On the nouns אִשָּׁה and אִישׁ in Genesis 2:23

(The above renderings come from the RJPS translation, an adaptation of the NJPS translation. Before accounting for these renderings, I will analyze the plain sense of the Hebrew term containing אִישׁ—which in this case includes its feminine form, אִשָּׁה—by employing a situation-oriented construal as outlined in this introduction, pp. 11–16.)

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There are three possible ways to construe the references that are evoked by the bare nouns אִשָּׁה and אִישׁ in this passage.

1. They are species-generic.
2. They are specific (and indefinite).
3. They are situationally unique.

The first two of those options presume that אִשָּׁה and אִישׁ are used as run-of-the-mill content nouns, equivalent to “adult woman” and “adult man” respectively (i.e., labels for identifying someone solely in terms of those intrinsic attributes). The third option treats them as two forms of the Hebrew language’s situating noun for persons.

Let us consider each option, in turn. Under #1, the speaker’s act of labeling is directing attention mainly to the referents’ shared humanness. However, the context does not support such an interpretation, for the speaker refers to himself as he existed during the phase when a species per se did not yet exist. (A lone individual doth not a species make!) Hence this construal is implausible, although in 2006 I had employed it in CJPS (‘Woman … a Human’).

Under #2, the speaker’s act of labeling is directing attention to the referents’ complementary gender: a certain woman is encountered by a certain man. Again, however, the context of use does not support this construal. Indefinite deixis necessarily creates a mental space in which other similar referents are presupposed to co-exist (see Radden 2009:202). Yet in this case, there is nobody else to occupy such a reference class, because for each gender there is only one participant in existence. The referent is pragmatically delimited to this one case—and on that basis can be identified by the speaker’s audience.

Fortunately, we need look no farther than the prototypical (and therefore highly available) meaning of a situating noun: it use profiles its referent as a participant whose presence is essential for grasping the schematically described situation. In this case, each referent is profiled as a situationally unique and therefore definitive participant.

That is, in an outburst of poetic inspiration, the speaker’s act of labeling is directing attention to the unprecedented situation: the speaker depicts it succinctly via two forms of the situating noun, which regards them in terms of that situation.

This construal is the only one that yields a coherent text: the speaker is referring to himself precisely as the אִישׁ (definitive participant) that he was already prior to the creation of the Woman. It also yields an informative text, one that points up the referents’ situational complementarity. And being a highly available construal (cognitively speaking), it thus meets all three criteria for being the plain sense of the passage in question.

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As for rendering into English, the NJPS ‘Woman … Man’ express construal #1 above—and so miss the mark.

To convey the situationally oriented meaning in idiomatic English, we must take account of the situational uniqueness, recognizing that for the text’s audience, the two referents are identifiable parties. Hence the deixis in English needs to be definite. Rendering as ‘the Woman … the Man’ seems best. However, because those nouns have lost much of their situating functionality in recent decades, clarifying footnotes are warranted—to discourage reading the two labels as if they are classifying their referents.