24 That is why a man leaves his father and his mother, sticks with his woman, and they become one flesh.
עַל־כֵּן֙ יַֽעֲזָב־אִ֔ישׁ אֶת־אָבִ֖יו וְאֶת־אִמּ֑וֹ וְדָבַ֣ק בְּאִשְׁתּ֔וֹ וְהָי֖וּ לְבָשָׂ֥ר אֶחָֽד׃
Don’t let the quotation marks I put in the previous post fool you; the original text, in Hebrew doesn’t have them. Who is saying these words in v. 24 is a decision that a translator has to make. Rashi explains:
This is the Holy Spirit speaking.
That is, it is not a continuation of the earthling’s speaking in v. 23 but a return to the voice that is narrating our chapter. And now for a responsible opposing viewpoint, that of David Kimhi:
In fact, these words are not Moses’ but a continuation of Adam’s in v. 23. He knew that he was to have children and perpetuate the species just like all the other living creatures. The straightforward sense of the verse is not that he abandons his parents, ceasing to serve and honor them to the best of his abilities, but simply that when he gets married he moves out of their house and into a home with his wife.
Uh, Adam? What are “father” and “mother,” and how do you know about them?
כן ken means “thus” or “so,” as we saw over and over again in Version 1. על כן al ken, occurring here for the first time, means “hence” or “therefore.” Nahum Sarna, in the JPS Torah Commentary, puts it yet a third way:
Hebrew ꜥal ken is not part of the narration, but it introduces an etiological observation on the part of the Narrator; that is, the origin of an existing custom or institution is assigned to some specific event in the past.
The standard translations all turn the Hebrew imperfect form into an English general present, something that regularly “happens,” rather than a future tense, something that “will happen” — except for the King James Version (perhaps following the LXX), which writes:
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
There are no quotation marks in the Greek, nor in the KJV either, so it is not certain that they are putting these words in “Adam’s” mouth. In any case, I must agree with Sarna, and with Rashi, that this is the narrator of our chapter speaking. (Kimhi assumes that “Moses” is the narrator, leading to some interesting questions about the relationship between Torah and revelation that I’m going to leave aside for the time being.)
If this is indeed the narrator speaking, then something remarkable is happening. The narrator is telling us why we have been told this story.
It was a similar voice, and presumably the same voice, that gave us the geography lesson in vv. 10–14. In that case, we had to figure out on our own why we were being told about the four rivers. This time, we have al ken to guide us: This story that I’ve just told you (says the narrator), about how the woman was created out of a “joist” taken from the man — his own flesh and bone — is the reason men and women are so eager to get back together. They are re-creating the original “one flesh” of the earthling that was separated into two parts.
Why this has to be explained to us, I’ll admit, is somewhat puzzling. Sarna says this:
In this case, some interrelated and fundamental aspects of the marital relationship are traced to God’s original creative act and seen as part of the divinely ordained natural order. The fashioning of the woman from the man’s body explains why his bond to his wife takes precedence over his ties to his parents … To become “one flesh” refers to the physical aspects of marriage, as though the separated elements seek one another for reunification.
But he adds:
There is a seeming contradiction here since Hebrew d-v-k, “to cling,” essentially expresses the idea of two distinct entities becoming attached to one another while preserving their separate identities … The underlying meaning of the paradox is clear, if it is noted that the verb d-v-k is often used to describe human yearning for and devotion to God. [He cites Deut 4:4, 10:20, 11:22, 13:5, and 30:20.] Sexual relations between husband and wife do not rise above the level of animality unless they be informed by and imbued with spiritual, emotional, and mental affinity.
Jon Levenson, in the Jewish Study Bible, focuses more on the monogamous implications of the story:
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