Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Genesis 2:8

And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

8 9. The Garden in Eden

8. a garden ] More strictly “an enclosure.” LXX , Lat. paradisum, a word borrowed from the Persian, and meaning “a park-like enclosure.” Its use here has given rise to the Christian metaphorical use of the word “Paradise.” “The word is of Iranian origin. In Avesta it is pairi-daza encircling wall’ ( Vend. iii. 18). It passed into Neo-Babylonian, Aramaic, post-Exilic Hebrew, Neo-Hebrew, Armenian, Persian, Kurdish, Greek, and Arabic as a word for a park or splendid garden. In the O.T. it is found in Neh 2:8, Son 4:13, Ecc 2:5 ” ( Encycl. Rel. and Eth. vol. ii. p. 705).

eastward ] The point of view is not that of the Babylonian, but of the Israelite, who regarded the East, and, in particular, Babylonia, as the cradle of man’s earliest civilization. Notice here the quite general description of the site of the “garden.” For its more minute definition, see Gen 2:10-15. LXX : Vulg. a principio. The Hebrew, when speaking or writing, is mentally facing East. “Eastward” is the same as “on the side fronting you.”

in Eden ] Eden is not the name of the “garden,” but of the country or district in which Jehovah planted his “garden.” Eden in Hebrew means “delight,” or “happiness”; and the Israelite naturally associated this meaning of the word “Eden” with the dwelling place of the first man and woman, because this auspicious name seemed appropriate to the Garden of Jehovah. Hence we find the Garden of God spoken of as the place of fertility, beauty, and delight, Isa 51:3, Eze 28:13; Eze 31:8-9; Eze 36:35, Joe 2:3.

“In Eden”; so, rightly, LXX . The Lat. “voluptatis,” = “of pleasure,” represents a popular misapprehension, not recognizing it as a proper name.

Assyriologists point out that the Assyrian word edinnu, meaning “a plain” or “steppe,” was applied to the Euphrates Valley. They suggest that the “garden” lay in this region. The Hebrew narrative, however, evidently contemplates a fruitful enclosure, not a plain: the name “Eden” is chosen because of its auspicious meaning in Hebrew, while the fact that in sound it reproduced the Babylonian designation of a remote Eastern, or Mesopotamian, region, made it appear all the more appropriate.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

– XI. The Garden

8. gan garden, park, paradeisos, an enclosed piece of ground. eden Eden, delight. qedem fore-place, east; foretime.

11. pyshon Pishon; related: flow over, spread, leap. chavylah Chavilah. chol sand. chebel region.

12. b^edolam, anthrax, carbuncle, (Septuagint) bdellion, a gum of eastern countries, Arabia, India, Media (Josephus, etc.). The pearl (Kimchi). soham prasinos, leeklike, perhaps the beryl (Septuagint), onux, onyx, sardonyx, a precious stone of the color of the nail (Jerome).

13. gychon Gichon; related: break forth. kush Kush; r. heap, gather?

14. dgla’ chddeqel Dijlah, Tigris. chad, be sharp. rapidus, p^erat Frat, Euphrates. The sweet or broad stream. Old Persian, frata, Sanskrit, prathu, platus.

This paragraph describes the planting of the garden of Eden, and determines its situation. It goes back, therefore, as we conceive, to the third day, and runs parallel with the preceding passage.

Gen 2:8

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden to the east. – It is evident that the order of thought is here observed. For the formation of man with special allusion to his animal nature immediately suggests the means by which his physical needs are to be supplied. The order of time is an open question so far as the mere conjunction of the sentences is concerned. It can only be determined by other considerations.

Here, then, the writer either relates a new creation of trees for the occasion, or reverts to the occurrences of the third day. But though in the previous verses he declares the field to be without timber, yet in the account of the third day the creation of trees is recorded. Now, it is unnecessary, and therefore unreasonable, to assume two creations of trees at so short an interval of time. In the former paragraph the author advanced to the sixth day, in order to lay before his readers without any interruption the means by which the two conditions of vegetative progress were satisfied. This brings man into view, and his appearance gives occasion to speak of the means by which his needs were supplied.

For this purpose, the author drops the thread of events following the creation of man, and reverts to the third day. He describes more particularly what was then done. A center of vegetation was chosen for the trees, from which they were to be propagated by seed over the land. This central spot is called a garden or park. It is situated in a region which is distinguished by its name as a land of delight. It is said, as we understand, to be in the eastern quarter of Eden. For the word mqedem on the east is most simply explained by referring to some point indicated in the text. There are two points to which it may here refer – the place where the man was created, and the country in which the garden was placed. But the man was not created at this time, and, moreover, the place of his creation is not indicated; and hence, we must refer to the country in which the garden was placed.

And put there the man whom he had formed. – The writer has still the formation of man in thought, and therefore proceeds to state that he was thereupon placed in the garden which had been prepared for his reception, before going on to give a description of the garden. This verse, therefore, forms a transition from the field and its cultivator to the garden and its inhabitants.

Without the previous document concerning the creation, however, it could not have been certainly known that a new line of narrative was taken up in this verse. Neither could we have discovered what was the precise time of the creation of the trees. Hence, this verse furnishes a new proof that the present document was composed, not as an independent production, but as a continuation of the former.

Gen 2:9

Having located the newly-formed man of whom he had spoken in the preceding paragraph, the author now returns to detail the planting and the watering of the garden. And the Lord God made to grow out of the soil every tree likely for sight and good for food. We look on while the ornamental trees rise to gratify the sight, and the fruit trees present their mellow fare to the craving appetite. But pre-eminent among all we contemplate with curious wonder the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These will come under consideration at a future stage of our narrative.

Gen 2:10

Here is a river the source of which is in Eden. It passes into the garden and waters it. And thence it was parted and became four heads. This statement means either that the single stream was divided into four branches, or that there was a division of the river system of the district into four principal streams, whose sources were all to be found in it, though one only passed through the garden. In the latter case the word nahar may be understood in its primary sense of a flowing of water in general. This flowing in all the parts of Eden resulted in four particular flowings or streams, which do not require to have been ever united. The subsequent land changes in this district during an interval of five or six thousand years prevent us from determining more precisely the meaning of the text.

Gen 2:11, Gen 2:12

The Pishon waters in its subsequent course the land of Havilah. This country is noted for the best gold, and for two other products, concerning which interpreters differ. Bedolach is, according to the Septuagint, the carbuncle or crystal; according to others, the pearl, or a particular kind of gum. The last is the more probable, if we regard the various Greek and Latin forms of the word: bdella, bdellion, Josephus Ant. iii. 1, 6; hoi de madelkon, hoi de bolchon kalousi, Dioscor. i. 71; alii brochon appellant, alii malacham, alii maldacon, Pliny H. N. 12, 9. Pliny describes it as black, while the manna, which is compared with it Num 11:7, is white; but ayn the point of resemblance may refer not to color, but to transparence or some other visible quality. This transparent, aromatic gum is found in Arabia, Babylonia, Bactriana, Media, and India. Shoham is variously conjectured to be the beryl, onyx, sardonyx, or emerald. The first, according to Pliny, is found in India and about Pontus. As the name Pishon means the gushing or spouting current, it may have been applied to many a stream by the migratory tribes. The Halys perhaps contains the same root with Havilah; namely, hvl (Rawlinsons Her. i., p. 126); and it rises in Armenia (Herod. i. 72). The Chalybes in Pontus, perhaps, contain the same root. The Pishon may have been the Halys or some other stream flowing into the Black Sea.

Gen 2:13, Gen 2:14

Gihon, the second river, flows by the land of Kush. It is possible that the name Kush remains in Caucasus and in the Caspian. The Gihon is the stream that breaks or bursts forth; a quality common to many rivers. The name is preserved in the Jyhoon, flowing into the sea of Aral. Here it probably designates the leading stream flowing out of Armenia into the Caspian, or in that direction. Hiddekel, the third, goes in front, or on the east of Asshur. The original Asshur embraced northern Mesopotamia, as well as the slopes of the mountain range on the other side of the Tigris. Perath, the fourth, is the well-known Frat or Euphrates.

In endeavoring to determine the situation of Eden, it is evident we can only proceed on probable grounds. The deluge, and even the distance of time, warrant us in presuming great land changes to have taken place since this geographical description applied to the country. Let us see, however, to what result the simple reading of the text will lead us. A river is said to flow out of Eden into the garden. This river is not named, and may, in a primary sense of the term, denote the running water of the district in general. This is then said to be parted into four heads – the upper courses of four great rivers. One of these rivers is known to this day as the Frat or Euphrates. A second is with almost equal unanimity allowed to be the Dijlah or Tigris. The sources of these lie not far asunder, in the mountains of Armenia, and in the neighborhood of the lakes Van and Urumiah. Somewhere in this region must have been the celebrated but unnamed stream. The Hiddekel flowed east of Asshur; the primitive portion of which seems therefore to have been in Mesopotamia. The Gihon may have flowed into the Caspian, on the banks of which was the original Kush. The Pishon may have turned towards the Euxine, and compassed the primitive Havilah, lying to the south and east of that sea.

It may be said that the Kush and Havilah of later times belong to different localities. This, however, is no solid objection, on two grounds:

First. Geography affords numerous examples of the transferrence of names from one place to another along the line of migration. Thus, Galatia in Asia Minor would be inexplicable or misleading, did not history inform us that tribes from Gallia had settled there and given their name to the province. We may therefore expect names to travel with the tribes that bear them or love them, until they come to their final settlements. Hence, Kush may have been among the Caucasian glens and on the Caspian shores. In the progress of his development, whether northward or southward, he may have left his mark in Kossaea and Kissia, while he sent his colonies into southern Arabia Aethiopia and probably India.

Second. Countries agreeing in name may be totally unconnected either in time or place. Thus, in the table of nations we meet with two persons called Havilah Gen 10:7, Gen 10:29; the one a Kushite, who settled probably in the south of Arabia, the other a Joctanite, who occupied a more northerly locality in the same peninsula. A primitive Havilah, different from both, may have given his name to the region southeast of the Euxine.

The rivers Pishon and Gihon may have been greatly altered or even effaced by the deluge and other causes. Names similar to these may be found in various places. They cannot prove much more than resemblance in language, and that may be sometimes very remote. There is one other Gihon mentioned in Scripture 1Ki 1:33, and several like names occur in profane history. At first sight it seems to be stated that the one stream branched into four. If so, this community of origin has disappeared among the other changes of the country. But in the original text the words and thence come before the verb parted. This verb has no subject expressed, and may have its subject implied in itself. The meaning of the sentence will then be, and thence, after the garden had been watered by the river, it, the river, or the water system of the country, was parted into four heads. We cannot tell, and it is not material, which of these interpretations correctly represents the original fact.

According to the above view, the land and garden of Eden lay in Armenia, around the lakes Van and Urumiah, or the district where these lakes now are. The country here is to this day a land of delight, and very well suited in many respects to be the cradle of the human race. There is only one other locality that has any claim to probability from an examination of Scripture. It is the alluvial ground where the Euphrates and Tigris unite their currents, and then again separate into two branches, by which their waters are discharged into the Persian Gulf. The neck in which they are united is the river that waters the garden. The rivers, before they unite, and the branches, after they separate; are the four rivers. The claim of this position to acceptance rests on the greater contiguity to Kissia or Susiana, a country of the Kushites, on the one side and on the other to Havilah, a district of Arabia, as well as its proximity to Babel, where the confusion of tongues took place. These claims do not constrain our assent. Susiana is nearer the Tigris itself than the present eastern branch after the separation. Havilah is not very near the western branch. If Babel be near, Armenia, where the ark rested, is very far away. Against this position is the forced meaning it puts on the text by its mode of accounting for the four rivers. The garden river in the text rises in Eden, and the whole four have their upper currents in that land. All is different in the case here supposed. Again, the land of Shinar is a great wheat country, and abounds in the date palm. But it is not otherwise distinguished for trees. It is a land of the simoon, the mirage, and the drought, and its summer heat is oppressive and enfeebling. It cannot therefore claim to be a land of delight (Eden), either in point of climate or variety of produce. It is not, consequently, so well suited as the northern position, either to the description in the text or the requirements of primeval man.

It is evident that this geographical description must have been written long after the document in which it is found might have been composed. Mankind must have multiplied to some extent, have spread themselves along these rivers, and become familiar with the countries here designated. All this might have taken place in the lifetime of Adam, and so have been put on record, or handed down by tradition from an eye-witness. But it is remarkable that the three names of countries reappear as proper names among the descendants of Noah after the flood.

Hence, arises a question of great interest concerning the composition of the document in which they are originally found. If these names be primeval, the document in its extant form may have been composed in the time of Adam, and therefore before the deluge. In this case Moses has merely authenticated it and handed it down in its proper place in the divine record. And the sons of Noah, from some unexplained association, have adopted the three names and perpetuated them as family names. If, on the other hand, these countries are named after the descendants of Noah, the geographical description of the garden must have been composed after these men had settled in the countries to which they have given their names. At the same time, these territorial designations apply to a time earlier than Moses; hence, the whole document may have been composed in the time of Noah, who survived the deluge three hundred and fifty years, and may have witnessed the settlement and the designation of these countries. And, lastly, if not put together in its present form by any previous writer, then the document is directly from the pen of Moses, who composed it out of pre-existent memorials. And as the previous document was solely due to inspiration, we shall in this case be led to ascribe the whole of Genesis to Moses as the immediate human composer.

It must be admitted that any of these ways of accounting for the existing form of this document is within the bounds of possibility. But the question is, Which is the most probable? We are in a fair position for discussing this question in a dispassionate manner, and without any anxiety, inasmuch as on any of the three suppositions Moses, who lived long after the latest event expressed or implied, is the acknowledged voucher for the document before us. It becomes us to speak with great moderation and caution on a point of so remote antiquity. To demonstrate this may be one of the best results of this inquiry.

I. The following are some of the grounds for the theory that the names of countries in the document are original and antediluvian:

First, it was impossible to present to the postdiluvians in later terms the exact features and conditions of Eden, because many of these were obliterated. The four rivers no longer sprang from one. Two of the rivers remained, indeed, but the others had been so materially altered as to be no longer clearly distinguishable. The Euxine and the Caspian may now cover their former channels. In circumstances like these later names would not answer.

Second, though the name Asshur represents a country nearly suitable to the original conditions, Havilah and Kush cannot easily have their postdiluvian meanings in the present passage. The presumption that they have has led interpreters into vain and endless conjectures. Supposing Kush to be Aethiopia, many have concluded the Gihon to be the Nile, which in that case must have had the same fountain-head, or at least risen in the same region with the Euphrates. Others, supposing it to be a district of the Tigris, near the Persian Gulf, imagine the Gihon to be one of the mouths of the united Euphrates and Tigris, and thus, give a distorted sense to the statement that the four streams issued from one. This supposition, moreover, rests on the precarious hypothesis that the two rivers had always a common neck. The supposition that Havilah was in Arabia or on the Indian Ocean is liable to the same objections. Hence, the presumption that these names are postdiluvian embarrasses the meaning of the passage.

Third, if these names be primeval, the present document in its integrity may have been composed in the time of Adam; and this accounts in the most satisfactory manner for the preservation of these traditions of the primitive age.

Fourth, the existence of antediluvian documents containing these original names would explain in the simplest manner the difference in the localities signified by them before and after the deluge. This difference has tended to invalidate the authenticity of the book in the eyes of some; whereas the existence of antiquated names in a document, though failing to convey to us much historical information, is calculated to impress us with a sense of its antiquity and authenticity. And this is of more importance than a little geographical knowledge in a work whose paramount object is to teach moral and religious truth.

