What Does Genesis 2:18 Mean?

God causes a deep sleep to fall upon the man and takes one of his ribs (or "sides"), then closes up the flesh. The making of the woman is entirely God's act while the man is unconscious. No other creative act in Genesis involves this kind of taking-from-within: the woman is not made from the dust of the ground but from the man's own body. The deep sleep is not simply anaesthesia; it marks the man's non-participation in his own transformation. He contributes the material without contributing the act.

The Hebrew word tsela, translated "rib," most commonly means "side" in the Old Testament (it is used for the sides of the tabernacle, the ark of the covenant, the temple). Many interpreters read "side" rather than "rib" here: the woman is made not from a peripheral bone but from the man's flank, the side of him that faces outward, that would face another. If the reading is "side," the act is even more intimate: God takes half of the man to make the other who will be beside him.

God closes the flesh after the taking. The man wakes without a wound: he has been transformed, not injured. Something has been taken from him; but the flesh is closed and healed. He will not wake to pain but to presence, the presence of the one who was made from inside him, standing before him as his counterpart. The night of the deep sleep is the night between the man's incompleteness and his completion.