A

ADAM AND EVE
When God creates the first man (Hebrew adam) and woman (named Hawwah ["Eve"], similar to Hebrew hayyah, "life"), he commands them, "Be fruitful and multiply." It should follow, then, that Adam and Eve engage in sex early on. The book of Genesis, however, is silent on this question. The couple remains childless while in the Garden of Eden, and until their loss of innocence Adam and Eve are not even aware of their nakedness. Some interpreters take this to mean that Adam and Eve before the Fall are not aware of their sexuality. But that makes nonsense of the divine command to procreate. It also suggests that sex is somehow to be associated with the Fall and is thus tainted with sin and shame. Such a view reflects a later ascetic Christian, not a biblical Hebrew, attitude toward human sexuality. (See LOVEMAKING and VIRGINITY.)
One can speculate, based on Gen. 1:27, that Adam and Eve were originally one androgynous being--"God created man in his own image, . . . male and female created he them"--meant to reproduce in some asexual way. But again this associates sex with the couple's Fall (their original state being androgyny or asexuality), an un-Hebrew notion that also conflicts with Genesis 2, according to which man and woman were not created simultaneously.
Perhaps Genesis makes no mention of Adam and Eve making love in the Garden of Eden because it is taken for granted. James Barr, in The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality, points out that there was no reason, given the acceptance of sexuality as normal in ancient Hebrew culture, for the couple to abstain. In the Noncanonical book of Jubilees (3:6), Adam and Eve have sexual relations as soon as God introduces them. It is literally love at first sight. According to rabbinic tradition, Eve is not even Adam's first wife. His first wife is Lilith, who leaves him because during sexual intercourse Adam won't let her be on top. (For more on this failed relationship, see GENDER: "MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM.")
Sex, in any case, has nothing to do with Adam and Eve's Fall from grace in Genesis. Their sin is one of disobedience, specifically eating fruit from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil," that is, reaching for godlike knowledge ("ye shall be as gods," the serpent tells Eve, "knowing good and evil" [Gen. 3:5]) (see Gaster). Eve, tempted by the serpent to partake of the fruit, gets blamed by Adam ("she gave me of the tree," Adam tells God, "and I did eat," as if Eve had a choice but poor Adam didn't). (The woman is given all the blame also by the early Christian church; see PAUL.) God punishes them both, with the punishment of Eve being pain in childbirth ("in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children") and unequal status ("thy desire," God tells her, "will be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee"; see GENDER).
The first sex act described in the Bible comes after the departure from Eden: "And Adam knew Eve his wife" ("to know," Hebrew yada, being a euphemism for sexual intercourse), "and she conceived, and bare Cain." As Barr notes, intercourse is here described for the first time because it is the first time that a child is produced. Adam and Eve then have a second son, Abel, and when Adam is one hundred and thirty years old he knows Eve again, fathering Seth.
How many times Adam knows Eve after that, or how many more wives Adam knows, is unknown, but he begets "sons and daughters" for eight hundred more years. (Gen. 1:26-5:5) (On to CAIN)
Lucas Cranach the Elder, "Adam and Eve" / Carol Gerten's Fine Art

