Adam, Eve, and the Question of Death

In contemplating my newfound state of singleness, I’ve been going over the biblical picture of the man-woman relationship. In doing so I’ve ended up back in the beginning of it all. Odd that I have ended up going backward in my quest to move forward. But look back I’ve found I must. And now I find myself looking all the way back.

I’ve always found it remarkable that the first love story is so simplistic. Adam didn’t date a bunch of Eves before finding “the one.” She was always the one; she was the only one. And she was given to Adam by God.

After spending two years with a man I was convinced I’d marry, life without him is utterly foreign. I almost feel as if I’m living someone else’s life. It’s not a dark and gloomy sort of life, but it’s just not mine.

All of this has led me to wonder how it was when Adam or Eve lost the other to death. Their sin in the Garden had sealed their death, but they still walked out of Eden together. In each other they held on to one blessing God had given. Both were cursed, but they endured together. Both saw their older son kill their younger, but they went through it together. Adam was cursed to toil and work over the ground, but he always came home to Eve. Eve gave birth to Adam’s children and endured the painful curse of child birth each time. But they were Adam’s children, and he was blessed through her pain.

But they died. I wonder who went first. We know they lived for several hundred years. Were they surprised when death came?

What if Eve went first? Did Adam watch her grow tired, weary, and sick? What did her last day look like? Did she die quietly in her sleep? I can see Adam lying next to her, old and decrepit himself, his arm beneath her head, his face bowed down close to hers, sharing her last breaths. He just listens to her inhaling—feels her exhaling. Each breath comes slower and slower. Every time she exhales he wonders, “Will she breathe again? Will her chest rise again as she grasps for one more breath, one more moment to stay in my arms?” He strokes her hair away from her face and dribbles water onto her thin, dry lips. This woman, this mother of all humanity, is slowly losing her grip on life as Adam holds her. God is drawing her away.

Let me pause here and mention a thought I have repeatedly been struck by. Adam probably clearly remembered those first moments with Eve. God brought her to him, and the two were man and wife. This was in response to God seeing Adam’s loneliness. Adam has his work in the garden and he had named all the animals, but he was still alone. Adam had his job and he did the tasks God assigned him. “But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:20 ESV). Adam’s life was not empty and void without Eve. He had his God and he had his work. But God saw that, “It is not good that man should be alone” (2:18). So God created Eve to complete Adam’s world. She was not the sole source of his life and purpose, but without her, God’s plan was not complete.

So we go back to this theoretical moment, with Eve slipping away from Adam to be with God. Adam was suddenly facing life without her once again. Whether he had days left or years, they were to be incomplete or, as God first put it, “not good.” My heart aches for Adam in this situation. I think of my parents and the utter despair I would feel for my father to lose his partner, his helper. The aching is unimaginable.

Yet I must say I prefer this scenario to the alternative. Let us picture, for a moment, a different scene. As a woman who has known true love for a man, this picture is easier for me to imagine. What if Adam died first? What if Eve was left alone? Just thinking of her heartache makes my own heart quiver. I know what it is liked to have loved and lost. I’m in the midst of the grieving process for that loss. But I have a life a part from that love. I’m a bit more like Adam. I have God and I have tasks. I can remember a time before I had love, before I had a partner. And while I would much rather live life with him, I know I am capable of living well without him. Not so for Eve. God created Eve and brought her to Adam. She was created by God, for Adam. She had never existed without him.

But here she is in our mind’s eye, an old woman with wrinkled hands that have held her children and cared for her husband. She has endured the curse by his side for several hundred years and wept at the death of Abel. She gave Adam a son “in his own image” (Genesis 5:3 EV). They alone carried the memory of Eden in their hearts. Yet here he lay, her partner, her mate, the one for whom she was intended. And she was facing the unknown of life, whether days or years, without him. She strokes his hair and keeps him warm while God draws his spirit from the earth.

Forgive me for being overly personal, but I think I have a small understanding of how this might have been for Eve. Losing a relationship, specifically a serious, long term, romantic relationship is, for women, often a huge loss. It is a loss not of the relationship in the present, but also of the hopes and plans for the future. When a relationship ends, the potential future for that relationship ends as well. The children with her hair and his eyes cease to exist. The Christmases spent going between in-laws disappear. The image of him at the end of the aisle, waiting for her, must be extinguished. It is the loss of the future that women often find the most difficult to overcome.

Eve was facing the same loss at Adam’s death. Their time together was coming to an end and she was losing not just him, but the continuing future with him as well. She was losing her leader, her broad shoulder to cry on, and the father of her children. And she was entering into a life, no matter how long she has left, without him. My heart breaks for Eve. It aches for them both but it truly breaks for her.

I’ve gotten a taste of her possible pain over the last few weeks. This level of loss is unimaginable, and it does not hit all at once. It’s a process of realization and of mourning each significant aspect of the relationship that has suddenly ceased to exist. Knowing all of this now, and more importantly, feeling it now, I have just one genuine hope. I doubt I will ever know the reality, but I still have this hope: I desperately hope that God took Eve first. I do not think I could process the concept of Adam dying first. The loss of Adam to Eve would, I think break any woman. But for Eve, who had never known a moment with Adam, I think it would be too much. So I simply hope to God that she never experienced that—I hope beyond all hope that God took her first.