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Divine rest of the seventh day The first three verses of the second chapter in their content are entirely adjacent to the previous chapter, being the natural conclusion of the history of the creation of the world set out in it. This is how heaven and earth are perfect Thus, the work of creating the entire universe was completed and completed. i.e., the army of heaven and the army of earth. The first expression is quite common in the Bible and serves as a designation either for the angels surrounding the heavenly throne of God the Almighty, obviously by analogy with the guards around the throne of earthly rulers (Josh. 5:14; 1 Kings 22:19), or for the stars burning in the firmament and the correctness of their order reminiscent of orderly ranks of troops (Deut. 4:19, 17:3; 2 Kings. 17:16; Jer. 8:10; etc. The expression “army of the earth” is no longer found in Scripture, although there is some analogy to it in the book. Nehemiah (Neh. 9:6) and the prophet Isaiah (Is. 34:1), where we talk about the highest representatives of the earth, i.e., people and animals. Thus, by “the army of heaven and earth” we mean everything that is highest and best in one and the other area and which, therefore, serves as a kind of decoration for each of them. This last thought is beautifully expressed by the Greek LXX and Latin translations of the Bible, where the Hebrew word: zeba (army) is conveyed by its corresponding synonyms: κόσμος and ornatus, meaning “ornament.” Gen.2:2. And God finished by the seventh day his works which he had done, This day is called differently in our Russian and Slavic Bibles: in the first it is the seventh day, and in the second it is the sixth day. This happened from the difference in the originals from which these translations were made: it is in the Hebrew text, as well as in the Vulgate and the Arabic translation, that the “seventh” day is indicated, but in the Greek translation of the LXX (with the exception of some verses), as well as in I. Josephus and in the Syriac translation and the Samaritan text, the “sixth” day is stated. The context of the speech, in which only further there is talk of the “seventh day” and where, apparently, the day of the end of creation differs from the day of the beginning, is most favorable to the last reading, for which the authority of the ancient Samaritan text is vouched. and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. Repose in the Hebrew text is expressed by the word: sabat. Hence, the seventh day of the week, dedicated to the remembrance of this divine peace, retained the name Saturday among the Jews (in our country the meaning of this day passed to Sunday, and the very content of the memory was replaced). How can we understand this “rest” of God, when our Lord Jesus Christ himself said: “My Father works until now, and I work” (John 5:17)? The answer to this is found in the text we are considering, where the work from which God rested on the seventh day is clearly indicated: this is, precisely, His creative and educational activity of the six previous days; “God rested from all the work that He had done,” and which had just been discussed all the time before, “he ceased to create things like those that had just been created,” as the Arabic paraphrase of the Bible explains. “God rested,” says St. Augustine, “from creating new types of creation, because He no longer created any new kind of it.” “He rested,” says Saint John Chrysostom, “meaning he stopped creating and producing from non-existence into being.” But, having ceased creativity, God never abandoned His providential activity in relation to the world and man (Ps. 103:28; Eccl. 12:7; Isa. 57:16; Jer. 38:16; Neh. 9:6; John 5:17; Heb. 4:9–10). Gen.2:3. And God blessed the seventh day, “When the day is blessed,” says M. Philaret, “then it is made a participant in some special good, worthy of joy and preservation among the very changes of time,” of course, we will add on our own, due to the importance and significance of the memory associated with it. and he sanctified it, for in it he rested from all His works, which God created and created. The first meaning of the Hebrew verb standing here in the Masoretic text contains the thought of “separation” for some higher purpose and from here - about sanctification, i.e., about purpose for the sanctuary and God. In particular, the sanctification of times, according to biblical usage, is their appointment for worship (2 Kings 10:20; Neh. 8:9). This blessing and the selection of the seventh day as a day of grateful and joyful rest, dedicated to the remembrance of creation and glorification of the Creator, had significance only for rationally gifted beings, that is, people who, probably, from that time began to observe the Sabbath, in imitation of the creative rest of God. Although, strictly speaking, the Sabbath received the character of a specific commandment only in the legislation of Moses (Ex. 20:8; Deut. 5:12), there is a whole series of strong evidence from which it is clear that in the form of a pious custom it was practiced much earlier than