Eden · The Symbolism of Scripture
BSBEden
Nobody ever goes back, and yet Eden never leaves the Bible. It becomes the measurement a restored place is held against, and the last chapters return the specifics one at a time without announcing it.
Summary
Eden is the only place in Scripture that everybody leaves and nobody returns to, and it keeps being mentioned anyway. The prophets use it as a measurement: a ruined country will be made 'like Eden', and passers-by will say so. Then the last two chapters of the Bible do something quieter than a return. They put the specifics back, the tree of life, the river, the work, without ever using the name, and add one line the garden never needed.
- The garden is IN Eden. Genesis 2:8 distinguishes the two, and Eden itself means delight or pleasantness.
- Genesis 2:15 gives the man two jobs, to dress it and to keep it, before anything has gone wrong. Work is not the curse.
- The Hebrew verbs are abad (work, till, serve) and shamar (keep, guard); Albert Barnes gives both glosses.
- The same verb 'to keep' is handed to the cherubim in Genesis 3:24, guarding the way the man had been guarding.
- Isaiah 51:3 and Ezekiel 36:35 both use the garden as the standard a restored wasteland is compared to.
- Revelation 22 gives back the tree, not one tree, but on both banks and in the street, and states what is gone: the curse.
What This Page Is
the picture, not the place
Genesis gives the garden four rivers and two of them by names still on modern maps, which has kept people looking for it for a very long time. That question (where it was, what the rivers were, what can honestly be said about the geography) belongs to a separate study. This page carries what Scripture does with the name afterwards.
And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, where He placed the man He had formed.A garden eastward IN Eden: the region and the garden inside it are two things in one sentence.
A garden eastward in Eden - Though the word עדן Eden signifies pleasure or delight, it is certainly the name of a place. See Gen 4:16; 2Ki 19:12; Isa 37:12; Eze 27:23; Amo 1:5. And such places probably received their name from their fertility, pleasant situation, etc. In this light the Septuagint have viewed it, as they render the passage thus: Εφυτευσεν ὁ Θεος παραδεισον εν Εδεν, God planted a paradise in Eden. Hence the word paradise has been introduced into the New Testament, and is generally used to signify a place of exquisite pleasure and delight.
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Genesis 2:8
Eden--was probably a very extensive region in Mesopotamia, distinguished for its natural beauty and the richness and variety of its produce. Hence its name, signifying "pleasantness." God planted a garden eastward, an extensive park, a paradise, in which the man was put to be trained under the paternal care of his Maker to piety and usefulness.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Scottish, nineteenth century
Genesis 2:8
Clarke’s point is worth keeping because it is easy to lose in English: Eden means delight, and it is also a place name, and the garden is a plot inside it. Jerome, translating in the fifth century, renders it deliciae and notes that the Hebrew word for the garden is simply a garden; the word paradise arrives through the Greek.
(Verse 8.) And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. Instead of paradise, in Hebrew it has the word 'hortum' which means garden. And Eden is translated as 'deliciae'. Symmachus translated it as a flourishing paradise.
Jerome · Hebrew Questions on Genesis, 420Latin, fifth century
Genesis 2:8
Work Is in the Garden
Genesis 2:15, and two verbs given before anything goes wrong
Then the LORD God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.Two jobs, in a chapter with no sin in it yet. Whatever the curse does later, it does not introduce work.
- XII. The Command 15. נוּח nûach rest, dwell. עבד ‛ābad work, till, serve. שׁמר shāmar keep, guard. We have here the education of man summed up in a single sentence.
Albert Barnes · Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Genesis 2:15
The glosses are worth reading slowly. Abad: work, till, serve. Shamar: keep, guard. Neither is a light word, and the second one implies there was something to guard against. Both are given to a man in a garden where nothing has yet gone wrong.
Put him into the garden - to dress it, and to keep it - Horticulture, or gardening, is the first kind of employment on record, and that in which man was engaged while in a state of perfection and innocence. Though the garden may be supposed to produce all things spontaneously, as the whole vegetable surface of the earth certainly did at the creation, yet dressing and tilling were afterwards necessary to maintain the different kinds of plants and vegetables in their perfection, and to repress luxuriance. Even in a state of innocence we cannot conceive it possible that man could have been happy if inactive. God gave him work to do, and his employment contributed to his happiness
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Genesis 2:15
Although man was placed in paradise so as to work and guard it, that praiseworthy work was not toilsome. For the work in paradise is quite different from the work on the earth to which he was condemned after the sin. The addition "and to guard it" indicated the sort of work it was. For in the tranquility of the happy life, where there is no death, the only work is to guard what you possess.