Fifth, it is the habit of the sacred writers not to neglect the old names of former writers, but to append to them or conjoin with them the later or better known equivalents, when they wish to present a knowledge of the place and its former history. Thus, Bela, this is Zoar Gen 14:2, Gen 14:8; Kiriath-Arba, this is Hebron Gen 33:2; Ephrath, this is Bethlehem Gen 35:19.

Sixth, these names would be orignally personal; and hence, we can see a sufficient reason why the sons of Noah renewed them in their families, as they were naturally disposed to perpetuate the memory of their distinguished ancestors.

II. The second hypothesis, that the present form of the document originated in the time of Noah, after the flood, is supported by the following considerations:

First, it accounts for the three names of countries in the easiest manner. The three descendants of Noah had by this time given their names to these countries. The supposition of a double origin or application of these names is not necessary.

Second, it accounts for the change in the localities bearing these names. The migrations and dispersions of tribes carried the names to new and various districts in the time intervening between Noah and Moses.

Third, it represents with sufficient exactness the locality of the garden. The deluge may not have greatly altered the general features of the countries. It may not be intended to represent the four rivers as derived from any common head stream; it may only be meant that the water system of the country gathered into four principal rivers. The names of all these are primeval. Two of them have descended to our days, because a permanent body of natives remained on their banks. The other two names have changed with the change of the inhabitants.

Fourth, it allows for primeval documents, if such existed of so early a date. The surviving document was prepared from such preexisting writings, or from oral traditions of early days, as yet unalloyed with error in the God-fearing family of Noah.

Fifth, it is favored by the absence of explanatory proper names, which we might have expected if there had been any change known at the time of composition.

III. The hypothesis that Moses was not merely the authenticator, but the composer of this as well as the preceding and subsequent documents of Genesis, has some very strong grounds.

First, it explains the local names with the same simplicity as in the preceding case (1).

Second, it allows for primeval and successive documents equally well (4), the rivers Pishon and Gihon and the primary Havilah and Kush being still in the memory of man, though they disappeared from the records of later times.

Third, it notifies with fidelity to the attentive reader the changes in the geographical designations of the past.

Fourth, it accounts for the occurrence of comparatively late names of localities in an account of primeval times.

Fifth, it explains the extreme brevity of these ancient notices. If documents had been composed from time to time and inserted in their original state in the book of God, it must have been a very voluminous and unmanageable record at a very early period.

These presumptions might now be summed up and compared, and the balance of probability struck, as is usually done. But we feel bound not to do so. First. We have not all the possibilities before us, neither is it in the power of human imagination to enumerate them, and therefore we have not the whole data for a calculation of probabilities. Second. We have enough to do with facts, without elevating probabilities into the rank of facts, and thereby hopelessly embarrassing the whole premises of our deductive knowledge. Philosophy, and in particular the philosophy of criticism, has suffered long from this cause. Its very first principles have been overlaid with foregone conclusions, and its array of seeming facts has been impaired and enfeebled by the presence of many a sturdy probability or improbability in the solemn guise of a mock fact. Third. The supposed fact of a set of documents composed by successive authors, duly labelled and handed down to Moses to be merely collected into the book of Genesis, if it was lurking in any mind, stands detected as only a probability or improbability at best. The second document implies facts, which are possibly not recorded until the fifth. Fourth. And, lastly, there is no impossibility or improbability in Moses being not the compiler but the immediate author of the whole of Genesis, though it be morally certain that he had oral or written memoranda of the past before his mind.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Gen 2:8-14

The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden

The garden of Eden

I.

IN THIS GARDEN PROVISION WAS MADE FOR THE HAPPINESS OF MAN.

1. The garden was beautiful.

2. The garden was fruitful.

3. The garden was well watered.

II. IN THIS GARDEN PROVISION WAS MADE FOR THE DAILY OCCUPATION OF MAN.

1. Work is the law of mans being.

(1) Mans work should be practical.

(2) Mans work should be healthful.

(3) Mans work should be taken as from God. This will dignify work, and inspire the worker. A man who lets God put him to his trade, is likely to be successful.

2. Work is the benediction of mans being. Work makes men happy. Indolence is misery. Work is the truest blessing we have. It occupies our time. It keeps from mischief. It supplies our temporal wants. It enriches society. It wins the approval of God.

III. IN THIS GARDEN PROVISION WAS MADE FOR THE SPIRITUAL OBEDIENCE OF MAN.

1. God gave man a command to obey.

2. God annexed a penalty in the ease of disobedience.

(1) The penalty was clearly made known.

(2) It was certain in its infliction.

(3) It was terrible in its result. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)

The two paradises

I. Compare the PLACES. The second is superior to the first.

1. In respect to its elements. What was dust in the first paradise was gold in the second.

2. Of its extent. The first paradise was the corner of a small planet; the second is a universe of glory in which nations dwell, and whose limits angels know not.

3. Of its beauty.

II. Compare the INHABITANTS of the two paradises. The inhabitants of the second are superior to those of the first.

1. In physical nature.

2. In employment. The employment of heaven will relate to beings rather than to things. The sphere of activity will be more amongst souls than flowers. Will call into exercise loftier faculties; will tend more to the glory of God.

3. In rank.

4. In freedom.

5. In security. Adam was liable to temptation and evil. In the second paradise is immunity from peril. 6, In vision of God. In the first paradise God walked amid the trees of the garden. Adam realizes the overshadowing Presence. The inhabitants of the second paradise shall enjoy that Presence more perfectly.

(1) Vision brighter.

(2) Constant. (Pulpit Analyst.)

Mans life in Eden

I. Our first parents are discovered in a state of innocence, beauty, and blessedness, which is broken up utterly by the transgression of the Divine command.

(1) To Eden, as the first condition of human existence, all hearts bear witness. Two hymns are babbled by the echoes of the ages–the good days of old, the good days to come. They are the work songs of humanity; the memory of a better, and the hope of a better, nerve and cheer mankind. That memory, Genesis explains; that hope, the Apocalypse assures.

(2) We shall err greatly if we treat Adams history in Eden as nothing more than a fabled picture of the experience of man; rather is it the root out of which your experience and mine has grown, and in virtue of which they ace other than they would have been had they come fresh from the hand of God. We recognize the law of headship which God has established in humanity, whereby Adam, by his own act, has placed his race in new and sadder relations to Nature and to the Lord.

(3) The origin of evil may still remain a mystery, but this history of Eden stands between it and God. Eden is Gods work, the image of His thought; and mans spirit joyfully accepts the history, and uses it as a weapon against haunting doubts about the origin of evil.

(4) The sin of Adam is substantially the history of every attempt of self-will to counterwork the will of God. Every sin is a seeking for a good outside the region which, in the light of God, we know to be given us as our own.

II. This narrative presents to us the Father seeking the sinful child with blended righteousness and tenderness, assuring him of help to bear the burden which righteousness had imposed on transgression, and of redemption out of the spiritual death, which was the fruit of sin.

III. God not only, father like, made wise disposition for the correction of His child, but He east in with His childs lot of toil and suffering His own sympathy and hope; He made Himself a partaker in mans new experience of pain, and, that He might destroy sin, linked the sufferer by a great promise to Himself. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)

The garden of Eden

I. A SCENE OF BEAUTY.

II. A SPHERE OF WORK.

III. AN ABODE OF INNOCENCE.

IV. A HOME OF HAPPINESS.

V. A PLACE OF PROBATION.

1. Man in his original condition was immortal.

2. Mans immortality was suspended on his personal obedience.

3. Adam acted in the garden as a public person, or as the representative of the race. (Anon.)

Adam in Eden

The text teaches several things concerning God.

I. HIS POWER.

1. Physical. The might involved in the creation and maintenance of the universe. As much power displayed in preservation of universe as in its creation.

2. Intellectual. The thought and intelligence involved in the works of nature; the unity of design, harmony of motion, and proportion of parts visible everywhere, from the majesty of revolving worlds to the structure and polish of an insects wing, all attest the work and power of a boundless intelligence.

II. HIS WISDOM.

1. We see Gods wisdom here in the order of events.

(1) He planted a garden.

(2) There He put the man. Every man has his own God-appointed work.

2. In providing so bountifully for the wants of man, both present and future.

(1) Present. In causing all manner of fruits and vegetables to spring out of the earth, and in stocking the earth, air, and water with creatures for mans food and happiness.

(2) Future. In filling the bowels of the earth with those priceless treasures which He saw he would be required, in order to mans highest civilization and wellbeing.

III. HIS GOODNESS.

1. In providing a home for man.

2. Gods goodness is also seen in the size of Adams home. A garden. Why not something larger? Gods idea of human vocation is not distribution, but concentration. Not farming a township, but tilling a garden. No man can be a gardener, a doctor, a lawyer, a banker, and a preacher, and succeed in either.

3. In putting him in possession of his new home. There He put the man. I am pleased to find this statement, especially as Adam got into trouble so soon afterwards. If the Lord had only pointed out the garden, and left Adam to find it, he might have doubted, after the Fall, whether he had not gotten into the wrong place, and whether such a calamity could have befallen him in a God-selected residence. Learn, here, that however clearly we may be able to trace the Divine hand in bringing us into any position or calling, we may there yield to the tempter, and fall. That God can build no Eden this side the gates of glory which man cannot curse and wither, by listening to the suggestions of the devil.

4. In providing a wife for Adam. Brought her unto him. The composition of the first divinely ordained home was husband and wife. (T. Kelly.)

Genesis of Eden

I. THE TOPOGRAPHICAL PROBLEM. All that we can determine at present is this: Eden lay to the east of the venerable witness of creations panorama, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Tigris and the Euphrates. And history strikingly confirms the chronicle of the hoary witness. Those confessedly competent to discuss such questions agree that the cradle of mankind is to be looked for somewhere in the country of the Euphrates. Civilization has generally, with comparatively unimportant exceptions, moved from east to west. Who knows but that we, the latest born of the nations, with the Continental railways and Pacific steamships in our grasp, are Gods chosen instruments in carrying the glad tidings ever and ever westward, till, having crossed China, we reach again the cradle of humanity, and reinaugurate the lost paradise on the very spot where our inspired Seer caught glimpse of the tree of life? The truth, however, is, the exact site of Eden will probably never be discovered–at least, till the day when the voice of Him who was wont to walk in the garden in the evening breeze (Gen 3:8) is again heard on earth.

II. And now let us attend to some of THE LESSONS OF THE STORY.

1. And, first, the birth of industry. Jehovah God took the man He had formed, and put him in the Garden of Eden, to till it, and to keep it.

(1) Work is mans normal condition. Man must work for

(a) the souls sake;

(b) his own sake;

(c) Gods sake.

(2) Pursue your calling with enthusiasm.

2. The birth of language.

(1) Wonderfulness of language.

(2) The first words nouns.

(3) Our words are judges.

3. The birth of immortality. The tree of life.

4. The birth of probation.

5. The Eden of the soul.

6. The heavenly Eden. (G. D. Boardman.)

Paradise held; or, mans innocency

I. ADAMS HOME. A pleasant, fruitful garden. Beautiful flowers; green meadows; rivers and brooks; woods and coppices.

II. ADAMS WORK. Two fold; to till and to keep the garden–work and watchfulness. Something to call out vigilance as well as diligence.

III. ADAMS WIFE. Loving companionship and mutual help. How glad Adam must have been! LESSONS: The teacher can point out how this picture of the first man and woman reminds us of–

(1) Gods providential rule (He places us where we are; He orders our circumstances. City or country; this land or that. He gives us a position to occupy).

(2) Gods moral law (i.e., our duty of obedience to God)

.

(3) Mans family and social position on earth (i.e., our relative duties, one to another–for the relation of husband and wife leads to that of parent and child, brother and sister, and so on. Only sin brings in discord and division)

. (W. S. Smith, B. D.)

Love of flowers a relic of life in Eden

Waking up to conscious existence in the midst of a garden, it would seem as if man had not entirely forgotten the wonderful vision on which his eyes then opened. At least, there is no passion more general than the admiration of beautiful flowers. They kindle the rapture of infancy, and it is touching to see how over the first kingcups or daisies its tiny hand closes more eagerly than hereafter it will grasp silver coins or golden. The solitary blossom lights a lamp of quiet gladness in the poor mans chamber, and in the palace of the prince, the marble of Canova and the canvas of Raffaelle are dimmed by the lordly exotic with its calyx of flame or its petals of snow. With these companions of our departed innocence we plait the bridal wreath, and, scattered on the coffin, or planted on the grave, there seems a hope of resurrection in their smile, a sympathy in their gentle decay. And whilst to the dullest gaze they speak a lively oracle, in their empyrean bloom and unearthly fragrance the pensive fancy recognizes some mysterious memory, and asks,–

Have we been all at fault? Are we the sons

Of pilgrim sires who left their lovelier land?

And do we call inhospitable climes

By names they brought from home?

(Dr. J. Hamilton.)

The chains of a river

A river has special charms for me–always arriving, always departing; softening the landscape, and completing the circle of the firmament; rich with manifold reflections, and eloquent with the sad yet soothing minor in which all Nature speaks in her gentlest moods. I love to tarry by the riverside, to look, to listen, to wonder, and to feel the pleasant unrest of constant expectation. Standing by a river, one seems to be on the edge of another world–life, motion, music–signs that tell of speed, gliding and darting, that look as if activity had solved the mystery of industrious repose; breaking bubbles that hint at something of incompleteness and disappointment; occasional floodings and rushings that tell of power under control,–all are seen in that flowing world. (J. Parker, D.D.)

Mans life in Paradise

I. THE FIRST INSTITUTION FOR PARADISE AND FOR MAN IN PARADISE, WAS A SABBATH DAY. Man, not yet fallen, needed the Sabbath to keep him to God–and all too little, as the event showed. Better to wait in Paradise with God and the Sabbath, than go to find a lower happiness elsewhere.

II. GOD, WHO TOLD MAN HOW TO SPEND THE SEVENTH DAY, TOLD HIM HOW TO SPEND THE OTHER SIX ALSO. One of the happinesses of paradise was employment–not idleness. And God Himself chose for Adam his occupation. He has clone so also for each of us. In the garden where God puts you He will find you work; some flowers to rear and cultivate; some human minds to which you may do good; some plantations of Divine grace which you may dress and water, and so be fellow worker with Him who gives the increase.

III. GOD PLACED MAN UNDER A LAW IN PARADISE. For our own sake, for our own true happiness, God would have us keep Him in our thoughts. The yielding up our own will to His has greater sweetness to the taste than pleasing ourselves ever had.

IV. GOD, THE AUTHOR OF ALL OUR HAPPINESS, IS THE IMMEDIATE FOUNDER OF DOMESTIC LIFE. Observe what exceeding honour He has put on the institution of marriage, making it one of the two original appointments which came immediately from Himself when He made our race. CONCLUSION: All these fair features are types or emblems of heavenly things. The Sabbath is a type of the heavenly rest; the employments, of the employments of heaven, and its peaceful industry; the law, of the law which the angels keep, happy in that their every thought and act is according to the motions of Gods good Spirit: and the marriage tie, of the spiritual union betwixt Christ and His Church. The picture of Paradise shall be reproduced in perfectness–in heaven. It should be seen, even here and now, in Christian families. (C. P. Eden, M. A.)

Mans residence

1. The Lord of it, God Himself, who planted it with His own hand.

2. The nature or kind of it; it was a garden.

3. The situation of it; it lay eastward.

4. The furniture or store of the garden.

(1) In general; it was furnished with all sorts of plants both for use and delights.

(2) In particular; it had in it two trees appointed to a spiritual use.

5. The commodious situation of the garden, both for fruitfulness and delight, by the benefit of the liver that issued out of it.

6. The assigning over of the garden to the man.

(1) Of the place, for them to dwell in.

(2) Of the fruits, to feed on. (J. White.)

