Sunday 8 July 2012

Women of the Bible: Eve



Adam called the first woman Eve because she was the mother of all living. Is there anything living with which we shall not properly say that Eve was its mother. Adam endowed with an uncorrupted mind came to this conclusion and him being wiser than we, shall we not also agree.

Eve was created after Adam because out of all the living creatures living who were created from dust there was found no suitable companion for poor Adam. God in his infinite wisdom abandoned the idea of making again a creature from the dust but rather thought it splendid and perfect that a suitable helper for man should come from Adam's own flesh. So God caused Adam to sleep and took a rib and formed it into a Woman. Adam woke and found in his presence a beauty which surpassed the angels, his dear wife Eve. At once with a sparkle that fades the Sun, Eve smiled, with Adam reaching out his arm to collect his bride as a gift better than all of Creation. And do we not see Christ as the priest leading this ceremony which was to ultimately be the perfect illustration of his unity with his Church. See how the angels cheered and danced at the introduction of this new feminine excellence of God's glorious image; with the angels drinking wine that makes one not loose their senses but to culminate the joy of their beholding. And how God the Father in unity with the Spirit and Son at last declared the whole creation very good.

But there was one who despised this happy matrimony, who from seeing the merriment of Adam with his wife Eve and their sweet communion with God, entertained with great jealousy, anger and wisdom the destruction of this blessed communion. The devil, understanding Adam's total love for Eve, saw Eve as his Achilles’ heel thus venture to tempt Adam through Eve for it was written “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression".


Eve at first appearance must have sat next to Adam and learned in quietness - Adam would have taught her the ways of paradise and instructed her in the names he gave to all the animals, so that in turn, she may teach it to their children and instruct all the new born animals of the free rules of paradise. She was a helper and Adam must not lord it over her and in all true graces, yea, that sweet grace, fine and tuned distinct in that of womanhood, surpassing flowers and colourful birds in eminence, she was the crown of his glory, and the golden crown of creation.

Then an evening came, the woman in all her loveliness musing by the streams of eternal life, resting with the rabbits was suddenly intruded upon by a creature whose nature had been made deplorable. The serpent with its cunning ways tempted Eve to break God’s command. Eve at last succumbed to the devil’s lies for she was of a delicate kind, less well adapted to offering resistance to such a foreigner as Adam would have. But Adam is not to be excused, for he was by her but granted her the liberty to deal with such a beast when He should have known better and pried into their conversation. The woman being deceived then dragged Adam into her sin. She must have said to him, ‘Adam the desire of my soul, see, the fruit of the tree is good for food, it is delightful to the eyes like I am to you, and able to make us wise like God, and do not worry my dear about God’s prohibitions, we will not die but live and be like God, knowing good and evil’. Eve must have said such words with great sweetness yet innocent of its great consequences. Her transgression became essential in the sin with which she caused Adam to sin. If Christ had an Eve, would the devil not have employed the same tactics - he would not have tempted Christ directly but send his Eve -it would be her in that garden of Gethsemane; but Christ being greater than Adam would have done what Adam should have done at first, that is, follow the will of God regardless from whose lips betrayal is spoken forth from. 

Paradise was lost. Eve’s dwelling in this blissful earthly garden was short lived. She was banished to live the rest of her years in a world of thorns and thistles. Poor Eve was now to be mastered; she was to be all her life a slave to her passions for her husband. Society would suppress her kind, childbearing would become painful, this weaker vessel would be treated harshly by her master, she herself a paradise was now a paradise lost.


History may have wished to forget you Eve or treat you as vile and hold you as the queen of seduction bringing ruination to Mankind but God, your God as not despise you for it pleased him, yea it pleased Christ, to be found in you. At the end of God’s awful cursing towards you because of your treacherous sin, the God who created you and formed you from the Man’s ribs said “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

Inside the uterus of this cursed woman was release from her universal curse to be found. Her seed will one day reverse the paradise which she caused to be lost and her seed will free her from her own tainted depravity. Eve was fixated upon this promise that when Cain was born she supposed that he was the promised seed for she said when she conceived him, “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD”. Miserable Eve! O how she must have lamented when she watched the growth of Cain, how depraved his ways were. Her sorrows only increased for she must have set her hope again on Abel, who was more a friend of nature and of God but died at an untimely hour at the hands of Cain. She must have rued that unpleasant hour when she yielded to the devils hands - for the result of her sin was now the loss of two sons from her womb. Eve must have died in sadness and only repeated in lamentable speech the glory of that heavenly paradise which she substituted for this barren desert where her husband must toil day and night.

But God is faithful. After many millennia the Angels of God acknowledged the seed of Eve in the Child of Mary. Jesus was the blessed seed to reverse the curse and how Eve must have longed to see His day. She saw it by faith and was glad, and through the eyes of Mary she nurtured him and placed all her hopes in him. 

K.Oni


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