Genesis 2:21–23

A creation story within a creation story. The imagery changes from a potter shaping clay to a contractor building from an architectural blueprint (“rib” is later used as an architectural detail).

Presumably an anesthetist G*D has a protocol for awakening as well as a putting to sleep. Left in darkness is the number of Days this Not-Alone Project took. Did ’adam sense a loss before recognizing a transformational return of a heretofore unconscious part?

It is not until there is another image of an image of a creator that we have speech, a talking with another as well as a creator in the cool of the day. Tilling and watching do not seem to engender grist for conversation.

’Adam’s first words are in the form of a feminine indicative pronoun, “This one.” Fortunately, the writer has an already formed grammar sufficient for the needed poetic form appropriate to this creative moment.

This one … at last … bone/flesh
This one … rising ’ishah … from ’ish
… this one …

Up to this point naming has been a matter of distinguishing one thing from another. Now a “something else” can be named for what can be seen as a connection between differences. We might even go so far as a recognition of a constructed Galatea who can be encountered and that will make a difference in the expected arc of a Pygmalionesque ’adam.

With the introduction of ’ishah (too easily condensed to a category of “woman”) the story of a simply tiller and watcher (too easily identified as “male”) cannot remain the same (here remember the song of a lonely goatherd in The Sound of Music).

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