The two paradises

We read of two paradises–one is described to us at the beginning of the Bible, and the other at the end of it (Rev 22:1-5). The descriptions cannot be perused without leading the thoughts into a comparison and contrast of the one paradise with the other.

I. THE RIVERS. A river is a beautiful object. A river of clear water winding through a garden, meandering among flowers and trees, presents to the eye a lovely scene. And then, besides the beauty of a river or stream in itself, which may be called its direct contribution of beauty–much of the remaining attractions of the garden through which it passes is to be ascribed to it. The flowers and the trees are quickened and refreshed by it. Through its aid the flowers assume their fair and gorgeous array, and the trees spread out their noble arms, and are covered with foliage and fruit.

There was a river in the paradise of Eden. The benignant Creator did not leave the primeval home of man without the advantage and the ornament of a river. In the future paradise there is also a river. It is not behind the paradise of the past in this respect. Two things are to be noted concerning this river–the water of it, and the source of it. The water is pronounced to be water of life, clear as crystal. We cannot be at a loss, with the Bible in our hands, for the interpretation of this. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God (Psa 46:4). What can that be but Jehovahs love and faithfulness, which are always the consolation of the Church in times of trial and danger? He leadeth me beside the still waters (Psa 23:2). Thou shalt make them drink of the rivers of Thy pleasures (Psa 36:8). With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation (Isa 12:3). The water of life is no other than the joys,and privileges, and blessings of that life eternal, which is the appointed portion of the redeemed. It corresponds to the new wine which Christ and His people drink together in the kingdom of God. And it is a river of water of life, because, as the flow of a river goes on continually, so shall there never be an end of the celestial happiness. The river, also, is pure, and clear as crystal, because the future state will be a state of unmixed felicity, and a state of glory without a cloud. The river proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the throne of God and of the Lamb it has its source. The throne of God and of the Lamb. A single throne is meant, which is occupied by God and the Lamb. The lesson is, that the joys and blessings of the future paradise are to be traced, in the first place, to the sovereign love of God; and, in the second place, to the redeeming work of Christ. The river proceeds out of the Fathers throne. The whole life, and grace, and glory, which the Church ever arrives at, must be traced back through the far-reaching depths of eternity, and are connected with, and spring out of, that which was done in the beginning, when God, in the greatness, the freeness, and the sovereignty of His love, pronounced the decree of salvation. The throne of the Lamb alone could not have originated this river. The Lambs throne, by itself, originates nothing. The spring and first fountain of all our blessings, and of that river which shall gladden the paradise of God, is in the Fathers throne. But the throne, whence it comes, is not to be viewed as the Fathers throne merely. It is the throne of God and of the Lamb. Without that work of the Son, which the name of the Lamb suggests, and on account of which the Lamb has a seat on the Fathers throne–without what is done by Him as the second Man, the Servant of the Father, and our covenant head, neither grace nor glory could be ours. His death has made openings for its egress; and from His hands, and His feet, and His side, come the joyful waters that flow in the river of paradise.

II. THE TREES. The paradise of Eden was adorned and enriched with trees–every tree, we are told, that is pleasant to the sight, and good forfood. The beautiful trees and the noble stream together must have made an exquisite scene. And two trees there were, that stood in the midst of the garden (Gen 2:9; Gen 3:3), and excelled all the rest. They were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These were sacramental trees, as their names denote. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a sign and seal of the condition of Gods covenant, and the tree of life was a sign and seal of its reward. The first paradise was remarkable for its trees. It had wonderful trees. The new paradise is not behind. It has many stately and fruitful trees. There are trees of righteousness without number, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified. And there is, besides, one matchless tree, that is in the midst of that paradise of God (Rev 2:7). There is the tree of life, which bears twelve manner of fruits, and yields her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. With its river of the water of life, and its tree of life, the paradise, on which the Churchs hope is fixed, is, indeed, a paradise of life. We need not say that the tree of life is Christ. He is the goodly tree in the midst of the garden. His Word, His gospel, His ordinances, are the means which the Holy Spirit employs on earth for quickening, regenerating, and sanctifying the people; and the enjoyment of Him is the chief ingredient, and the very essence, of the heavenly felicity.

III. THE CURSE. Of the second paradise, it is emphatically said, There shall be no more curse. The words, no doubt, have reference, in the way of contrast, to the state of things here and now, and are designed to intimate that the curse, which lies on the present creation, shall not be prolonged and carried onward from thin state to that. There shall be no more curse. The curse is here, but it shall not be there. There was curse in the first paradise. There was curse in it the moment its peaceful and happy bowers were invaded by the devil. The being on whom Gods curse alights is himself, in a sense, a curse. For this reason, even Christ, when He bore the curse as our substitute, is said to have been made a curse. There was curse in the garden of Eden, for there was sin in it. Not, indeed, at first. Man was blameless and holy for a season. But sin there was at last, and probably soon. And sin came not alone. Sin, by necessary consequence, brought the curse. There was curse in the garden of Eden; for there was shame, and there was slavish fear. When the privileged pair fell, they must have fig leaves to cover them; and they must hide among the trees from the presence of the Lord. There was curse in the garden of Eden; for there was death in it. In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And die that day they did. The life of God went out of them. And there was curse in the garden of Eden: there was a curse which was spoken by the mouth of the Lord. The garden had been the scene where words of blessing and grace were wont to be uttered by the Creator, and where the holy affections of those whom He had made in His image found vent in glad songs of adoration and praise, accompanied, it may be, by a chorus of angels. But sin changed it all. It is gone–that paradise–gone forever. Let us not, however, despair. There is another paradise. He who planted the first has planted a second. He has planted a second, which is better than the first; and concerning which He has declared, that there shall be no more curse. There shall be no more curse. This implies that there shall be no more devil–no more Satanic intrusions. There shall be no more curse. The words imply that, in the second paradise, there shall be no more sin. As the heirs of glory appear within its precincts, they are found, one and all, to be perfectly sanctified. And they will never fall again. The crown of righteousness will never drop from their heads. Never again will they break Gods law, transgress His holy covenant, or be guilty of an act of distrust or rebellion. There shall be no more curse. The declaration implies that God shall no more pronounce any curse. It has been impossible for Him, hitherto, as the moral ruler of a sinful world, to dispense with the use of the curse. There shall be no more curse; and so there shall not be another expulsion from paradise.

IV. THE GENERAL STATE OF THE INHABITANTS.

1. The state of man was, in the old paradise, and will be in the new, a state of honourable service.

2. The state of man, in the garden of Eden, was a state of enjoyment and privilege. But the second paradise, also, will have enjoyment and privilege. It will have such enjoyment and privilege as to afford no occasion of regret for what has been lost. The old men, who had seen the temple of Solomon, wept when they thought how inferior must be the temple that was to succeed it. The contrast between the first and the second paradise will draw no such tears from our original progenitors. They shall have the richest social delights. They shall dwell together, the incorporated members of a family, having God the Father as their Father, God the Son as their Brother, and the Spirit of love resting on them all. They shall see God.

3. The pristine state of man was a state of power and glory. He was a king. The earth was His kingdom; the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, and every living thing that moveth upon the earth, were His subjects. Believers will be kings. They are kings already by right. They are kings, who are not yet of age, and who must wait a little for the actual commencement of their reign. A kingdom is prepared for them. They shall be greater kings than Adam was, and have a wider and more illustrious dominion. Their kingdom shall be immoveable and undecaying. They shall be enthroned with Christ. They shall be crowned with righteousness and glory. And they shall reign forever and ever. (Andrew Gray.)

The garden of Eden

When we think of paradise, we think of it as the seat of delight. The name Eden authorizes us so to do. It signifies pleasure: and the idea of pleasure is inseparable from that of a garden, where man still seeks after lost happiness, and where, perhaps, a good man finds the nearest resemblance of it, which this world affords. The culture of a garden, as it was the first employment of man, so it is that to which the most eminent persons in different ages have retired, from the camp and the cabinet, to pass the interval between a life of action and a removal hence. When old Diocletian was invited from his retreat, to resume the purple which he had laid down some years before–Ah, said he, could you but see those fruits and herbs of mine own raising at Salona, you would never talk to me of empire! An accomplished statesman of our own country, who spent the latter part of his life in this manner, hath so well described the advantages of it, that it would be injustice to communicate his ideas in any other words but his own. No other sort of abode, says he, seems to contribute so much, both to the tranquillity of mind and indolence of body. The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of the smell, the verdure of the plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the exercise of working or walking; but, above all, the exemption from care and solicitude, seem equally to favour and improve both contemplation and health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet and ease both of body and mind. The garden has been the inclination of kings, and the choice of philosophers; the common favourite of public and private men; the pleasure of the greatest, and the care of the meanest; an employment and a possession, for which no man is too high, nor too low. If we believe the Scriptures, concludes he, we must allow that God Almighty esteemed the life of man in a garden the happiest He could give him, or else He would not have placed Adam in that of Eden. The garden of Eden had, doubtless, all the perfection it could receive from the hands of Him who ordained it to be the mansion of His favourite creature. We may reasonably presume it to have been the earth in miniature, and to have contained specimens of all natural productions, as they appeared, without blemish, in an unfallen world; and these disposed in admirable order, for the purposes intended. And it may be observed, that when, in after times, the penmen of the Scriptures have occasion to describe any remarkable degree of fertility and beauty, of grandeur and magnificence, they refer us to the garden of Eden (see Gen 13:10; Joe 2:3; Eze 31:3, etc.). Traditions and traces of this original garden seem to have gone forth into all the earth, though, as an elegant writer justly observes, they must be expected to have grown fainter and fainter in every transfusion from one people to another. The Romans probably derived their notion of it, expressed in the gardens of Flora, from the Greeks, among whom this idea seems to have been shadowed out under the stories of the gardens of Alcinous. In Africa they had the gardens of the Hesperides, and in the East those of Adonis. The term of Horti Adonides was used by the ancients to signify gardens of pleasure, which answers strangely to the very name of paradise, or the garden of Eden. In the writings of the poets, who have lavished all the powers of genius and the charms of verse upon the subject, these and the like counterfeit or secondary paradises, the copies of the true, will live and bloom, so long as the world itself shall endure. It hath been already suggested, that a garden is calculated no less for the improvement of the mind, than for the exercise of the body; and we cannot doubt but that peculiar care would be taken of that most important end in the disposition of the garden of Eden. Our first father differed from his descendants in this particular, that he was not to attain the use of his understanding by a gradual process from infancy, but came into being in full stature and vigour, of mind as well as body. He found creation likewise in its prime. It was morning with man and the world. As man was made for the contemplation of God here, and for the enjoyment of him hereafter, we cannot imagine that his knowledge would terminate on earth, though it took its rise there. Like the patriarchs ladder, its foot was on earth, but its top, doubtless, reached to heaven. By it the mind ascended from the creatures to the Creator, and descended from the Creator to the creatures. It was the golden chain which connected matter and spirit, preserving a communication between the two worlds. That God had revealed and made Himself known to Adam, appears from the circumstances related, namely, that He took him, and put him into the garden of Eden; that He conversed with him, and communicated a law, to be by him observed; that He caused the creatures to come before him, and brought Eve to him. If there was, at the beginning, this familiar intercourse between Jehovah and Adam, and He vouchsafed to converse with him, as He afterward did with Moses, as a man converseth with his friend, there can be no reasonable doubt but that He instructed him, as far as was necessary, in the knowledge of his Maker, of his own spiritual and immortal part, of the adversary he had to encounter, of the consequences to which disobedience would subject him, and of those invisible glories, a participation of which was to be the reward of his obedience. Whenever the garden of Eden is mentioned in the Scriptures, it is called the garden of God, or the garden of the Lord–expressions which denote some peculiar designation of it to sacred purposes, some appropriation to God and His service, as is confessedly the case with many similar phrases; such as house of God, altar of God, man of God, and the like; all implying, that the persons and things spoken of were consecrated to Him, and set apart for a religious use. When it is said, The Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it, the words undoubtedly direct us to conceive of it as a place for the exercise of the body. The powers of the body and the faculties of the mind might be set to work at the same time, by the same objects. And it is well known that the words here used do as frequently denote mental as corporeal operations; and, under the idea of dressing and keeping the sacred garden, may fairly imply the cultivation and observation of such religious truths, as were pointed out by the external signs and sacraments, which paradise contained. When the prophets have occasion to foretell the great and marvellous change to be effected in the moral world, under the evangelical dispensation, they frequently borrow their ideas and expressions from the history of that garden, in which innocence and felicity once dwelt together, and which they represent as again springing up and blooming in the wilderness (see Isa 51:3; Isa 41:17; Isa 35:1). At the time appointed, these predictions received their accomplishment. Men saw the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God. By the death and resurrection of the Redeemer, lost paradise was regained; and its inestimable blessings, wisdom, righteousness, and holiness, are now to be found and enjoyed in the Christian Church. But as men are still men, and not angels, those blessings are still represented and conveyed by sacramental symbols, analogous to the original ones in Eden. From the sacred font flows the water of life, to purify, to refresh, to comfort; a river goes out of Eden, to water the garden, and to baptize all nations; while the eucharist answers to the fruit of the tree of life: at the holy table, we may now put forth our hands, and take, and eat, and live forever. Let us go one step farther, and consider the state of things in the heavenly kingdom of our Lord. There, it is true, all figures and shadows, symbols and sacraments, shall be no more; because faith will there be lost in vision, and we shall know even as we are known. (Bishop Horne.)

Legends of Paradise among ancient nations

Paradise is no exclusive feature of the earliest history of the Hebrews; most of the ancient nations have similar narratives about a happy abode, which care does not approach, and which reechoes with the sounds of the purest bliss. The Greeks believed, that at an immense distance, beyond the pillars of Hercules, on the borders of the earth, were the islands of the blessed, the elysium, abounding in every charm of life, and the garden of the Hesperides, with their golden apples, guarded by an ever-watchful serpent (Laden). But still more analogous is the legend of the Hindoos, that in the sacred mountain Meru, which is perpetually clothed in the golden rays of the sun, and whose lofty summit reaches into heaven, no sinful man can exist; that it is guarded by dreadful dragons; that it is adorned with many celestial plants and trees, and is watered by four rivers, which thence separate, and flow to the four chief directions. Equally striking is the resemblance to the belief of the Persians, who suppose, that a region of bliss and delight, the town Eriene Vedsho or Heden, more beautiful than the whole rest of the world, traversed by a mighty river, was the original abode of the first men before they were tempted by Ahriman, in the shape of a serpent, to partake of the wonderful fruit of the forbidden tree Hem. And the books of the Chinese describe a garden near the gate of heaven where a perpetual zephyr breathes; it is irrigated by abundant springs, the noblest of which is the fountain of life; and abounds in delightful trees, one of which bears fruits which have the power of preserving and prolonging the existence of man. (M. M. Kalisch.)

The Eden of the soul

To every human being, not less than to Adam, God has given a garden to till and to keep: it is the garden within him. Alas! this garden of the soul is no longer an Eden. An enemy hath come and sown tares (Mat 13:25). Instead of the fir tree has come up the thorn, and instead of the myrtle tree has come up the brier (Isa 55:13). Nevertheless, the capacity of paradise still lies latent within us all. Like seeds which have for ages lain buried beneath the soil of our primeval forests, there lie deep down in the subsoil of our moral natures the germs of giant spirit powers and experiences. Fallen as we are, we are capable of being redeemed, reinstated in the range of conscious sonship to the everlasting Father. In fact, this capacity for redemption is, on its human side, the basis of the possibility of Christs salvation. The Son of God came not to crush, but to save; not to destroy, but to restore; not to annihilate, but to transfigure. And when we let Him have His way in our hearts; when we let Him drive the ploughshare of His Spirits conviction, uprooting tares and thorns and all baleful weeds; when we let Him sow the good seed of the kingdom, which is the Word of God; when we let Him quicken it with the warmth of His breath, and water it with the dews of His grace, and hue it with the sunshine of His beauty: then does paradise lost become paradise found; then is brought to pass–oh, how gloriously!–the saying of the poet-prophet (Isa 35:1). (G. D. Boardman.)

