From previous studies, we’ve discovered, we are in agreement, that marriage as an institution is a social matter governed by the state. Marriages conducted by the state and other religious faiths are valid marriages. We may not consider them Christian, but that doesn’t preclude them being legitimate marriages. We sometimes confuse what occurred in Genesis 2:21-24 as a marriage. Technically, it isn’t just that; it’s more! Indeed, Adam was married to the woman, who at that time stood before him, because it was due to what God had done (Genesis 2:21-22) to his original creation of mankind (Genesis 1:27) that the two, male and female, would marry and become one flesh (Genesis 2:24), vis-à-vis image God in bringing life into the world.[1]
We need to read and consider what the Lord tells us he did in the beginning: “And God created man in his own image, he created him in the image of God; he created male and female” (Genesis 1:27). In other words, neither the male nor the female is singularly in the image of God, but both, together, are the physical image of God. The male and female are the **only** physical image God ever created of himself. Wherever we go from this point, as that pertains to God’s image, this idea needs to be our guide in interpreting what we find.
As we turn the page in our Bibles, we come to find gender under the microscope. What happened? How did gender come to be at all—a chicken and egg kind of thing that evolution is unable to adequately explain. We are told that the Lord said: “It is not good for the man to be alone, I am going to make a helper for him, as his counterpart” (Genesis 2:18). When the Lord said he would make a helper for the man, what would that look like? Would it be Adam2? To prepare the man, the Lord had Adam study and name the animals, and whatever Adam named them, that would be what they were called. To give a name to something is symbolic of ownership or rulership, and Adam, after all, was placed in charge of everything that the Lord created (Genesis 1:26). However, when Adam performed the task of naming the animals, he discovered there wasn’t any that were fit to be his helper and counterpart (Genesis 2:20).
Most of us know this story, don’t we? However, the trouble with knowing something, one often overlooks a detail or two, simply because he believes he already knows what he is being told, so he really doesn’t consider every word. I do this often and must force myself to reconsider the facts, and reconsider them again, until my mind follows my direction to consider the details. The translators tell us that the Lord caused a deep sleep to come over Adam, and God removed one of Adam’s ribs, and, with it, he made the woman. So, was Adam minus one rib, when God made the woman?
The Hebrew word that is translated into rib in Genesis 2:22 is tsaylaw (H6763). Elsewhere, it is translated into chambers (H6763) of the Temple that Solomon built (Kings 6:5), and in verse-34 the same word is translated into two leaves (H6763) of one door. The point is, whatever the Lord removed from Adam, it, clearly, wasn’t what the translators tell us, because what was removed from Adam made him masculine, and what was taken from him and formed outside of him was his feminine counterpart. In other words, prior to this operation, Adam was male and female. After the operation, human gender came into being. Seeing what God had done, Adam declared: “this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man” (Genesis 2:23).
Thus, we are able to understand and visualize how human gender came to exist. In the beginning the male/female existed in one physical body. Later, God separated or divided humanity into a man and a woman, masculine and feminine. But, how does this relate to marriage? The prime directive of mankind, when God created Adam was to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…” (Genesis 1:28). This wasn’t to be done indiscriminately, but was to be done through marriage (cp. Genesis 2:24), intimately working together to produce families, and families would be enlarged to form cities and towns until the whole earth would be filled. This kind of labor would image what God had done, when he created the heavens and the earth and everything contained in them.
What we call a gay marriage is unable to do this. This doesn’t make such a marriage illegitimate, it simply means a gay marriage does not nor is it able to image God in bringing life into the world, vis-à-vis it cannot fulfill the prime directive. When a woman gives birth, according to the Law, she is unclean for a period of time. From what I’m able to understand, she is unclean or perhaps a better word would be impure (in the sense that she lacks something), because she is unable to conceive and produce children during this period described in the Bible. She isn’t evil because she is unclean/impure. She merely is temporarily unable to fulfill the prime directive.
Some marriages produce children, while others do not, no matter who is married to whom. Therefore, the inability to fulfill the prime directive does not invalidate what we call a marriage. In previous studies I concluded a marriage is one, if the state says so, and/or if a religious institution says so. Even when folks live together, as a husband and wife do, they are often considered husband and wife by common law. So, although a gay marriage is unable to fulfill the prime directive, which God gave to mankind, it is still a marriage according to the state and some religious authorities.
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[1] This study represents a change in what my previous study claimed. My general conclusion about gay marriages is different here than it was in my first study: Creating Gender.
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