Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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dependence upon providence, put themselves under a divine conduct. That wife that is of God's making by special grace, and of God's bringing by special providence, is likely to prove a help-meet for a man.
2. From God, as his Father, Adam received her (Ge 2:23): "This is now bone of my bone. Now I have what I wanted, and which all the creatures could not furnish me with, a help meet for me." God's gifts to us are to be received with a humble thankful acknowledgment of his wisdom in suiting them to us, and his favour in bestowing them on us. Probably it was revealed to Adam in a vision, when he was asleep, that this lovely creature, now presented to him, was a piece of himself, and was to be his companion and the wife of his covenant. Hence some have fetched an argument to prove that glorified saints in the heavenly paradise shall know one another. Further, in token of his acceptance of her, he gave her a name, not peculiar to her, but common to her sex: She shall be called woman, Isha, a she-man, differing from man in sex only, not in nature--made of man, and joined to man.
23 And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:
she shall be called Woman [Heb. Isha], because she was taken out of Man [heb. Ish].
24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall
cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
The institution of the ordinance of marriage, and the settling of the law of it, Ge 2:24. The Sabbath and marriage were two ordinances instituted in innocency, the former for the preservation of the church, the latter for the preservation of the world of mankind. It appears (by Mt 19:4, 5) that it was God himself who said here, "A man must leave all his relations, to cleave to his wife;" but whether he spoke it by Moses, the penman, or by Adam (who spoke, Ge 2:23), is uncertain. It should seem, they are the words of Adam, in God's name, laying down this law to all his posterity.
1. See here how great the virtue of a divine ordinance is; the bonds of it are stronger even than those of nature. To whom