God took A rib. Why?

Have you ever wondered? God took A rib. Why? No one knows the mind of God; however, He has given us important facts through the words He has preserved in our Bible. So let’s see what we can glean as we follow the LORD’s lesson plan to teach us: “precept upon precept” “line upon line.” (See Isaiah 28:10.)

Start at the beginning, just as did God in Genesis

If you were asked to teach a child the alphabet, where would you start? If you wanted to teach a child how to count, where would you begin? If you were to read a novel, where would you begin?  It seems obvious that you should begin at the beginning. So why doesn’t man begin and focus on the Bible’s beginning—in Genesis—to define and defend marriage?

Perhaps it’s because many do not understand the extreme importance of the beautiful picture that God gives in Genesis 2:21-24. This succinct picture of the complex creation of marriage is so important that Jesus refers to this image each time He discusses marriage with the wicked Pharisees. He asks them (and us today) a rhetorical question (a question that is not looking for an answer because the answer is supposed to be obvious): Have ye not read?

Jesus was referring to Genesis 2:21-24 telling everyone that it is not man but God who joins two people into one flesh as recorded in the beginning of time.

Everyone who wants to know what constitutes a marriage, created by God, should not look to man’s wisdom but to study what is written in Genesis 2:21-24. That’s because what is joined and Who does the joining has never changed: two are made one flesh solely by the Hands of God. This joining is the same whether we are Christians or nonbelievers.

… Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Matthew 19:4-6

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth … Genesis 1:27-28 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. Genesis 5:2 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. Mark 10:6

The making of two into one flesh is God’s universal, supernatural, invisible “marriage law,” and it is the process by which two people are made one flesh. This JOINING has nothing to do with sexual intimacy but with a creation via the Hands of God. Sexual intimacy is a privilege of a one-flesh marriage; it does not make two people one flesh.

And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. Genesis 2:21-24

Marriage is in the Hands of God.

Does it all come down to God and a rib?

Yes, it does.

It is God and God alone who creates the joining that takes place during a marriage ceremony, and it is God and God alone who dissolves that joining; but, ONLY when one of the two spouses physically dies. Dissolution of a marriage is not predicated on man’s behavior, man’s commitment, man’s sin, or man’s love or lack of it; it is the physical death of one of the two parties who have been joined by God that dissolves a marriage. This applies to both Christians and those who are not Christians.

Study more carefully Genesis 2:21-24. This is where God pictures for us, in the physical realm, what He did physically and now does spiritually when He creates marriage—a one-flesh union between one man and one woman until death they do part. If we really understand what God is teaching us in Genesis 2:21-24, we should know that it is absolutely impossible for man to do (or undo) what God does during a marriage ceremony. Just as man does not and cannot create gravity; man does not and cannot create a marriage (a one-flesh union).

How, for example, is it possible to take a rib from man and create a full-grown woman; and how is it possible to take this fully grown woman, created from the rib of man, bring her back to the man, and join her so that she is bone and flesh with the man from whom the rib was taken? Humm! Perhaps, no, not perhaps, but surely it is only God Who can do this: create what man calls marriage!

… she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Genesis 2:23

Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh, What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Matthew 19:6

There is much more to this process and the time frame indicated by the word AND emphasized in the Scriptures in the green frames above. For a discussion on this, read Chapter 4 of our book, Finding Loopholes in the Bible on Divorce and “Re-marriage” is like … Riding a Bike to Jamaica. The focus of this present teaching is on the rib, but there’s MUCH more to this teaching beyond the scope of current teaching.

Why did God use a rib?

The Bible doesn’t tell us why. Like so many other things, God’s Word just tells us what God did. The rib bone, however, is one of the few bones mentioned by name in Scripture. Perhaps God reveals to us that He took a rib from man, created woman, and joined woman to man to help us to understand that the creation of marriage is very complex, and it is nothing that man can possibly create or dissolve, or fully understand. It is a creation by the Hands of Love—God—the height and depth of which no man can comprehend or replicate outside the Hands of God.

I’m not a biologist in any sense of the word, but the LORD recently led me to investigate the rib, so I checked several studies done by experts in the medical field to learn more about the rib as this bone is so prominent in the creation of marriage. Here is some of what I also learned from Wikipedia which has several sources listed, and from several other on-line resources that came up under the search words rib and marrow.

At the left is a picture of a rib taken from the rib cage of man. It’s interesting that some anatomy resources label the rib to include: head, neck, and body. However, there are some physical internal idiosyncrasies about the rib that may have had a bearing on God’s choice of a rib.

The rib, like other bones, is filled with marrow—the tissue comprising the center of large bones. In humans, red blood cells are produced by cores of bone marrow in the heads of long bones, one of which is the rib. It is the place where new blood cells are produced. Bone marrow, the flexible tissue in the interior of bones and the source of a person’s blood cells, can transform into cells of the skin, muscle, heart, liver, and even the brain.

For it is the life of all flesh; the blood of it is for the life thereof … Leviticus 17:14

There is something very unique about the rib.
However, in addition to the above, there is one very special feature of our ribs that may give insight as to why God chose to use one of man’s ribs to make woman and to join a man and woman “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” Our ribs are the only bones in our body that can regenerate themselves; that is, to grow a new rib. The rib and other bones can repair themselves, but only the rib has this unique regenerative attribute. There’s a very thin lining of tissue that surrounds the ribs—like a very thin clear sheaf covering a knife blade.  If the rib is removed from that sheath, without damaging the sheath, the body will grow a new rib inside the sheath.  No other bone in the human body can do this.

So what did God do?

1. God put the man Adam to sleep.
2. God, while Adam was asleep, removed a rib from him.  THEN, somewhere in the garden, God created woman from the rib of Adam. (God doesn’t tell us how long this process took, nor what he perhaps showed or told Eve.)
3. God brought the woman back to Adam for the purpose of creating a one-flesh joining between the woman and man. This is what we know as marriage. Remember, God is a Spirit and He does things spiritually. Our joining to our spouse is a spiritual joining, yet explained in physical terms.

Jesus tells us in the gospels of Matthew and Mark that God’s joining of a husband and wife as recorded in Genesis has never changed. Today, as it was in the beginning, marriage is a transformation by God that takes place in the spiritual realm which we live out in the physical realm:

But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Mark 10:6-9

God tells us the conclusion:

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be [not shall become] one flesh. Genesis 2:24

God gives a warning:
       What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Mark 10:9

The link below is a YouTube teaching on the rib created by another author:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZVfqvmnViM

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