family. Standing beside the lordly lion and his lioness or beside any mated pair of animals in Eden, Adam no longer looked one-sided, incomplete, for now his perfect mate, his wifely complement and helper, stood beside him. Everything matched. The sight was lovely. It was good in the Creator’s eyes.

22. (a) When did Adam first have relations with his wife, and what does this show as to when the first marriage was consummated? (b) In their perfection what was their attitude toward each other?

²² When Jehovah God brought this perfect woman to the awakened man in Eden and pronounced his blessing upon them and set their joint duties before them their marriage was consummated. It did not require any physical sexual union between them first to consummate their marriage. If that sexual connection were first necessary to make the marriage a real, valid, binding one, then Adam and his woman were never married in Eden. It is first after this couple found themselves outside of Eden some time later that, we read, “now Adam had intercourse with Eve his wife and she became pregnant. In time she gave birth to Cain.” (Gen. 4:1, NW) Adam and Eve knew that the purpose of the sexual connection was to bring forth children. So in their perfection and with perfect self-control and without shame at their nakedness and without feeling passion at the sight of each other’s unclothed body they refrained from having sexual union and conceiving children while in Eden. Nevertheless, they were fully married and were bound to cleave to each other lovingly in faithfulness. Jehovah God, the divine marriage-maker, had yoked them together. No creature could rightly put them apart.

Marriage Under Imperfect Conditions

1. What had God meant marriage to bring to man and to accomplish?

MARRIAGE has been put under much stress and strain by imperfection. Imperfection is due to sin. Sin is unrighteousness, disobedience to the perfect laws of Jehovah God. The marriage of Adam and Eve in Eden was a perfect one because it was performed by Jehovah God, all of whose activities are perfect, all of whose ways are justice. (Deut. 32:4, NW) The taking of a rib from Adam and along with it the female characteristics that were originally in him did not make him unhappy. God’s presentation of these things back to him in the form of a perfect woman for his wife ushered him into a happiness he had never known before. His wedding day in Eden was a most happy one. The marriage that it inaugurated was meant to be a continuously happy one and was to lead to the unspeakable happiness of being fruitful and bringing forth perfect children of their kind. God himself who had united them would be happy at all this, for thus his purpose in creating the earth would be fulfilled, to have it “inhabited.”—Gen. 1:26-28; Isa. 45:18.

2. (a) What interrupted the complete happiness of the first human pair? (b) How had Adam taught his wife, and by doing what would he show his love for God and her?

² What, then, interrupted the complete