Moses and that its origin in this sense is almost contemporary with the very beginning of human history (for evidence, see the dissertation of A. Pokrovsky “Biblical teaching about the first religion”, p. 49–53). The creation of the first man. Gen.2:4. This is the origin of heaven and earth at their creation, This is nothing more than the general heading of a whole new section of biblical primary history, starting from here (Gen. 2:4) and extending to the next similar heading (Gen. 5:1). Proof of this is both a philological analysis of the Hebrew word here: toldoth, and its biblical use, which we have already discussed above (see the introduction to the book of Genesis). on the same day when the Lord God created the earth and heaven, The “day” that is spoken of here (Slavic Bibl.) is not an ordinary astronomical day, for there is no necessary indication of morning and evening, but the entire six-day period of the creation of the world, as is clear from the context in which we are talking about the creation of the entire universe, united in the concepts of “heaven and earth.” The best translation of this passage is given by the Syriac version (Peshito), 2 which simply says “at the time” when heaven and earth were created... Gen.2:5. and every bush of the field which was not yet in the earth, and every herb of the field which was not yet grown: for the Lord God sent no rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the earth, This entire introductory sentence serves to define the moment of the creation of man - the special subject of this narrative. In this way, the writer of everyday life intends to prove the deep antiquity of man and the complete absence of any traces of human existence on earth before the creation of the first couple - Adam and Eve. He conveys this thought through a general depiction of the picture of the newly created earth before the moment of the appearance of man on it, in which he notes two main features: a) the absence of any traces of human culture and in general the products of field cultivation and b) the presence of unfavorable atmospheric conditions that made any culture and any human existence even unthinkable. All this, according to the writer of everyday life, decisively established the fact that on earth, before the creation of Adam, there was no culture, and therefore, there was no human being. Here is the best biblical refutation of the rationalistic theories of pre-Adamism, that is, the view that people existed before the creation of Adam. Here we encounter for the first time in the Hebrew text the word “Jehovah,” a more correct translation of which would be “He who is” (Ex. 3:14). This is the primary name of the God of the Covenant, God the Provider and Redeemer (Gen. 4:6, 6:3, 5, 8, 9:12, 26, 24:40, 30:30; Exod. 6:20; Num. 26:59 and in the preferred usage of all the prophets). In this sense it differs from the other common word Elohim, which means God as the omnipotent Creator of the universe. On the basis of this difference in divine names, negative criticism (“record hypothesis”, “fragmentary theory”, “replenishment hypothesis”, etc.) wants to establish a difference in the time of origin of various sections of the Bible (the most ancient elohistic from the latest Jehovahistic) and thereby undermine faith in the authenticity of the Mosaic Pentateuch. But at the present time, biblical science is increasingly establishing the fact of the deep antiquity of this divine name and those sections of the Bible in which it is used; The biblical apologetic data of the “Chaldean genesis” provide a particularly valuable service in this regard (cf. about this in the dissertation of A. Pokrovsky “Biblical teaching on primitive religion,” p. 424–427). Gen.2:6. but steam rose from the ground and watered the entire face of the earth In the Slavic Bible, following the text of LXX, there is a “source”; but in the Hebrew text there is the word: ed, a more accurate translation of which is given by our Russian text - “steam, fog,” as the Targums of Jonathan and Onkelos interpret it. In order to more clearly establish the connection of this verse with the previous ones, the word “then” should be placed at the beginning of it, after which this entire period will take a completely complete and definite form in the following form: “at a time when heaven and earth had already been created, but no field plants and grains had yet appeared, since there was no rain, man did not yet exist, but a thick fog hung over the whole earth, then the Lord God created man.” Here, as in many subsequent sections of the Bible (Gen. 3:1, 9, etc.), both controversial (of course, only from the point of view of rationalists) magnification of God Jehovah and Elohim (from the Hebrew language) are combined together, thereby eliminating any thought about their fundamental difference, as the enemies of the Bible (i.e., representatives of negative, rationalistic criticism) are trying to prove. And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, The fact of the creation of man was already mentioned earlier (Gen. 1:27) in the history of the creation of the world, but