Timeless Wisdom: Weekend Torah Teaching - Genesis 2:1-2:25

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Working is a chapter each session. At the rate we're going, might be 2 verses each session. But so far, so far it's been a chapter. We're going to chapter 2 of Genesis. And, uh, as you probably know, if you would like to review the stuff, because I give a lot of material, there are tapes of each session outside. Just reminding you to, uh, if you want to brush up before your next, uh, next session with me. Okay, I hope that everybody either has brought a Bible or a Torah or, uh, or has a sheet to look on with a companion. Uh, but forget what's underlined. I, I opened up, uh, a, an English translation and found these underlines. I— they're not mine and they're not, they're not relevant. They might be important, but they're not relevant. Okay, chapter 2 in, uh, in Genesis. Observant Jews know this, know the first, uh, first 3, uh, verses by heart. It is stated every Friday night, has been for eons in Jewish history. It is stated at the Kiddush, at the sanctifying of the drinking of wine on Friday night. The Sabbath, uh, for Jews. And it is, the heaven and the earth were finished and all their array. Uh, you— everybody has slightly different translations, it doesn't matter. On the seventh day, God finished the work that he had been doing, which is— or the work that he had made. It's very, very complex, to the point of actually not being fully understandable. I have said this, these 3 verses, every week for all my 28 years on this planet. 43. Uh, and, uh, the, uh, it— as, as well as one would know Hebrew, it is still difficult to understand. God finished on the 7th day I'm translating now word— the word order. And finished God on the seventh day his work which he made. He rested on the seventh day from all the work which he had made. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because he rested from all the work which he created God to make. I have just translated literally so you will understand how complex it is. How complex it is. What does it mean? First of all, what does it mean from all the work that God had made? Why, it should say obviously, and God rested from all his work. What does it mean? And God rested from all his work which he had made. And then it gets worse. The last part in number— in verse 3 because he rested from all his work which he created, which God created to do or to make. The last word in verse 3 is to do or to make. In Hebrew, it's the same verb, to do and to make. Now, what does that mean? He rested from all the work which he created to do. The general consensus is that this last to-do in verse 3 is, is for us. That the, the traditional interpretation— and I have not generally used traditional interpretations, I have tried to simply look at the text with as, as, uh, unencumbered eyes by tradition as possible— but the traditional interpretation makes sense here even just reading it by the text. It's God created work for us to do, that we are the partners in the completion of creation. It's not done yet. God has created things, but God created work. In other words, God created things for us to do. That is the single most logical and honest understanding of this very difficult thing. Because otherwise, if it had just said, "And God rested from all his work," it would imply it's over. Creation has ended. But with the creation of us, of the human, it has not ended. We continue God's creation. And to go into slightly metaphysical terms, the terms that are used in, for example, mystical Judaism or Hasidic Judaism is that we are to restore or redeem the world. It's an unredeemed world, and the human being is here to redeem it. But whether you go to metaphysics or not, whether you go to the mystical or not, what is clear is we are completing the creation that God has begun. He rested, but he has rested from work which he made, and we are the ones to do that work now. God rests, we take over. This is a very, very important thing in our lives because what it's saying as well is that God infused meaning into creation. There is a purpose for the creation. Otherwise, it merely would have been God's ability to do something extraordinary, make a universe. But what is being said here is the world, the universe is fused with purpose. There is work for us to do, to be God's partner, as it were, and to continue. God made a purposeful universe is what is really being said, to my reading, in the first 3 verses. There is something for every one of you to do as a partner with God in this world. He has rested, and as it were, now we take over. Now, does that mean that God does not do anything later? Well, obviously the Bible is filled with things that God does later. But on the other hand, the general reading is that God doesn't intervene quite as much, as obviously as God did, let's say, with the Exodus from Egypt. It seems to me that the maturer we are as people, the more we grow up— and I believe there is an element of growing up, and I'll talk about that in the Garden of Eden— in all of our lives and in humanity collectively, We realize that God has left it for us to do. Not that God doesn't know what we're doing or doesn't care what we're doing. God forbid. God forbid that God shouldn't care what we're doing. But the fact is that it really now is in our hands. God has made the work to do, and now we do it. There is another thing that needs to be stated about the first 3 verses of, uh, of chapter 2. The word rested from his work. Let's see the word— or ceased, actually ceased, not rested. What, what does anybody have other than ceased, a word for, uh, chapter 2? On the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he what? On the seventh day, I have ceased. What other English words do you have? Arrested. You have rested. Okay. I think ceased is more accurate, but rested is okay too.

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The Hebrew word for rested third-person male In other words, he rested is Shabbat, shin, bet, taf, which are the 3 letters of Shabbat. Shabbat means ceased. The Sabbath, the Hebrew word for Sabbath, is the same as the Hebrew word for ceased, stopped. That's where it comes from. The Sabbath comes from God's ceasing of work. That is the reason that it is the only ritual in the Ten Commandments. The Sabbath is the single most important ritual in Jewish life, in biblical life. It is a capital offense to violate the Sabbath. The Yom Kippur, which most Jews think is the holiest day of the Jewish year, that is not technically correct. You can argue in some way it is because it's called Sabbath of Sabbaths, but the fact remains that the Yom Kippur is not in the Ten Commandments. The Sabbath is in the Ten Commandments because it is deemed to be an announcement by the Jew every week that God created the world. That is why the Sabbath is so important. Every time in history a Jew observed the Sabbath Consciously or not, that Jew was announcing to the world that God created the world. That is how important the Sabbath is in the biblical Jewish mind. It is here, nested right in the middle of the creation story. And remember, the creation story is not Jewish per se, it's universal. I made that point last week. It's utterly universal. There is nothing specifically Jewish But the Sabbath emanates entirely from this. In fact, in the Ten Commandments, there were two versions of the Ten Commandments, in the book of Exodus and in the book of Deuteronomy. In the, in the, in the Exodus, or is it in the Deuteronomy? I always forget. One of them, it tells the reason for keeping the Sabbath, and it is because you— because I created the world in 6 days, and on the 7th day God rested. The other reason that is given is because you were taken out of Egypt and you couldn't observe a day of rest as a slave. This announces your freedom. The importance of the Sabbath here is critical. The purpose of life is not just to work. Work is important, but not working is as important as working. I can't think of a more relevant and important message to a workaholicized population than ceasing from work, from work that produces. That's the issue. You can't produce. God stopped producing. The word milacha, which is translated as work— God ceased from his work— the real word for work in Hebrew was avoda, but that's not the word used here. Milacha is not truly translatable. It might be that which produces something. You can't do on the Sabbath that which produces something. That is the basic idea of all the laws that Jews are prohibited from doing, that prohibit Jews from doing things on the Sabbath. When you understand it, it is so elevated beyond what you normally might associate with the prohibitions of the Sabbath. It is to make sure you don't produce something, because that is not not all you're here in the world to do. 6/7 of the time you are here to produce. 