, Deborah who lead the nation to war by default, the Proverbs 31 woman – perhaps the ultimate – Judah’s daughter-in-law who took her right from him, Rahab who understood the Hebrew God’s power, Ester ‘for such a time as this’, but they do not place their femininity on the altar of independence in order to fulfil their roles. On the other hand they challenge the men who could not fulfil their proper roles while strongly retaining their femininity (story of Deborah the Judge).
So the challenge is to men to be trustworthy. This is the ingredient that gives them the right relationship with a woman. They do not take advantage of her weakness but protect her delicacy as a precious and wonderful thing. She in turn enchants with wisdom (wisdom in proverbs is female), care, and delicacy which he protects with his life. Only God gives this relationship its wholeness and power when they look to Him to walk between them, uniting them and making then whole.
In this sense the original Hebrew suggests she opposes him. Perhaps the picture is something like the thumb opposing the forefinger. The thumb and forefinger have remarkably different qualities and it is in opposition that they demonstrate their unique ability to work together in handling an object. But the forefinger and the thumb do not operate singly. There must be something that unites them, and that is the muscle which controls their opposition! As that muscle controls the opposition of thumb and forefinger, so God needs to control the opposition of male and female by His presence between them. Oppose doesn’t necessarily mean in singular opposition to. They both owe everything to God and His presence alone is strength to their bones. The unity He brings give the opposition of male and female its power. Take Him out of the picture and the male and female will flail about loosely and unco-ordinated like two fingers unco-ordinated by muscle.
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