A person’s name opens a path to immortality
The context is one of the best-known stories of the Bible. Together in the Garden of Eden, surrounded by the rich panoply of creation, the first human couple have everything they could possibly want — except one thing, a tree from which they are forbidden to eat.
They eat; their eyes are opened; they lose their innocence; for the first time they feel shame. When they hear “the Voice of G-d” they try to hide, but they discover that G-d is someone from whom we cannot hide. Adam blames his wife. She blames the serpent. The result is paradise lost.
The episode is rich in its implications, but I want us to study one of its strangest features. The woman has been told that “with pain she will give birth to children.” Next, Adam is informed that he will face a life of painful toil. There then follows a sequence of three verses which seem to have no connection with one another:
“By the sweat of your brow,” G-d says to Adam, “will you eat bread, until you return to the land, for from there you were taken. You are dust, and you will return to dust.” Then the man named his wife Eve, for she would become the mother of all life. Then the Lord G-d made garments of skins for Adam and his wife and clothed them. (Genesis 3:19-21)
The problems are obvious. Adam has just blamed his wife for leading him into sin. He has also been condemned to mortality. Why, at just this juncture, does he turn to her and give her a new name?
When he heard the words, “dust you are and to dust you will return,” it was the first time Adam became conscious of his mortality. There is no more profound self-knowledge than this — that the world will one day be without us, and we without the world. What, if we are mortal, will live on?
It was then that Adam remembered G-d’s words to the woman. She would give birth to children — in pain, to be sure, but she would bring new life into the world.
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Suddenly Adam knew that though we die, if we are privileged to have children, something of us will live on — our genes, our influence, our example, our ideals. That is our immortality. Where the Mesopotamians and Egyptians thought of buildings, Abraham and his descendants thought of builders. Judaism became the most child-centred of faiths.
But the immortality we gain through those we bring to life cannot be achieved alone. Until he became aware of his mortality, Adam could think of his wife as a mere ezer kenegdo, usually translated as “a suitable helper.” He thought of her as his assistant, not his equal. [“She shall be called ‘woman’ (ishah) for she was taken from man (ish).”] She was, in his eyes, an extension of himself.
Now he knew otherwise. Without Eve, Adam could not have children, and children were his share in eternity. She was a person in her own right — even more so than he was for she, not he, would actually give birth. In this respect she was more like G-d than he could be, for G-d is He-who-brings-new-life-into-being.
Once he had thought these thoughts, recrimination ended. There is a spiritual dimension to the physical relationship between husband and wife. At one level it is the most animal of desires, but at another it is as close as we come to the principle of Divine creativity itself, namely that love creates life. That is when he turned to her and for the first time saw her as a person and gave her a personal name, Chava, Eve, meaning, “she who gives life.” It was not that previously Adam had given his wife one name and now gave her another. It was that previously Adam had not given her a name at all. He called her ishah, “woman,” a generic noun not a proper name.
With the appearance of proper names, the concept of person is born. A noun designates a class, a group of things linked by common characteristics. If we lose a belt, we can buy another. If our car is stolen we can replace it.
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A name is different. It refers not to a class or group of things but to an individual in their individuality. The single most important ethical truth about persons is that none is substitutable for any other. “When a human being makes many coins in the same mint,” said the Sages, “they all come out alike. [By contrast,] G-d makes every human being in the same image, His image, and they are all different.”
This is what gives human life its dignity and sanctity. Without it, we would not know love — for love in its primary sense is always directed to a person: to this man, that woman, this child, in their uniqueness.
This is also what gives human love its particular pathos and vulnerability. We know that like us, our beloved will eventually grow old and die, and that they can never be replaced. But because we know we will one day die, one of the greatest things that can happen to us is the moment beyond time when two souls touch and between them form a bridge over the abyss of mortality. That is what Shir HaShirim means when it says, “Love is as strong as death, its passion as unyielding as the grave.”
The moment when Adam turned to his wife and gave her a proper name, Chava, was a turning point in the history of civilization. It was then that G-d robed the couple in garments of light. For it is only when we relate to one another as persons possessed of non-negotiable dignity, that we respond to the “image of G-d” in the other.
In a sense the whole of Judaism — or at least mitzvot bein adam le-chavero (the commands between us and our fellow human beings) — is an extended commentary to this idea.
The idea goes deeper still. There is an intimate connection between the way we relate to other people and the way we relate to G-d, and this too is expressed in the difference between a noun and a name.
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Though G-d has many descriptions, two are primary: Elokim and the four-letter name we may not pronounce, known generally as Hashem.
The eleventh-century poet and philosopher Judah Halevi noted that the word E-l was generally used by pagans to signify a god, by which they meant a force of nature. Monotheism was and is the insistence that none of these forces represents ultimate reality. The One G-d is the totality of all powers. That is what is represented by the word Elokim, a collective noun meaning “the force of forces.” Elokim is G-d as we encounter Him in nature, in the vastness and intricacy of creation.
Hashem, by contrast, is not a noun but a name. It refers to G-d not as a power, but as a person, a “Thou.” Hashem is the One who speaks to us and to whom we speak, who loves us as a person loves, who hears our prayers, forgives our failures, and teaches us the path of life.
Halevi taught that the difference between Elokim and Hashem is the difference between the G-d of Aristotle and the G-d of Abraham.
A philosopher can come to the realization that the universe has an author, a first cause, a “prime mover.” But only a prophet can relate to G-d as a person. Hashem is G-d as we encounter Him not in creation but revelation.
If we now turn to the biblical text, we see a remarkable phenomenon. In Bereishit 1, G-d is described as Elokim. In chapters 2 and 3, He is called Hashem-Elokim. In chapter 4, for the first time He is called Hashem alone. Something changes in the course of these chapters: not G-d (who does not change) but the human perception of G-d.
In the first chapter, man is part of nature, which is why G-d is described as Elokim, the author of nature. In chapters 2 and 3, man begins to use language. He becomes, in the words of the Targum, “a speaking being.” But thus far he only uses nouns, first for the animals, and then for his wife, whom he calls ishah, “woman.”
He has moved from nature to culture, but he has not yet understood the concept of a person. It is only after he gives his wife a proper name that the Torah uses the word Hashem alone. It is only after he has become aware of his wife as a person that he is capable of understanding G-d as a person.
Judaism was much more than the discovery of monotheism. It was also the discovery that G-d is a person — that the fact that we are persons, with loves, fears, hopes and dreams, is not an accidental by-product of evolution but is an echo of the ultimate reality of the cosmos. That is why the commands between us and G-d are inseparable from the commands between us and our fellow human beings.
Now we understand that extraordinary sequence of three verses.
Discovering his mortality, Adam knew that he could only live on through his children, born through an act of love. For the first time he looked on his wife as a person in her own right, and expressed this by giving her a proper name. Having done this, he was able to experience G-d through His proper name, Hashem. At that moment humanity ceased to be a mere biological species and became homo religiosus, man-in-search-of-G-d who meets Hashem, G-d-in-search-of-man.
Judaism is the story of how the love we feel for another person leads to the love of G-d, and robes us in garments of light.