1/7 of the time you are here not to produce, but merely to live. Merely to live. Indeed, to ask, what were the other 6 days about? If you work all 7 days, how do you know what you have produced? How can you sit back and ask, what have I done? You never have the time, as it were, to even enjoy the fruit of what you have labored for the other 6 days. It is critical. It is part of creation, is Genesis saying. It is part of creation to sit back and ask, what am I alive for? What did I produce all of these things for? If you keep working you are not human, and you are not divine, and you are not free. Because the person who has to work 7 days a week is a slave. The Bible would call you a slave. You may get paid for it, but you're still a slave because you can't stop. If you work all the time, you are not differentiable from a slave. That's why it is so important the Sabbath in, in biblical life, in Jewish life. One of the great Jewish writers of the last century said it very well: the Sabbath has guarded Israel more than Israel has guarded the Sabbath. It has kept— it is, in effect, kept Jews alive. It has kept the idea of— it kept the idea of God alive until other religions could carry it further as well, but it kept it alone. Why are you resting? A Greek would ask a Jew. Why aren't you working? Greek historians called the Jews lazy. Jews were described by various Greek philosophers as lazy. They rest every seventh day. It was unheard of. And if the Greek would ask a Jew, why do you do this? Because God did it. God did it, and I'm imitating God. God produced 6 days and then reflected on what happened, and that is what I am to do. That is the critical nature of the Sabbath. It is actually tied up in the creation of the universe. That's why I personally believe it is so important. Incidentally, when the Jew rises to recite the Kiddush, the sanctifying of the drinking of wine Friday evening, the Jew stands at this time reading this. And the reason— there is a reason for standing. In the ancient world, when you took an oath, you stood. And you are taking an oath here. You are bearing testimony. And the testimony that you are giving is that God created the world. By standing up Friday night and blessing a cup, making a blessing over a cup of wine The Jew is offering testimony that God created the world. If taken seriously, it's a very powerful thing, because we have lived through a time when people have said, "You have to be crazy to believe that a God created the world. It happened by chance. It happened through natural law. There was no creation. It was always there," or whatever argument would have been given. And yet all of that is pushed aside. The moment the Jew rises on Friday night with a cup of wine and recites these 3 verses. It's a very remarkable thing when taken seriously. Much of religious life for any group is rote, unfortunately, and loses a lot of its meaning. It's one of those areas of Jewish life that never lost a meaning for me because I understood that this was the revolution, that this was a counterrevolution to the naturalist revolution we were living through through, that nature is everything and there is no God. There's one further point here that needs to be made, uh, that is utterly unique. The Sabbath is utterly unique to, uh, to Jewish history until carried on obviously by Christianity and Islam. But there is something here that is also utterly unique in history until later time. What did God make holy? Remember, it says here, um, in verse 3, 'And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.' It's unfortunate, I tell you, so many of the translations seem to me to add words that aren't there. This one says 'declared it holy,' but there's no 'declared.' The Hebrew is 'made it holy.' Anyway, what did God make holy? To you, this is nothing. To the ancients, this was an absolute radical departure. And remember last week, last time we met, how I kept pointing out the radical departure of Genesis from all of the rest of the world? Here is another radical departure. God announced that time could be sanctified. This is a first in human history. In all of history, physical things could be made holy. People could be made holy. Buildings. Animals. Time? To make time holy? As Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, the Jews, or God, built a cathedral in time. It's an incredibly moving metaphor. Of a cathedral in time. We have sanctified here time, and this was unheard of in history. As, uh, Sarna writes in his commentary, this first use of the key biblical concept of holiness relates to time. This is in striking contrast to the Babylonian cosmology which culminates— the Babylonian story of creation, which culminates in the erection of a temple to Marduk by the gods, thereby asserting the sanctification of space. That people all understood— sanctify an area with a temple, with a great building. But to sanctify time was unique And it comes from this concept. That is why it is in the Ten Commandments. That is why the Sabbath is, to this Jew, the greatest single of the many gifts that are unique to Judaism, is the greatest single gift outside of all the ethical aspects of ethical monotheism and so on. The Sabbath. And it is truly unfortunate in both Jewish and Christian life in the Western world today that it is largely ignored. That the Sabbath has become a day for most Jews to go shopping, and Sunday has become a day for most Christians to go shopping. So now Americans can shop 7 days a week. That's the added benefit of no blue laws. I don't know if we should have blue laws, but I'm not sure that America is a better country for the fact that no time is sacred, that everything is 24 hours, 7 days a week, and you can engage in shopping and commerce all the time as if nothing has changed. I don't think we're richer for it, frankly. I think that the taking of the time out not to do commerce, the taking the time out to reflect what is the purpose of my my life each week is a good thing. To have silence once a week without radio or television is a good thing. It is a time that you can actually be the most human, the most reflective on what, what matters in life. So just a thought on this critical element in the first 3 verses of chapter 2. Verse 4 says, when the Lord God created heaven and earth. Excuse me. Yes, well, it's funny, it's, uh, that's the translation here. Let me— these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. I'm translating now literally word for word. On the day that God the Lord made the land and heaven. I want to say it again. Don't look in because you'll get confused. Listen please. These are the generations, or histories, of the heaven, heavens, and the earth in their being created on the day that God created the land and the heavens, the earth and the heavens. Confusing? Well, first of all, I want to make a point here that should be the, the the final nail in the coffin of those who argue that a day in Genesis 1 equals 24 hours. This is a refutation. This is as clear a refutation as I could imagine without God coming down and saying, excuse me, but isn't it obvious that I didn't mean 24 hours? Yom in Hebrew in Genesis doesn't mean day, or certainly doesn't only mean day. It means time, period. And the proof is in this sentence, which you can't tell from your English. How many of you have in the English the word day in sentence 4? Raise your hand. Does anybody? You do? What translation do you have? No, no, what's the name of the translation? What are you using? According to the Masoretic text. I want to see the publisher though later. Does anyone else have the word day? What are you using? No, no, don't use Rashi. That's— Rashi is the commentary. I want to know in translation, English translation, using the word day. You have the word day in Hirsch. Very good. What are you— sorry, Hertz. Hertz uses it too. Very awesome. Well, that's the old one. That's the, that's the, that's the traditional, uh, it's 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation. What do you have? The New JPS has the word day. It does? Well, it doesn't, it doesn't have it, uh, yeah, all right, doesn't matter. It's there. The word day is there, and it says on the day that God created the earth and the heavens, unless you believe that this sentence contradicts everything in chapter 1, because chapter 1 clearly says that everything was created in different times. Clearly God didn't create the earth and the heavens on one day. It took him 6 days to create everything. Isn't that right? And we just go through that in chapter 1. Therefore, if you hold that day in Genesis means 24 hours, You have to