The first garden

1. Situation of paradise that man lost, unknown. Landmarks obliterated by the Deluge. It may be sought, and found in every part of the world. Thy presence makes my paradise, etc.

2. God planted the first garden; our flowers are lineal descendants of Edens bright blossoms, as we are of the grand old gardener–Adam. Let the colours and perfumes of summer call that garden to mind.

3. Cultivate flowers of holiness, and fruits of godliness; possess the Rose of Sharon and the true Vine, and paradise will be regained. (J. C. Gray.)

Adam in Eden

I. THE FIRST MAN. Adam. Of the earth, earthy. His happiness Gen 1:28). His moral dignity, likeness of God (Gen 1:26; Eph 4:24; Col 3:10). His mental greatness; named the animals, etc. (Gen 2:20). His regal position (Gen 1:28). His relation to other created intelligences (Heb 2:7-8). His great age; lived 930 years (Gen 5:5). During 243 years a contemporary of Methuselah, who for 600 years was contemporary of his grandson Noah.

II. THE FIRST STEWARDSHIP. To dress and keep a garden. Lowly, healthful; needing diligence, forethought, etc. Mere office, however lofty, does not dignify; nor however humble, degrade. The great ancestor of the race, a gardener.

III. THE FIRST COMMAND. A command to remind man of his subordinate relation, his duty, etc. Only one, very simple and easy. In common life the breach of one often makes many injunctions needful. (J. C. Gray.)

Observations

I. THE FRUITFULNESS OF ONE PART OF THE EARTH ABOVE ANOTHER IS FROM GOD ALONE, AND MERELY AND ONLY BY HIS BLESSING.

II. THOUGH GOD HAVE PREPARED THE EARTH FOR MAN, YET HE CAN HAVE NO TITLE TO ANY MORE OF IT THAN GOD ALLOTS OUT OF IT FOR HIS HABITATION.

III. GOD IS PLEASED TO BESTOW UPON MEN LIBERALLY HIS BEST AND CHIEFEST BLESSINGS. (J. White, M. A.)

Work

Not only did Adam work before the Fall; but also nature and natures God. From the particle of dust at our feet to man, the last stroke of Gods handiwork, all bear the impress of the law of labour. The earth, as has been said, is one vast laboratory, where decomposition and reformation are constantly going on. The blast of natures furnace never ceases, and its fires never burn low. The lichen of the rock, and the oak of the forest, each works out the problem of its own existence. The earth, the air, and the water teem with busy life. The poet tells us that the joyous song of labour sounds out from the million-voiced earth, and the rolling spheres join the universal chorus! Therefore, labour is not, as Tapper expresses it, the curse on the sons of men in all their ways. Observations:–

I. AS GOD GIVES US ALL THINGS FREELY, SO WITHAL HE TAKES SPECIAL NOTICE OF ALL THAT HE BESTOWS UPON US.

II. EVERY PLANT ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH GROWS WHERE AND IN WHAT MANNER AND ORDER GOD APPOINTS IT.

III. GODS BOUNTY ABOUNDS UNTO MEN NOT ONLY TO THE SUPPLYING OF THEIR NECESSITIES, BUT ALSO FOR THEIR DELIGHT.

1. Let us then tender unto God, after the measure that we receive from Him, the most acceptable presents of our cheerful services, which that variety and abundance which we receive from His hand should provoke us Deu 28:47). Serving Him with enlarged hearts, and delighting to run the way of His commandments with the holy prophet Psa 119:32).

2. It may warrant us the honest and moderate use of Gods blessings, even for delight: so we use them–

(1) Seasonably, when God gives us an occasion of rejoicing, and

(2) within bounds of moderation, as we are advised (Pro 23:2), and

(3) directed to those holy ends proposed by God to His own people Deu 26:11).

IV. IT IS USUAL WITH GOD TO MIX DELIGHT AND PLEASURE WITH USEFULNESS AND PROFIT IN ALL HIS BLESSINGS.

V. THE BEST AMONGST MEN AND MOST PERFECT HAVE NEED OF THE HELP OF OUTWARD MEANS TO QUICKEN AND STRENGTHEN THEM AND PUT THEM IN MIND OF THEIR DUTIES. Let no man neglect any outward means, public or private, as being–

(1) So needful to ourselves.

(2) Commanded by God Himself.

(3) Effectual by His blessing upon the conscionable use of them.

Considering that the best of us know but in part (1Co 13:9), are subject to so many temptations, laden with a body of sin (Rom 7:24). By which we are continually assaulted, often foiled, and continually retarded in our coarse of obedience.

VI. SPIRITUAL AND RELIGIOUS DUTIES OUGHT TO BE REMEMBERED IN THE MIDST OF THE USE OF OUR EMPLOYMENTS ABOUT THE THINGS OF THIS LIFE.

VII. GODS COMMANDMENTS OUGHT TO BE STILL IN THE VIEW AND BEFORE THE FACE OF HIS CHILDREN. VIII. IT IS USUAL WITH GOD TO TEACH HIS CHILDREN BY THINGS OF ORDINARY AND COMMON USE. And this He cloth–

(1) In compassion of our weakness, stooping low unto us, because we cannot ascend up unto Him, nor easily raise up our earthly minds, to comprehend and behold spiritual things in their own nature, unless they be shadowed unto us by things that are earthly.

(2) That by resembling those spiritual things by earthly, He might acquaint us with the right use of those things which are subject to sense, which is to raise up our hearts to the contemplation of things that are above sense.

(3) That we might have monitors and teachers in every place, in every object of sense, in every employment that we take in hand.

(4) To affect us the more with spiritual things, by representing them unto us by the objects of sense, which are most apt to work upon our affections.

IX. GOD IS CONTENTED NOT ONLY TO DO US GOOD, BUT BESIDES TO ENGAGE HIMSELF THEREUNTO BY HIS WORD, RATIFIED BY HIS OWN SEAL.

X. BOTH THE CONTINUANCE OF PRESENT, AND HOPE OF FUTURE LIFE, AS THEY ARE GODS GIFT, SO THEY ARE ASSURED BY HIS PROMISE.

XI. ALL GODS PROMISES MUST BE UNDERSTOOD AND EMBRACED UNDER THE CONDITION OF THE PERFORMANCE OF OUR OBEDIENCE.

XII. GOOD AND EVIL ARE BOUNDED AND LIMITED ONLY BY THE WILL OF GOD. (J. White, M. A.)

The promise of life in the first covenant

I. We behold here the goodness and grace of God to man. Though the first covenant was a covenant of works there was, not withstanding, much grace displayed in it. Could that obedience of the first Adam which was perfect, have, strictly speaking, merited nothing for him, at the hand of God? What ignorance, then, what folly, what pride, does it argue in a sinner, to pretend that his performances, notwithstanding their acknowledged imperfections, merit for him not something merely, but eternal happiness!

2. If Adam in innocence was not to depend for happiness immediately on the goodness of Gods nature but on the promise of His covenant, how evidently does that sinner expose himself to woful disappointment who trusts to general, to uncovenanted mercy! Finally, was the first Adams state of innocence his state of trial? Then a state trial or probation is not, properly speaking, the state of man since his fall. But now, since he has failed in his obedience, and broken the covenant, his state of trial has issued in a state of condemnation. (J. Colquhoun, D. D.)

The tree of knowledge of good and evil

The two trees

I. THE TREE OF LIFE. This was a real tree, as real as any of the rest, and evidently placed there for like purposes with the rest. The only difference was, that it had peculiar virtues which the others had not. It was a life-giving or life-sustaining tree–a tree of which, so long as man should continue to eat, he should never die. Not that one eating of it could confer immortality; but the continuous use of it was intended for this. The link between soul and body was to be maintained by this tree. So long as he partook of this, that tie could not be broken.

II. THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. Why may we not take this in the same literality of meaning as the former? Why may it not mean a tree, the fruit of which was fitted to nourish mans intellectual and moral nature? How it did this I do not attempt to say. But we know so little of the actings of the body or the soul, that we cannot affirm it impossible. Nay, we see so much of the effects of the body upon the soul, both in sharpening and blunting the edge alike of intellect and conscience, that we may pronounce it not at all unlikely. We are only beginning to be aware of the exceeding delicacy of our mental and moral mechanism, and how easily that mechanism is injured or improved by the things which affect the body. A healthy body tends greatly to produce not only a healthy intellect, but a healthy conscience. I know that only one thing can really pacify the conscience–the all-cleansing Blood; but this I also know, that a diseased or enfeebled body operates oftentimes so sadly on the conscience as to prevent the healthy realization by it of that wondrous blood, thereby beclouding the whole soul; and there is nothing which Satan seems so completely to get hold of, and by means of it to rule the inner man, as a nervously diseased body. Cowpers expression, A mind well lodged, and masculine of course, has in it more meaning than we have commonly attached to it. (H. Bonar, D. D.)

Of the sacraments of the covenant of works

I. It hath pleased the blessed and Almighty God, in every economy of His covenants, to confirm, by some sacred symbols, the certainty of His promises, and, at the same time, to remind man in covenant with Him of his duty: to these symbols ecclesiastical practice has long since given the name of sacraments: this was certainly appointed with an excellent design by the all-wise God. For–

1. What God has made known concerning His covenant, is, by this means, proposed to mans more accurate consideration; since he is not only once and again instructed in the will of God by a heavenly oracle, but frequently and almost daily beholds with his eyes those things which by heaven are granted him as pleasures of the greatest blessings: what believers see with their eyes, usually sink deeper into the soul, and leave deeper impressions of themselves, than those only which they hear with their ears. Elegantly to this purpose says Herodotus, men usually give less credit to the ears than to the eyes.

2. These symbols also tend to confirm our faith. For, though nothing can be thought of that deserves more credit than the Word of God, yet, where God adds signs and seals to His infallible promises, He gives a two-fold foundation to our faith (Heb 6:17-18).

3. By means of this institution, a holy man does, by the sight, touch, and taste of the sacred symbols, attain to some sense of eternal blessings, and accustoms himself under the symbols, to a contemplation and foretaste of these things, to the plenary and immediate fruition of which he will, one time or other, be admitted without any outward signs.

4. The man has in these something continually to remind him of his duty: and as, from time to time, they present to his thoughts, and give a foretaste of his Creator, so at the same time they put him in mind of those very strong obligations, by which he is bound to his Covenant-God. And thus, they are both a bridle to restrain him from sin and a spur to quicken him cheerfully to run that holy race which he has so happily entered upon. (H. Witsius, D. D.)

The tree of the knowledge of evil

There was here a very plain memorial of duty. For this tree taught–

1. That man was sincerely to contemplate and desire the chief good, but not to endeavour after it, but only in the manner and way prescribed by Heaven; nor here to give in to his own reasonings, how plausible soever they might appear.

2. That mans happiness was not to be placed in things pleasing to the senses of the body. There is another and a quite different beatifying good which satiates the soul and of itself suffices to the consummation of happiness.

3. That God was the most absolute Lord of man, whose sole will, expressed by His law, should be the supreme rule and directory of all the appetites of the soul and of all the motions of the body.

4. That there is no attaining to a life of happiness but by perfect obedience.

5. That even man in innocence was to behave with a certain religious awe when conversing with his God, lest he should fall into sin. (H. Witsius, D. D.)

The knowledge of right and wrong

I. We call the Scriptures a revelation; in other words, an unveiling. The Bible records were given to us to take away the veil which hung between heaven and earth, between man and God. Their purpose is to reveal God. The actual revelation which has been made to us is of God in His relation to the soul of man. We are not to demand, we are not to expect, any further revelation. Of the secrets of Gods power and origin we are told not a word. Such knowledge is not for us. The self-declared object of the Scriptures is that men should know God and know themselves.

II. But the condition on which such an object may be accomplished is this: that the Book of God should appeal to men in a form not dependent for its appreciation upon any knowledge which they may have obtained–independent, that is, of the science of any particular age or country.

III. Here, so early in the sacred books, is revealed the fact of the two opposing forces of right and wrong. Take away the reality of this distinction, and the Bible and all religion falls forever. Make its reality and importance felt in the soul of man, and you have at once whereon to build. Righteousness is the word of words throughout all Scripture. The righteousness which the Scriptures reveal is the knowledge of a communion with God. When our earth has played its part in the economy of the universe, and is seen by the few spheres which are within its ken to pass away as a wandering fire, right and wrong will not have lost their primeval significance, and the souls which have yearned and laboured for rest in the home of spirits will find that rest in Him who was and is and is to be. (A. Ainger, D. D.)

The tree of knowledge

The trial of Adam, like that of every other man, was whether he would so fat believe in God as to look for happiness in obedience to the Divine command; or would seek that happiness elsewhere, and apply for it to some forbidden object, of which the tree must have been an emblematical representation. You will ask what that object was? And what information, as to the knowledge of good and evil, Adam could receive from the prohibition? By answering the last question, a way may, in some measure, perhaps, be opened for an answer to the first. A due contemplation of the prohibition might naturally suggest to the mind of our first parent the following important truths; especially if we consider (as we must and ought to consider) that to him, under the tuition of his Maker, all things necessary were explained and made clear, how obscure soever they may appear to us, forming a judgment of them from a very concise narrative, couched in figurative language, at this distance of time. Looking upon the tree of knowledge then, and recollecting the precept of which it was the subject, Adam might learn, that God was the sovereign Lord of all things: that the dominion vested in man over the creatures was by no means a dominion absolute and independent: that without, and beside God, there was no true and real good: that to desire anything without and beside Him was evil; that no temporal worldly good, however fair and tempting its appearance, was to be fixed upon by man as the source of his felicity: that the sole rule for shunning, or desiring things sensible, should be the will and word of God; and that good and evil should be judged of by that standard alone: that the obedience, which God would accept, must be paid with all the powers and affections of the mind, showing itself careful and prompt in even the least instance: that man was not yet placed in a state of consummate and established bliss; but that such state was by him to be earnestly expected, and incessantly desired: and that he must take the way to it, marked and pointed out by God Himself. These particulars seem to flow from the prohibition in an easy and natural train. And they lead us to answer the other question; namely–What was the object represented by the tree of knowledge? It was that object, on which man is prone to set his affections, instead of placing them on a better; it was that object, which, in every age, has been the great rival of the Almighty in the human heart; it was that object, which, in one way or other, has always been worshipped and served rather than the Creator; it was the creature, the world; and the grand trial was, as it ever hath been, and ever will be, till the world shall cease to exist, whether things visible, or things invisible, should obtain the preference; whether man should walk by sight, or by faith. To know this, was the knowledge of good and evil; and this knowledge came by the law of God, which said, Thou shalt not covet. Mans wisdom consisted in the observance of that law; but an enemy persuaded him to seek wisdom by transgressing it. He did so, and had nothing left but to repent of his folly; a case that happens, among his descendants, every day, and every hour. Let us, therefore, consider the tree of knowledge, in this light, with respect to its nature, situation, design, qualities, effects, and the knowledge conferred by it. The fruit of this tree was, to appearance, fair and pleasant; but, when tasted, it became, by the Divine appointment, the cause of death. Now, what is it, which, in the eyes of all mankind, seems equally pleasing and alluring, but the end thereof, when coveted in opposition to the Divine command, proves to be death? It is the world, with its pleasures and its glories, desired by its votaries, per fas atque nefas, to the denial of God, and to their own destruction. The tree of knowledge was situated in the midst of the garden, as was the tree of life. They stood near together, but they stood in opposition. The Divine dispensations are always best illustrated by each other. Under the gospel Jesus Christ is the tree of life. What is it that opposes Him, and, notwithstanding all that He has done, and suffered, and commanded, and promised, and threatened, is continually, by its solicitations, being ever present and at hand, seducing men into the path of death? Scripture and experience again join in assuring us that it is the world. The tree of knowledge was designed to be the test of Adams obedience, the subject matter of his trial. The world, with its desirable objects, is the test of our obedience, the subject matter of our trial, whether we will make it our chief good, or prefer the promise of God to it. The apparent qualities of the forbidden tree are represented to have been these. It seemed good for food, and fair to the sight, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. It is remarkable that St. John, laying before us an inventory of the world, and all that is in it, employs a division entirely similar. Love not the world, says he, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the desire thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Here is a picture of the fatal tree, full blown, with all its temptations about it, drawn, by the pencil of truth, in its original and proper colours. The expressions tally, to the minutest degree of exactness The desire of the flesh answers to good for food; the desire of the eyes is parallel with fair to the sight; and the pride of life corresponds with a tree to be desired to make one wise. The opposition between this tree and the other is strongly marked. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And, we are informed, that one leads to death, the other to life. The world passeth away, and the desire thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Precisely conformable, in every circumstance, was the threefold temptation of the second Adam. He was tempted to convert stones into bread for food, to satisfy the desire of the flesh. Thus, whether we consider the tree of knowledge as to its nature, its situation, its design, or its qualities, it seems to have been a very apt and significant emblem of the creature, or the world, with its delights and its glories, the objects opposed, in every age, to God and His Word. To reject the allurements of the former, and obey the dictates of the latter, is the knowledge of good and evil, and the true wisdom of man. So that the forbidden tree in paradise, when the Divine intentions concerning it are explained from other parts of Scripture, teaches the important lesson more than once inculcated by Solomon, and which was likewise the result of holy Jobs inquiries; Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding. (Bishop Horne.)

