While from her bosom heavenly raptures rise;
Intrinsic worth, comprising every grace,
Displays its radiance in her roseate face.”
When the woman was formed, “God brought her unto the man,” i.e. he presented her to him to be his wife. We are not to imagine, by bringing her to the man, is meant, that God merely placed her before his eyes, and thus exhibited her: but that he joined the man and the woman together in marriage.
“Attending angels strike the choral lay,
And hymn your anthems on this bridal day;
While the first Pair unite their willing hands,
Whose hearts are join’d in love’s eternal bands.”
On receiving the woman, Adam said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” Adam was the common stock and root of all mankind; not only all his posterity were wholly contained in him alone, but also the first woman, the mother of us all, had her vital life in him, and was part of his living flesh and bones: he saw that she was of the same nature, the same identical flesh and blood, the same constitution in all respects, having the same physical powers, mental faculties, and inalienable rights. He added, “She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man;” i.e. she shall partake of my name as she does of my nature. A literal version of the Hebrew would appear strange, says Dr. A. Clarke, and yet a literal version is the only proper one. איש Ish, signifies man; and the word used to express what we term woman, is the same with feminine termination, אשה ishah, and literally means she-man. Most of the ancient versions have felt the force of the term, and have endeavored to express it as literally as possible. The Vulgate Latin renders the Hebrew virago, which is a feminine form of vir, a man. Symmachus used ανδρις andris, a female form of ανηρ, aner, a man. Our own term is equally proper, when understood: it is a literal translation of the original; and we may thank the discernment of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors for giving it. Wombman, of which woman is a contraction, means the man with the womb. Verstegan, in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, justifies this sense of the word, on the ground of antiquity and propriety, and says it should be so written. The term woman was not peculiar to her, but common to the sex; she differing from man in sex only, not in nature. Afterward Adam called her חוה chavah, which answers exactly to ζωη of the Septuagint, both signifying life, because she was the mother of all living.
“Oh blest existence! (now the man exclaims,