end up holding the very non-traditional position that chapter 2 was written by somebody other than who wrote chapter 1, because chapter 2 clearly gives you a different story, that on one day God created everything. Well, you just had 6 days of God creating everything. I am only making this point again and again because it bothers me when people take positions that they think defend the sanctity of the Bible when I think it undermines the credibility of the Bible. It undermines biblical credibility to argue that you have to read it as 24-hour periods when it is so clearly not. It means a period. When— even word 'when,' the best translation would be in effect 'when,' which is what this particular one of the Jewish Publication Society has. It just says 'when.' But you could even do, since I believe a little literal translations, on the day. Now, the other fascinating introduction in this particular verse is Elo— is Adonai. On— in Genesis 1, God is only referred to as Elohim. We now have Adonai Elohim. Now, actually, it's Jehovah that is mentioned. Jews do not pronounce God's name in the original, therefore they say Adonai, which means my Lord. Okay? And Jews don't even say that outside of a holy context. They say Hashem. But that's going to another dimension which I don't need to involve you in right now. But what has happened here is God has now given a proper name. You understand what I'm saying? Until now it was just God. Generically. The God of nature, as I described it, I believe, last time. The God, the universal God of nature, created the universe in chapter 1. But human beings can't relate to a God of nature. It's too distant. It's not personal. The God of nature, the God who created the universe, is not a God I could talk to, cry to, pray to. The God who creates nature doesn't care about me. He's just the Creator God. Therefore, we now have the God we relate to. Adonai is introduced. And who is he? He is the God that we spoke of in the first chapter, because he's given both names here in verse 4: Adonai Elohim, Jehovah the God, if you have to be literal in the translation. And therefore we know immediately that it's going to have to do with people, because only people can relate to Jehovah. The animals, the stars, they're with Elohim. We are with Jehovah, we are with God, with Adonai, but we are also with Elohim. We are also with that God who creates the world, not just the personal God. We are also with that God who is the Creator. The rabbis had an interesting thing here. They said Adonai is the, is the God of the characteristic of mercy and compassion, and Elohim is the God whose characteristic is justice, and that you need both in order for the world to function. And it is very true, you do need both. On justice alone, the world would be destroyed. Human beings have so screwed up the world that on pure justice, grounds of justice, the world deserves to be destroyed. And it is destroyed, except for Mr. and Ms. Noah. But the, the, uh, I'm always politically correct, uh, but on the other hand, you can't live with compassion alone. The God of compassion is not the God of justice. Give you an example: if a poor man, a very poor man, and a Rockefeller come to court, and, uh, the, uh, the, the, the Rockefeller is actually mean, he has sued the unbelievably poor man for some, for some reason, compassion dictates Why are you bugging this poor guy for banging into your car by accident when he was parking? I mean, you're a billionaire, and he can barely get by on Social Security. Compassion says, therefore, throw out the case or rule in favor of the poor man. Justice dictates, wait a minute, wait, the fact is this poor guy swiped this billionaire's car. And it demands that he pay up. Which do you follow? It's a tough question, isn't it? We are filled with that in our lives. Which do you follow, justice or compassion? If you wanted some slightly generic difference between conservatives and liberals, you have it right there. Conservatives more concerned with justice, liberals more concerned with compassion. If you are over-concerned with one, you will end up with a bad world. Compassion without justice is a terrible world, because you have undermined, you have undermined a pillar upon which the world stands—justice. Justice without compassion is a mean world. You need both. And that is why the rabbi spoke of the two who have created the world, the two sides of God. God, one represented by Elohim and one by Adonai. Anyway, that is introduced here for the first time in this, in this verse. I will not, uh, go to verses 5 and 6. It, it would take, it would take massive inquiry to make full sense of it, uh, but let me just read it to keep the, the thing going. When no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the soil, but a flow would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth. Okay, but now we get to what really matters. And God formed— God Elohim, Jehovah Elohim— formed or created— not created, formed, made— Adam, Adam the man, Ha'adam, generic, the human. Would be the best, the human or the man. Afaar min ha'adama, dust from the earth. That's how we were made. Vayipach bi apav, and God blew into his nostrils, being again literal. Nishmat chayim, the breath of life, or, and this is an incredibly important or Nishmat Chaim also means the soul of life. The Hebrew word for soul and breath is the same. So we were given— God is a lot of very interesting things here. God creates the human from the earth, breathes into his nostrils the the spirit of life, if you will. Well, that would be ruach, which is wind. It's also interesting. Both of them have a living element. But God breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, or the soul of life. Vayehi ha'adam le'nefesh chayah. And the man came to be a living being. Okay. Couple of things about, about this. First of all, and this is a classic example of where it's good to know the Hebrew, Adam is Adam, right? Human being. What is the word for earth? Adamah. Adam is earth without a hey at the end. That's all it is. Adam and earth. To show our origins, our name is really Earthling. If you really wanted a literal definition for Adam, it's Earthling. We are— we're from the earth. That's where God has made us from. And so God makes Adam dust from Adama. That's just what it says there. God himself makes man. Remember, with other things, God said, let there be. Why didn't God say, let there be man? In all the other things, God announces what will happen, and it happens. But when it comes to us, we are the culmination of God's efforts. It's very very profoundly anthropocentric, the biblical narrative. It's human-centered. You know what it is? It's religious humanism. Humanists are human-centered. Religious people are God-centered. The Torah, the— this, certainly Genesis, is really religious humanism. It's man-centered under God. It's like a twin Twin pillars, twin centers. It's not just God-centered. It really is anthropocentric. And you know who attacks it for being that? The radical environmentalists, who exactly attack the Judeo-Christian tradition correctly for being anthropocentric. When I say on my radio show that the world was created for human beings, I am clobbered. I am called the worst possible thing: anthropocentric. It wasn't created for sea otters. It wasn't created for trees or spotted owls. They were all created for us. I went through this last time, where we are told to rule over and dominate the earth. Doesn't mean abuse it. But the reason not to abuse it is not because trees have an intrinsic worth. Earth, but because they're there for us, and if we abuse it, they won't be there for our children. That's the environmentalist argument that makes sense to this person. If you don't protect the environment, your kids won't be able to enjoy the spotted owl. That makes sense to me. But that I am part of an ecosystem and I don't want to imbalance an ecosystem of which I am merely one part and the sperm whale is another, doesn't move me at all. I am not part of the ecosystem. Only the natural part of me is. We are special. The human being is special. God himself made us. God did not breathe into the nostrils of fish. That's very important. Or the nostrils of mammals, or the nostrils of birds. God himself. It's touching, isn't it? God, it's almost a humble God. I am going to go down and I'm going to do it. You will have my breath in you, human beings, my godly breath. That's what we are given in this verse, God's breath. It's staggering, isn't it? I get the chills when I say it. That's what we are given, and only we are given, and we are— we are the only one in God's image. It's constantly repeated. We're it. We're the whole point of it all. We are— we are why God did this whole thing.