The tree of knowledge of good and evil

The tree of knowledge of good and evil was so called not merely as a test for proving man, and showing whether he would choose the good or the evil–nor, merely because by eating it he would come to know both good and evil, and the evil so that he would know the good in the new light of contrast with the evil. Both these were involved. But it was set also as a symbol of the Divine knowledge to which man should not aspire, but to which he should submit his own judgment and knowledge. The positive prohibition was to be a standing discipline of the human reason, and a standing symbol of the limitation of religious thought. Man was to have life, not by following out his own opinions and counsels, but by faith and the unqualified submission of his intellect and will to God, No reason is here given for this, except in the name of the tree, and the nature of the penalty. God would not have him know evil. Sin was already an invader of His universe in the fallen angels. Evil was, therefore, a reality. Man was interdicted from that kind of knowledge which is evil, or, which includes evil–because of itself in its own nature, it leads him to death. Thus this is, therefore, not a mere arbitrary appointment. It has grounds in the evident nature of things. Nor was the penalty denounced against the transgression arbitrary. The disobedience was itself necessarily death. The curse could not have been less than it was. The act itself was a disruption of the tie which bound man to his Maker, and by which alone he could live. The knowledge of evil, sadly enough, lay in the partaking of that tree. Man already had the knowledge of good, and a moral sense of the eternal distinction between right and wrong. But good and evil, in all their mutual bearings, he could not presume to know by contact and experience as he aspired and claimed to know them under the promise of Satan. We hear no more of this tree. It served its purpose in the garden. We hear of the tree of life. The act of partaking was an encroachment upon the Divine prerogative. This tree was set to be to man the occasion of the highest Divine knowledge, in the training of his thoughts to subjection, and in the contemplation of Gods prerogatives of knowledge. The highest reason accords to God this claim–and renders the profoundest submission of the human mind and will toGod–to His plan of Providence and grace. So the renewed man cries out, O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Christ crucified is the wisdom of God, and the power of God, unto salvation. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Man was prohibited from laying hold of this fruit that was held to be under the Divine prerogative. And it is just at this point that Satan has always plied his most artful and powerful temptation. And just here, in taking what is forbidden–and in refusing all subjection and limitation of religious thought, man has always fallen under the curse. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools. This is the spirit of our fallen race, that in every age, keeps man out of paradise. And this is the mark of Anti-Christ sitting in the temple of God, showing (exhibiting) himself that he is God, (2Th 2:4). Hence, also, cherubim–the angels of knowledge–are set with the flaming sword to keep (guard) the way of the tree of life (chap. 3:24). This tree was also, as Luther says, a sign for mans worship dud reverent obedience of God, and so it would represent the homage due to Gods word, as the revelation of Gods truth–of His mind and will to men. (M. W.Jacobus.)

Significance of trees

To the thoughtful observer, perhaps, there is no more profound object in nature than a tree. Its graceful figure, its wavy outlines, its emerald hue, its variety of branches and twigs and leaves–illustrating diversity in unity–its tinted and fragrant blossoms, its luscious fruit, its exhibition of many of the wonderful phenomena of human life, such as birth, growth, respiration, absorption, circulation, sleep, sexuality, decay, death, reproduction: these are some of the particulars which make a tree the living parable of man and of society, and, as such, perhaps the most interesting object in the natural world. No wonder, then, that among all nations and in all ages trees have had a peculiar fascination, and even sacredness for the devoutly inclined. Witness the groves of the Hebrews, the symbol tree of the Assyrian sculptures, the Dryads of Greece, the Druids of Britain, the Igdrasil of the Norsemen. We need not be surprised, then, that on going back to natures Eden we learn that paradise, rich in every element of beauty, was especially rich in trees. Jehovah God caused to spring up in the Garden of Eden every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. But amid all this variety of trees two stood forth in memorable conspicuousness, their very names having come down to us through the oblivion of millenniums: one was the tree of life in the midst of the garden; the other the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (G. D.Boardman.)

The gold of that land is good

Good gold

I. If men so willed, GOLD MIGHT BE WON AND NO SOUL LOST. And therefore we must take care to distinguish between gold and the thirst for gold. Gold is like the rest of Gods gifts, a good thing or a bad thing, according to the use made of it. And so it is no wonder that Scripture has recorded that near to paradise was a land of gold. The land of Havilah may exist still; the fine gold and the bdellium and the onyx stone may now lie buried deep beneath its surface, or perhaps may yet be lying disregarded, like the treasures of California or Australia not many years ago.

II. Be this as it may, THERE IS ANOTHER LAND WHOSE GOLD IS GOOD, a land farther off than the far West and the islands of the sea, and yet ever close at hand, approachable by all, attainable by all, where no rust corrupts and no thieves break through and steal. The gold of that other land is good, simply because, though the words sound like a contradiction, it is not gold. It has been changed. In the world above, that which stands for gold is more precious than gold itself, for even gold cannot purchase it, though gold may serve it.

III. THE TREASURE OF HEAVEN IS LOVE. Love is the true gold. All else will tarnish and canker and eat into the souls of them that covet it; but Love never. It is bright and precious here in this world; fraud cannot despoil us of it; force cannot rob us of it; it is our only safe happiness here, and it is the only possession we can carry with us into the world beyond the grave. (F. E.Paget, M. A.)

Fine gold

Money and money making are the most frequent and familiar subjects of talk and thought. I remember once seeing an old merchant, at whose house I was visiting, sitting by himself against the wall. The room was filled with guests; music and dancing and merry laughter were all around; but there sat the old man, taking no heed, with his head against the wall. Fearing he was ill, I asked his son about him, and he answered–He is only thinking about money; he is always like that.

I. Now, understand me at the beginning, there is no sin in having money, if it be honestly come by and rightly used. What I want to do is to show you THE SIN AND FOLLY OF THINKING TOO MUCH OF EARTHLY TREASURE, and too little of heavenly. An emigrant ship was once wrecked on a desert island. The people were saved, but they had few provisions, and it was necessary to make haste to clear and till the ground and sow seed. Before this could be done they discovered gold on the island, and everyone gave himself up to the search for wealth. Meantime, the season slipped by, the fields were left untilled, and the people found themselves starving in the midst of useless treasure. There are people now who starve their soul and conscience that they may acquire a little more gold and silver.

1. One reason why we are wrong in thinking too highly of earthly wealth is, that the obtaining it is a very uncertain and difficult thing. Where one man grows rich, hundreds are ruined.

2. Another reason for not thinking too highly of earthly wealth is, that it is soon gone.

3. We should not overvalue earthly wealth, because it does not make people happy. A golden crown will not cure the headache, or a velvet slipper give ease from the gout. Sometimes, indeed, wealth has made people altogether miserable. There was a miser, worth thousands of pounds annually, who firmly believed that he must die in the workhouse, and actually worked daily in a garden and made one of his own servants pay him wages.

4. Excessive love of money is to be avoided, because it often keeps us back from God.

II. I pass on to speak of BETTER RICHES THAN THIS WORLD CAN GIVE, riches which all may have if they will, which will make the poorest wealthy. The gold of that land is good. Earthly gold is often alloyed with base metal, but the gold of God is pure. Earthly gold is only for the few; the gold of God is for all who desire it. Earthly gold soon passes away; the gold of God lasts forever. Earthly gold must be left at the grave; the gold of God becomes even more precious after death than before. Earthly gold cannot satisfy; the gold of God brings perfect peace and satisfaction.

1. Tim love of God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

2. The precious promises of the gospel.

(1) That God will never leave or forsake us.

(2) That the righteous shall want no good thing.

(3) That God will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him.

(4) Rest for the weary and heavy laden.

(5) Pardon for the penitent.

(6) The resurrection of the body.

(7) The life everlasting. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)

The wonderful gold

Everyone knows what gold is. The land here spoken of was called the land of Havilah. This was a country far away in Asia, near the garden of Eden, in which God put our first parents when they were created. What a blessed, happy place it must have been! Who would not like to have lived there? And there was gold, too, in Eden; yes, and the gold of that land was good. Now, we never can enter that garden. But there is a better one than that, which we may enter. The garden in which Adam first lived, and which we call Eden, or Paradise, was the figure or image of heaven. And many of the very same things will be found in this heavenly paradise which were in the earthly paradise. The gold of heaven means the grace of God. And, if anybody wants me to prove this, it is easy enough to do so. Jesus Himself speaks of His grace as gold, when He says, I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich (Rev 3:18). Gold tried in the fire here means the grace of God. And so, if we take the land of Havilah spoken of in our text as representing heaven, and if we take the gold of heaven as representing the grace of God, then we may very well point up to heaven and say, The gold of that land is good. There are three things about this gold which show that it is wonderful. And these three things are all connected with the word getting.

I. THE WAY OF GETTING this gold is wonderful.

1. People sometimes have to go a great distance in order to get earthly gold. When the gold mines in California were first discovered, there was a great rush of people from all parts of this country, who wanted to go out there and get gold. Some went by sea, all the way round Cape Horn. That was a long, cold, stormy, disagreeable, and dangerous voyage to take. But they were going for gold, and they cared nothing for the length of the journey they had to take ill getting it. Other people went in waggers, or on foot, across the country. Some had more than two thousand miles distance to go. What a long way that is to travel! But they were going for gold, and that made them willing. But the wonderful thing about the heavenly gold is, that no long journey is necessary in order to get it. It is not stored up, like earthly gold, in mines which can only be found in particular places. It is to be found in all countries. It may be had in all places. The church is a good place in which to seek it. So is the Sunday school. So is the room in which you sleep at night.

2. But, besides going a great distance, men often have to meet great dangers before they can get the earthly gold they are seeking. Some of those people who went round by sea to California to get gold met with terrible storms. Some of them were shipwrecked, and lost their lives on the way. And those who went by land met with great dangers too. Some of them lost their way in the desert plains which they had to travel over. Some got out of provisions and suffered dreadfully from hunger and thirst. Some were robbed by the Indians. But there is no exposure to danger in seeking the heavenly gold. At home, among those who love you best, you may seek it and find it. And no one can hinder or hurt you in doing this.

3. In getting earthly gold men not only have to go a great distance, and meet great dangers, but often they have to pay a great price to get it. Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, lost his situation with that good master; he lost his health too, and became a miserable leper all his days, whom no one could cure, in order to get a little gold. That was a great price to pay for it. Judas Iscariot sold his Master for a little money. Oh, what a tremendous price that was to pay for it! Benedict Arnold sold his country for a poor, paltry sum of gold. Some men are willing to pay any price for earthly gold. Look at the whalers. They are willing to go from home for two or three years at a time. They will sail up into the cold and stormy North Sea, or Frozen Ocean. They will run the risk of being crushed to death between jarring icebergs; or of being frozen up in the north all winter; they will meet with all sorts of trials and hardships in order to get a little gold. This is the great price they are willing to pay for it. But nothing of this kind is necessary in order to get the heavenly gold. Jesus counsels us to buy this gold of Him. He is the only one from whom it can be had. But the way in which Jesus sells this gold is very wonderful. He tells us to come, and buy wine and milk, without money and without price (Isa 55:1). The wine and milk spoken of in one of these passages, and the gold spoken of in the other, all mean the same thing. They refer to the grace of God. Jesus sells this without money and without price. This means that He lets poor sinners, such as we are, have it free.

II. The second thing that is wonderful about it is THE DESIRE OF GETTING IT. The desire to get earthly gold often has a wonderfully bad effect; but the desire to get the heavenly gold has a wonderfully good effect. Let us see now what a bad effect the desire to get earthly gold often has on people.

St. Paul calls this desire the love of money; and he says it is the root of all evil (1Ti 6:10). The desire to get this gold has led men to cheat, and to lie, and to steal, and to murder, and to commit all kinds of wickedness. Some time ago, as many will remember, there was a horrible murder committed just outside Philadelphia. A poor, wretched German, whose name was Probst, enticed a whole family into the barn, and murdered them one by one, even down to the innocent little babe in the cradle. He was not angry with them. He had no quarrel with them. The only thing that led him on to do that dreadful deed was the desire for gold–the love of money. And most of the horrible murders committed inthe world are caused by this same desire. When the Spaniards discovered the country of Mexico, in South America, they sent an army, under a general, whose name was Cortez, to conquer the country. The principal motive of those Spanish soldiers, in trying to conquer the country, was a desire to get gold. They expected to find gold so plentiful in the city of Mexico, that there would be more than they would want, or more than they could carry away. The Mexicans defended their city as long as they could, like brave men. When they found that it was impossible to defend it any longer, they took the great treasures of gold that were in their city, and threw them into the lake on which the city stood. They knew that gold was the chief thing the Spaniards desired, and they wanted to leave as little for them to get as possible. The Spaniards took the city, but were sorely disappointed to find so little gold there. They knew that the Mexicans had put it away somewhere. They tried to persuade them to tell where they had hid their treasures. But the Mexicans would not toll. Then the Spaniards tortured them in order to make them tell. The Emperor of Mexico then was a truly brave and noble man. The miserable Cortez became very angry with him, because he would not tell where the treasure was. So he ordered a huge gridiron to be made. He had this brave emperor fastened to it with a chain. Then he had a fire kindled under it, and roasted him alive in the most cruel and lingering manner. How horrible to think of! There you see the bad effect of the desire of earthly gold. But very different results follow from the desire to get the heavenly gold of which we are speaking. Wonderful good results from this, as wonderful evil results from the other. The love of earthly gold is the root of all evil. The love of heavenly gold is the root of all good. It corrects everything that is wrong, and leads to everything that is right. It makes the heart new, and the thoughts new, and the feelings new, and the tempers new; and everything about it makes holy and good.

