Garden of Eden

Garden of Eden: The garden God planted in Eden, where he put Adam and Eve, according to Genesis 2:8-15.

Gan: The Hebrew word for garden. It comes from a root that means to cover or defend, and it names an enclosed garden.

Eden: A Hebrew name that sounds like the word for delight. Some scholars connect it with an Akkadian word for plain or steppe.

## What Is the Garden of Eden? It is the garden God planted “eastward in Eden” and where he put the man he had formed (Genesis 2:8). It held the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God drove Adam and Eve out after they ate from the second tree.

## The Account Genesis 2:7 says God formed Adam from the dust. Genesis 2:8 says God then planted a garden and put him there. Genesis 2:15 says God took the man and put him in the garden “to dress it and to keep it.” Adam was made outside the garden and placed in it.

The Hebrew for dress and keep is avad and shamar. The same two verbs describe the work of the priests in the tabernacle in Numbers 3:7-8, and several scholars read the garden as a sanctuary. The cherubim and flaming sword placed at the east in Genesis 3:24 support that reading.

A river flowed out of Eden and divided into four heads: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Hiddekel and the Euphrates (Genesis 2:10-14). Hiddekel is the Tigris. The Pishon and the Gihon are not identified with certainty.

## Where Was It? The Bible names two of the four rivers but does not locate Eden. Suggestions include southern Mesopotamia, the Armenian highlands, the head of the Persian Gulf, and Jerusalem. None has been confirmed. The Flood described in Genesis 6 to 9 would also have changed the land.

## Eden Elsewhere in the Bible Ezekiel 28:13 speaks of Eden, the garden of God, and Ezekiel 31 speaks of the trees of Eden. Isaiah 51:3 promises that the LORD will make Zion’s wilderness like Eden. The Greek translation of Genesis renders gan as paradeisos, the source of the word paradise. In Revelation 2:7 and 22:1-2, the tree of life and the river return in the new creation.

## Why Was a Garden Needed? Genesis does not say. The Hebrew word gan suggests an enclosed and protected place. Genesis 3:1 shows the serpent already present in the garden, and the text does not say when Satan fell. Readers differ on the timing.

## My View I believe Adam was formed outside the garden and placed in it. I believe Lucifer had fallen before this, and that God made an enclosed garden to protect his new creation. The serpent still got in, so the protection was no guarantee against deception.

## Sources Scripture quotations are from the King James Version.