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So we are created specially, and we are given this soul of life. We are a nephesh chayah, a living being. So are the animals. It's fascinating. It's— remember I told you that great duality? We're in God's image and animal's image. We're part divine, part animal. It's the same thing in this sentence. When the animals are created, they're also called nephesh chayah, a living being. Like the last words in verse 7. But none of them are given an nishmat chayim. None of them are given this soul of life. That's where we are distinctive. We are a living being like cats, but they don't have the breath of God in them, the soul of life that God gave to us. Okay, verse 8. God planted Again, it's God Elohim, Adonai Elohim, planted a garden in Eden. Now it's called the Garden of Eden, but to just so you'll understand, Eden is presumably a place. So it's a garden in Eden. Don't ask me where Eden is because I don't know. Nobody knows. Yeah, all we know is it's Mikedem, it's in the east. Which really is great help to all of us. By the way, it doesn't even necessarily only mean from in the east, because Kedem in Hebrew also means an ancient times, old. So we have no idea. It could have been, and God planted a garden long time ago. So anyway, and God put there this Adam whom he had just made, whom he had made. Oh, by the way, very important little point on verse 7. When it says God made Adam, the Hebrew word used is vayitzer. This is gonna interest you, which is, and God caused to be. 'be' or 'God made,' but it's stronger than the usual word 'made,' which is vayas. It's vayitzer, 'God made.' Now please note as well, verse 19. If you know Hebrew in particular, you'll find this fascinating. Verse 19 also begins with vayitzer or vayitzer. Said, actually. And it says, and God made from the earth all the beasts of the, of the forest, or of the wild beasts of the earth, okay? And all the, and all the flying beings, okay? He uses the same word— the Torah uses the same word for creating Adam and creating creating the beasts. Vayitzer, or vayitzer. Okay, what's the difference? If you know any Hebrew, even if you don't understand Hebrew but just can read it, notice the vayitzer of verse 7 has two yuds, and the vayitzer of verse 19 with the animals has one yud. If that's not deliberate, I am a a Brussels sprout. It is so obvious that there was something meant to be said here. Why with the same word? It's as if it was, "And God made man," M-A-A-D-E, "and God made beasts," M-A-D-E. Why the extra A? Why the extra Yod? Clearly it's to distinguish the two. God made beasts and God made people, and it's to distinguish the two. We are not the same act of creation. Well, the rabbis, you could imagine, had a field day with this thing, especially— and here's the beauty— because vayitzer, vayitzer, the root of it is yetzer. What is the yetzer? You have two of them, right? A Yetzer Tov and a Yetzer Ra, a predilection or creative force, which is better, to good, and a creative force to bad. Clearly the word therefore has to mean something having to do with the Yetzer. Animals have only one Yetzer. We have two. We have a Yetzer Tov and we have a Yetzer Ra. We were created created in the beginning with a creative urge to good and a creative urge to evil. Animals just have a creative urge. Wherever it goes, it goes. They don't know good from evil. We do. So here, here is a great example of where the verb or a word itself tells you a great deal. And I don't believe for a moment that that is rabbinic reading into it. And God knows there's a lot of rabbinic reading into this, which I I don't give you at all, because I am not here— I am here to teach as clearly as possible what the text states, not the religious hermeneutics that came later. But here it is clear what is happening, because the word yetzer, which is used later— God, when he's going to destroy the world because people are doing bad, says, yetzer adam raminu rav, the yetzer of man is bad from his youth. So it's clearly that that's the— that's what is used here. That's why you have the two yuds, for the two yetzer in vayiter. Fascinating, isn't it? And that is the distinction, a major distinction if not the most, between animals and us. Animals cannot choose how to behave. We can. They only have one yetzer, so they have no choice. We have two. You can choose to do evil. You can choose to do good, even if you grow up in poverty. It's a radical notion in today's world that people in poverty have a moral will, but allow me that one radical notion for today. God makes this garden in Eden, and he puts Adam, who he has made there. Verse 9, and then we get to stuff that is so complex, which is why until this year, I, as I said last time, I would never teach Genesis. I still am not certain about the answer to some of the riddles I will pose. It is so complex. Verse 9, and God God caused to grow from the earth all beautiful trees to look at and good to eat. And the tree of life is in the center of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now, are we missing a verb? Wouldn't you say that something is missing in that sentence? Where the hell was the Tree of Good and Evil? It doesn't even say. I mean, it's one of the many riddles here that, that are so fascinating to me. Uh, is it also in the center of the garden with that tree? Where was it? How come we never hear about the Tree of Life again, uh, with regard to Adam and Eve until later with, uh, with, uh, the serpent? It's a very fascinating It's not answered. All we know is that God gave all of these beautiful trees to look at and to eat from. And the tree of knowledge, the tree of life is in the middle, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Never call it tree of knowledge because that's not its name. It's the tree of knowledge of good and bad, or good and evil. Okay, now by the way, there is something very important here. One is that, uh, it is clear again that God's original intent was vegetarianism. That's what was there for us to eat. There are, there are a number of indications of that, uh, and I will, uh, I will show you what— 2:16 as well. Take a look please at verse 16. Verse 16: And God commanded Adam saying, from every tree of the garden you shall eat. Okay, it's just important that you know it's very, very clear that Adam was created and the animals were created vegetarian, and that in some end of days when things are better again We'll all be vegetarian again. By the way, kashrut, the Jewish laws of kosher, are Judaism's compromise on the vegetarian ideal of the Bible. It is just a very— just a little, uh, excursus here, uh, just to— you will, you will understand it is not a health code. It is part of Judaism's dealing with the fact that we are, to use a Christian term, fallen. Since the Garden of Eden, where the ideal life was no eating of animals. Judaism allowed the eating of animals, but under very rigorous conditions, which I won't go into now, it's not our time, but that's what kosher is about. Keeping kosher is a reminder, and it really is, it's a very effective reminder, that vegetarianism is an ideal. And that meat eating is not as, as simple as fruit eating or vegetable eating. That after all, for those who say that the purpose of kosher is self-discipline, I have a very simple question: then why aren't we restricted in terms of fruit and vegetables? If the purpose is self-discipline, then it should have had laws: these fruits you can eat, these fruits you can't eat, these vegetables you can eat, these vegetables you can't eat. It may induce self-discipline, but the The purpose was not self-discipline. The purpose is to remind you that there is a vegetarian ideal and that you have still killed when you eat meat. It's not a hamburger, it's a cow. That's the point of it. I am not a vegetarian. I am, because of Kashrut, functionally a fish-a-chick-a-terian, but the fact is that that kashrut has that effect on one who does it knowledgeably. The tragedy, again, in Jewish and other religious life is that many religious people do things by rote and the meaning is totally lost. That's a, that's a separate issue, but I just want you to see the roots of all the stuff from the Genesis story. Okay, God therefore tells, uh, what we can eat. Now there are two trees. This is very tough stuff. What do the two trees represent. Now, we have a tree of life and a tree of knowledge of good and evil, and we're not supposed to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. You know how many questions immediately arise? First of all, why can't we eat the tree of knowledge of good and evil? What are we going to learn if we do? Now, problem to begin with for a number of reasons. First of all, if the implication is that we don't know right from wrong until we eat from the tree, how could they disobey God, right? I mean, the very act of disobedience to God by eating from the tree, and the very act of God telling them right and wrong— you can't do this, can't do that— implies that they already had freedom of choice. If we didn't have freedom of choice, then how could we choose to disobey God? Which is— which, by the way, another point here is so fascinating— is all Adam and Eve— we didn't meet Eve yet— but all Adam and Eve had to do to have an idyllic world, just one miserable law. That's it. Not 613 Not Ten Commandments. One farstunkener miserable little law: don't eat from that tree. That's it. You have a great life, just don't eat from that tree. And they ate from that tree. And it has always boggled me. It is amazing. One thing. It is as if I said to you, you can drive the car of your your dreams. Just, I beg of you, don't listen to radio station, I don't know, KKKQ. Okay? That's all you have to do. Otherwise, you can drive the rest of your life the finest automobile of your dreams. And what do you do as soon as you enter the car? KKKQ. All right, that is what happened. It is a