Women derive their role and functions from the Word of God as well. Eve was Adam’s “Helpmeet”, Genesis 2:18. She filled the void God detected in Adam, his aloneness.

“Ribology” was fashioned into biology and Adam said, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”, v.23. Her “femaleness” completed Adam’s “maleness”. Not from the ground, but out of Adam, Eve gives Adam a new understanding of himself. “His” is also “hers” the two become one flesh and “cleaving” becomes the paradigm we learn from them, v.24.

 

Eve had to be wife enough for Adam before she could become the mother of his children. She had to bring out the inner Adam before their sons could come forth. All that “being alone” had cultivated in Adam, now it was “being filled” by Eve. She recultivated a place and space in Adam which God had created in Him. She made Him forget that she was a rib, a bony protector, and led him to rename her as the derivative of all that satisfaction from another human could derive, Proverbs 31:10-31.

 

Such qualities of wives/mothers must coincide with this place Eve held. The New Testament admonishes: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord.” Eph. 5:22 “…however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” v.33; I Corinthians 7:2-5, 10-16. “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Colossians 3:18; I Peter 3:1-6.

 

The role of women have biblical guidelines: Single women have instructions, I Corinthians 7:20, 25-27, 34—39. I Timothy 5:2 emphasizes the regard between older women and younger women; w. 3-16 references the stately ministry of widows; Titus 2:3,4 enunciates the instructions of older women to the younger.