ASHERAH: The Lord God's Lady?
The goddess Asherah was the consort of El ("god"), the supreme god of Canaan and father of the popular Baal. In the Bible her name often appears as ha asherah, meaning "the" asherah. In such instances the reference is not to the goddess but to a symbol of her, an object (in the plural asherim) that was apparently a sacred pole, tree, or group of trees (hence the translation "groves") at Israelite sanctuaries or "high places" as well as by altars of Baal. The erecting of asherim was among the "evil" deeds of kings like Ahab and Manasseh, and cutting the things down was a regular chore of "right" kings like Hezekiah and Josiah.
The presence of Asherah or her symbol at places where Yahweh, the biblical God of the Hebrews, was worshipped raises the question of whether the Canaanite goddess was considered also to be the consort of Yahweh. We know from references to "the sons of God" (Gen. 6:1-4; Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7), "the host of heaven" (1 Kings 22:19), "angels" (Gen. 19:1; Ps. 103:20), and God's statement "Let us make man in our image" (Gen. 1:26), that Yahweh was not alone in his heaven. We know also that Yahweh supplanted the Canaanite El to the extent that God's other names in the Hebrew Bible include El, El Elyon ("God Most High"), El Shaddai ("God Almighty"), and the (originally) plural form Elohim (as in Gen. 1:1). But did Yahweh take El's woman too?
The answer may well be found, appropriately enough, in some graffiti, inscriptions dating from the eighth century B.C.E., found on walls and storage jars at two sites, Khirbet el-Kom and Kuntillet Ajrud, in Israel. (See Dever's Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research.) The graffiti includes blessings such as "I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and by his asherah," and "I bless you by Yahweh of Teiman and by his asherah." Does this mean by Yahweh and by his goddess? Or is it saying "by Yahweh and by his sacred pole"?
All we may safely assume at this point has been well put by the French epigrapher Andre Lemaire: "Whatever an Asherah is, Yahweh had one!" (See also BAALIM AND ASHTAROTH and YAHWEH: "THY MAKER IS THINE HUSBAND".)

S

SONS OF GOD: "They Took Them Wives"
Male members of God's heavenly court are mentioned three times in the book of Job: called bene ha Elohim ("sons of God"), they twice present themselves (Satan among them) before God (1:6, 2:1), and are described as shouting for joy at the creation (38:7). (Similarly, heavenly beings are referred to as bene elim ["sons of gods"] in Ps. 29:1, and bene Elyon ["sons of the Most High"] in Ps. 89:6.) According to the book of Genesis (6:1-4), some of these divine beings also enjoyed themselves by mating with earthly women: "the sons of God" saw that "the daughters of men . . . were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose." The sons of God then "came in unto" these earthly wives, and "they bare children to them." The children were giants called the Nephilim, "the mighty men that were of old, men of renown."
Though originally, it appears, a tradition to account for the presence of "giants in the earth in those days" (Gen. 6:4), the story of the sons of God and the daughters of men is used in Genesis to help illustrate the earthly wickedness--these were apparently bad giants--that led God to send Noah's Flood. Thus the Nephilim passage is followed by the statement that "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth," man's every thought being "only evil continually" (Gen. 6:5).

In the pseudepigraphical 1 Enoch (6-14), the sons of God are called the Watchers, angels who take earthly women for themselves and father giants who plague mankind. God has the fallen angels bound inside the earth till the day of judgment. (See also Jubilees 5:1-10.) In the New Testament, 2 Peter 2:4 tells how these angels were cast "down to hell, . . . to be reserved unto judgment," and Jude 6 refers to the angels who "kept not their first estate" and are "in everlasting chains" till judgment day. It would also seem to be Genesis's lustful sons of God to whom Paul refers in 1 Cor. 11:10: praying or prophesying women should have their heads covered, says the Apostle, "because of the angels." (On to NOAH)

