Genesis II:18 and 22 read: "And Yahweh said, 'It is not good for Adam to be alone. I will make a fitting helper for him.'...And Yahweh fashioned the rib that He had taken from the man into a woman; and He brought her to the man."
Today, we know that Genesis I and II are simply two separate Creation stories. Genesis II derives from a Sumerian story, while Genesis I is a later creation of the Hebrew Priesthood (created by the Deuteronomic School around 700 BCE). However, to a people who were quite determined to take the Scriptures as ultimate Truth, such a contradiction was not welcome at all. It demanded an explanation that reconciled both stories.
Explanation number one is perhaps the best—Qabalistically speaking. As we know, Adam was created to perfection. He was created in the perfect image of "Elohim." Of course, God is not seen as being either male or female, but as both at once. Even the Name Elohim is a feminine word (Eloah—Goddess) with a masculine plural suffix. Thus, if God is male and female, the mother and the father, then Adam (which translates as "Mankind") must also have originally been male and female in one. To be otherwise would have been to be unbalanced, and thus imperfect.
And thus was Adam's perfection, said to be even greater than the Angels. In fact, in this view, Adam was not a human at all—but a Cosmic Being known as Adam Kadmon. He was the Archetype upon which humans would later be based.
Now, enters the passages from Genesis II. Just as the Unity of God was divided in two (the separation of the Waters by the Firmament) to create the Universe, so to was mankind created by the separation of the Archetypal Man into "its" two halves—male and female. Thus, woman was separated from man, and Adam Kadmon became an unbalanced creature—a human. This imperfection finally led to the Fall, the manifestation of the Human Race from Archetypal to the Actual. The woman was called Eve, which literally translates as "Life." Mankind was given Life, and the rest is history.
Explanation number two, though just as Qabalistically useful in its own right, is nevertheless vastly more fun—especially mythologically speaking. This is where Lilith enters the picture as the first wife of Adam. The verse from Genesis I was thus explained as a veiled hint to the entire Lilith affair. Genesis II:20 even helps back this up: "And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts; but for Adam no fitting helper was found." The animals of the Earth had been created for the strict purpose of being helpers to Adam, and Lilith was among them. But, Lilith had failed, and no other beast came even close (apparently Lilith was the only animal enough like Adam to be a candidate at all). The next seen in the Scripture is where Yahweh breaks down and decides to chance separating Adam into his two halves of male and female.
Without worrying over specific developments, I will simply relate the entire tale as it came to be after all. Following is the story of Lilith:
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