I. The gift of speech to Adam was in itself a sublime prophecy that man was not to remain alone and without a companion in the garden where God had placed him. Glorious as man's condition was, there was yet a want the shadow of some yearning hung upon his brow. The sleep that fell upon Adam was no common sleep, like that of wearied humanity; it was something higher. The old Greek translation has it "an ecstasy." It was a prophetic sleep. While he slept, the Lord God built for him a woman, like some great architect, before whom the ideal of a glorious building has floated, until at last the time comes to pile it up visibly, and to rejoice in its exceeding beauty. When Adam awakes his language swells into a hymeneal first, and then into a prophecy.
II. The idea of wedded life involves three things: unity, companionship, subordination.
III. In the old classical world, woman was incredibly degraded; but corruption and false principles on this point were directly attacked by the Gospel of Christ. The tender ties of home and family were not for Him who moved in His loneliness among the sons of men; and yet He breathed with that infinite purity of His upon the flushed and passionate cheek of woman in her home, until it grew pure again. Our homes themselves repose upon the idea of marriage, which was given to man in Eden and renewed by Jesus Christ, the Second Adam.
Bishop Alexander, Norwich Discourses,4th series, No. 3.
References: Genesis 2:24. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. viii., p. 77. Genesis 2; Genesis 3. S. Leathes, Studies in Genesis,p. 31.