it was only mentioned in this general history of the universe, as an integral part of it; here it is conveyed in detail in the form of a special, independent subject of narration. “Having mentioned at the beginning of Chapter II. about what has already been said, Moses extensively expounds on what was not said,” says Saint Ephraim the Syrian in his interpretation of this place. The very idea of the creation of man, the actual outer shell of man, or his body, from the earth, or, more closely to the original, “from the dust of the earth,” is common to many places in both the Old Testament and New Testament Holy Scripture (Gen. 3:19, 18:27; Job 10:9, 25:6; Ps. 29:10, 102:14, 118:73, 138:14-16; Eccl. 3:20; Sir. 15:47-49; The creation of the human body from the dust of the earth contains the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe affinity of man with all visible nature, most closely with the animal kingdom, which arose by creative inspiration from the same earth (Gen. 1:24). On the other hand, in the sign of the materiality of human physical nature, the idea of ​​its destructibility or mortality is given. All this, according to John Chrysostom, teaches a wonderful moral lesson of humility: “in order to teach us in the very image of our creation the everlasting lesson not to dream of ourselves beyond measure, for this Moses narrates everything with such care and says: “The Lord God created man from the dust of the ground” (Conversation on the book of Genesis XIII, St. Petersburg, 1898, 103 p.). and breathed into his face the breath of life, Or, according to a more accurate translation from the Hebrew, “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” Both the previous formation of the human body from the earth and the present spiritualization of it by God cannot be understood in a crudely sensual sense: in the form that first, as if God sculpted a human figure from clay, and then took it in his hands and blew on it. All such passages, on the advice of Blessed Theodoret, should be interpreted “in a God-appropriate manner” (θεοπρεπως), that is, in accordance with the greatness, holiness and spirituality of God. In particular, the present passage should be explained in such a way that the external appearance of man arose from the earth according to the creative verb of the Almighty. The idea underlying the entire biblical story about the creation of man is the intention to present man as a connection between two worlds - the visible, physical and invisible, spiritual world, and to present him as the king of nature and the image of God himself on earth, and to establish the truth of the immortality of the human soul; the language with which such an abstractly sublime idea is expressed is the language of images and pictures, in which only in such cases did ancient humanity think. The very idea that man is involved in the divine life finds parallels in other places of Holy Scripture (Job 33:4; Eccl. 12:7; Acts 17:25, etc.). and man became a living soul. The combination of the highest divine principle (the breath of God) with the lower material (dust from the earth) resulted in man as a living soul, that is, as a conscious personality, gifted with reason and free will. But at the same time, man, this “living soul,” is infinitely different from God, Who is the “life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45) and relates to him as a pale copy to his incomparable original. Gen.2:8. And the Lord God planted a paradise in Eden Having created the first man, God does not leave him to the mercy of fate, but provides for him; This is primarily expressed in the fact that He places him in a specially prepared, best place on earth, “in the Garden of Eden” (gan Eden - in Hebrew), or in the “paradise of sweetness” according to Greek and Slavic texts. This difference arose from the fact that the LXX Hebrew word Eden, meaning the proper name of the country, was taken as a common noun consonant with it, which was translated into the word “pleasure or sweetness.” Likewise, the Hebrew word gan, which means a place fenced with a lattice, from there “garden” (Deut. 11:10; Isa. 51:3; Jer. 31:12), LXX was replaced by the Greek word παράδεισος, taken in turn from the Persian language and meaning an earthen or stone rampart surrounding a place of walk, from there this place itself, i.e. “garden or park.” In other places in the Bible, paradise is called the “garden of God” (Gen. 13:10; Ezek. 28:13; Ezek. 31:8), or the “garden of Eden” (Gen. 2:15, 3:23–24; Joel 2:3), or, finally, simply “We are Eating” (Is. 51:3; Ezek. 31:9, etc.). Some of the biblical translations replace this geographical indication with a chronological one, translating the Hebrew term: miqqedem with the word “in the beginning” (Vulgate, Akita, Symmachus, Theodotion). But the Greek, Syriac, and both of our translations more correctly convey “in the east,” for in other places in the Bible this term usually denotes a place, not a time (Gen. 3:24, 4:16). The country of Eden, which, according to the instructions of other sacred books (Isa. 37:12; Ezek. 27:23), should be sought near Mesopotamia