The Glory of Womanhood (Part 2): Of the Man

By Heather Ross · Christian devotionals for women

About the author

The Bema still rises above the forum at Corinth, even in ruin.

Standing there, you can look out over the old marketplace and begin to imagine what once filled that open square—the movement of merchants, the murmur of bargaining, the nearness of temples, the coming and going of officials, the common people below, and authority visibly set above them all.

The broken stones still preserve the shape of a city where order was public, rank was elevated, and religion pressed close to ordinary life. Even now, it is not hard to feel how such a place trained the eye to think of power in terms of height, distance, and display.

A view of ancient Corinth

Yet when Paul writes to Corinth about womanhood, he does not borrow Rome’s picture of order. He does not point the church to raised platforms, civic rank, or the architecture of empire. 

He leads them back instead to Eden, where God revealed order not through distance, but through nearness—not through a tribunal lifted above the crowd, but through a woman taken from a man’s side. In a city that displayed hierarchy in stone, Paul speaks of something older, quieter, and full of meaning: “the woman of the man.”

He is reminding the Corinthians that God first revealed the meaning of womanhood in the Garden.

There, before sin, before rivalry, before confusion, God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. Then, in wisdom and care, He took from his side and built the woman. The way she was made was itself part of the message. Woman was formed of the man—in a way that spoke of nearness, kinship, and a relation full of God’s own wisdom.

Artist's rendering of a Bema

God could have formed Eve from the dust, just as He had formed Adam. But He did not. He chose instead to bring her forth from the man himself. That choice was full of meaning. Woman was not introduced into creation as a detached being, standing apart in solitary self-definition. She was brought forth in connection. Her very beginning testified to a God who delights in order, harmony, and belonging. Womanhood was never meant to be read as detached or isolated. From the beginning, it was framed with companionship, harmony, and shared life in view.

To be of the man means that womanhood bears, in its very origin, the mark of divine wisdom. God made woman in such a way that her existence would speak of relation. She would not be a stranger to man, nor a rival to him, nor merely another version of the same thing. She would be wonderfully like him, and yet wonderfully distinct. 

Adam’s first response to the woman's existence is striking. It is full of joy, of glad recognition: “This is now bone of my bones," he says, "and flesh of my flesh"—for she belongs with him within the good order of God.

A Garden scene

And this, in turn, helps us understand why Paul joins the language of headship to the language of origin in 1 Corinthians 11. “The head of the woman is the man,” he says in verse 3, and then, a few verses later “the woman of the man.” These are not separate ideas. Paul is showing that the order he speaks of is not arbitrary or imposed from outside. It is bound up with creation itself. The arrangement rests in the wisdom of God.

And what stands out in that first creation scene is  tenderness. Woman is taken from Adam’s side. She is brought to him by God. She is received with gladness. The picture is one of closeness, belonging, and joy. That should shape the way we speak of womanhood.

To be of the man is to be formed in a relation that God Himself declared good. It is to bear in one’s very making the wisdom of a Creator who delights in order, harmony, and belonging. It is to belong to a design that is not cold or accidental, but full of holy intention.

A woman does not have to invent herself or step outside God’s order to become meaningful. Her life already carries meaning, because God has written meaning into what she is. Womanhood, then does not begin with self-assertion, but with receiving from the hand of God what He has wisely made. 

To be of the man also means that womanhood is relational by design. Not every woman is called to marriage, but every woman still bears this created meaning. Even where a woman is unmarried, her womanhood is not suspended or incomplete. A single woman already lives before God as one who was made within this created order. Her womanhood is already full of dignity, shaped by divine wisdom, and to be received with gratitude and lived out with grace.

God told the story of woman’s making in such a way that we might know His heart in it. There is beauty in belonging to what God has made. There is peace in receiving His order as good. There is dignity in living within the meaning He has written into creation. 

So when Paul says, “the woman of the man,”he is opening a window back to Eden. He is showing us that from the beginning, womanhood was shaped by God with tenderness, relation, and holy purpose.

It did not arise accidentally, nor stand alone, nor wait for the culture to explain it. It came from the hand of God already full of meaning.

And every woman, receiving that meaning with gladness, may learn to live in the quiet beauty of what He has made.

In the next article, we'll explore the significance of verse 9, "for the man."

Part 1