remarkable story, and it is. It's a remarkable story about what it means to be human. That's what I have to conclude this whole thing is about. I'll come back to that. Here's another problem. There are those who say that the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that good and evil or good and bad really means sexual knowledge. Well, how are they supposed to procreate if they didn't know sex? They were already told procreate. Now, while whether Eve was not around yet, that is correct. Well, Eve was around because we have the story God created both. We simply don't have yet where we meet Eve. But remember, this is a recapitulation of chapter 1. God created the human being, male and female he created them. But in any event, whether Eve is around yet or not, Eve does show up. Otherwise, the point cannot, you know, then the question of sexual knowledge is not an issue. But the animals were told to have sex, so what do you think if it wasn't sex, what does Adam think they're doing? What an interesting act. I wonder what that is. Obviously they had to know. They had to know what sex was. Or did they? That's— these are— and the reason I raise sex is because that's the thing that they discovered after they ate, which we'll see next time. That's the one thing mentioned after they ate from the tree. They knew they were naked. That's interesting. So, but they knew sex before but didn't know they were naked? Well, that's quite a feat, isn't it? Well, I think there are some answers to it, but I want to give you some of the problems that are raised. There's another one. Are we immortal? Were we created— was the human being created to die or not to die? Because later we're going to see that— well, in a moment we'll see what the penalty is for eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Well, we'll find out, I think, at least some of them. I have, I have a belief as to what Tovarah is, good and evil, in this in this instance. And, uh, I'll tell it all. I might as well tell it to you now, even though it foreshadows the story. I think you all know what happens later, so I'm not killing it for you. It's not like it's the first time Westerners have heard the Garden of Eden tale. So my suspicion is that what we have here here is innocence. That Adam and Eve, or Adam right now, is innocent. Animals are innocent. Animals procreate, but animals don't know sex. What Adam and Eve knew was procreative sexual intercourse, perhaps. Not perhaps, presumably. But they didn't know sex, in all of the ramifications of that word. In the ugly, in the beautiful, in the romantic, in the erotic, and as I said, in the dirty. That's all part of what it is. My reading of the Garden of Eden story is that it is our story. It is not Adam and Eve, it's you and me. And, and as I tell you, I always try to be very faithful to the text and not read into it what I want, what I want to learn. I do believe that it is a statement about the human condition. If it is merely about two humans named Adam and Eve, it's too important to be just about Adam and Eve. And if it weren't Adam and Eve, in other words, if it were Jerry and Barbara, they would have acted differently? Of course not. Adam and Eve is every male and every female. It has to be that way. I'm not saying they didn't exist. I don't care if they did exactly or not. It doesn't make any difference. Remember, Torah means teacher, not history. The question is, what do I learn from it, not who they were. What do I learn from it? I learned the following, more than any other single thing I learned this from the story, that in the choice in life between innocence and safety on the one hand, and knowing it all and having a tough life, we prefer painful and knowing. You may deny it, but you don't live that way. We don't want to remain children, Peter Pan notwithstanding. We do want to grow up. We may not like what we see when we grow up, but we want to grow up. You can't help growing up. You can fight it all you like, but at some point you will know the difference between procreation and sex, and God They sure as hell aren't the same thing. Animals procreate, but it is merely an act, a physical act, like urinating, like eating. It is another physical act. It is not imbued with eros. It is not imbued with any other meaning. For us it is, and that is part— That is the biggest single part of growing up. Watching my child grow up, I kept saying to my wife, he's still in the Garden of Eden, remember? He's still in the Garden of Eden. That's the way I would describe it, and I, and I treasured it. There's one of the— what is our joy in little children? That they're so innocent, and the innocence overwhelmingly is a sexual innocence when you think about it. It still amazes me that my son will run to the baseball magazine section at a newsstand. 'Cause he's not gonna run to that section in a couple of years. There will be another section that he will gravitate to first. And so long as he is still running over with lust to Topps Baseball Weekly, with real lust. I know that he has not fully left the Garden of Eden, though I get some reports that he has been moving, uh, in, in other directions. So that— what can I do? He has a foot in the Garden of Eden and a foot out at the age of 9. But it is a remarkable thing to see. Now, I don't want him forever to gravitate only to the baseball magazine section. I'll be worried. On the other hand, I don't want him to be a lecturer. And obviously, that is the difficulty in life, is to learn how to control those elements of us. But the innocence is what is described here. But innocence— innocence is— innocence has another characteristic. Kids think they'll live forever. I think In that sense, Adam was immortal, in the sense that being innocent, you don't think of dying. Not that he wouldn't literally die. After all, we don't have an implication animals didn't die. He must have seen animals dying. And what does it mean that we were created immortal? What if a very, very large dinosaur fell on his head? Would he have gotten up like Superman? I mean, it's almost— I have to say, reading this over and over and over, I don't believe that we were created to live forever. I know that you can read it out of this. I do not dispute that. I think both our readings are legitimate. But I don't believe so. I'll tell you why. First of all, life is undesirable if you live forever. Only death makes life meaningful. If you knew you lived forever, why would you ever do anything? You can always do it tomorrow. In fact, you can do it in the next millennium. Shine your shoes? What for? I could do it in the year 3008. Isn't that right? I mean, think about it. Frightening thought. Why God would not create a world like that for us, would just go on forever, to do what? The whole point is that it will end, and therefore we have a constricted amount of time. Ask anybody told they have a terminal illness, they change their lives, they stop watching TV. It's the first thing they do because they realize how much time it took up that was meaningless. That is why there's a great Talmudic dramatic statement. Don't believe in yourself till the day you die. You don't know the day you'll die, so never believe in yourself. In other words, take it all in immediately. Don't get overconfident that there is always time to do things. There isn't. There is a lot to do and the time is short. We're all terminal in that sense. I don't mean that in any way as grizzly or unhappy, I say, thank God. You want to be here forever? Nobody wants to be here forever. I— and to make sure it was true, I asked David on the way here, my 9-year-old son, David, would you like to live forever? Said no. Said why? Said it would be boring. He's right. That's exactly why. It would be boring. Life is made interesting, inherently interesting, But truly, the innocent don't know from death, and that was what he was. Another point here: there were two trees, one you can eat from, one you can't eat from. Isn't it obvious therefore that they are mutually exclusive trees? The tree of eternal life— that's probably what it meant— keep eating from that tree and and you will stay alive. Now you understand what I believe has happened. We weren't created immortal. We were created with the choice of immortality without knowing good and evil, or mortality and knowing it all, which is what good and evil really means biblically used. Good and evil, when it's used, means everything, means the whole thing. So you have your choice And here it is. This is— I think this— I think I finally figured it out. The mystery is this, or the solution to the mystery is this: you have a choice. You want to eat from the tree of immortality. Remember, you could be— it's not that we were created immortal. We were created with the possibility of immortality by constantly eating from the tree of life. We had another choice. Remember, it's one or the other. God says it clearly, it's one or the other. Eat from the tree of immortality or eat from the tree of knowledge of everything. And the moment they had a choice, they ate from the tree of knowledge. I'll take it, I will take it over immortality. And that's what you would have said. That's the point. They're human You're human. That's what we want. That's what I've always learned from this story, that we'd rather be fully alive than live forever. Those are your choices. Really alive, know it all. And we want to know it all. That's what humans are about. We want to know it all. That is why when a man and a woman sleep together, in the Bible it says, and Adam knew Adam knew Eve, and Abraham knew Sarah. That's what knowledge is about, and that's the knowledge we want. He couldn't have had knowledge, he could have procreated, but he wouldn't have known woman, and woman wouldn't have known man. And we prefer to know than to live a long life like an intelligent animal, which is all we would be. That's why the story is so great. Anybody in there