אִשָּׁה

Summary

אִשָּׁה (isha, "woman/wife") in Genesis 2:22-23 is formed from the same root as ish ("man") in a wordplay celebrating shared nature: "She shall be called woman, for she was taken from man." The egalitarian reading is that this naming is an act of recognition and relationship, not authority — poetry celebrating equality of nature, not a hierarchy. The woman as isha is a theological marker of full humanity and shared image-bearing.

In Genesis 2:22–23, God fashions the rib/side (tsela) taken from the man (ʾîš) into a woman (ʾiššâ), and the man declares "She shall be called woman (ʾiššâ), for she was taken from man (ʾîš)" — a paronomasia that ties the woman's identity directly to her origin from the man. Article 146 (Cheryl Schatz) notes that God called the creature ʾiššâ before even bringing her to the man, indicating that her identity as woman does not depend on the man's naming act alone. The Hebrew wordplay ʾîš / ʾiššâ (man/woman) is untranslatable into Greek or English. In the LXX, ʾiššâ is rendered as gynē (γυνή). Key exegetical debates: (1) Does the ʾîš/ʾiššâ etymology imply ontological derivation (complementarian reading: the woman derives her being from the man, establishing a hierarchy)? (2) Or does it simply mark biological and relational mutuality — the woman is the counterpart to the man, bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh (v.23), establishing equality of nature? The egalitarian reading (Phyllis Trible, Catherine Kroeger, Schatz) argues that the naming in v.23 is an act of recognition and relationship, not an act of authority. Gen 2:23 reads as poetry celebrating sameness of nature, not hierarchy. The word ʾiššâ thus functions as a theological marker of the woman's full humanity and shared image-bearing with the man. See: ʾēzer, tsela, kenegdo, bāśār ʾeḥād.