in the Tigris and Euphrates basin, actually lay to the east of Palestine, the place in which the author of the Pentateuch lived and acted, where he wrote down this divine revelation of paradise. and he placed there the man whom he had created. Consequently, the first man was created outside of paradise, into which he was introduced only later. Gen.2:9. And the Lord God made from the ground every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, In the midst of all the trees of paradise that delighted the eye and nourished the human body, there was one that had miraculous power - to impart immortality to those who ate from its fruits (Gen. 3:22), for which it received its name “tree of life.” The indicated feature of this tree was not, without a doubt, its natural property, but represented one of the types of special, supernatural action of divine grace associated with eating its fruits, as with its external symbolic sign. In addition to its actual historical existence (Rev. 2:7, 22:2), the tree of life, both in Scripture itself and among the Fathers of the Church, received a mysterious and educational meaning, pointing mainly to the tree of the cross, with which the Lord returned spiritual life to us, and to the sacrament of the Eucharist as the saving fruit of this sacrifice on the cross (John 6:51–58, etc.), leading to eternal life. and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was another famous tree of paradise, standing next to the first (Gen. 3:3, 2:9), but possessing, as was later revealed, properties directly opposite to it (Gen. 3:17). God chose this tree as a means to test Adam’s faith and love, as well as his gratitude to the heavenly Father, for the purpose of which He gave him the commandment not to eat from the fruits of this tree. It is from this commandment that, in all likelihood, it received its name. “The Tree of Knowledge,” says Metropolitan Philaret, “having been chosen as an instrument of testing, represented to man, on the one hand, the continuously increasing knowledge and enjoyment of good in obedience to God, on the other, the knowledge and sensation of evil in disobedience.” Since, in general, the commandment associated with this tree had in mind the development of the highest abilities of man as a rational being, then the name “tree of understanding” or “tree of knowledge” could easily be transferred to this tree itself. And since, according to the Old Testament view, all knowledge in general was of a moral nature, “good and evil” are taken here as two opposite poles of all knowledge in general. The general rather mysterious nature of the biblical story about paradise, in particular the existence of some mysterious trees in it and especially the tree of knowledge, served both ancient heretics and new rationalists as a reason to consider the entire biblical story about it to be a complete allegory. As if preventing the very possibility of such a false reinterpretation of facts, the writer of everyday life, not without purpose, indicates the exact and fairly detailed topography of paradise, thereby confirming its once real existence on earth (the fact of its complete reality). A river came out of Eden to water Paradise; and then divided into four rivers. This is the first significant geographical sign of paradise. In the Hebrew text, this river is not named, since the word: nagar generally means a large river, an entire water basin, which is why sometimes it is even applied to the ocean (Job 22:16; Ps. 23:2; Ps. 45, etc.). And since, of the large rivers, the Jews of the era of Moses knew best the closest river to them, the Euphrates River, it is not surprising that they primarily called it by the name “nagar”, with all the tributaries and branches flowing into and out of it (Gen. 15:18; Exod. 23:31; Mic. 7:12, etc.). This river, originating in the land of Eden (i.e. in the north of Mesopotamia or on the southern slope of the mountains of Armenia), passed through the entire paradise and, upon leaving it, branched into four main branches. The name of one is Pison: it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and onyx stone. “Pison” was the name of the first of these sleeves. Ancient geography did not preserve for us the name of this river, as indicated further, but modern scientists, apparently, have found some traces of it: we mean the discovery in Assyrian wedge-shaped inscriptions of the word “pisanu”, meaning “bed, bed, canal” (Delich and Prof. Yakimov). And since the ancient Assyrian Biblical name “Phison,” which is consonant with this, literally means “full,” the same scientists make a witty guess that the name of the first river of paradise means nothing more than one of the largest and deepest canals of ancient Mesopotamia, which served to drain water from the Euphrates directly into the sea and was better known to ancient Greek authors under the name Pallocopas. The same circumstance that here a canal is introduced into the biblical description of paradise, that is, an artificial human structure, should not be particularly embarrassed, since Moses, judging by the entire context of the speech, was