Genesis 2:1-25
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. 4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. 5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. 15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” 18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Women were part of God’s original design. As we talked about earlier in the series, God did not proclaim that it was not good for man to be alone as a mistake on his part but so that Adam would understand his need for another to accomplish the purpose of God. In this light, he creates Eve from Adam. Eve is the same but different. There are a few differences Adam would notice immediately and then a score of other differences that Adam will notice as he works with Eve in the garden.
Women are simply different.
Genesis 2:18 “18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.””
God created Eve differently from Adam on purpose for a purpose.
Physical differences
Physical structure
Muscle differences
Women athletes are known to be less strong and powerful than equally trained men [1], muscle strength of women indeed, is typically reported in the range of 40 to 75% of that of men [2]; women are also known to be less powerful than equally trained men. [3]. Gender differences are still evident when power per kg of body mass is considered [3,4] and the difference in absolute strength between genders appears more evident in the upper body compared to the lower body [5,6]. On the contrary, several studies have reported that strength per unit of cross sectional area or lean body mass, do not substantially differ between sexes [7,8,9]. The main factors accounting for gender differences in maximal strength, indeed, have been identified as the muscle mass [6,7]. Other studies confirmed that gender differences in strength may be accounted to LBM but reported that the differences in power performances were still apparent regardless of body composition, and muscle mass [10,11]. These results support the idea that differences between genders in anaerobic power and jumping capacity could not be accounted for by differences in lean body mass only NIH 2021
Ability to create - A woman’s ability to give birth to a child is the single greatest difference between male and female.
Brain Differences
In 2000, Cahill scanned the brains of men and women viewing either highly aversive films or emotionally neutral ones. The aversive films were expected to trip off strong negative emotions and concomitant imprinting in the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure found in each brain hemisphere. Activity in the amygdala during the viewing experience, as expected, predicted subjects’ later ability to recall the viewed clips. But in women, this relationship was observed only in the left amygdala. In men, it was only in the right amygdala. Cahill and others have since confirmed these results. Discoveries like this one should ring researchers’ alarm buzzers. Women, it’s known, retain stronger, more vivid memories of emotional events than men do. They recall emotional memories more quickly, and the ones they recall are richer and more intense. If, as is likely, the amygdala figures into depression or anxiety, any failure to separately analyze men’s and women’s brains to understand their different susceptibilities to either syndrome would be as self-defeating as not knowing left from right. The two hemispheres of a woman’s brain talk to each other more than a man’s do. In a 2014 study, University of Pennsylvania researchers imaged the brains of 428 male and 521 female youths — an uncharacteristically huge sample — and found that the females’ brains consistently showed more strongly coordinated activity between hemispheres, while the males’ brain activity was more tightly coordinated within local brain regions. This finding, a confirmation of results in smaller studies published earlier, tracks closely with others’ observations that the corpus callosum-— the white-matter cable that crosses and connects the hemispheres — is bigger in women than in men and that women’s brains tend to be more bilaterally symmetrical than men’s.
There has been very little coverage of this report in the mainstream media. You will find no mention of this study in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or National Public Radio. I suspect that’s because most mainstream media are cautious of anything having to do with brain-based differences between women and men. Many of us are understandably wary that any claim of difference will lead to claims regarding ability. If men’s brains are different from women’s brains, doesn’t that imply that men will be better at some things and women will be better at other things? Especially when there is no overlap in the findings? But “different” doesn’t necessarily imply “better.” As I stressed in the second edition of my book Why Gender Matters, apples and oranges are different. That doesn’t mean apples are better than oranges. Men and women are turning out to be different, more different than we may have imagined. That doesn’t mean that women are better than men, or vice versa. But it does suggest that if we ignore the differences, we may disadvantage both women and men. Psychology Today Leonard Sax M.D., Ph.D.
God created us to think differently to accomplish his purpose. Women were designed to be complementary to man, and in order to accomplish that, they had to be physically and emotionally complementary.
The difference is much deeper.
“Eve’s being made after Adam, and out of him, puts an honor upon that sex, as the glory of man (1 Cor. 11:7). If man is the head, she is the crown… . The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust double-refined, one remove further from the earth.” Matthew Henry
Men, being primarily visual in their form of attraction, notice the obvious and least refined parts of a woman.
Song of Solomon 4:3–4 “3 Your lips are like a scarlet thread, and your mouth is lovely. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. 4 Your neck is like the tower of David, built in rows of stone; on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors.”
To simply look on the exterior of a woman for her worth is to diminish the unseen beauty that God uniquely placed in a woman. A woman’s ability to think differently is a benefit, not a detriment. The nature of a woman to care for and nurture a child is far greater than that of a man.
Isaiah 66:13 “13 As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”
1 Thessalonians 2:7 “7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.”
Distortion of the Differences
Since the sexual revolution, there has been a redefining or reimagining of the role of women. The idea of a woman being different than a man, not less but different, was quickly dismissed, and we were left with “women can do anything a man can do.” That philosophy has permeated every aspect of our culture and devastated our families.
Women have been encouraged to pursue the role of man and diminish the differences inherent to a woman. All of these distortions have led to a break in God’s original design - that men and women were to be complementary to one another for the fulfillment of God’s purpose. The differences were not to be viewed in the sense of competition but as necessary. Our culture has capitalized on the results of sin and exploited the differences and desires.
Genesis 3:16 “16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.””
Men would not appreciate the difference, and women would seek to erase it. Now we live in a culture that elevates the least important of the differences and reimagines the critical ways we must be different. We encourage women to sell their sexuality and hide their ability to feel and experience emotion and pain greater than a man. We encourage them to have abortions while asking them to respond to the pain as a man.
God’s best is your best.
You feel more because you were designed to, you care deeper because you were designed to, you think differently because you were designed to, you love differently because you were designed to. As women, God purposefully and masterfully designed you to be different from men. You are now desperately needed to play that role in our culture.