She is Valued for Herself Alone

The image of God appeared for a second time, born not of a woman, as it would be from then on, but from the mind of the Maker. From Adam’s rib, her flesh was formed, and with his breath, God inflated her lungs. She was a new creation, like the one from which she came yet altogether different. She was bone of Adam’s bones, flesh of his flesh. Called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

But why was she here? What was her purpose? History has struggled to answer. She’s been a bit of everything, really. She’s been in bondage and she’s been free. She’s been valued and discarded. She’s been used and abused. She’s been a mother, a sister, and a wife. She’s been the world to many and no one to too many. But what did God intend?

Genesis 2 holds a surprising answer.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Throughout that first creation week, he populated the land and sea and sky, bringing forth all kinds of living creatures with his powerful voice. But all that he made paled in comparison to what he formed from the dust on the sixth day. The crowning achievement of creation was not the now bustling earth that once stood empty and void. No, all the winds and waves, trees and shrubs, mammals and reptiles, birds and bugs were nothing beside Adam. He alone was made in God’s image. He alone was ruler and cultivator of all that lie before him.

Adam was God’s glorious creation, and he set out to do God’s will. Taking upon his responsibility to rule over all the earth, he received each kind of animal in what I suppose was a strange processional with God himself as the usher. Adam thought about each one and wisely named them all (Genesis 2:19-20). One after another, the animals came forth. But Adam noticed something missing. Of all God’s creation, nothing seemed a match for him. He saw the animals pairing up but to whom would he go home?

God saw and God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18).

It’s easy to miss the beauty of this account. Far more than a creation story, this is a love story. God loved Adam. Adam loved God. But that wasn’t enough. Adam had a need that only God could fill. So he made Eve.

Eve was made like Adam but also from Adam (Genesis 2:21). And after, as a father would a bride, God presented her to Adam (Genesis 2:22). Here at least was a helper fit for him. Someone in whom he could confide, rejoice, and be intimate. He fell madly in love. 

The New Testament notices this act of creation, using it as the basis from which all teaching on manhood and womanhood resides. The man was created first, then the woman. It is the man who is the head, the woman who submits. Made for man, here is woman.

The world bases her worth, as it does to man, on what she is. She is mother. She is wife. She is co-laborer. She is sexual desire. She is businesswoman. She is a thousand other things, some good and right, some twisted and wrong, just as man. But to God, and to Adam, Eve, and therefore Woman, her value is not in what she is but that she is.

Derek Kidner, in his commentary on Genesis, makes this startling claim. “The naming of the animals, a scene which portrays man as monarch of all he surveys, poignantly reveals him as a social being, made for fellowship, not power: he will not live until he loves, giving himself away (24) to another on his own level. So the woman is presented wholly as his partner and counterpart; nothing is yet said of her as childbearer. She is valued for herself alone.” (Emphasis mine)

Woman is valued for herself alone. She is many things, but the glory of Woman is that she is. She is a God-created original, valued not for her future achievements but for her present companionship. God’s creation of woman was not a pragmatic move. It was not merely for childbearing, nor was it for housekeeping or child-raising. Eve was created for Adam. Eve’s value was in her existence alone. That first day when Adam beheld Eve, he did not wish her to be any more than she was. That she was was enough for him.

God’s intention in creation was not to make useful tools but to breathe life into beings in whom he—and we—can delight. Woman, according to the Bible is marvelous because she is. She needs no other reason.