not describing the primitive, but the contemporary topography of the former paradise. And this is especially true since the Pallocopas canal itself, according to the conclusion of one authoritative geographer (Ritter), was carried out along the dry bed of one actually former, but dried up river. More closely determining the position of the Pishon River, Moses indicates that it flows around the entire land of Havilah, famous for its high-grade gold, fragrant resin (bdell) (Num. 11:7) and precious stones. The Bible knows two countries with this name: one is Hamitic (that is, inhabited by Hamites) in the northeastern corner of Egypt (Gen. 10:7), the other is Semitic, located in the northwest of Mesopotamia, otherwise also called Iektanida (Gen. 10:29). Based on the context, we must admit that here we are talking specifically about this last, Semitic Havilah, especially since the data of the latest scientific research, which discovered in wedge-shaped texts the name of the “sandy land” Ard-el-Havilot, or Halat, lying adjacent to the Persian Gulf, consonant with the biblical one, coincides with this. Gen.2:13. The name of the second river is Gihon [Geon]: it flows around the entire land of Cush. The location of the second river of paradise is also quite controversial and therefore it is better to start by determining the country that it flowed around. In the Hebrew original, this country is called the “land of Cush,” that is, the residence of the Cushites, the descendants of Ham’s youngest son, Cush, or Hus (Gen. 10:5–8). LXX translated this with the word “Ethiopia,” which gave many a reason to look for the country itself in the northeastern corner of Africa, next to Gisl, where, indeed, the Hamites subsequently moved (Jer. 2:18). But the original homeland of these Cushites, according to the genealogical table of the Bible (Gen. 10:6–10) and monuments of wedge-shaped literature (Kasdim), was the eastern bank of the lower reaches of the Tigris and the northeastern corner of the Persian Gulf, precisely the same valley of Shinar, in which, according to the Bible, the descendants of various nationalities remaining after the Babylonian pandemonium settled; Having united into one cultural and civil union under the predominant influence of the Kushites, they formed a special nationality, known in science as the Sumerian-Akkadian, and in wedge-shaped texts under the name Kassu, which is very consonant with the biblical “Kush”. “If Kush is the same as Kassu,” says Prof. Delich, then it seems possible to identify Gihon with Guhan, the Mesopotamian branch of the Euphrates.” Gen.2:14. The name of the third river is Hiddekel [Tigris]: it flows before Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. The names of the last two rivers no longer present any difficulties, since they are still known under the same names. Here, the direction of the Tigris, indicated to the east (or as LXX is inaccurately translated, and our Slavic after them - “opposite”) from Assyria, can only arouse some bewilderment, while Assyria itself almost all lies to the east of the Tigris! This bewilderment is easily eliminated by the assumption that by “Assyria” here we mean not so much the whole country as the very city whose name it bore and the ruins of which are currently discovered, indeed, on the eastern bank of the Tigris (the town of Kilet-Sherga). Thus, comparing the data of the Bible with the discoveries of modern Assyriology, the position of the biblical paradise is most appropriate to determine in the southern part of the Mesopotamian plain, between Babylon to the north and the Persian Gulf to the south. According to the conclusion of a number of outstanding scientists (Rolinson, Schrader, Delitzsch, Yakimov, etc.), the biblical gan-Eden is identical with the gan-idimi - Assyrian wedge-shaped texts, and, therefore, lay in the region of southern Babylon. The undoubted reality of the earthly paradise is also established in many places in Holy Scripture itself (Gen. 13:10; Ezek. 31:8–9, etc.). Gen.2:15. And the Lord God took the man [whom he had created] and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The best interpretation of this passage is given by Saint John Chrysostom, who says: “since heavenly life gave man complete pleasure, bringing both pleasure from contemplation (“the beauty of paradise”) and pleasure from eating (“foods of paradise”); so that a person would not become corrupted from excessive pleasure (“idleness,” it is said, “taught many evil things,” Sir. 33:28), God commanded him to make and maintain paradise, that is, to cultivate its soil and cultivate various plants on it, and also to protect it from unreasonable animals, which, running into the garden, could bring disorder and damage to it. This is the first divine commandment about human work, excluding the pagan idealization of the so-called “golden age” and comprehending human existence. Easy, unburdensome and pleasant work was an excellent way to exercise a person’s physical and partly mental strength. Gen.2:16. