What Does Genesis 24:65 Mean?

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. The narrator's theological conclusion from the woman's creation, "that is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife", is the creation's own interpretation of what just happened. The act of becoming one flesh is the norm established at creation: a man and a woman leaving their families of origin to constitute a new family unit. The leaving and the uniting are paired as a single movement: one cannot be united to a wife while clinging to the parents; the new covenant of marriage requires the leaving that makes room for the joining.

The nakedness without shame is the creation's summary of the pre-fall condition of the human being before God and the human partner: complete transparency without vulnerability to exploitation, complete exposure without the need for cover. Shame in the biblical tradition is the awareness of exposure before a gaze that is not safe; the garden's nakedness without shame is the condition of people whose vulnerability is met with recognition rather than exploitation. The Incarnation of Jesus, who bore human flesh and human vulnerability without sin, is the restoration of the condition in which exposure before God is safe again.

Paul in Ephesians 5:31-32 quotes this verse and immediately calls it "a deep mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church." The leaving and uniting of marriage is a sign that points to the gospel's structure: the Son left the Father's house to be united to his bride, the church, and the two become one body. The pattern embedded in the creation of the woman and the first marriage is the pattern that Paul reads as the deepest structure of the covenant's purpose. The garden's "one flesh" is the covenant's first image of the union between Jesus and those who are in him.