Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #26 of Genesis, chapter 3 and we are going to read Genesis 3:20:

And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

When we read and consider this verse it seems fairly straightforward at first. It seems true and correct and, of course, we know all the Bible is true and correct, but this verse seems to be in accord with everything we know to be true about Eve. She was the mother of all living. However, when look more closely at this verse it really raises some questions. There are two main things I want to look at, so let us read this verse again, as it says in Genesis 3:20:

And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

So, we would expect that the name Eve was due to the fact that she was the mother of all living. In other words, we would expect the name “Eve” to identify with “living” or “life,” but when we look up the Hebrew word translated as “Eve” that is not what we find.

The Hebrew word translated as “Eve” is Strong’s #2332 and it is only translated as “Eve,” but it is identical in both spelling and vowel pointing to the Hebrew word #2333. Yet, that word does not help us much because that word is translated as “town.” For some unknown reason, every time that Strong’s #2333 is used, it refers to the town of “Jair.” The word “Jair” relates to being “enlightened,” so there could be some relationship there and, yet, overall, I do not see how understanding that the name “Eve” means “town” is helpful and I do not see how it relates to being the mother of all living.

This Hebrew word, Strong’s #2332 is related to another Hebrew word, Strong’s #2331. This word is translated as “shew” and it is the word used in Job 32:10:

Therefore I said, Hearken to me; I also will shew mine opinion.

It is also used in Job 36:2:

Suffer me a little, and I will shew thee that I have yet to speak on God's behalf.

This word is found several more times, but we will go to one more place in Psalm 19:1-2:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.

It is the second word “sheweth” in verse 2 that is #2331 in Strong’s concordance and it is a related word to our word translated as “Eve.” When we look at how #2331 is translated as “shew,” we see it is a word related to “revealing” something. It is “revealing” the Word of God. That is the point of the heavens that declare the glory of God as they utter speech and show knowledge. This is the word that helps us to define our word “Eve.” It is either “town,” like “Jair,” or it is “sheweth” or that which “reveals,” but neither of the words relate to life or living, as we would expect because Adam called his wife’s name Eve because she was the mother of all living. This is the first curious thing about this verse.

The second unusual thing about Genesis 3, verse 20 is that it says Adam called his wife’s name Eve “because” (for the reason) that she was the mother of all living. What is unusual about that? We know that Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel. After Cain rose up and slew Abel, she gave birth to Seth and the human race developed from there, but at the time that Adam is giving her the name “Eve” she has not yet given birth to anyone and she is not the mother of anyone at that point. It was right after the fall into sin and, apparently, it was not too long after Eve was formed and taken out of the side of Adam. They had spent some time together, but there is no indication of any kind that she had given birth, so it is strange that Adam calls her “Eve” because she was the mother of all living. Notice the word “was” is in the past tense. At this point, she has not given birth to even one child, so she is not the mother of anyone, so why did Adam call his wife’s name “Eve”? When we look at it historically, it does not seem to fit. In Jay Green’s Interlinear Bible, he tries to help the situation by translating the word “was” as “become” because he realized it was awkward language and he tried to correct it a little bit. Obviously, we do know that she did become the mother of all living and all children would trace their lineage back to Adam and Eve, but the problem is the Hebrew word translated as “was” is correctly translated. It is the same word that is found back in Genesis 1:2:

And the earth was without form, and void…

It was not that the earth “became” without form and void, but that was its condition at creation. The word translated as “was” is identical in its consonants and its vowel points as our word in Genesis 3, verse 20: “And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.”

This is another example that shows that the Bible is primarily written in a spiritual way. It is not just an “after thought.” In the first instance, a statement is primarily made to teach spiritual truth and not for the historical or moral truth. The deeper spiritual meaning is the supreme meaning of any statement in the Bible – it is the most important meaning – and it has to do with the spiritual truth that is found in a verse or passage. Oftentimes, God will write a verse that is historically or grammatically unusual and very difficult to understand in order that we look for that deeper spiritual meaning. It is actually a “sign post” to look deeper when we see difficult or awkward language. The deeper spiritual meaning is the “hid treasure” or the “mystery” of the Gospel that is contained throughout Scripture, as God has written the Bible in a very difficult manner to hide truth. The Bible says in Isaiah 45:15: “Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.” God hides Himself and He is the truth, so He hides truth in His Word. We know it is the glory of God to conceal a thing, and the honor of kings to search it out. We, the people of God, have the task assigned to us to search the Scriptures and to dig into the Word of God to uncover the deeper spiritual meaning, if God is pleased to grant us understanding.

So, when we see verses like the verse that says that Eve was the mother of all living, we have to ask ourselves what God is teaching through this language. Historically, we know that Eve was the mother of all living and any children would have come, ultimately, from her. If she had not given birth to children, none of us would be here.

The word “living” is a word that can be understood to refer to physical life. It says in Genesis 2:7:

And JEHOVAH God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

The words “life” and “living” are the same Hebrew word used in our verse. It is used in a natural sense in referring to physical life in other places as well, but it is also the word God used in Psalm 133:3:

… for there JEHOVAH commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.