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou shalt eat, For the development of the moral powers (higher) of man, God gave him a special commandment, which consisted in abstaining from the fruits of the tree of knowledge already known to us. God appointed this abstinence to serve as a symbol of obedience and submission to Him on the part of man, due to which the observance of this commandment expressed on the part of man a feeling of love, gratitude and devotion to God; while its violation, on the contrary, testified to distrust of God, disdain for His words and black ingratitude towards the Creator, along with the desire to live according to one’s own will, and not according to the commandments of God. That is why such an apparently insignificant crime acquired such enormous moral significance! Gen.2:17. But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die. The word “day” here, as before (Gen. 2:1), should be understood in the sense of an indefinite indication of time and translated with the words: “at the time when.” “You will die by death” is one of the ways used in the Hebrew language to strengthen a thought, equal to our expression “you will certainly die.” This threat of death (for violating a commandment) cannot be understood in the sense (form) of an instant defeat that would occur immediately after the Fall, but should be understood in the sense of the slow process of dying that began as a result of the Fall: God sent death (more precisely, deprived him of immortality) at the very moment when man fell; but this death only gradually undermined his strength, palpably expressed in the sorrows of the spirit and illnesses of the body. But in addition to this physical death, the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church see here an indication of spiritual death, which consisted in the fact that by the act of his fall, man violated his first covenant with God, breaking his connection with the greatest source of life and thereby from that moment doomed himself to spiritual death (Rom. 5:12, 17, 21; Eph. 4:18). Gen.2:18. And the Lord God said: It is not difficult to see here a fairly close analogy with the words of the divine council before the creation of the first man (Gen. 1:26) and in the same way, therefore, to find here proof of the importance of the act of which they speak. It is not good for a person to be alone; These words do not at all mean that God supposedly admits to the imperfection of his creation and, as it were, makes an amendment to it - in the plans of divine providence, without a doubt, all this was already foreseen and intended in advance: but they only point to the fact that loneliness is difficult and not good for a person, because it deprives him of the closest and most convenient means for the comprehensive development of his personality, which happens most successfully, as we know, in communicating with others like you. Let us make him a helper suitable for him. These words, on the one hand, indicate the high dignity of the wife, for she is similar to her husband, that is, just like him, she bears the image of God within herself, on the other hand, her position is also noted, somewhat dependent on her husband, since every assistant stands in the social sense a step lower than his immediate superior. Before moving on to a detailed presentation of the very history of the creation of the first wife, the writer briefly notes another fact that served as the immediate reason for this creation. Gen.2:19. The Lord God formed from the earth every beast of the field and every bird of the air, Formed, of course, much earlier, precisely on the fifth and sixth days of creation (Gen. 1:21, 25), but if here the writer of everyday life returns to this fact again, then he does this only for the general connection of the narrative. and he brought [them] to the man to see what he would call them, and that whatever the man called every living soul, that would be its name. By this indication of the writer of everyday life, God himself is placed in the role of observer and supreme leader by the first experience of human speech. “The authority of J.-J. Rousseau and the great philologist and philosopher Wilhelm Humboldt agree with the idea that for humanity there was no other outcome from infantile irrational babbling than divine Revelation, which gave him a ready-made form for expressing his thoughts, or, better said, gave him thought and form together” (Vlastov, “Sacred Chronicle”, I, p. 30). Gen.2:20. And the man gave names to all the livestock, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; Since this naming was not accidental, but was based on familiarity with the nature of the creatures being named and for the most part contained an indication of a more characteristic property of the future bearer of this or that name, it indicates a relatively high state of mental development of the first person. In addition, according to the interpretation of St. John Chrysostom, Adam’s naming of animals indicated his dominance over them (Ps. 8:6–7): “People have the custom of placing a sign of their power in the fact that, having bought slaves for themselves, they change their names; so God forces Adam, as a ruler, to