III. The third thing about this gold that is wonderful is THE RESULT OF GETTING IT. The result of getting earthly gold is wonderfully bad; but the result of getting the heavenly gold is wonderfully good. When St. Paul would show us the bad result that often follows to people from getting earthly gold, he says, it drowns men in destruction and perdition (1Ti 6:9). Some years ago there was a person, in a village in England, who was a collector for a Bible Society. He had a list of the names of a number of persons in the village who were subscribers to the Bible cause, and once a year he used to go round and collect their subscriptions. Among these names was that of a poor widow woman, who supported herself by washing. She was about the poorest person whose name he had on his list, and yet she was one of the most liberal, For a long time she had been in the habit of giving a guinea a year to the Bible Society. But one year a rich relation of this poor washer woman died, and left a large fortune to her. She still lived in the same village; but her humble little cottage had been exchanged for one of the largest and finest houses in the village. After a while the time came for the Bible collector to go round and gather up his subscriptions. He knew about the change which had taken place in the circumstances of her whom he had long known as the poor washer woman. And as he went to call on her at her new house he said to himself, I shall get a fine largo subscription from this good woman. For if, when she was a poor washer woman, and had to work hard for her living, she could give a guinea a year, how much more will she be sure to give now, when she lives in so large a house, and is so well off? So he rang the bell; and was ushered into the handsome parlour, where he met his old friend and subscriber. He said he was glad to hear of the pleasant change which had taken place in her circumstances, and then stated that he came once more for her subscription to that best of all books–the Bible. She opened her purse and handed him a shilling! He looked at it with astonishment. Then he said, My good friend, what does this mean? I cant understand it. When you were a poor woman and lived on your own labour, you always gave a guinea a year to the Bible Society; and now, when you are so well off, can it be possible that you intend to give only a shilling? Yes, she said, thats all I am willing to give now. I feel very differently about these things from what I used to do. When I was really a poor woman I gladly gave away whatever money I could spare, for I never felt afraid of being poorer than I then was. But now the fear of being poor haunts me like a ghost, and makes me all the time unwilling to spend any money, or give it away. The truth is, she continued, when I only had the shilling means, I had the guinea heart; but now, when I have the guinea means, I find that I only have the shilling heart. Here we see the evil that resulted to this person from getting gold. It froze all her kind feelings, and shrunk up her large and liberal heart into a tiny little selfish one. She was a rich woman when she was very poor, but a poor woman when she became very rich. But the heavenly gold is very different from this. It is wonderful gold, because of the good it always does to those who get it. (R. Newton, D. D.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 8. A garden eastward in Eden] Though the word Eden signifies pleasure or delight, it is certainly the name of a place. See Ge 4:16; 2Kg 19:12; Isa 37:12; Eze 27:23; Am 1:5. And such places probably received their name from their fertility, pleasant situation, c. In this light the Septuagint have viewed it, as they render the passage thus: , 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. From this the ancient heathens borrowed their ideas of the gardens of the Hesperides, where the trees bore golden fruit the gardens of Adonis, a word which is evidently derived from the Hebrew Eden; and hence the origin of sacred gardens or enclosures dedicated to purposes of devotion, some comparatively innocent, others impure. The word paradise is not Greek; in Arabic and Persian it signifies a garden, a vineyard, and also the place of the blessed. The Mohammedans say that God created the [Arabic] Jennet al Ferdoos, the garden of paradise, from light, and the prophets and wise men ascend thither. Wilmet places it after the root [Arabic] farada, to separate, especially a person or place, for the purposes of devotion, but supposes it to be originally a Persian word, vox originis Persicae quam in sua lingua conservarunt Armeni. As it is a word of doubtful origin, its etymology is uncertain.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

He had planted, viz. on the third day, when he made the plants and trees to grow out of the ground, a place of the choicest plants and fruits, most beautiful and pleasant.

Eastward, from the place where Moses writ, and the Israelites afterwards dwelt.

Eden here is the name of a place, not that Eden near Damascus in Syria, of which see Amo 1:5; but another Eden in Mesopotamia or Chaldea, of which see Gen 4:16; 2Ki 19:12; Isa 37:12; Eze 27:23. There are many and tedious disputes about the place of this Paradise; of which he that listeth may see my Latin Synopsis. It may suffice to know that which is evident, that it was in or near to Mesopotamia, in the confluence of Euphrates and Tigris.

There he put the man whom he had formed, to wit, in another place.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

8. Edenwas probably a veryextensive region in Mesopotamia, distinguished for its natural beautyand 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 trainedunder the paternal care of his Maker to piety and usefulness.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden,…. Or “had planted” m, for this was not now done after the formation of man, but before; and so the word translated “eastward” may be rendered, as it is by some, “before” n: for the plain meaning is, that God had planted a garden before he made man, even on the third day, when all herbs, and plants, and trees were produced out of the earth. The whole world was as a garden, in comparison of what it is now since the fall: what then must this spot of ground, this garden be, which was separated and distinguished from the rest, and the more immediate plantation of God, and therefore is called the garden of the Lord, Ge 13:10 and which Plato o calls

, “Jove’s garden?” This garden was planted in the country of Eden, so called very probably from its being a very pleasant and delightful country; and though it is not certain, and cannot be said exactly where it was, yet it seems to be a part of Mesopotamia, since it is more than once mentioned with Haran, which was in that country,

2Ki 19:12 and since it was by the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, when they were become one stream, which ran through this country, and parted again at this garden; and the country there, as Herodotus p says, is the most fruitful he ever saw; and it seems to be much better to place it here than in Armenia, where the fountain of these rivers is said to be: so Tournefort q thinks it lay in the country, or plain of the three churches (or Ejmiadzit), in Armenia, about twenty French leagues distant from the heads of Euphrates and Araxes, and near as many from the Phasis, a country exceeding pleasant and fruitful. A very learned man r is of opinion, that the garden of Eden was in the land of Judea to the east, by the lake of Gennesaret or Tiberias, and the lake of Asphaltites, called the Dead sea, and takes in, in its compass, the famous valley, or the great plain, and the plains of Jericho, and great part of Galilee, and all that tract which Jordan flows by, from Gennesaret to the country of Sodom; and he takes the river Jordan to be , “the river of Eden”, from whence it has its name of Jordan; and Gennesaret he interprets as if it was , “Gansar”, the garden of the prince, that is, of Adam, the prince of all mankind. He argues from the situation of the place, and the pleasantness and fruitfulness of it, the balsam of Jericho, and other odoriferous plants that grew there, and what are called the apples of paradise: and it must be owned, that this country abounded with gardens and orchards: it is mentioned in the Jewish Misnah, where the commentators s say, it was a country in the land of Israel, in which were many gardens and orchards, that produced excellent fruit; and the fruits of Gennesaret are spoken of in the Talmud t as exceeding sweet: and with this agrees the account Josephus u gives of it, that it is

“wonderful in nature and goodness, and through its fertility refuses no plant; everything is set here; the temper of the air suits with different things; here grow nuts, and more winter fruit; and there palms, which are nourished with heat, and near them figs and olives, which require a softer air–not only it produces apples of different sorts, beyond belief, but long preserves them; and indeed the most excellent of fruit; grapes and figs it furnishes with for ten months, without intermission, and other fruit throughout the whole year, growing old, with them.”

And it may be further observed, that it is asked by the Jewish Rabbins, why it is called Genesar? and the answer is, because

, “the gardens of princes”; these are the kings who have gardens in the midst of it: another reason is given, because it belonged to Naphtali, a portion in the midst of it, as it is said, and of “Naphtali a thousand princes”, 1Ch 12:34. w And it is worthy of remark, that Strabo calls Jericho, which was within this tract, “the paradise of balsam” x; and there, and hereabout, as Diodorus Siculus y, and Justin z relate, grew this aromatic plant, and nowhere else; it was not to be found in any other part of the world. And it appears from Scripture, that if the plain of Jordan was not the garden of Eden, it is said to be, “as the garden of the Lord”, Ge 13:10 and if the “caph” or “as” is not a note of similitude, but of reality, as it sometimes is, it proves it to be the very place; and the above learned writer takes it to be not comparative, but illative, as giving a reason why it was so well watered, because it was the garden of the Lord: and the Jews have some notion of this, for they say, if that the garden of Eden is in the land of Israel, Bethshean is the door of it, or entrance into it; the gloss gives this reason, because the fruits were sweeter than any other a; and this was near, at the entrance of the great plain before mentioned; and before which was this place, as Josephus says b: and if the garden of Eden was in those parts, it may be observed, that where the first Adam first dwelt, and where he sinned and fell, Christ the second Adam frequently was; here he conversed much, taught his doctrines, wrought his miracles; and even here he appeared after his resurrection from the dead. But the opinions of men about this place are very many, and there is scarce any country in the whole world but one or another has placed the garden of Eden in it; nay, some have assigned a place for it out of the earth, in the eighth sphere. Such a garden undoubtedly there was somewhere, and it is said to be placed “eastward”, either in the eastern part of the country of Eden, see Ge 4:16 or to the east of the desert where Moses was when he wrote; or to the east of Judea, as Mesopotamia was: and if this garden was in Judea, the place assigned for it by the above learned person, it was in the eastern part of that country; see

Nu 32:19. This garden was an emblem either of the church of Christ on earth, which is a garden enclosed, surrounded with divine power, and distinguished with divine grace; a small spot in comparison of the world; is of Jehovah’s planting, and is his property; and is an Eden to his people, where they enjoy much spiritual pleasure and delight: or however of the place and state of the happiness of the saints in the other world, often called a paradise in allusion to this, Lu 23:43 and which is of God’s planting, and therefore called the paradise of God, and is an Eden, where are pleasures for evermore: and this seems to be what the Jews mean when they say c, that the garden of Eden, or paradise, was created before the world was; which is no other than what Christ says of it in other words, Mt 25:34

and there he put the man whom he had formed; not as soon as he had planted the garden, but as soon as he had made man; and from hence it is generally concluded, that man was made without the garden, and brought from the place where he was formed, and put into it; and which some say was near Damascus: but be it where it will, it is most probable that it was not far from the garden; though there seems no necessity for supposing him to be made out of it; for the putting him into it may signify the appointing and ordering him to be there, and fixing and settling him in it, for the ends and uses mentioned, see Ge 2:15.

(After the global destruction of Noah’s flood, it is doubtful that the location of the Garden of Eden could be determined with any degree of certainty today. Ed.)

m “plantaverat”, V. L. Vatablus, Piscator, Pareus, Drusius, Cartwright; “ornaverat plantis”, Junius Tremellius. n “a principio”, V. L. so Onkelos “antes vel antequam”, same in Fagius, Cartwright. o In Symposio, apud Euseb. praepar. Evangel. l. 12. c. 11. p. 584. p Clio sive, l. 1. c. 193. q Voyage to the Levant, vol. 3. p. 161, 162. r Nichol. Abrami Pharus Vet. Test. l. 2. c. 16. p. 56. So Texelius (Phoenix, l. 3. c. 7. sect. 7.) takes it to be in the land of Promise, not far from the Dead sea, or sea of Sodom, and in the country about Jordan; and of the same opinion is Heidegger (Hist. Patriarch. Exerc. 4. sect. 42. p. 15.) s Maimon. & Bartenora in Misn. Maaserot, c. 3. sect. 7. t T. Bab. Beracot, fol. 44. 1. Erubin, fol. 30. 1. & Pesachim, fol. 8. 2. u De Bello Jud. l. 3. c. 9. sect. 8. w Aruch in voce , fol. 37. 1. x Geograph. l. 16. p. 525. y Bibliothec. l. 19. p. 734. z E Trogo, l. 36. c. 3. a T. Bab. Erubin, fol. 19. 1. b Antiqu. l. 12. c. 8. sect. 5. 1 Maccab. v. 52. c T. Bab. Pesachim, fol. 54. 1. Nedarim, fol. 39. 2.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

The abode, which God prepared for the first man, was a “ garden in Eden,” also called “the garden of Eden” (Gen 2:15; Gen 3:23-24; Joe 2:3), or Eden (Isa 51:3; Eze 28:13; Eze 31:9). Eden ( , i.e., delight) is the proper name of a particular district, the situation of which is described in Gen 2:10.; but it must not be confounded with the Eden of Assyria (2Ki 19:12, etc.) and Coelesyria (Amo 1:5), which is written with double seghol. The garden (lit., a place hedged round) was to the east, i.e., in the eastern portion, and is generally called Paradise from the Septuagint version, in which the word is rendered . This word, according to Spiegel, was derived from the Zendic pairi – daeza , a hedging round, and passed into the Hebrew in the form (Son 4:13; Ecc 2:5; Neh 2:8), a park, probably through the commercial relations which Solomon established with distant countries. In the garden itself God caused all kinds of trees to grow out of the earth; and among them were tow, which were called “the tree of life” and “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” on account of their peculiar significance in relation to man (see Gen 2:16 and Gen 3:22). , an infinitive, as Jer 22:16 shows, has the article here because the phrase is regarded as one word, and in Jeremiah from the nature of the predicate.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

The Garden of Eden.

B. C. 4004.

      8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.   9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.   10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.   11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;   12 And the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone.   13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.   14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.   15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

      Man consisting of body and soul, a body made out of the earth and a rational immortal soul the breath of heaven, we have, in these verses, the provision that was made for the happiness of both; he that made him took care to make him happy, if he could but have kept himself so and known when he was well off. That part of man by which he is allied to the world of sense was made happy; for he was put in the paradise of God: that part by which he is allied to the world of spirits was well provided for; for he was taken into covenant with God. Lord, what is man that he should be thus dignified–man that is a worm! Here we have,

      I. A description of the garden of Eden, which was intended for the mansion and demesne of this great lord, the palace of this prince. The inspired penman, in this history, writing for the Jews first, and calculating his narratives for the infant state of the church, describes things by their outward sensible appearances, and leaves us, by further discoveries of the divine light, to be led into the understanding of the mysteries couched under them. Spiritual things were strong meat, which they could not yet bear; but he writes to them as unto carnal, 1 Cor. iii. 1. Therefore he does not so much insist upon the happiness of Adam’s mind as upon that of his outward state. The Mosaic history, as well as the Mosaic law, has rather the patterns of heavenly things than the heavenly things themselves, Heb. ix. 23. Observe,

      1. The place appointed for Adam’s residence was a garden; not an ivory house nor a palace overlaid with gold, but a garden, furnished and adorned by nature, not by art. What little reason have men to be proud of stately and magnificent buildings, when it was the happiness of man in innocency that he needed none! As clothes came in with sin, so did houses. The heaven was the roof of Adam’s house, and never was any roof so curiously ceiled and painted. The earth was his floor, and never was any floor so richly inlaid. The shadow of the trees was his retirement; under them were his dining-rooms, his lodging-rooms, and never were any rooms so finely hung as these: Solomon’s, in all their glory, were not arrayed like them. The better we can accommodate ourselves to plain things, and the less we indulge ourselves with those artificial delights which have been invented to gratify men’s pride and luxury, the nearer we approach to a state of innocency. Nature is content with a little and that which is most natural, grace with less, but lust with nothing.

      2. The contrivance and furniture of this garden were the immediate work of God’s wisdom and power. The Lord God planted this garden, that is, he had planted it–upon the third day, when the fruits of the earth were made. We may well suppose to have been the most accomplished place for pleasure and delight that ever the sun saw, when the all-sufficient God himself designed it to be the present happiness of his beloved creature, man, in innocency, and a type and a figure of the happiness of the chosen remnant in glory. No delights can be agreeable nor satisfying to a soul but those that God himself has provided and appointed for it; no true paradise, but of God’s planting. The light of our own fires, and the sparks of our own kindling, will soon leave us in the dark, Isa. l. 11. The whole earth was now a paradise compared with what it is since the fall and since the flood; the finest gardens in the world are a wilderness compared with what the whole face of the ground was before it was cursed for man’s sake: yet that was not enough; God planted a garden for Adam. God’s chosen ones shall have distinguishing favours shown them.

