Why did God use Adam’s rib to create Eve?

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Why did God use Adam's rib to create Eve? The book of Genesis relates how

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God created Eve. The Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh.

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Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and brought her to the man. The phrase for one of his ribs could be translated a part of his side, but almost every

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English translation specifies the part as a rib. Earlier in making

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Adam, God used the dust of the ground to form his body and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

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But in making Eve, God did not go back to the dust. He used one of Adam's ribs to form the woman.

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When she was brought to Adam, the man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

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She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man. God used Adam's rib to form

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Eve. He used existing tissue and did not start from scratch to show that Adam and Eve were of the same substance.

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She was made from the same stuff and was a bearer of God's image and likeness just as Adam was.

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The woman, made of Adam's rib, was designed to be a companion and helper suitable for Adam. Eve, formed from a physical part of Adam, was truly his complement, an integral part of who he was.

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As such, she was a perfect companion. Why did God use Adam's rib?

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Interestingly, ribs have amazing regenerative powers. Portions of rib bone and cartilage removed in bone graft surgery will regrow in a few months time, as long as the rib perichondrium is left intact.

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This means that Adam's loss of a rib was only temporary. He did not have to go through the rest of his life with an incomplete skeletal system.

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When God brought Eve to Adam, they were united in marriage. The woman, in Genesis 2 .22,

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is called Adam's wife in verse 24. The pattern for marriage, the first social institution, was thus established by God in Eden.

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The manner of Eve's creation is, why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

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The unity of a married couple and the one flesh principle are based on the fact that God used one of Adam's ribs to make a woman.

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God's use of one of Adam's ribs to make Eve is a reminder that woman was created to be beside man.

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Together, the man and woman complement one another in marriage, and in Christ, they are heirs together of the grace of life.