give names to all the dumb” (John Chrysostom). but for man there was no helper like him. In these words one can hear the quiet sadness of the first man, excited by the consciousness of his complete loneliness on earth, and one can hear his clear and strong desire to replenish what is missing, which the merciful Lord was not slow in realizing. Creation of the first woman. Gen.2:21. And the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; That the dream induced by God on Adam (in Hebrew: tardema) was not ordinary and natural, but inspired and ecstatic (έκστασις - LXX), this is evidenced by both the context of speech and the biblical use of this word (Gen. 15:12; 1 Sam. 26:12; Isa. 29:10). Gen.2:22. And the Lord God created a wife from a rib taken from a man, and brought her to the man. This biblical detail seems tempting to many, and on the basis of it, some consider this entire story about the creation of the first wife to be a myth (rationalists), while others interpret it allegorically (some even from the fathers and teachers of the Church). But the very nature of this biblical narrative, which notes all its details with such care, excludes the possibility of allegory here. As for the reference to the supposedly obvious improbability and unnaturalness of this process, then where we are dealing not with an ordinary phenomenon, but with a miraculous, supernatural event, it is, to say the least, inappropriate. The beginning of humanity was an extraordinary era. The spiritual meaning of this narrative is revealed in several places in Holy Scripture (1 Tim. 2:11–13; Eph. 5:25–26), namely, the fact of the unity of nature of husband and wife, and through that of all humanity, the basis of their mutual attraction and the nature of their proper relationship. Gen.2:23. And the man said: According to all the best interpreters, Adam, being in a deep mysterious sleep, during which God took out a rib from him to create a wife for him, did not lose his consciousness, which is why he could say these words. Behold, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This is a common biblical saying, expressing the idea of ​​close physical kinship, perhaps originating precisely from this primitive fact (Gen. 29:14; Judges 9:2; 2 Sam. 5:1; 1 Chron. 11:1, etc.). she will be called woman, for she was taken from [her] husband. The Hebrew word for “wife” (isha) is derived from the word “husband” (ish) and thereby forever imprinted a clear hint of the history of her origin. Gen.2:24. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother It is hardly possible to attribute these words to Adam, since he, not knowing, as the ancestor of all mankind, any parents, had neither the need nor even the very opportunity to talk about them. In view of this, with great right they should be attributed either to Moses, as the legislator of the marriage union among the Jews (Ex. 21:1-11; Deut. 21:11-17, 24:1-5) and the author of the book of Genesis, or, even better, based on the words of Jesus Christ (Matthew 19:5) - to God himself, who thereby sanctified the sacrament of marriage and gave it to him foundation for the future. The thought contained in these words, on the one hand, confirms the divine institution of marriage, on the other hand, proclaims its two main laws - unity and indissolubility, as interpreted by the Holy Scripture itself (Matthew 19:4-5; Mal. 2:14-15; 1 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 5:31, etc.). and shall cleave to his wife; and the [two] will be one flesh. The word “cleave” in Hebrew is expressed by the verb dabak, meaning “to be absorbed,” “assimilated,” “to become like” (Deut. 10:20; 1 Kings 11:2), and, therefore, indicates not so much a physical connection between spouses, but rather a spiritual unification of their interests, so close that they should no longer represent two special ones, but, as it were, one common personality. This close spiritual and moral union of spouses, both in the Holy Scriptures and among the Fathers of the Church, serves as an image of the union of Christ with the Church (Eph. 5:30–31), John Chrysostom, Augustine, etc. Gen.2:25. And they were both naked, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed. Before the Fall, the first people had no need for clothing and were not familiar with the feeling of shame, which is already the fruit of sin (Gen. 3:7; Rom. 6:21). All the spiritual and physical powers of the first people were in such wonderful harmony and were so balanced that the natural sight of bodily nakedness did not awaken in them any unclean thoughts or dirty desires; and their physical nature was so hardy and strong that it did not need any means of protection from atmospheric influences. PESHITO - In the 1st-2nd centuries, a translation of the Holy Books into Syriac appeared under the name “Peshito”, i.e. simple, correct. For the Orthodox Church, these two translations (“Septuagint” and “Peshito”), and for Roman Catholics also the translation made by St. Jerome, the so-called “Vulgate” (commonly used), are certainly more authoritative than the modern Hebrew original. You might be interested in: