What Our Sexuality Points To

The Woman and Setting our Minds on Things Above . . .

Last Substack, I suggested that the Genesis 2 woman has a covenantal representation. She is a shadow and type of the heavenly city and congregation.  She is the symbol of the second, last, and enduring order. She is the Sabbath creature, representing the seventh day. In contrast, I suggested that Adam represents the earthly order pressing forward in obedience to the covenant that God made with him on behalf of all that was made on the first six days of creation. He symbolizes beginning things that will one day give way to end things. This is why Adam, not Eve, is the covenantal head of both adam (mankind) and the adamah (earth or soil). Adam represents what has “sprung up”  from the earth and what must pass through testing on its path to irrevocable rest. Eve represents what has been confirmed in Sabbath rest. Adam’s glory is earthly and Eve’s glory is heavenly.

Photo by Alvin Mahmudov on Unsplash

Eve’s “suitability” to Adam in Genesis 2:18  is like heaven’s suitability to earth. The words “heavens and earth" of Genesis 1:1 are more than a term for all of created reality (Neh 9:6; Ps 104:1-2; Is 66:1). They are two distinct yet eternally inseparable realms destined to come together on the last day. The created realm of angels (heaven) and the created realm of men (earth) are destined to converge in a union that will shake both realms (Hag 2:6,7; Heb 12:27). In this shaking, one of my seminary professors suspects the significance of the marriage act. It may point to the day when God will unite heaven (symbolized by the woman) and the earth (symbolized by the man) to the climactic joy of both realms. 

The coming forth of the heavenly city to earth in Revelation 21 means that our future lies not only with God but with the angels. Although Paul had no words to describe what he saw when he was taken to that city, the author of Hebrews 12, the prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel, and the Apostle John lead us to envision Mount Zion, where angels celebrate and “heavenized” souls await the culmination of the first order of human history. Why are angels celebrating? Because “the kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever,” enthroned in the blended, harmonious praises of men and angels (Rev 11:15). 

Like all the prominent symbolism, we would expect an “acorn to oak” unfolding of the woman as the heavenly symbol. We would further expect that her symbolism would parallel the unfolding of man as the corresponding earthly symbol and representative. So where do we see heaven, the realm of angels, feminized in Scripture? 

Photo by Oscar Helgstrand on Unsplash

As I suggested previously, I see the “acorn” of Eve’s symbolism in her creation from the zela of Adam mentioned twice in Genesis 2. Zela has the meaning of both side/supporting beam and “to limp.”  It is used nine times out of 47 as some form of “limp” as well as the name of the town where Jonathan and Saul were buried. However, besides Eve’s creation from Adam, zela refers to  “side” or “supporting beam” 38 other times. It is used 19/38 times to refer to the sacred structure of the tabernacle and its consecrated objects in Exodus 25-38. It is used 7/38 times to refer to Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 6 and his neighboring palace in 1 Kings 7. It is used 11/38 times by Ezekiel to refer to the end times’ temple he envisions in chapter 41. Adding these together, 37/38 uses of  zela refer directly to sacred space, and half of those times in reference to the wilderness tabernacle made explicitly after the heavenly pattern (Ex 25:9, 40; 26:30; 27:8, cf. Heb 8:5). There is only one other time that zela is used in the Old Testament, and that is 2 Samuel 16:13. It refers to the side of a mountain along which David was traveling as he fled Jerusalem during Absalom's revolt. This zela seems to be continuous with the Mount of Olives, descending to the Jordan Valley. In other words, it was the zela of Jerusalem, earthly Zion.

Before we go further, I would like to say something about Adam’s “acorn” representation of the earth.  First we see that Adam preceded the garden. God formed the man from the earth before he planted the garden and placed him in it (Gen 2:8). Adam was not from dust of the garden, but from the dust of the adamah as the broader earth before God planted the garden. When the garden was planted, it was on the earth, but as many have observed, it was also set apart from the earth. It was a sanctuary, a dwelling place of God with man. It was a space where God’s presence “concentrated,” feebly speaking. In the end, it was a place from which Adam and Eve were exiled. 

Others have concluded that the garden of Eden, like the tabernacle and temple, was uniquely patterned after the heavenly mountain tabernacle dwelling of God (Ex 25:8-9). Meredith Kline, Gregory Beale, and Lane Tipton are among many who have helped me understand these things. In other words, Eden was conspicuously like heaven as the dwelling place of God. Adam was placed there as from the earth, representing the earth, and mediating God’s blessings to earth through obedience to God. Eve was like Adam as image-bearing adam, but she was unlike him in her representation. She was created in the garden from the consecrated zela of Adam, representing the consummate dwelling place of God with man. 

So if zela is the “acorn” of woman’s representation, what is the “oak”? The “oak” of the woman as a symbol of heaven is found in Revelation 19:7-8. She is the bride of the Lamb, clothed in fine linen, bright and pure. She is the heavenly congregation that is prepared for the marriage supper of the Lamb. She is not only the heavenly bride, but a bridal city in Revelation 21:2. She is both the people assembled and “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” She represents the consummation of the covenant as the “dwelling place of God . . . with man” (v. 3). The wife of the Lamb is a “great, high, mountain— the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God” (v. 10, 11).  We see in Revelation that she was foreshadowed in Ezekiel’s inner temple in chapter 41, where zela is mentioned 11 times.  

The woman as a symbol of heavenly Zion is seen most fully not only in references to the bride of Revelation 19 and 21, but also in the mother of Revelation 12. She is “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (v.1).  She gives birth to the Messiah and to “other children” destined to overcome the dragon and to stand with the Lamb on Mt. Zion. The author of Hebrews tells us that this Mother is the dwelling place of God, the judge of all, and Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant (Heb 12:23, 24). She is the home of innumerable angels and the assembly of the firstborn, the spirits of the perfected righteous. She is Zion, the city of the living God, the joy of the whole earth, heavenly Jerusalem. Those who are born from her, whose names are written in her, find eternal rest within her walls. 

Next Substack, I would like to bridge Genesis (acorn) and Revelation (oak) with the Old Testament Scriptures that develop the heavenly realm and people of New Jerusalem as mother, bride, and daughter. It seems to me that if we do not consider the way that God uses gender in the unfolding story of Scripture, we may forfeit what God has given us to fortify our souls to love our neighbor and endure the temptations and hardships of this life. There is a world of hope extended to us in the revelation that “he made them male and female.” God gave Eve to Adam to point him to his end. God gave Adam to Eve to point her to the means to her end, which she herself symbolized. Though Eve betrayed her means, and Adam rejected his end, God has provided the means, the Second Adam, and assured the end, Jerusalem Above. The second Adam has taken on flesh and Eve has surely become “mother of the all-living.”  Our differences as male and female offer solid encouragement to us. They steady our eyes on the man Jesus Christ and all he has prepared for them that love him.