ישיבת ארייתא-חבורת חומש בעיון - בראשית

(1) המאורות הגדולים THE GREAT LUMINARIES — They were created of equal size, but that of the moon was diminished because she complained and said, “It is impossible for two kings to make use of one crown” (Chullin 60b).

Besides, whereas rulers generally exercise control only over people who are their contemporaries, and cannot extend their authority automatically over subsequent generations of their subjects, the root רדה, implies superiority based on natural law by one species over another. Man is superior to the animals both by reason of his intelligence and by reason of the means at his disposal to establish physical superiority over them. Eventually, by having rescued the animals from extinction during the deluge, man even acquired the right to use the animals as food. Prior to the deluge the “dominion” mentioned here was evident primarily in man using the animals as beasts of burden, etc. The various kinds of birds were used by man to enjoy its eggs, its feathers, etc. At any rate, the right accorded to man to exercise control over the animal kingdom was not fully implemented until after the deluge.

A HELP MEET FOR HIM — (כנגדו literally, opposite, opposed to him) If he is worthy she shall be a help to him; if he is unworthy she shall be opposed to him, to fight him (Yevamot 63a).

( an assistant when the need should arise. Solomon, in Kohelet 4,9, paraphrased this when he wrote: טובים השנים מן האחד, “Two are better than one alone.” Furthermore, woman was a necessity if man was to leave offspring behind to ensure the continuity of his species.

(The meaning of the word פן in that verse is the same as אולי or שמא , “maybe.” G’d told Adam that he would certainly die if he ate from it, as the Torah wrote literally in 2,17 “on the day you will eat from it you will certainly die.” Seeing that she had not quoted the prohibition correctly as G’d had not said anything about maybe dying as a result of eating from the tree, we must assume that Chavah had invented this word meaning for it to apply to touching the tree, an addition which had been altogether her own. She meant to say that G’d so loves us that He denied us to touch the tree as a safeguard against eating from it.
An alternate way of explaining the words פן תמותון is similar to פן תשיב את בני שמה which Avraham warned Eliezer about (Genesis 24,6) which meant “do not bring back!” or Genesis 30,24) פן תדבר עם יעקב, “do not speak to Yaakov, etc.,” G’d warning Lavan.

(1) "And the reason for the words 'the woman you gave to me'-in other words, she gave me from the tree, and i figured that whatever she would say to me would be for my benefit and help. That is why in the punishment God says "because you listened to the voice of your wife", that you should not have listened to her advice in lieu of following my command. This is what the rabbis called 'ingratitude'. For we would want to explain that Adam answered God 'you caused me to fail in this area, that you gave me a woman to help and she ended up advising me to sin'. "

(The fact that the Torah uses the plural mode when referring to blood, writing דמי instead of דם, is not especially significant, as the word דם occurs frequently in the singular mode and also in the plural mode. (Compare Leviticus 20,9 and Leviticus 20,11 to mention just as few examples.) Actually, the justification for treating the word דם as both singular and plural is the fact that on the one hand it is an entity, but at the same time it contains 4 different categories of moisture.