      3. The situation of this garden was extremely sweet. It was in Eden, which signifies delight and pleasure. The place is here particularly pointed out by such marks and bounds as were sufficient, I suppose, when Moses wrote, to specify the place to those who knew that country; but now, it seems, the curious cannot satisfy themselves concerning it. Let it be our care to make sure a place in the heavenly paradise, and then we need not perplex ourselves with a search after the place of the earthly paradise. It is certain that, wherever it was, it had all desirable conveniences, and (which never any house nor garden on earth was) without any inconvenience. Beautiful for situation, the joy and the glory of the whole earth, was this garden: doubtless it was earth in its highest perfection.

      4. The trees with which this garden was planted. (1.) It had all the best and choicest trees in common with the rest of the ground. It was beautiful and adorned with every tree that, for its height or breadth, its make or colour, its leaf or flower, was pleasant to the sight and charmed the eye; it was replenished and enriched with every tree that yielded fruit grateful to the taste and useful to the body, and so good for food. God, as a tender Father, consulted not only Adam’s profit, but his pleasure; for there is a pleasure consistent with innocency, nay, there is a true and transcendent pleasure in innocency. God delights in the prosperity of his servants, and would have them easy; it is owing to themselves if they be uneasy. When Providence puts us into an Eden of plenty and pleasure, we ought to serve him with joyfulness and gladness of heart, in the abundance of the good things he gives us. But, (2.) It had two extraordinary trees peculiar to itself; on earth there were not their like. [1.] There was the tree of life in the midst of the garden, which was not so much a memorandum to him of the fountain and author of his life, nor perhaps any natural means to preserve or prolong life; but it was chiefly intended to be a sign and seal to Adam, assuring him of the continuance of life and happiness, even to immortality and everlasting bliss, through the grace and favour of his Maker, upon condition of his perseverance in this state of innocency and obedience. Of this he might eat and live. Christ is now to us the tree of life (Rev 2:7; Rev 22:2), and the bread of life,Joh 6:48; Joh 6:53. [2.] There was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so called, not because it had any virtue in it to beget or increase useful knowledge (surely then it would not have been forbidden), but, First, Because there was an express positive revelation of the will of God concerning this tree, so that by it he might know moral good and evil. What is good? It is good not to eat of this tree. What is evil? It is evil to eat of this tree. The distinction between all other moral good and evil was written in the heart of man by nature; but this, which resulted from a positive law, was written upon this tree. Secondly, Because, in the event, it proved to give Adam an experimental knowledge of good by the loss of it and of evil by the sense of it. As the covenant of grace has in it, not only Believe and be saved, but also, Believe not and be damned (Mark xvi. 16), so the covenant of innocency had in it, not only “Do this and live,” which was sealed and confirmed by the tree of life, but, “Fail and die,” which Adam was assured of by this other tree: “Touch it at your peril;” so that, in these two trees, God set before him good and evil, the blessing and the curse, Deut. xxx. 19. These two trees were as two sacraments.

      5. The rivers with which this garden was watered, v. 10-14. These four rivers (or one river branched into four streams) contributed much both to the pleasantness and the fruitfulness of this garden. The land of Sodom is said to be well watered every where, as the garden of the Lord, ch. xiii. 10. Observe, That which God plants he will take care to keep watered. The trees of righteousness are set by the rivers, Ps. i. 3. In the heavenly paradise there is a river infinitely surpassing these; for it is a river of the water of life, not coming out of Eden, as this, but proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev. xxii. 1), a river that makes glad the city of our God, Ps. xlvi. 4. Hiddekel and Euphrates are rivers of Babylon, which we read of elsewhere. By these the captive Jews sat down and wept, when they remembered Sion (Ps. cxxxvii. 1); but methinks they had much more reason to weep (and so have we) at the remembrance of Eden. Adam’s paradise was their prison; such wretched work has sin made. Of the land of Havilah it is said (v. 12), The gold of that land is good, and there is bdellium and the onyx-stone: surely this is mentioned that the wealth of which the land of Havilah boasted might be as foil to that which was the glory of the land of Eden. Havilah had gold, and spices, and precious stones; but Eden had that which was infinitely better, the tree of life, and communion with God. So we may say of the Africans and Indians: “They have the gold, but we have the gospel. The gold of their land is good, but the riches of ours are infinitely better.”

      II. The placing of man in this paradise of delight, v. 15, where observe,

      1. How God put him in possession of it: The Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden; so Gen 2:8; Gen 2:15. Note here, (1.) Man was made out of paradise; for, after God had formed him, he put him into the garden: he was made of common clay, not of paradise-dust. He lived out of Eden before he lived in it, that he might see that all the comforts of his paradise-state were owing to God’s free grace. He could not plead a tenant-right to the garden, for he was not born upon the premises, nor had any thing but what he received; all boasting was hereby for ever excluded. (2.) The same God that was the author of his being was the author of his bliss; the same hand that made him a living soul planted the tree of life for him, and settled him by it. He that made us is alone able to make us happy; he that is the former of our bodies and the Father of our spirits, he, and none but he, can effectually provide for the felicity of both. (3.) It adds much to the comfort of any condition if we have plainly seen God going before us and putting us into it. If we have not forced providence, but followed it, and taken the hints of direction it has given us, we may hope to find a paradise where otherwise we could not have expected it. See Ps. xlvii. 4.

      2. How God appointed him business and employment. He put him there, not like Leviathan into the waters, to play therein, but to dress the garden and to keep it. Paradise itself was not a place of exemption from work. Note, here, (1.) We were none of us sent into the world to be idle. He that made us these souls and bodies has given us something to work with; and he that gave us this earth for our habitation has made us something to work on. If a high extraction, or a great estate, or a large dominion, or perfect innocency, or a genius for pure contemplation, or a small family, could have given a man a writ of ease, Adam would not have been set to work; but he that gave us being has given us business, to serve him and our generation, and to work out our salvation: if we do not mind our business, we are unworthy of our being and maintenance. (2.) Secular employments will vary well consist with a state of innocency and a life of communion with God. The sons and heirs of heaven, while they are here in this world, have something to do about this earth, which must have its share of their time and thoughts; and, if they do it with an eye to God, they are as truly serving him in it as when they are upon their knees. (3.) The husbandman’s calling is an ancient and honourable calling; it was needful even in paradise. The garden of Eden, though it needed not to be weeded (for thorns and thistles were not yet a nuisance), yet must be dressed and kept. Nature, even in its primitive state, left room for the improvements of art and industry. It was a calling fit for a state of innocency, making provision for life, not for lust, and giving man an opportunity of admiring the Creator and acknowledging his providence: while his hands were about his trees, his heart might be with his God. (4.) There is a true pleasure in the business which God calls us to, and employs us in. 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: it is still a law, He that will not work has no right to eat, 2Th 3:10; Pro 27:23.

      III. The command which God gave to man in innocency, and the covenant he then took him into. Hitherto we have seen God as man’s powerful Creator and his bountiful Benefactor; now he appears as his Ruler and Lawgiver. God put him into the garden of Eden, not to live there as he might list, but to be under government. As we are not allowed to be idle in this world, and to do nothing, so we are not allowed to be wilful, and do what we please. When God had given man a dominion over the creatures, he would let him know that still he himself was under the government of his Creator.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

8. And the Lord God planted (117) Moses now adds the condition and rule of living which were given to man. And, first, he narrates in what part of the world he was placed, and what a happy and pleasant habitation was allotted to him. Moses says, that God had planted accommodating himself, by a simple and uncultivated style, to the capacity of the vulgar. For since the majesty of God, as it really is, cannot be expressed, the Scripture is wont to describe it according to the manner of men. God, then, had planted Paradise in a place which he had especially embellished with every variety of delights, with abounding fruits and with all other most excellent gifts. For this reason it is called a garden, on account of the elegance of its situation, and the beauty of its form. The ancient interpreter has not improperly translated it Paradise; (118) because the Hebrews call the more highly cultivated gardens פרדסים ( Pardaisim, (119)) and Xenophon pronounces the word to be Persian, when he treats of the magnificent and sumptuous gardens of kings. That region which the Lord assigned to Adam, as the firstborn of mankind, was one selected out of the whole world.

In Eden That Jerome improperly translates this, from the beginning, (120) is very obvious: because Moses afterwards says, that Cain dwelt in the southern region of this place. Moreover it is to be observed, that when he describes paradise as in the east, he speaks in reference to the Jews, for he directs his discourse to his own people. Hence we infer, in the first place, that there was a certain region assigned by God to the first man, in which he might have his home. I state this expressly, because there have been authors who would extend this garden over all regions of the world. Truly, I confess, that if the earth had not been cursed on account of the sin of man, the whole — as it had been blessed from the beginning — would have remained the fairest scene both of fruitfulness and of delight; that it would have been, in short, not dissimilar to Paradise, when compared with that scene of deformity which we now behold. But when Moses here describes particularly the situation of the region, they absurdly transfer what Moses said of a certain particular place to the whole world. It is not indeed doubtful (as I just now hinted) that God would choose the most fertile and pleasant place, the first-fruits (so to speak) of the earth, as his gift to Adam, whom he had dignified with the honor of primogeniture among men, in token of his special favor. Again, we infer, that this garden was situated on the earth, not as some dream in the air; for unless it had been a region of our world, it would not have been placed opposite to Judea, towards the east. We must, however, entirely reject the allegories of Origin, and of others like him, which Satan, with the deepest subtlety, has endeavored to introduce into the Church, for the purpose of rendering the doctrine of Scripture ambiguous and destitute of all certainty and firmness. It may be, indeed, that some, impelled by a supposed necessity, have resorted to an allegorical sense, because they never found in the world such a place as is described by Moses: but we see that the greater part, through a foolish affectation of subtleties, have been too much addicted to allegories. As it concerns the present passage, they speculate in vain, and to no purpose, by departing from the literal sense. For Moses has no other design than to teach man that he was formed by God, with this condition, that he should have dominion over the earth, from which he might gather fruit, and thus learn by daily experience that the world was subject unto him. What advantage is it to fly in the air, and to leave the earth, where God has given proof of his benevolence towards the human race? But some one may say, that to interpret this of celestial bliss is more skillful. I answer, since the eternal inheritance of man is in heaven, it is truly right that we should tend thither; yet must we fix our foot on earth long enough to enable us to consider the abode which God requires man to use for a time. For we are now conversant with that history which teaches us that Adam was, by Divine appointment, an inhabitant of the earth, in order that he might, in passing through his earthly life, meditate on heavenly glory; and that he had been bountifully enriched by the Lord with innumerable benefits, from the enjoyment of which he might infer the paternal benevolence of God. Moses, also, will hereafter subjoin that he was commanded to cultivate the fields and permitted to eat certain fruits: all which things neither suit the circle of the moon, nor the aerial regions. But although we have said, that the situation of Paradise lay between the rising of the sun and Judea, yet something more definite may be required respecting that region. They who contend that it was in the vicinity of Mesopotamia, rely on reasons not to be despised; because it is probable that the sons of Eden were contiguous to the river Tigris. But as the description of it by Moses will immediately follow, it is better to defer the consideration of it to that place. The ancient interpreter has fallen into a mistake in translating the proper name Eden by the word pleasure. (121) I do not indeed deny that the place was so called from its delights; but it is easy to infer that the name was imposed upon the place to distinguish it from others.

(117) “ Plantaverat quoque Dominus.” — “The Lord had also planted.”

(118) “ Paradisum.” — Vulgate.

(119) פרדס Baumgarten, Park, etc. “ Wahrschenlich aus der Persichen Sprache, wo es die Lustparks der Koenige bezeichnet.” — “Orchard, Park, etc. — probably from the Persian, where it signifies the pleasure — parks of kings.” — Gesenius

(120) “ Plantaverat autem Dominus Deus Paradisum voluptatis a principio.” — “But the Lord God had planted a paradise from the beginning.” — Vulgate.

(121) The Hebrew word עדן signifies pleasure, delight, loveliness. — Ed

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

CRITICAL NOTES.

Gen. 2:14. East of Assyria] So Ges. and Dav. Lit., before A. wh. to a writer in Pal. is = west (Frst).

Gen. 2:17. Surely die] Heb. die, die shalt thou; as in Gen. 2:16 eat, eat shalt thou, Gen. 3:16, increase, increase will I:a frequent and quite peculiar idiom for the indication of emphasis (Ewald). Dying thou shalt die is misleading, has in fact misled many into groundless subtleties.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Gen. 2:8-17

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

There has been much speculation as to the situation of the Garden of Eden; but in vain, it is utterly impossible to ascertain its site. All vestage of it was probably swept away by the deluge. This, however, is of little moment, in comparison with the higher and more solemn moral truths with which this garden stands connected. In these the world is interested, in them it finds its most difficult problems, and the only explanation of its present condition.

I. In this garden provision was made for the happiness of man. This is evident from the description of the garden found in these verses.

1. The garden was beautiful. There was planted in it every tree that is pleasant to the sight. Beautiful scenery does much to enhance the comfort and enjoyment of man: in order to gaze upon it men will travel to the ends of the earth. By all that was lovely and inspiring in material nature, Adam was daily surrounded.

2. The garden was fruitful. And good for food. Hence with the beautiful in nature, there was blended all that would be needful to supply the temporal requirements of man. The material beauty by which he was surrounded was only indicative of the plenty that everywhere presented itself for his service.

3. The garden was well watered, and a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. Thus we cannot wonder at the beauty and fertility of this garden. The teaching of this garden is, that God intended man to enjoy a happy life. He did not design that man should be shut up in a cloister, but that he should wander amid the beautiful scenes of nature; He did not design that man should lead a melancholy and sad life, but that he should be jubilant, and that his joy should be inspired by all that was beautiful and morally good. In this happy picture of primeval life we have Gods ideal of life, a pattern for our own.

II. In this garden provision was made for the daily occupation of man. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

1. Work is the law of mans being. Work is a divine ordination. God put Adam to it. He was the first Employer of labour. Mans ideal of life is to have nothing to do, to be independent as it is called. Work is compatible with the most ideal existence. It is a token of dignity; a willingness to perform it, is a vestige of the former splendour of our being. People tell us that work is the result of the fall. This is not true. Man worked before he fell, but free from fatigue or pain. The element of pain which has been infused into work, that is the result of the fall. Man must work. He is prompted to it by natural instincts. He is cheered in it by happy results. He is rewarded after it by an approving conscience.

(1) Mans work should be practical. Adam was to dress the garden. It is mans work to develop, and make Gods universe as productive as possible. Some men spend their lives in speculation; it would be far better if they would employ them in digging. Aim to be practical in your toil. The world needs practical workers. The world is full of men who want to be great workers, and they would be, if they would only undertake little tasks.

(2) Mans work should be healthful. There is no employment more healthy than that of husbandry. It enables a man to get plenty of fresh air. It will make him stalwart. It would be much better for the health of the world if less men were engaged in offices, and more in the broad fields.

(3) Mans work should be taken as from God. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden. This will dignify work. It will inspire the worker. It will attain the full meaning of service. A man who lets God put him to his trade, is likely to be successful.

2. Work is the benediction of mans being. Work makes men happy. Indolence is misery. If all the artizans of our country were freed from their employment to-morrow, it would not increase their joy; to what would they turn their attention? Work is the truest blessing we have. It occupies our time. It keeps from mischief. It supplies our temporal wants. It enriches society. It wins the approval of God.

