By Jennifer Potter

              Before subsequently interweaving throughout the covenants, marriage and by extension family, find their inauguration within the Creation Account.  Over the course of the first two chapters in Genesis, covenant relationship defines not only God’s providential relationship to His creatures, but He also establishes covenant relationship as the means by which His image bearers are connected to one another.  In man’s brief period of innocence, their beneficent Creator provides for them the most fundamental of human social relationships – covenantal marriage- establishing from their union the plan of covenant family as the means by which humanity fills the earth. Commentator Matthew Henry observed that “marriage is one of only…two ordinances instituted in [man’s] innocency” (1). Highlighting the significance of covenantal ties between humanity, God establishes the fundamental social institutions of covenantal marriage and by extension the covenantal family as a part of His “very good” creational order establishing for all time the norms by which society best functions.

              In studying the social structures instituted at Creation, Biblical standards for marriage and family emerge in their covenantal context. In general, the first chapter in Genesis gives an overview of the Creation week when on the final day of creative activity, God determines to form His image bearer giving humans a crowning significance as the Psalmist declares, “You have made him [mankind] a little lower than the heavenly beings, and crowned him with glory and honor” (ESV, Psalm 8:5).   Upon his image bearers, the Creator declares blessing using language common in biblical covenantal structures, the ‘is-ought’ blessing, meaning an assured promise is stated but a responsibility requiring active participation also is presented.  This blessed responsibility reads, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion “…over every living thing that moves on the earth,” giving covenantal responsibility to the man and woman to fill the earth with other image bearers that they may care for the Creation as their Creator cares for them (ESV, Genesis 1:28).  Through God’s explicit design and blessing, the covenantal family is made the primary means of both filling the earth and caring for it.  By the end of the chapter, the fundamental relationships of marriage and family have been established as part of a covenantal and well-managed created order.  

               These fundamental relationships are further expounded upon in the extended retelling of man’s creation in Genesis 2.  This account gives more details on the covenantal nature of the relationship between the man and the woman.  In summary, God creates the first man Adam giving him substance formed out of the dust, existence through His breath, residence in the garden, blessings through provisions and beauty, employment through garden keeping and animal classification, relationship with Himself through covenant, and covenantal sacraments in the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Having situated man in a perfect garden, God relates to Adam, who as Matthew Henry asserts dwelt in an easy and honorable state, placing this man under the Covenant of Works and giving him full ability to carry out his responsibilities in paradise (2,3).

              However, even in these ideal conditions, God saw that Adam needed a helper of like substance for to be alone was not good (ESV, Genesis 2: 18). In Hebrew the word helper literally means “one who helps” with the Greek Septuagint equivalent translating directly as “a helper” (4,5).  This helper was not to be a subordinate being but one able to provide for the man that which God Himself recognized as needful even in His good Creation.  Of note, the Greek word for helper used in this account is also used in the New Testament referring to God Himself as Helper suggesting the strong positive role man’s helpmeet was given.  Hebrews 13:6 reads: “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear” [italics mine] (ESV). So, God planned to provide man with relationship not only to Himself but also to a strong helper equal in honor to the man and indeed both distinct and yet a part of man; for God does not again use the dust of the earth to fashion this helper. Rather, He uses the body of the man.  Taking the flesh of the man by using a rib from his side God creates one equal in significance, one to be beloved and protected at his side (1).  In a very real sense, they are of one flesh.  Word study is again valuable here. This word flesh is from the Hebrew word meaning “flesh or blood relations” with the Greek Septuagint equivalent meaning “flesh (the soft substance of the living body, which covers the bones and is permeated with blood) of both man and beasts” (6,7). These words shed light on the deep relational connection established by the Creator’s hand between His image bearers. In the account, following the formation of man’s help meet, the Lord leads the woman in presentation to the man almost as if He is “the officiating minister” joining the two together by sovereign appointment (8). Here, in the fresh beauty of the garden, the Creator positioned Adam and his wife under the marriage covenant which in a sense fits or at least reflects the definition of covenants God initiates between Himself and humankind: “a bond-in-blood sovereignly administered” (9). This similarity in covenantal elements emphasizes the inter-relationship between the vertical covenant and the horizontal covenant established at creation. In this first horizontal covenant, the Sovereign Creator initiated, arranged, and oversaw the structure establishing it at the dawn of humanity’s existence placing marriage under man’s covenantal responsibilities to Himself while providing for man’s needs.

