The older book
Spear
What happens at his side?
Yahweh God made a woman from the rib which he had taken from the man.
Genesis 2:18-25 · Ephesians 5:25-32 · John 19:28-37 · Brown-Driver-Briggs, צֵלָע · Septuagint, Genesis 2:21-22 · Augustine, Tractates on John 9.10
The scene
God causes Adam to fall into a deep sleep, takes one of his ribs and makes the woman, then brings her to him.
When Adam sees the woman, he says:
"This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh."Genesis 2:23
Genesis then gives us the marriage:
"Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh."Genesis 2:24
Paul quotes that passage in Ephesians while talking about husbands and wives:
"For this cause a man will leave his father and mother and will be joined to his wife. Then the two will become one flesh."Ephesians 5:31
Then he says:
"This mystery is great, but I speak concerning Christ and the assembly."Ephesians 5:32
That's the connection Scripture actually gives us. Paul has put the marriage in Genesis beside Christ and his people.
At the cross, Jesus is already dead, so the soldiers don't break his legs. Instead, one of them pierces his side with a spear, "and immediately blood and water came out."John 19:34
Here's something you can't see in English. The Hebrew word translated "rib" can also mean a side. And in the Greek Old Testament, the word used there is pleura. John uses that same word for Jesus' side.
Adam falls into a deep sleep, and the woman is made from his side. Jesus dies, and his side is pierced.
John doesn't tell us that the church was being made from Jesus' side, so I'm not going to pretend he does. But Christians saw it early. Augustine described the church coming from Christ's side, the way Eve came from Adam's.
We started with Paul calling Adam "a foreshadowing of him who was to come." Three cards later, we've barely started Genesis.Romans 5:14
There's more we could find, but I think you can see why Christians kept coming back here.
The point
Adam was a foreshadowing of him who was to come.Romans 5:14
Sit with this
Keep looking.