Augustine of Hippo · Two Books on Genesis Against the Manichaeans 2.11, 430Latin, fifth century
Genesis 2:15
Clarke and Augustine arrive at the same conclusion from opposite directions: Clarke by noticing that a man could not have been happy idle, Augustine by distinguishing the work in paradise from the labour a man was condemned to afterwards. What Genesis 3 curses is the ground, not the working of it. Matthew Henry puts it in one clause: “Adam's work was so far from being an allay that it was an addition to the pleasures of paradise; he could not have been happy if he had been idle”
A reading worth knowing: the garden as a sanctuarywhere the two verbs turn up again in the law
put the man into the garden of Eden to dress it--not only to give him a pleasant employment, but to place him on his probation, and as the title of this garden, the garden of the Lord (Ge 13:10; Eze 28:13), indicates, it was in fact a temple in which he worshipped God
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Scottish, nineteenth century
Genesis 2:15
How would God have placed what was altogether imperfect in paradise to work and guard it? For he who is capable of tending "the tree of life" and everything that God planted and caused to spring up afterwards would not reasonably be called imperfect.
Origen of Alexandria · Commentary on John 13, 253Alexandrian, third century
Genesis 2:15
The pairing of those two Hebrew verbs recurs in the law for the service of the sanctuary, which is why a long line of readers has taken the garden as the first temple and the man’s work as priestly. It is a reading rather than a statement of the text, and it is offered here as one.
Therefore the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.He is sent out to do the same work in a harder place, and the ground he is sent to is the ground he was made from.
So He drove out the man and stationed cherubim on the east side of the Garden of Eden, along with a whirling sword of flame to guard the way to the tree of life.Read the last four words. The job of keeping has not been abolished; it has been reassigned.
He might justly have chased him out of the world, Job xviii, 18, but he only chased him out of the garden: he might justly have cast him down to hell, as the angels that sinned were, when they were shut out from the heavenly paradise, 2 Pet. ii, 4, but man was only sent to till the ground out of which he was taken. He was only sent to a place of toil, not to a place of torment.
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765Methodist
Genesis 3:24
So he drove out the man - Three things are noted here: 1. Gods displeasure against sinful man, evidenced by his expelling him from this place of blessedness; 2. Mans unfitness for the place, of which he had rendered himself unworthy by his ingratitude and transgression; and, 3. His reluctance to leave this place of happiness. He was, as we may naturally conclude, unwilling to depart, and God drove him out.
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Genesis 3:24
Wesley’s reading of the expulsion is the one that keeps proportion: a place of toil, not a place of torment. Ephrem the Syrian goes a step further and reads the toil itself as remedy: “God now sends him "to work the earth from which he had been taken, " [ Gen. 3:23 ] so that he who had been harmed by the ease in the Garden might be benefited by toil on the earth.” That is a reading, and a generous one. Augustine notes what the cherubim are actually posted to do, and the verb is guard rather than merely bar:
"God placed cherubim and a flaming sword that moves"—this could be said in the one word movable—"to guard the way to the tree of life." Those who translate the Hebrew words in Scripture say that "cherubim" means in Latin "the fullness of knowledge."
Augustine of Hippo · Two Books on Genesis Against the Manichaeans 2.23, 430Latin, fifth century
Genesis 3:24
Eden as a Unit of Measurement
what a restored place gets compared to
For the LORD will comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and melodious song.Two comparisons in one verse (like Eden, like the garden of the LORD) for a place currently in ruins.
Then they will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden. The cities that were once ruined, desolate, and destroyed are now fortified and inhabited.’And the same comparison, this time in the mouths of onlookers. It is what people will say.
Eden--as Tyre (the type of the world powers in general: so Assyria, a cedar "in the garden of God, Eden," Eze 31:8, 9), in original advantages, had been compared to "Eden, the garden of God" (Eze 28:13), from which she had fallen irrecoverably; so Israel, once desolate, is to be as "the garden of Eden" (Isa 51:3), and is to be so unchangeably.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Scottish, nineteenth century
Ezekiel 36:35
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown have gathered the three Eden references in the prophets and noticed that they do two opposite jobs. For Tyre the garden is what she has fallen from irrecoverably. For Israel it is what she will be restored to, and the word they use is unchangeably.