              After the presentation of the newly formed covenantal helper, the man responds in joyful acknowledgment of God’s provision in this one woman declaring her “…. bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (ESV, Genesis 2:23) acknowledging God’s masterful answer to his need for companionship and succor.  Matthew Henry comments in “…designing Adam a help meet for him, he made him one wife…And wherefore did he make but one woman for one man?  It was that he might seek a godly seed- a seed of God…a seed that she bear the image of God , be employed in the service of God, and be devoted to his glory and honor” (10)  In this, the second chapter of Genesis, God establishes the marriage covenant between one man and one woman, a creational ordinance acknowledged by Christ in the New Testament and tied to the one flesh union between the man and woman who are given the responsibility to have children instituting the covenant family for as Henry also concludes “the raising up of godly seed…is one of the great ends of the institution of marriage” (10). Therefore, after the creation of the woman, God directly inaugurates not only the marriage covenant but also the family lines by which man’s ongoing covenantal responsibilities will move forward. Through the marriage covenant and this end of bearing seed, Adam and his wife will carry out the blessed responsibility of being fruitful, filling the earth, and having dominion.

              Being established prior to the Fall, covenantal marriage, with the resulting family, stands out as the first horizontal covenant inaugurated in Scripture.  Adam, as the representative head of humanity (11) and the woman as his help meet are covenanted together by God’s explicit design that together they may obey the stipulations of the covenant with their God and fulfill their responsibilities toward one another participating in the blessing of filling the earth with godly seed who will care for the creation.  God as covenant initiator, sets forth in the creation account the pattern for man’s first covenant with woman in marriage.

              This covenantal pattern continues as a fundamental aspect of subsequent covenants after man’s fall into sin such that the marriage covenant and the family born from it place covenantal responsibilities upon all mankind. Such subsequently repeated covenantal responsibilities apply not only to a man and woman in a marriage covenant but also to any group of men and women as a church or society in regards to honoring and protecting this marriage covenant. In the New Testament, Jesus[LP1]  places this responsibility upon humanity in general: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (ESV, Matthew 19: 6b).  A society’s repudiation of God’s fundamental covenantal design puts them at odds with the Creator of the Universe- a very precarious place indeed.

1. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%202&version=NIV, Accessed July 9,2023.
2. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%202&version=NIV, Accessed July 9, 2023
3. Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter VII:II. and IX:II. Trinity Hymnal (2021), (p. 852 & 854). 20^th Edition. Great Commission Publications.
4. Old Testament Hebrew Lexical Dictionary developed by Jeff Garrison for StudyLight.org. Copyright 1999-2023. All Rights Reserved, Jeff Garrison, Gdansk, Poland. https://www.studylight.org/lexicons/eng/hebrew/05828.html, Accessed July 11, 2023.
5. Old / New Testament Greek Lexical Dictionary developed by Jeff Garrison for StudyLight.org. Copyright 1999-2023. All Rights Reserved, Jeff Garrison, Gdansk, Poland.   https://www.studylight.org/lexicons/eng/greek/998.html,  Accessed July 11, 2023.
6. Old / New Testament Greek Lexical Dictionary developed by Jeff Garrison for StudyLight.org.  Copyright 1999-2023. All Rights Reserved, Jeff Garrison, Gdansk, Poland. https://www.studylight.org/lexicons/eng/greek/4561.html, Accessed July 9, 2023.
7. Old Testament Hebrew Lexical Dictionary developed by Jeff Garrison for StudyLight.org. Copyright 1999-2023. All Rights Reserved, Jeff Garrison, Gdansk, Poland.  https://www.studylight.org/lexicons/eng/hebrew/01320.html, July 10, 2023.
8. Edith, D. (1963). Family Living in the Bible (p. 5). Harper and Row Publishers.
9. Robertson, O. P. (1980). The Christ of the Covenants (p. 15). Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.
10. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Malachi%202&version=NIV, accessed July 9, 2023
11. Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 16. Trinity Hymnal (2021), (870). 20^th Edition. Great Commission Publications.