Life for evermore is spiritual life and it is the life that God grants in salvation. So, this means that in one sense Eve is the physical mother of all living, but it could also be that this has to do with those that are spiritually alive. We are encouraged along those lines because we know that God has been using Adam as a figure of the Lord Jesus Christ. When God caused a deep sleep to come upon Adam, He took one of Adam’s ribs and He formed the woman, we know it was a spiritual picture of Christ dying (deep sleep) and the woman (the elect) coming out of His side. It is no coincidence that when Jesus was on the cross, the Roman soldier pierced His side with a spear and out came “water and blood.” The water of the Gospel and the blood of Christ flowed forth into the world, spiritually, and as people heard the Word and became saved they became part of the bride of Christ. It is a very clear connection to the spiritual bride that came from Christ’s pierced side, so we know that Eve does relate and identify with the elect. The elect are the “living.”

When God looks down from heaven and sees this world with billions of people, He sees masses of humanity that are dead in sin; they are spiritually dead because they have never been born again. Scattered among them are those that God has saved, the elect, and they were brought to “life,” like Lazarus. God made them to be “alive” among the dead and they are alive spiritually in their souls and, in that sense, they are the true “living.” So, we can look at it as what happened when the Gospel was brought forth down through the ages and it saved God’s elect. They came to “life” and were born of the Word and, in a sense, they were born of the ones that ministered the Word to them, as the Apostle Paul said, “For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.” We are born again through the Gospel and when we are born again we feed upon the milk of the Word, just like a baby feeds upon its mother’s milk.

In Galatians, chapter 4 God takes a passage from Genesis and He is going to look at the historical record and relate it to the Gospel. In this case, the Lord is going to do our work for us by revealing the deeper spiritual meaning of a big section of the Old Testament account in Genesis that has to do with Abraham and his two wives. It says in Galatians 4:22:

For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.

The free woman was Sarah, but God does not refer to her by name. It goes on to say in Galatians 4:23:

But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.

Hagar was the bondwoman, but the free woman, Sarah, gave birth to Isaac according to the promise of God. It was a longstanding promise to Abraham that he would have a son in his old age.

It goes on to say in Galatians 4:24-25:

Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.

This passage is mind blowing because it just destroys the “hermeneutic” of the churches that you must look for the historical or grammatical statement of Scripture and then you seek no other meaning. This passage in Galatians fits hand-in-hand with the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ spoke in parables and without a parable He did not speak. Here, God is taking many Old Testament chapters into account. When you go to Galatians, you read about Abraham and the promise God gave him and God’s dealing with Abraham and Sarah and how it appeared that they lacked patience and Sarah told Abraham to go in unto her handmaid Hagar. This story worked out over several chapters in Genesis where there is not a hint that those chapters should be understood allegorically. And an allegory is another way of saying a parable. Of course, it was true history, so it was an historical parable, but when you read those chapters there was nothing that indicated deeper spiritual meaning. But, here in Galatians God is explaining the deeper spiritual meaning. It was like when Jesus would speak a parable and then the disciples would come to Him later and ask Him the meaning of the parable and then Jesus would explain the deeper spiritual meaning. In Galatians God is speaking of Abraham and his two wives and their sons and God is saying, “Which things are an allegory.”

The churches and theologians jealously want to protect their methodology of Bible study and they say, “Well, here is how we understand this. When God specifically speaks to a point and He says something is an allegory or something represents something else, then we have specific allowance by God and we can understand these things as an allegory.” But then they are quick to point out, “But where God does not specifically tell us that a statement is an allegory, then you are forbidden to do that.” That is where they lay down their law of the “historical, grammatical method” and you seek no other truth. It really is dull and lifeless because, as I said earlier, the teaching of the Bible is primarily the deeper spiritual meaning and this is what the churches lack. They say, “That is when you get in trouble. You are over spiritualizing.” They go back to the Old Testament and they read about Abraham, his life with Sarah, the incident in marrying Hagar and the children that are born. Then you have permission from Galatians, chapter 4 and you can only work with that in this chapter, but once you move on in history and God does not later explain it as an allegory, then the churches say, “You must stop allegorizing. You can allegorize in chapters 16, 17 and 18, but when you get to chapter 22, you have to stop allegorizing.” It is completely foolish. It is blind.

In Galatians 4, it is like Jesus explaining a parable. As a matter of fact, if you go back to verse 21, this is how the passage was introduced: “Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?” Then God goes immediately into the explanation of the two covenants from the Book of Genesis. That was part of the Law of Moses, the first five Books (the Pentateuch). Do you see what God asked in verse 21: “Do ye not hear the law?” Jesus would say, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Then God follows that question by explaining the deeper spiritual meaning of the Law. God is talking about parts of Genesis, but the same application can be made to Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Remember what the Apostle Paul said in 1Corinthians when he made reference to the Law of Moses. It says in 1Corinthians 9:9-10:

For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.

He explained the deeper spiritual meaning of that one Law or one verse from the Old Testament. It was an allegory, just like in Genesis.