For the Lord shall comfort Zion - On the word Zion, see the notes at Isa 1:8. The meaning here is, that he would again restore it from its ruins. The argument is drawn from the statement in the previous verses. If God had raised up so great a nation from so humble all origin, he had power to restore the waste places of Judea to more than their former beauty and prosperity
Albert Barnes · Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Isaiah 51:3
They shall say, "See what a blessed change here is, how this land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden, the desert turned again into a paradise," Note, God has honours in reserve for his people to be crowned with sufficient to counterbalance the contempt they are now loaded with
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Ezekiel 36:35
Adam Clarke compresses the whole movement into a sentence: “This land that was desolate by sin, is become like the garden of Eden by righteousness - Satans blast is removed; Gods blessing has taken place.”
You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every kind of precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald. Your mountings and settings were crafted in gold, prepared on the day of your creation.An oracle addressed to the king of Tyre, and the name of the garden turns up in it, along with nine stones.
Who is Ezekiel 28:13 addressed to? Two readings, both seriousa genuine dispute, and the page does not settle it
The king of Tyre, ironically. John Gill and Adam Clarke both read the oracle as addressed to the man it names, with the Eden language as comparison rather than history:
Not only in Eden, but in the garden which was in Eden, and was of the Lord's immediate planting; and therefore called the garden of God, as well as because of its excellency, fragrancy, and delight; not that the king of Tyre was literally there, or ever dwelt in it; but his situation in Tyre was as safe, and as pleasant and delightful, as Adam's was in the garden of Eden, at least in his own imagination.
John Gill · Exposition of the Old Testament, 1763Particular Baptist
Ezekiel 28:13
Thou hast been in Eden - This also is a strong irony. Thou art like Adam, when in his innocence and excellence he was in the garden of Eden!
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Ezekiel 28:13
The devil, behind the king. Ambrose and Augustine both take the passage as speaking past the man to the power behind him, and Augustine uses it in an argument that the devil was not created evil:
That the devil existed even in paradise we are informed by the prophet Ezekiel, who in discussing the prince of Tyre says, "You are in Eden, the garden of God." The prince of Tyre stands for the devil.
Ambrose of Milan · On Paradise 2:9, 397Latin, fourth century
Ezekiel 28:13
They have no reply to the witness of the prophets, for example, where Isaiah, representing the devil figuratively in the person of the prince of Babylon, asks, "How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of the dawn?" or where Ezekiel says, "You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering." These texts indicate that the devil was for a time without sin.
Augustine of Hippo · City of God 11.15, 430Latin, fifth century
Ezekiel 28:13
Four serious readers, two answers, eighteen centuries of the question staying open. This page names both and does not adjudicate between them.
Where It Points
what the last chapters give back
| In the garden | In the last chapters |
|---|---|
| The tree of lifeOne tree, in the middle of the garden, and guarded after the expulsionGenesis 3:24 | “was there the tree of life… and on either side of the river”Revelation 22:2 |
| The riverA river went out of Eden to water the gardenGenesis 2:10 | A river of water of life, and the tree standing on both banks of itRevelation 22:1-2 |
| Work“to dress it and to keep it,” before anything goes wrongGenesis 2:15 | “his servants shall serve him”Revelation 22:3 |
| The curseNot in the garden. It arrives in Genesis 3, on the groundGenesis 3:17 | “And there shall be no more curse”Revelation 22:3 |
down the middle of the main street of the city. On either side of the river stood a tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit and yielding a fresh crop for each month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.Count the locations: in the street, and on either side of the river. That is not one tree.
No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be within the city, and His servants will worship Him.And the sentence that was never needed in Genesis 2, because there was nothing yet to remove.
Was there the tree of life - Not a single tree, but it abounded everywhere - on the banks of the river, and in all the streets. It was the common tree in this blessed Paradise - of which all might partake, and which was everywhere the emblem of immortality. In this respect, this new Paradise stands in strong contrast with that in which Adam was placed at his creation, where there seems to have been a single tree that was designated as the tree of life, Gen 3:22-23.
