What Does Genesis 2:21 Mean?
And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and shut the flesh in its place.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
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;THE KEY
The Hebrew צֵלָע (tsēlāʿ, side/rib) lets the “rib” carry the wider image of a side being taken from the body.
THE MEANING
You are shown a body changing beyond its own awareness: Adam sleeps while God takes from his side. Flesh closes over the place of taking, and the next verse shows the taken side becoming a woman.
THE ROOT
צֵלָע
tsēlāʿ
GROWS FROM
צלע
Side, flank; the side of a structure.
The Hebrew word translated “rib” can also name a side or flank. The same word family describes sides and side chambers in structures, connecting bodily form with the larger shape of a side.
ALSO GROWS
tsēlāʿ: Side, flank, or rib.
צֵלָע
This is the word used for the part taken from Adam, holding the bodily and broader sense of “side” together.
tsĕlāʿôt: Sides or side chambers.
צְלָעוֹת
This plural form is used for structural sides, showing that the word can describe the side of a body and the side of a structure.
וַיִּסְגֹּר
vayisgōr
GROWS FROM
סגר
Close, shut, enclose.
“shut” in this verse is vayisgōr. The taking has a physical boundary: God closes flesh over the place from which the side is taken. The root holds the action of closing and the resulting closure in one word family.
ALSO GROWS
sāgar: To close or shut.
סָגַר
This is the action described as God closes the flesh.
sāgūr: Closed or shut.
סָגוּר
This form names the state that follows the closing, keeping the verse’s act and result connected.
תַּרְדֵּמָה
tardēmāh
GROWS FROM
רדם
Sleep deeply; fall into profound sleep.
This is a deep sleep caused to fall over Adam before the taking begins. The root keeps his unawareness inside the scene: the body’s change happens while his awareness is suspended.
ALSO GROWS
tardēmāh: Deep sleep.
תַּרְדֵּמָה
This noun names the state that falls over Adam before the taking.
nirdām: Deeply asleep; one who has fallen asleep.
נִרְדָּם
This related form describes a person in deep sleep, extending the same root’s sense from the state itself to the sleeper.
THE PATTERN
A body can be formed in hiddenness beyond the awareness of the one being formed.
You clothe me with skin and flesh, and you knit me with bones and sinews.My bones are not hidden from you, as I am made in the hiding place, and embroidered in the lowest depths of the earth.As you do not perceive the way of the breath, or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is filled and conceives, so you do not perceive the making of God, who makes all.THE THREAD
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from Adam, he built into a woman, and brought her to Adam.Genesis 2:22 repeats צֵלָע (tsēlāʿ, side/rib) for what God takes here and what he makes into the woman. The repeated word keeps the body’s side present in the account of her making.
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