would have done the same thing. That's what humans opt for, and that's the story of all our lives. You want the safe course, or do you want to live life? The Bible comes down with the following: if you want to know life, you will have pain. But you know, it's funny, we always speak about what happened to Adam and Eve as punishment for eating, as you'll see in the later chapter. But never says they were punished. It just says God said, because you ate from the tree, this is what's going to happen. Never says I'm punishing you. It's a very common misconception. This is the consequence of knowledge. The consequence of knowledge is pain. You want to be naive, you'll have less pain. And a lot of people prefer that. A lot don't. I don't want to hear, I don't want to know. I am convinced that 7 hours a day of television in the average American home is a way of not dealing with pain. It anesthetizes you. Noise is on. It blocks out other stuff. But you don't live a life then. They're leading lives in television land, but you're not in your living room. That's the choice we have in life. Live intensely and have a lot of pain. That's the way God created the world. Those are your choices. Or eat from the Tree of Life. You just— Tree of Life is be very, you know, healthy, healthy, healthy, and drop dead. And you spend— and I am convinced that that is a part of it. People are deeply afraid of intense living. Because intense living, from bungee jumping to taking a tour on your own rather than with a group, is difficult. Getting married is difficult. So you have all these men walking around who don't want the pain of marriage. They want the tree of life of eternal youth. And they have it, and they're empty. And they're still children, but they don't want the pain. And for a man, more than for a woman, is, is a realization of the pain that marriage will bring, because it is a denial of certain very inherent stuff. This is not to say that later the pain isn't shared equally, all right? That's not to say that. It's just to say that at the outset, men are more aware of the price, so they don't want the pain. And they don't eat from the Tree of Knowledge. I think it's a very big— I think the same thing with opting not to have children. It's a safer way to live life. It's less pain, there's no question. The ratio of pain to pleasure with children is an interesting one, which we— you can reflect on at your leisure. But to opt— if you don't have children, you don't have children. It's not the end of the world. But to choose not to have children, unless there are just extreme circumstances— and I, I would never try to convince anybody to have children. I'm speaking now not to an individual, I'm speaking generically. It's a choice for no pain. What the— what Genesis is saying here is to live, to know it all, is to have a lot of pain. And but this is the human choice. God doesn't get angry at Adam. It's fascinating. He just says, okay, you made your choice, this is what happens. As you will see later, it's— and that is what the choice that we make, it's ennobling of human beings. I have never looked at Adam the Great sinner. It's not my tradition, A, and B, I don't see it that way. I'd have done it the second God would have said, don't you touch that tree. Where is it exactly? Where is it, by the way? And you know what's fascinating here? All the trees were nice and good to touch. It goes out of its way to show the, the, uh, the, the rebelliousness of Adam's decision. It wasn't like God made it a really tough thing. All the other trees were ugly, miserable tasting, and one delicious looking tree with ripe cantaloupes is in the middle. It isn't that way at all. Looking for— it's what's so beautiful. Verse 9: And God makes all these beautiful trees to look at and delicious to eat from. That's all. But one tree, if you eat from that tree, you're going to know everything, but you can live forever if you keep eating from the other tree. That's the point. That is how I have resolved the dilemma. We were not made immortal. We could have chosen immortality by eating from that tree, and you know what happened. Let's go on. Verse 10, there was the— this one I If I'd have edited the Torah, which I didn't, I would not have included the next couple of verses about which rivers came out of Eden. It has always struck me as a remarkably unimportant little item, but it obviously isn't. It obviously had great importance for the Jews at the time. They all must have meant something. It was very physical. Listen, now I want to tell you where the— where Eden— where the Garden of Eden was. Okay, so it gives you various names, some of which are not findable today but which clearly meant something then. I won't give you all of them, it's not important. But what is fascinating is the literary device here, all the tension. Remember, it didn't even end with a verb. Remember the sentence? It's, uh, and, uh, the Tree of Life is in the middle of the garden, and a tree of knowledge of good and bad. And the rivers which came out of the— you know, like, who cares what happened? It's a, it's a, it's very Beethoven-like. Beethoven, that's how romantic music was really developed. You get tension, tension, tension, then a low, nice, lovely melody. And then tension, tension, tension, tension. And that's what's happened to you. So what's with the trees? Well, let me first tell you about the four rivers. I know that's really, really concerning you at this time. So we will skip the four rivers and go to verse 15. God, Elohim, right? Adonai Elohim took Adam and he puts him— this is a repeat of what you had early, it's just, it's a recapitulation— and he put him in the— by the way, it's such a beautiful word in Hebrew, it really means, and he very lightly He put him down. It's this vision of very carefully, like your most treasured little item, he put him down in the Garden of Eden to work at it. And here's where you have the real word for work, avoda, le'avoda, to work at it and to watch over it. Verse 16. And God commanded Adam, the Adam, the man, it's generic, it's not even, it's still the human. And God commanded the human, saying, from every tree in the garden you shall eat. Again, the vegetarian statement. In other words, don't eat from the animals. And really, 17 continues but from the tree of knowledge of good and bad, don't eat from it because on the day you eat from it you will die. Another proof that day doesn't mean 24-hour period, because if it did, God lied. Because the day Adam and Eve ate from it, they didn't die. So it can't mean the day. It means the period, the time. The time that you eat from it. Does it have day in your translations? Because on the day that you eat from it, it doesn't. What's wrong with your translations? What do you have? When? See, when is correct, but it's not literal. See, that's the trouble. They should really have translations of the Bible, literal and figurative. That would be a bigger help for everybody to learn Bible. It's another project I'll embark on if I live forever, but I've already eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil so heavily that I have indigestion.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this. Now, what if everything you thought you knew about online exploitation was only the beneath the surface. The shocking docuseries Sexploited rips the veil off the digital darkness destroying lives. You'll be stunned by what's uncovered in these real stories. Watch the trailers if you dare. Once you see it, you'll understand why silence is no longer an option. Visit SalemNow.com and watch Sexploited in America and visit SexploitedFilm.com. Back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

Okay, anyway, Uh, so yes, when you eat from it, uh, you will die. God, uh, God, or Adonai Elohim, said then— it's, it's really right now, it's, it's a jump, it's totally unrelated, but this is truly one of the great, great verses of the, of the Bible. And then God said, it's not good for the man to be alone. I'm going to make for him— and here it's very unfortunate, the translation. I want to give you literal translation, then do what you want with it. Ezer is helper, that's correct. But whatever else the words that are used used. Kineged in Hebrew has a meaning. It means equal to. It's constantly used in the Talmud. For example, it will say that learning Torah is equal to all the other commandments. It uses the word kineged. That's what's used here. I will make for him a helper who is his equal. That is what it says. This is not post-feminist hermeneutics. Believe me, I am totally prepared to read the Bible as it is with any difficulty a modern human being would have. But it says it, so we might as well read it as it says it. Now, the fascinating part is feminists may not like— I won't say will not like, feminists come in different varieties— feminists may not like the helper part. They like the equal part, but not the helper part. Whether you like it or not, that is the way it is written. I like it. I think helper who is his equal is the perfect statement of the ideal relationship of a helper, but not a helper as in my butler, my maid, my servant. My equal. Because if it is not as helper helper, then what is our relationship? Just as equals? Then what do we do for each other? It can't be. It could have said, "And I will make for him a being his equal." It could have been, "I will make from a living being his equal." Use the word equal, but not helper. Or it could have been, "I will make him an ezer, a helper, but not have his equal." I think this choice of words which seem in a way— and they are, there's a tension— how can you be my helper and my equal? That's the— that's a very large tension in male-female relations to begin with. How do you be both? But I cannot imagine another way that male-female relations can work out. Now, you may want to argue, well, no, it should be the other way. He should be her helper