Albert Barnes · Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Revelation 22:2
In Eden the tree of life was one tree, in one place, and after Genesis 3 it had a guard on it. In the last chapter it lines a street and both banks of a river, and nobody is keeping anyone away from it. John Wesley makes the same count, and Adam Clarke explains the grammar that allows it:
In the midst of the street - Here is the paradise of God, mentioned, chap. ii, 7. Is the tree of life - Not one tree only, but many. Every month - That is, in inexpressible abundance.
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Methodist
Revelation 22:2
The tree of life - An allusion to Gen 2:9. As this tree of life is stated to be in the streets of the city, and on each side of the river, tree must here be an enallage of the singular for the plural number, trees of life, or trees which yielded fruit by which life was preserved.
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Revelation 22:2
And the last row of the figure is the one that makes the ending more than a restoration. Eden had no curse in it: the curse arrives in Genesis 3, and it lands on the ground. So when Revelation 22:3 says there shall be no more curse, it is not describing a return to the garden. It is describing a place the garden was never asked to be.
What Scripture says outright
- Genesis 2:15
The man is given work in the garden, before the fall, in two verbs, dress and keep. The text states it without comment.
- Isaiah 51:3
A ruined place is promised a restoration measured against Eden by name, and against the garden of the LORD in the same breath.
- Ezekiel 36:35
The comparison is put into the mouths of onlookers: the prophet says what people will say.
- Revelation 22:3
“And there shall be no more curse”, stated plainly, in the chapter where the tree of life reappears.
What readers have heard in it
Readings, named as readings.
- Ezekiel 28:13
That the oracle is addressed past the king of Tyre to the devil. Ambrose and Augustine read it so; Gill and Clarke read it as irony aimed at the man himself. The question is open and this page does not settle it.
- Genesis 2:15
That the garden was a temple and the man’s work priestly. The two Hebrew verbs do recur together in the sanctuary law, which is a real observation; Genesis does not make the claim.
- Genesis 3:24
That the flaming sword stands for temporal punishment, or the cherubim for the fullness of knowledge. Augustine offers both; the verse says what they were posted to do and no more.
Its Presentation Through Scripture
the garden, from the planting to the last street
And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, where He placed the man He had formed.
Read the preposition. The garden is IN Eden: the two are not the same word for the same thing.
Then the LORD God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.
Two verbs, before anything has gone wrong. Work is in the garden, not in the curse.
Therefore the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
And he is sent out to do the same thing somewhere harder: to till the ground he was taken from.
So He drove out the man and stationed cherubim on the east side of the Garden of Eden, along with a whirling sword of flame to guard the way to the tree of life.
The verb at the end of the verse is 'to keep,' the same word given to the man in 2:15. The job passes to somebody else.
For the LORD will comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and melodious song.
Fifteen centuries later, and the garden is being used as a unit of measurement for a ruined place.
Then they will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden. The cities that were once ruined, desolate, and destroyed are now fortified and inhabited.’
The same comparison, put into the mouths of passers-by. It is what people will say when they see it.
You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every kind of precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald. Your mountings and settings were crafted in gold, prepared on the day of your creation.
The strangest use of the name, in an oracle addressed to a king, and readers have disagreed for eighteen centuries about who is being spoken to.
down the middle of the main street of the city. On either side of the river stood a tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit and yielding a fresh crop for each month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
The tree is back, and the difference is the arithmetic: not one, but everywhere.
No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be within the city, and His servants will worship Him.
And the line that was never needed in Eden, because there was nothing there yet to remove.
The Voices
with the work named
Albert Barnes supplies the two Hebrew verbs and their glosses, and then the observation the whole ending turns on: that Eden had one tree of life and Revelation has them everywhere. Adam Clarke does the ordinary work of keeping the words straight: Eden is a place and it means delight, the garden is inside it, and the singular tree in Revelation 22 is a figure of speech he can name.
Augustine distinguishes the work in the garden from the labour after it, and notices that the cherubim are posted to guard rather than simply to bar. John Wesley keeps the proportion of the expulsion: toil and not torment. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown gather the prophets’ three uses of the name and see that they run in two directions. And Gill, Clarke, Ambrose and Augustine between them leave the hardest verse in the symbol honestly open.
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