Charles Ellicott Commentary Genesis 2:22

"and the rib, which Jehovah God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man." — Genesis 2:22 (ASV)

He made a woman. —Hebrew, he built up into a woman. Her formation is described as requiring both time and care on the heavenly artificer's part. Thus, woman is not a casual or hasty production of nature, but is the finished result of labor and skill. Finally, she is brought with special honor to the man as the Creator’s last and most perfect work. Every step and stage in this description is intended for the ennoblement of marriage.

Woman is not made from the adâmâh, but from the adam. She is something that he once had, but has lost; and while for Adam there is simply the closing of the cavity caused by her withdrawal, she is molded and refashioned, and built up into man’s counterpart. She brings back more than the man parted with, and the Creator Himself leads her by the hand to her husband.

The anthropomorphic language of these early chapters is part of that condescension to human weakness which makes it the rule everywhere for inspiration to use popular language. He who made heaven and earth by the fiat of His will must not be understood as having literally molded the side taken from Adam as a sculptor would the plastic clay; nor did He assume human form so that He might place her at man’s side. Much of this may indeed have been represented to Adam’s mind in the trance into which he had fallen.

But the whole narrative has a nobler meaning. The practical result of its teaching was that neither woman nor marriage ever sank into that utter degradation among the Jews which elsewhere so greatly aided in corrupting morals and people.