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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; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
God did not do this with any other of His female creatures. Why with man was Adam first formed of the dust of the ground, then afterward, Eve formed from the man, not the dust of the ground?
When Paul speaks of the things of marriage - of the fact of male and female and the purpose of there being male and female, quoting the words of both Adam (the head of humanity) and Jesus (the head of another humanity) :
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. [Ephesians 5:31 KJV],
he speaks, then, immediately, of a mystery :
This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. [Ephesians 5:32 KJV],
the mystery being that of the union of Christ and the body of Christ, the Church.
The writer to the Hebrews expresses the purpose of God in creating all things, for that which was made was not made as an end in itself - it all had further purpose :
For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. [Hebrews 2:10 KJV].
The ultimate purpose in this present creation is that there should be a New Creation.
The first was a necessity, but not a finality.
That purpose has its foundation before the foundation of the world :
According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: [Ephesians 1:4 KJV]
Before the foundation of the world, God's purpose (to bring many sons to glory) had its inception, in Christ. Those who would be his sons, were chosen in Christ.
They were seen in Him, before the world was founded.
Thus, when God created, and expressed himself in that creation, when he made male and female, the way in which he made them demonstrates the purpose for which humanity - male and female - was created.
And in that creation, in the very method of creation, is seen the truth of Christ and his Body, Christ and his bride, Christ and his Church.
She is taken out of him.
They are chosen . . . . . in him.
Given the utter lack of clues, one can only speculate. However, one can't help but recognize here the parallel between Adam and Eve, and the Virgin Mary and Christ (not in the sense that I am the one who recognized it, but that it's impossible to ignore, and thus relevant).
Christ was taken from a single parent, his mother; Eve was taken from Adam, the first human in Creation. When Eve was taken from the side of Adam, God closed up the flesh again. Christ took his humanity from the womb of Mary, but Mary remained a virgin. || ⚠️ Independent theologians may have called this matter differently ||
Adam and Eve were born pure, but everyone else afterward was born in sin. There was no helpmate found for Adam, for which reason one was taken from his side. Everyone before Christ and Mary were born in sin, and so Christ could not take up flesh from any old sinful mother, passing on the curse to Himself (the Saviour cannot have been Himself saved from the curse, so His mother must have been pure), so He made Mary pure from conception, and took flesh from her: the first of the New Creation. God made man, and then woman, but the devil targeted the woman to bring about the Fall: God undid this by starting with a new woman, and bringing the new Adam from her (cf. Gen 3:15). Satan went to Eve, Gabriel to Mary. Eve disobeyed; Mary: "Let it be done unto me according to thy word."
Standing by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve were there at the very moment of the Fall of mankind. Right then, Adam dubs his wife, the Woman, "Eve, for she was the mother of all the living." Whilst Christ hung on the tree of the cross, his mother stood by Him as He accomplished the Redemption, where he said, "Woman, behold thy son," to His mother, and to "the beloved disciple" (keep in mind the theological overtones to almost everything John writes...), "Behold thy mother." That is, to all the living in Christ - those of the New Creation ("The rest of her seed" after Christ Rev. 12).
Etc.
This connection between Mary and Eve, Christ and Adam was not lost on early Christians. Irenaeus, an apostolic father, actually says that Luke intended the parallel of both.
All this to say that Genesis is a highly theological book of the Old Testament, similar to how John's Gospel is highly theological (recording events with language very given to theological understanding by its nature) - if we believe in the inspiration of both Testaments, we can glean information to help us understand both better. Why did God make woman from man? So that she could be truly Adam-ish (human), as opposed to something else: after all, no other helpmate was found suitable. But the entire narrative and way of doing things points forward to what God knows He is going to do - if not the events themselves, then how they are recorded for us, so that we can know and appreciate the foreknowledge of God.
God made it so to retain man as one person. Man is one just as God is one. Any other is just duplicate of the same one man or one God. Just as you have Jesus and the Holy Spirit, they are duplicates of the same one God. Likewise, Eve and the offspring are duplicates of the same one man. Even though, the original copy (Adam) of man is dead, the offspring live on. And, this offspring are man. God is able to duplicate himself just as he did as Christ and the Holy Spirit. Man, however, lacks this power to duplicate himself. Hence, the need for the woman to help him duplicate himself and fulfil this: Genesis 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, BE FRUITFUL, AND MULTIPLY, AND REPLENISH THE EARTH, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