and equal to her. Okay, that's not the way it was set up. You may say that that's the way you would like make it. Thank God it's a free country, and I mean that with no tongue in cheek. Thank God it is, and you are free to experiment in that way. Generally speaking, my own humble experience of observation has been that equality is necessary and the sense of help is necessary to make things work in what is already a tension-filled possibility. We of the opposite sexes strangers spending their lives together. It's a tough thing to work out. Nobody knows it better than Westerners who divorce all the time, and others who refuse to marry or are afraid of marrying. It is, it's a difficult thing, but that is the way in which her creation is described. You might have preferred it the other way, and I honor that, but at least understand what is written biblically as God's, as the understanding of the way God would do it. Some will argue again, feminists, whether male or female, well, it was written, they would argue, by males, from a male point of view, and obviously that's the way they'll describe it. Maybe so. I cannot, I have no answer to that. I can only tell you that this is the way it is written. Deal with it as you will. I think there is a great deal to say for that tension of equality and help. I think that a lot of couples today who have only the equality, and where there isn't the sense of helping the other— I have my career, you have your career, and, uh, and, uh, neither, uh, is particularly there for the other because we have equal macro roles in this world. Some people make that work. It seems not to be such a wonderful thing, though in theory it may have worked out. In practice, it seems not to have worked out. His macro role— not him because he's male— but his macro role may need the helper that she can support him with, but she is totally his equal. That is the way I read this. Some people will gag on it. I appreciate that. But that is my reading. That, well, that is the, I think, the honest reading. You can say you reject it, but the honest reading is helper who is his equal, and therefore he is to see her that way too. It doesn't— it goes in both directions, in both, in both ways. Okay, now The next sentence is very difficult. If there is any logical continuity, we got a problem here. God says, I am going to create a helper who is his equal. What is the next sentence? Tell me you would not expect the next sentence, and God created woman. Uh-uh. What we have rather is, and God made from the earth all the beasts of the beasts and all the fowl, and he brought them to the man to see what he will call it. And whatever he calls it, whatever he calls that living being, that's its name. Does that seem slightly like either a non sequitur or What exactly did God have in mind as a helper equal to him? Well, it's a very interesting thing, isn't it? It's a very difficult thing. Now, first of all, there's another operative element here of naming. Naming makes something real. It's just a fascinating element. To it. It's like we decided to no longer name our saltwater fish because when they died my wife got very, very upset. Because it wasn't that a blue chromis died, it was that Jerry died. There's a very big difference between, you know, the blue chromis died, the one The one with the yellow tail? Let's get another one. And Jerry died today at 4 o'clock. He was lying upside down in the tank. Names give a very real sense of reality. It is a fascinating, fascinating thing. So now, anyway, that's part of what is going on here. And Adam names all of these animals. But what does it mean with after the sentence of God wants to make him a helper who's his equal? So what is he bringing him animals for? Oh, an eagle, wonderful. Maybe that is it. So let's see what else happens. Verse 20, and God, and Adam gave, and the Adam, the man, he still doesn't have a name in effect. It's still the man each time. And the man gave names to all of the animals and to all of the birds of the sky and to all the beasts of the wilderness. And, uh, but— it's such beautiful Hebrew— but for Adam there was no finding a helper equal to him. Well, the implication seems to me pretty clear that he was looking for a helper among the animals. He was looking for companionship. Remember, it all starts with God said it's not good for man to be alone. Remember that? That, that's the statement. And then the next thing is God brings animals. Clearly there was something to be taught here. The, the, the something The major thing I think to be taught is that we need people. That patsche all of the greatness, and there is, in having dogs, and God, the amount of joy that we get from our dogs sometimes bothers me. Okay? It is that high an amount of joy. But that's, but our real companions, Is it going to be a human, and a specific human, the opposite-sex human, which we'll come to in a moment, because this stuff is filled with politically incorrect things. It's just filled with it. That it's not animals, that he couldn't find his place among the animals. It's not an ecosystem only. He couldn't find it. First of all, they may help us, animals, but they are never our equals. Whatever else will be said between you and your German Shepherd, it is not an equality. It is not an egalitarian relationship. God willing, I certainly hope that is true. No, and it needs to be added in our time. But it is interesting. It's really a way of saying the logical thing was for him to look among the animals. Gave them names. You're a hippopotamus. You're a You're an eagle, you're a bird, you're a type of bird. And so didn't work, okay? Didn't work with the animals. So he could not find— and it says he couldn't find a helpmate equal to him. It doesn't say couldn't find a helpmate. Dogs are your helpers, horses are your helpers, cows are your helpers, but none of them are your equal. You're alone with without an equal. That's the other thing that is being said here. Even if you have a companion, human, but you— they're not your equal, you are still not fully cured of your loneliness. That's radical. That's radical. That's why kids can't stop it. They're not your equals, your kids. With— when All is said and done, that is not what will assuage your loneliness, children. You need an equal. It's powerful, powerful stuff. So Adam realizes he's not going to find a helper who's his equal among the animals. Verse 21. And so God creates a great sleep. Tardemah is beyond sleep. It's really— God gave an anesthetic would really be an appropriate modern translation. And he slept, and Adam and the man slept. And he took not the rib— is not correct. Do any of you have rib? You do. It's really his side. He took from his side. Selah is really, is really side. I checked into this. He took one of Adam's sides. That's really what it is. And then he closed the, uh, the, the, his skin, uh, over it. And God built— it's very interesting, the term used here. It's not vayitzer, which we talked of earlier. It's not vayivrah, created. It's not vayas, made. God built. You have a vision of God the sculptor now working on woman. God built the side which he took from Adam into a woman, Isha, and he brought her to Adam. It's, it's so beautiful it could bring tears to your eyes, the, the touchingness of God's, of God's acts here. Oh, I— here you were looking, here I want you to meet. By the way, there is— the stuff is so rich in possibilities to, to read into it, like why didn't Why didn't God do it while Adam was awake? He could have made it painless. God does miracles and so on. Why didn't God want him to see it? It's something the rabbis, for example, deal with. Why to put to sleep and so on? Why from the side, not from elsewhere? I mean, it's all stuff that you can work on as well. But God brings her to Adam, to the man. Again, it's ha'adam, to the man. I would just like to tell you something that is pointed out by Sarna. We have no other example in the ancient Near East of a creation story of woman. This is unique in the ancient world. I think that alone That alone tells you of a tremendous sense of awareness of the worth of woman as compared to parallel civilizations. Plus another thing that is pointed out. Man is created in 1 verse, woman in 6. The care, the poetry, the time is fascinating. He is, he's just made, he's just created. God to dust made man. But woman, it's almost as if it took God more time, it took more effort. And by the way, because you certainly know by now I am not politically correct on feminist issues, but I think that it is totally in keeping with the text to note that creation works progressively, that what is created later is a greater creation than that which preceded it. Woman is last. Woman can be argued to be the greatest creation. She comes after and is last, just like man is a greater creation than animal. Animal is a greater creation than vegetable, and so on and so forth. Woman is the final creative act of God. That's it. That ends it all. I can't get better than that. Not only that, not only that, if I asked you, would you rather be made from dust or from a human, what would you say is superior? Men are from dust. They're dirt. A lot of women would agree with You piece of dirt, you dreck! But a woman— that is why when I read some feminist critiques of it as sexist, because she comes from his rib, it's sexist, she's made from— why? I don't understand. It's sexist in the other direction. If you read it without blinders, hers is a superior act. It takes more time, it comes from a far greater source, from human beings. It's the last of the creations. There's a reason for it. There's no reason for his being created. He's just created. She actually has a sense of intrinsic purpose. He's just made like animals are. It doesn't say, 'And God looked and saw it was not good for eagles to be alone.' It's not good for Adam to be alone. She makes life possible for the human species. Not because she