“Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.”
(Gen 2:22, NKJV)
We grew up hearing the tale of how the woman was made from the rib of the man. I recall an embarrassing moment in Biology class in Std 7 when someone raised their hand and asked the teacher if men then have one less rib than women do :-). From various standard sources, including Englishman’s Hebrew Concordance and Young’s Analytical Concordance, it’s clear that this an inaccurate translation. According to the King James Concordance the original word is translated from the Hebrew 148 times as side or chamber. The word rib is only used once with regards to the woman being formed. In Greek this is translated as pleura, and is used to describe the place where the spear had penetrated Jesus (John 19:34; 20:20, 25 and 27), in his side. Yet, in none of the 50+ Bible translations I referenced was this passage in Genesis correctly translated – all of them choose the word rib. Why would this be, especially in the light of the very important role that the side plays in the New Testament, and the way in which it operates as a shadow image of the Old Covenant’s creation of man?
I will be quoting extensively from a classic booklet by Dr Katherine Bushnell, published in 1923, God’s word to women, which has unfortunately been long out of print. She had researched the rabbinical mythology of the Eve-rib – “One story says that ‘Eve was made out of a tail which originally belonged to Adam’. Rav, the head of the Babylonian rabbinical school declared, ‘Eve was formed from a second face, which originally belonged to Adam.’ Another rabbi said, ‘Instead of a rib taken from Adam, a slave was given to him to wait upon him.’ But the originator of the ‘rib’ theory was Rabbi Joshua, who wrote, ‘God deliberated from what member He would create woman, and He reasoned within Himself thus: I must not create her from Adam’s head, for she would be a proud person, and hold her head high. If I create her from the eye, then she will wish to pry into all things; if from an ear, then she will wish to hear all things; if from the mouth she will talk too much; if from the heart she will envy people; if from the hand, she will desire to make all things; if from the feet, she will be a gadabout. Therefore, I will create her from the member which is hid, that is, the rib, which is not even seen when man is naked.” (pp. 39, 42-43).
The Bible states that the woman was taken out of man’s side; the Jewish fables state that Adam’s rib was her origin. Charles Trombley, who has written in a clear and well-researched manner about many of the issues which pertain to women, asks just this question, of why the rabbis preferred the word rib; he comes to the following conclusion – “Apparently to strengthen the low opinion most rabbis had of women, to justify masculine insecurities built upon the false premise that women and not man was responsible for sin and death.”
The time has come to demythologize the rib.
- Sela: Ponder the meaning of the side in the New Testament.
- Read: Lev 13-15
- Examine how this has been fulfilled: Lev 14:54-57 (tip: Eph 5:27; 2 Pet 3:14).
- For a deeper understanding: Read Katherine Bushnell’s God’s word to women.