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YAHWEH: "Thy Maker Is Thine Husband"
The Hebrew God Yahweh is conceived of biblically as a male deity, with the covenant relationship between him and Israel often portrayed as that of a marriage between husband and wife. (The other name by which the deity is most often referred to in the Hebrew Bible is Elohim [translated "God"], an originally plural form meaning "gods." "The LORD" in English versions translates Yahweh--the assumed pronunciation of YHWH [a name of uncertain meaning], there being no vowels in the original Hebrew text.)
The perception of God as masculine is of course not surprising in a patriarchal or male-ruled society. As noted by Susan Ackerman, there are some feminizations of Yahweh in Isaiah (e.g., "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you" [66:13]; see also 42:14 and 49:15). But then Isaiah also refers to kings as "nursing fathers" (49:23) and to daughters who "shalt suck the breasts of kings" (60:16), words that cannot be taken literally. In any case, Yahweh outside of some Isaianic imagery is masculine in the Hebrew Bible.
In the New Testament, "God" translates the Greek Theos, with God remaining a male deity. Thus Jesus regularly uses the word Father (Greek Pater, in Jesus' Aramaic Abba) for God (e.g., Matt. 6:8-9; Mark 14:36; Luke 10:21; John 17:1; see also Paul's use in Rom. 8:15 and Gal. 4:6). Elaine Pagels points out that some Christian Gnostics thought of the divine in both masculine and feminine terms, with Jesus referring to the Holy Spirit as his Mother in the Gospel of Thomas and in the Gospel to the Hebrews, and with the Apocryphon of John describing the Trinity as Father, Mother, and Son. As Pagels notes, however, such views were suppressed as heretical, with none of the Gnostic texts included in the New Testament canon. (See Robinson's The Nag Hammadi Library.)
There is archeological evidence that at least some ancient Hebrews perceived of Yahweh as having a consort or female companion (see ASHERAH: THE LORD GOD'S LADY?). This could be the origin of the mysterious Lady Wisdom found in Proverbs and the Apocrypha. (She is in some of the Gnostic texts as well.) Wisdom (Hebrew hokma, a feminine noun) is personified in Proverbs not only as a woman but as a preexistent entity with Yahweh. "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way," says Lady Wisdom, "before his works of old, . . . and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him" (Prov. 8:22,30). It was through Wisdom that Yahweh "founded the earth" (3:19), she is "a tree of life" to those who lay hold of her (3:18), and she offers to reward all who seek her: "I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me" (8:17).
In the Apocrypha, Lady Wisdom is identified with the Torah or biblical law (Sirach 24:23; Baruch 4:1). In the New Testament, the preexistent Word (Greek Logos) at the beginning of the Gospel of John is reminiscent of Wisdom, and in 1 Cor. 1:24 Paul calls Christ "the wisdom of God" (Greek Theou Sophia).
The metaphor of Yahweh and the Hebrew people as husband and wife is found first in the book of Hosea, and continues in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. It is a troubled marriage, for despite Yahweh's "love toward the children of Israel," they "look to other gods" (Hos. 3:1). The wife's infidelity is thus a metaphor for the Israelite people's idolatry. (See HARLOTRY: "A-WHORING AFTER OTHER GODS".) "Thy maker is thine husband," Isaiah tells Israel, yet she beds down with others (Isa. 54:5; 57:7-8). "Turn, O backsliding children," Yahweh pleads in Jeremiah (3:14), "for I am married unto you." At one point Yahweh divorces Israel for her adultery, only to have "her treacherous sister Judah" commit adultery also (Jer. 3:8). Ezekiel 23 allegorizes Samaria and Jerusalem, the Israelite and Judahite capitals, as two sisters with a host of foreign lovers while both are married to Yahweh.
Particularly disturbing to feminist commentators are the biblical passages that describe Yahweh's brutal punishment of the women who symbolize Israel's unfaithfulness. As noted by Kathleen M. O'Connor, the portrayal of physical abuse by the divine in such passages implicitly condones such behavior in humans. Just as Yahweh rapes Babylon in Isa. 47:1-4, so he helps the Babylonians rape Jerusalem in Jer. 13:26 (see RAPE). In Lamentations, Yahweh trods "the virgin" Jerusalem "as in a winepress" (1:15), and in Ezekiel he tells his wife Oholibah (Jerusalem), "I will raise up thy lovers against thee," and they will "strip thee out of thy clothes"; they will take away not only "thy sons and thy daughters" but "thy nose and thine ears," and "thus will I make thy lewdness to cease from thee" (23:22-27).

Needless to say, the thought behind these metaphors of Yahweh the husband physically abusing his wife presents a challenge to modern biblical interpreters. Through such imagery "the Bible," writes Sharon H. Ringe in The Women's Bible Commentary, "seems to bless the harm and abuse with which women live and sometimes die." The brutality seems hardly ameliorated by Yahweh's assurances to his mutilated wife of a brighter tomorrow, for they make God sound like the stereotypical wife beater who minimizes what he has done and promises not to do it again: "In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee. . . . Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel, . . . and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry" (Isa. 54:8; Jer. 31:4).