procreates, but because she makes it worth living. Very powerful stuff. That is utterly, I believe, a statement of the sanctity of the female. I do not— I can't believe that an honest reading of this reads an anti-female, or females are less important You— some people say, well, it's an afterthought. No, it's a purposeful thought. I mean, does anybody really believe God didn't have females in mind? It's just to show to man, this is what matters— female. All the other stuff won't dissuade your loneliness. By the way, incidentally, fascinating thing here: Adam didn't say, I'm lonely. Isn't that interesting? God said it's not good for Adam to be alone. Men don't know it's not good to be alone. Isn't that fascinating? It is truly, I tell you, it is moving. You would think he would say, "God, boy, am I lonely, and dogs just don't do it." Nothing. He's just walking around, hey, hey, we're so happy too, and just having a grand time. He's a dunce. He's an absolute dunce. He doesn't know what it's like to live a life. God, God has to announce, hello, hello, it is not good for man to be alone. Oh, okay, in that case I'll put— maybe that's why he had to put asleep. Now it just occurred to me, maybe that's it. If he'd have told them while he was awake, forget it, I am very happy the way it is, I don't want a woman, thank you very much. I don't know, I'm just reading the possibilities. I don't know. Oh boy. Anyway, now in verse 23, God, uh, So, so now, now he wakes up. Now Adam realizes. And isn't it true in the life of every male? Males don't know it's not good to be alone. They think it's terrific. Oh, free! I'm free! I can go from woman to woman, or no women at all, or just go to baseball games, or just do my law work. I'm free! But then when they meet a woman, oh, they wake up. And here he goes, this time it is, it is one of my, it's a bone of my bones, it is the flesh of my flesh. And he gives her a name. See, names are important. And he said, and this we call Isha, because from an ish she was taken. Ish is man, Isha is woman. Fascinating about spelling. Ish in Hebrew is aleph, yod, shin. So you know to make anything, any noun, a female noun in Hebrew, you add a kamatz, the ah or aw sound, under the last consonant and add a hey. So for example, I'll do it to you in a made-up English word. Um, bone. All right, so we have bone here. Bone would be be masculine. Bona would be how you would make it Hebraized, the feminine of it. So you have ish is man, isha is woman. But it's fascinating that you drop the yud of ish to make isha. And there's a lot of plays on it because it's a fascinating thing. The word for fire in Hebrew is 'esh,' which is the same as the word for woman except with the 'hey' at the end. So it's as if woman is fire and hey, which is the— which in Hebrew is the initial for God. Woman is fire and God. It, it's just to give you an idea of what can be done with the Hebrew, and I don't think it's too much reading into it because the spellings here are important. They have reasons for them. Anyway, he wakes up and he's really impressed, and the final sentence is absolutely incredible. Final sentence of chapter 2. And that is why this is so funny, because it's like out of nowhere. It's like a, and now a word from your psychiatrist. That really is out of nowhere. We've had nothing like this. All we have is a story till now. And now all of a sudden there's a psychiatric insight. And therefore a man will leave his mother, his father and mother, and cling unto his wife, and they will be as one flesh. Isn't that great? It doesn't tell you any part of the story. What happens here? It is very interesting. There are two ways of reading Al-Qaim, the first two words of 24, as prescriptive or descriptive. It is either prescribing how we should act or describing how in fact we act. Let me show you both. Let's do the descriptive. Remember the sentence before? Oh, look, this is a bone of my bones, this is the flesh of my flesh. So therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings unto his woman or wife, and they are as one flesh. You get it? It's a continuation of the preceding verse. You are— you were woman are part of me. So I therefore leave my parents and rejoin you, and we are as one flesh, because that's how we started, as one flesh. That's descriptive. Prescriptive, and both are fully accurate, is therefore no, you can't cling unto a woman until you leave your parents. Men, you must grow up in order to have the woman who is your equal. If you're mommy's boy, you can't cling to your wife. You either cling to your parents or you cling to your wife. You can't cling to both. And it's telling you what you ought to do. Bye. Keep calling. No, no, that's right. Keep calling, keep visiting, and all of that. But, bye-bye. It is a very powerful prescriptive sentence. And parents need to know that about their sons. Bye-bye. It doesn't say that about daughters, because apparently the daughter's ability— it doesn't, I must say, this may be stepping on truly virgin territory, in the worst sense of the word, but I— you don't As a man, I never recall men, when talking about girls and then women that we would be dating— there was that period when it went from girls to women, but I mean that not in terms of feminism, in terms of simply age— that I don't remember, though, a guy saying, "Well, she's too attached to her mother," or "too attached to her father." I must say I don't recall that among guys. We'd have other complaints. Complaints, but that was not one of them. But it is not an uncommon complaint at all. He hasn't severed his ties, and you know, where he's his mother's boy or whatever. It is a complaint. Women want a man to be a man, and that is part of being a man, is growing up. And it's painful, and it means leaving Mommy and Daddy. Not abandoning Mommy and Daddy, please, it's a terrible thing, but leaving And that is prescribed. Remember, we are not talking about Exodus or Deuteronomy. We're talking about Genesis. This is the second chapter of the creation of the world, and it tells you the way the world ought to be. From the creation of Adam and Eve, God is saying, leave mommy and daddy and cling to your wife. The other thing to be learned is that there was a monogamous ideal from creation. Polygamy was allowed, but monogamy was the ideal. It does not say he shall cling unto his wives. There's an extremely simple reason for that: because then they're not his equals. God said, I will create a helper who is his equal, not helpers who are his equal. Why didn't God create 3 women? He'd have been overjoyed. Imagine that, waking up in the morning, wow! Eve, Raquel, and Barbara. Holy crow, this is great! Put me to sleep again tonight. Did not work out that way. To have someone— polygamy is inequality. There can be love, there can be all sorts of things. And by the way, you will see later on, wherever the Torah depicts polygamy, it's awful. It's allowed, but it's miserable. One is loved, one is not loved, one is even hated. It's not good. We are meant to have an equal helper, we males, and it is not to be a polygamous relationship because it is not one of equality. In this regard, one final thought: God said it is not good for man to be alone, And I mean this absolutely sincerely, God could have said, God could have therefore created a community. God could have created, you know, 10 men, 10 women, 62 men, right? A whole— thank you. At least he didn't say wrong. Very important thing. Loneliness is not assuaged by numbers according to this. It is assuaged by a partner, and the partner is opposite sex, and the partner is equal, and the partner is a helper. To stop being alone, you need all of those. If it's not equal, they're still alone. If it's not a helper, it's still alone. If it's not the opposite sex, it's still alone. This is not the sort of thing people like to say these days, where theoretically all human relationships are equally desirable and wonderful. God knows I deeply believe in friends, and I believe couples need friends like singles need friends, and we need friends of the same sex very badly. But for the ultimate existential human aloneness that God describes here, it is assuaged according to this by a helper of the opposite sex, and only one. And that's the way it was designed. That doesn't mean that if you don't have one, or you lost one through what— for whatever reason, particularly death, for example, that you are doomed to a life of being lonely. We're not talking lonely— remember, Adam didn't feel lonely. We're not talking about loneliness in the sense, gee, I feel lonely. We're talking in the deepest human sense of what is most good for you. God said it's not good for man to be alone. He didn't say, I feel bad that Adam feels lonely. Adam didn't feel lonely. God knew he was alone, and it's not good to be alone. By the way, it's particularly not good for men to be alone. It didn't say it's not good for women to be alone, because when women are alone, they don't tear the world apart, but single men do. The most consistent facet of crime, of violent crime in the world, in the world, and certainly in our society, is not race, is not class. It is singleness of men. Single men are, are over 90% of the murderers, of the mass murderers, the single murderers, of the rapists of our society. That's what God is saying. Not that your loneliness is the issue. Loneliness can be assuaged with a lot of people and friends. Thank God it can. Not everybody can marry. People get widowed. But it is not good, it is not healthy, not to have this opposite-sex helper who is your equal. That's the point that is really being made there, and it is a very important one. And it goes to the heart of what God observes about the human condition. And this unbelievable chapter 2 ends with a, a new point. The two of them were naked, Adam and his wife, but they weren't embarrassed. How that's possible, we'll see next time. Thank you very much.