The creation of the first woman

Matthew Henry’s comment on the creation of Eve is most expressive —

If man is the head, she [woman] is the crown, a crown to her husband, the crown of the visible creation. The man was dust refined, but the woman was double-refined, one remove further from the earth. . . . The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.

Eve, then, was Adam’s second self and differed from him in sex only, not in nature. Priority of creation gave Adam headship but not superiority. Both man and woman were endowed for equality and for mutual interdependence. Often woman excels man in the capacity to endure ill-treatment, sorrow, pain and separation. Throughout history, man, through pride, ignorance or moral perversion has treated woman as being greatly inferior, and has enslaved and degraded her accordingly. Among many heathen tribes today woman is a mere chattel, the burden-bearer, with no rights whatever to equality with man.

Herbert Lockyer, All the Women of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2016).