My theology is a little rusty so bear with me, but; I believe the teaching here is that initially God did create ‘companions’ for Adam from the earth by way of creatures/animals/critters/etc and then had Adam go around naming them all. But then it goes on to say something like ‘there was not a helper fit for him from them’, so God made this “helper” (I’ll elaborate on that word) directly from Adam who immediately recognised her as being from himself. Genesis isn’t really literal either, especially not the first half of it so think of this more as a metaphor.
If you dive into the linguistics a bit (my memory here is also a bit rusty) the term “helper” is translated from the Hebrew word “ezer” and is the same word used to describe God’s relationship with humanity. There’s a lot of misinterpretation (understandably so IMO) about the word “helper” in most translations, but what most theologians believe it to mean by the use of the word “ezer” is the relationship between man and woman is collaborative and supportive, and not hierarchical despite the English translation making it sound a bit not like that.
I think he made Adam out of mud or something
Fair, it’s been a while since I last read it. But my question stands: I guess there was some more mud left…?
My theology is a little rusty so bear with me, but; I believe the teaching here is that initially God did create ‘companions’ for Adam from the earth by way of creatures/animals/critters/etc and then had Adam go around naming them all. But then it goes on to say something like ‘there was not a helper fit for him from them’, so God made this “helper” (I’ll elaborate on that word) directly from Adam who immediately recognised her as being from himself. Genesis isn’t really literal either, especially not the first half of it so think of this more as a metaphor.
If you dive into the linguistics a bit (my memory here is also a bit rusty) the term “helper” is translated from the Hebrew word “ezer” and is the same word used to describe God’s relationship with humanity. There’s a lot of misinterpretation (understandably so IMO) about the word “helper” in most translations, but what most theologians believe it to mean by the use of the word “ezer” is the relationship between man and woman is collaborative and supportive, and not hierarchical despite the English translation making it sound a bit not like that.