III. In this garden provision was made for the spiritual obedience of man.

1. God gave man a command to obey. Adam was not entirely to do as he liked in this garden, one restriction was made known to him. He was to be none the less happy. He was to be none the less free. He was to be the more obedient to that Being who had so kindly ordered his circumstances. Man is not to do as he likes in this world. God places him under moral restrictions, which are for his welfare, but which he has the ability to set aside. There are certain trees in the world, of whose fruit we are not to eat. But these restrictions are not irksome or unreasonable, they refer only to one tree in all the great garden of life. Let us attend to the regulation which the gospel puts upon our use of the creatures by which we are every day surrounded.

2. God annexed a penalty in the case of disobedience.

(1) The penalty was clearly made known.

(2) It was certain in its infliction.

(3) It was terrible in its result.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

THE TWO PARADISES.Gen. 22:8; Rev. 2:2

Gen. 2:8.

I. Compare the Places. The second is superior to the first.

1. In respect to its elements. What was dust in the first paradise was gold in the second.

2. Of its extent. The first paradise was the corner of a small planet; the second is a universe of glory in which nations dwell, and whose limits angels know not.

3. Of its beauty.

II. Compare the Inhabitants. of the two paradises. The inhabitants of the second are superior to those of the first.

1. In physical nature.

2. In employment. The employment of heaven will relate to beings rather than to things. The sphere of activity will be more amongst souls than flowers. Will call into exercise loftier faculties; will tend more to the glory of God.

3. In rank.

4. In freedom.

5. In security. Adam was liable to temptation and evil. In the second paradise is immunity from peril.

6. In vision of God. In the first paradise God walked amid the trees of the garden. Adam realizes the overshadowing Presence. The inhabitants of the second paradise shall enjoy that Presence more perfectly.

(1.) Vision brighter.
(2.) Constant. [Pulpit Analyst.]

A garden:

1. Its plantation.
2. Its situation.
3. Its occupation.

Gen. 2:9. As God gives us all things freely, so He takes special notice of all that He bestows upon us.

Every plant grows where, and in what manner God appoints it.
Gods bounty abounds unto men, not only to the supply of their want, but also for their delight.
It is usual with God to mix delight and pleasure with usefulness and profit in all his blessings.
Gods commandments ought to be full in view of His people.
It is usual with God to teach His children by things of common use.

Gen. 2:10-15. Gods blessings are in every way complete and perfect.

Springs and rivers of waters are not amongst the least of Gods blessings.
Every son of Adam is bound to some employment:

1. Necessary to mutual subsistence.
2. The creatures of the world are not serviceable without toil.
3. To occupy time.
4. To employ our faculties.

Our daily calling

1. Undertaken by a Divine warrant.
2. Pursued with cheerfulness and fidelity.
3. Guided by Gods word.
4. Seeking the good of the community.
5. Abiding there till God shall discharge us.

Duty and not gain should be the ground of our daily calling.
Mans employment ought to be in those places where it is most needed.
Very rich in earthly treasure was the habitation of innocency.

Gen. 2:16-17.Eden: or Gods voice to man on entering his earthly sphere of life.

I. That mans earthly sphere of life is furnished with vast and varied blessings. Of every tree. There are many trees of pleasure for man in this life.

1. There is the sensational tree. Material nature with its million branches is a tree all thickly clustered with fruit.

2. There is the intellectual tree. Life is crowded with ideas, every form of life embodies them, every event starts them.

3. There is the social tree.

4. There is the religious tree. This gives it beauty and worth to all. What a rich garden is our earthly life.

II. That these vast and varied blessings are to be used under certain Divine regulations. But of the tree.

1. His regulations are proper.

2. His regulations are liberal.

3. His regulations are needful.

III. That the violation of these Divine regulations will entail the utmost ruin. Thou shalt surely die. To disobey God is sin, and the wages of sin is death. Disobedience to God will produce death.[Homilist.]

ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE
REV. WM. ADAMSON

Breath of Life! (Gen. 2:8.) God breathed into man at the first creation the breath of life, and he became a living creature. Christ breathed upon His disciples the breath of eternal life, and said: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. We have all the breath of the first creation; but this breath will not save us from the vanity and perishableness of our natural life. Christ must breathe into our souls the Holy Spirit, Who alone can make us immortal souls. To hew a block of marble from the quarry, and carve it into a noble statueto break up a waste wilderness, and turn it into a garden of flowersto melt a lump of iron-stone, and forge it into watch springs; all these are mighty changes. Yet they all come short of the change which every child of Adam requiresfor they are merely the same thing in a new form. But man must become a new creature. He must be born againborn from aboveborn of God. God must breathe into him the breath of life. So that the natural birth is not a whit more necessary to the life of the body than is the spiritual birth to the life of the soul.Ryle.

Eden! Gen. 2:8. Sir Henry Rawlinson, to whom we owe so much in Assyrian decipherment, long ago identified Eden with the Kardunias or Gan-dunias of the inscriptions. Kardunias is one of the names of Babyloniaperhaps properly belonging to some particular part of the country, and it is said to be watered by four rivers just like Eden in Genesis. But Dr. Wylie and others lean towards another view of the locale of Eden. Paradise is said to be a garden eastward in Eden. As these words were penned by Moses in the wilderness south of Judea, it is self-evident that Eden must be considerably east of Palestine. Some have thought of the noble plain around Damascus, which is well-watered, luxuriant, and rich. Others have found it in that district known as Arabia Felix, so called on account of the eminent richness of its pastures. While others have seen it in that region somewhere between Bagdad and Bussorah at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. Here the soil is fertile, the climate delicious, and the noble stream which waters it diffuses a delightful freshness and verdure throughout the great plain along which it flows. Here the skies are serene; and the earth might wear everlastingly a robe of vernal beauty were it not for the neglect and barbarity of man. It is now occupied by ignorant and barbarous tribes under the nominal sceptre of the Shah of Persia. Beyond this we can make no nearer approach to the seat of primval innocence

Well named

A paradise, for never earth has worn
Such close similitude to heaven as there.Bickersteth.

Man! Gen. 2:8. He was to be the High Priest of creation, the mysterious yet glorious link between the material and spiritual. On him God placed his Eden robes that he might officiate on the first sabbath as a holy Levite before the Lord. Paradise was the temple prepared for him by his Creator, in which to worship the Holy and Eternal One. It was the glory of man that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and made him a living soul, in order that he might stand as the annointed priest in the midst of the great congregation of creation, to give a tongue to all around him, that, through him, the loud anthem of universal adoration might rise too. And though man is no longer natures minister before the Lord, and no longer resembles a walking orange tree swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air, yet

That day Gods church doth still confess,

At once creation and redemptions feast,
Sign of a world called forth, a world forgiven.Mant.

Work! Gen. 2:8. Not only did Adam work before the Fall; but also nature and natures God. From the particle of dust at our feet to man, the last stroke of Gods handiwork, all bear the impress of the law of labour. The earth, as has been said, is one vast laboratory, where decomposition and re-formation are constantly going on. The blast of natures furnace never ceases, and its fires never burn low. The lichen of the rock, and the oak of the forest, each works out the problem of its own existence. The earth, the air and the water teem with busy life. The poet tells us that the joyous song of labour sounds out from the million-voiced earth, and the rolling spheres join the universal chorus! Therefore, labour is not, as Tupper expresses it, the curse on the sons of men in all their ways. Rather

In the masters vineyard.

Go and work to-day;

Be no useless sluggard

Standing in the way.Bonas.

Healthy Work! Gen. 2:8. It is not, says one, work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Motion is all natures law. Action is mans salvation, both physical and mental. Rest is ruin; therefore he only is wise, who lays himself out to work till lifes latest hour; and that is the man who will live the longest, and live to the most purpose. Work gives a feeling of strength, and in this our highest pleasure consists. It is vigour; for an angels wing would droop if long at rest. As an Oriental couplet expresses the idea in quaint guise:

Good striving
Brings thriving;

Better a dog who works
Than a lion who shirks.

Tree! Gen. 2:11. A tree, called the man-chaneel, grows in the West Indies. Its appearance is very attractive, and the wood of it peculiarly beautiful. It bears a kind of fruit resembling the golden pippin. This fruit looks very tempting, and smells very fragrant

Not balm new bleeding from the wounded tree,
Nor blessd Arabia with her spicy grove,
Such fragrance yields.

But to eat of it is instant death. Its sap is so poisonous that, if a few drops of it fall on the skin, it raises blisters and occasions great pain. The Indians dip their arrows in the juice, that they may poison their enemies when they wound them.

Paradise! Gen. 2:12. To dream of a paradise on earth is to dream of what never can be realised. There is, however, another paradise into which we may entera paradise whose gates stand open day and nightat whose doors are ministers of grace to invite us to enterwithin whose precincts are the Tree of Life and the Water of Life. It is the garden of His Church. Yet are the beauties of the Gospel paradise nought compared with the unfading charms of the Heavenly Eden. A traveller in the east was once invited to see the glory of a princes garden. It was the night-blooming cereus; glorious indeed, with its creamy waxen buds and full bloom of exquisite formthe leaves of the carolla of a pale golden hue, and the petals intensely white. He saw it just as the short twilight of the tropics was deepening into night, and the beauteous flowers were beginning to exhale their wondrous perfume. But this sweet burst of glory he considered as nothing when, at the midnight hour, he saw the plant in all its queenlike radiance at perfect maturity, as the full glory of a royal garden revealed to his eye. So, beautiful as was the natural paradise, and beautiful as is the spiritual paradise, their beauty will be nothing to that of the upper paradise.

O there are gardens of the immortal kind,
That crown the Heavenly Edens rising hills
With beauty and with sweets;
The branches bend laden with life and bliss.Watts.

Eden and Gethsemane! Gen. 2:13. We compare the earthly with the heavenly paradise, but do we contrast Eden with Gethsemane? The earthly Eden was mans Gethsemanehis garden of woe and sweat. The Gethsemane is mans spiritual Eden, where crimson flowers bloom brilliant as the sunset rays, and emit an odour sweeter far than the spicy perfumes wafted from eastern gardens. It has been very quaintly put thus:

Sweet Eden was the arbour of delight,

Yet in its honey flowers our poison blew;

Sad Gethsemane, the bower of baleful night,

Where Christ a health of poison for us drew,
Yet all our honey in that poison grew.Fletcher.

Tree of Life! Gen. 2:9. In Eastern poetry they tell of a wondrous tree, on which grew golden apples and silver bells; and every time the breeze went by and tossed the fragrant branches, a shower of those golden apples fell, and the living bells chimed and tinkled forth their airy ravishment. On the gospel tree there grow melodious blossoms; sweeter bells than those which mingled with the pomegranates on Aarons vest; holy feelings, heaven-taught joys; and when the wind blowing where he listeth, the south wind waking, when the Holy Spirit breathes upon that soul, there is the shaking down of mellow fruits, and the flow of healthy odours all around, and the gush of sweet music, where gentle tones and joyful echoings are wafted through the recesses of the soul. Not easily explained to others, and too ethereal to define, these joys are on that account but the more delightful. The sweet sense of forgiveness; the conscious exercise of all the devout affections, and grateful and adoring emotions God-ward; the lull of sinful passions, itself ecstatic music; an exulting sense of the security of the well-ordered covenant; the gladness of surety righteousness, and the kindly spirit of adoption, encouraging to say, Abba, Father, all the delightful feelings which the Spirit of God increases or creates, and which are summed up in that comprehensive word, Joy in the Holy Ghost.Hamilton.

Blessings! Gen. 2:16. Holmes remarks that a man may look long enough in search of particles of iron, which he was told were in a dish of sand, and fail to detect them. But let another come, and sweep a magnet through the sand, and soon the invisible particles would be discerned by the mere power of attraction! The thankless heart is like the finger, it cannot see the innumerablethe vast and varied blessings. The magnet is that truly grateful spirit, which, sweeping through the earth, discovers many a rich earthly treasure.

In the nine heavens are eight paradises,
Where is the ninth one? In the human heart.
Given to thee are those eight paradises,
When thou the ninth one hast within thy heart.Oriental.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

PART NINE: THE BEGINNING OF SOCIETY

(Gen. 2:8-25)

And Jehovah God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made Jehovah God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads. The name of the first is Pishon: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth in front of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. And Jehovah God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it (Gen. 2:8-15).

1. The Garden. (Cf. Isa. 51:3; Eze. 28:13; Eze. 31:8-9; Eze. 36:35; Joe. 2:3). (1) God planted it eastward, that is, to the east of the Land of Promise (Canaan), and from the point of view of the writer. Is it significant that there is no mention here of anything to the west? (2) In Eden: a name derived probably from the Sumerian edin, meaning a plain or a steppe (Cornfeld, AtD, 13), and translated into the Greek, in the Septuagint, as paradeisos, a name meaning orchard or garden (probably a garden of fruit trees). Paradeisos is transliterated into English as Paradise. The location of this Garden is not precisely determinable. Only two theories have been advanced: the one puts it at the head of the Persian Gulf; the other, in Armenia, the region east of Asia Minor, the area around Mt. Ararat and Lake Van. (3) Did Eden exist at all geographically? I see no reason for assuming that it could not have so existed: indeed actual geography is indicated by specific mention of the two rivers whose names have been historically established, namely, the Tigris and the Euphrates. This would mean that the Garden was somewhere in Mesopotamia (from meso, middle, and potamos, river; hence, in the middle of or between the Tigris and the Euphrates). (The Euphrates has never had any other historical name, but the Hiddekel of the Genesis account was called the Tigra by the Persians and the Tigris by the Greeks: cf. Dan. 10:4, also the testimony of Strabo, Pliny, et al). However, it is not possible to identify the other two rivers, the Pishon and the Gihon, because it is not possible to identify, with any degree of certainty, the districts, Havilah and Cush, respectively, which these two rivers are said to have compassed (probably skirted). The best bet is that Havilah referred to an area somewhere in the Arabian peninsula, probably what is today called Yemen (Gen. 25:18; Gen. 10:7; Gen. 10:29; 1Sa. 15:7; also Gen. 16:7; Gen. 20:1; Exo. 15:22). Cush may have represented the Kas of the Egyptian monuments, since Cush is pretty generally thought to be the Hebrew name for modern Nubia, the name which by extension became Ethiopia, the nameapparently a misnomerused by the Greeks (cf. R.V. Gen. 2:13; also Num. 12:1, Exo. 2:21, Gen. 10:6-8, 1Ch. 1:8-10, Isa. 11:11; 2Ki. 19:9, 2Ch. 12:3; 2Ch. 14:9); in this case, the Gihon could have been the Nile. (Some authorities think that Cush represented the country, in Elam, taken over by the Kassi of the Babylonian inscriptions, about 1600 B.C.). It could be, of course, that the main river (apparently a subterranean sea) which went out of Eden to water the garden was the Persian Gulf itself, and the four heads emanating from it may have been identified, in ancient Hebrew thought, as the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris (which at one time flowed directly into the Gulf), and the Indus Rivers (the four great rivers of what the noted Egyptologist, James H. Breasted, has named the Fertile Crescent; see sketch map 2). Some hold that the four rivers may have been the Phasis, the Araxes, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Murphy thinks the Pishon may have been the River Halys, which flows into the Black Sea, and in the bend of which was the ancient capital of the Hittite Empire, Boghazkoi (or Hattusas). Finally, it could well be that subsequent geological changes have destroyed the site of Eden altogether. (Incidentally, little is to be accomplished by speculating about some of the geographical names that appear in the Pentateuch; hence, we do not intend to devote much time or space here to what can be but little more than conjecture.) Moreover, it is this writers opinion that the significance of Eden geographically is of secondary consequence to the spiritual meaning which the story of Eden has for the inward man, the spiritual meaning which may well be communicated to us by the Spirit of God symbolically or metaphorically in the very terms which reappear in the Revelation, the last book of the New Testament (cf. Rev. 22:1-5; also Gen. 2:7, Gen. 22:14). (4) Geographical significance is indicated, however, in the fact that the Biblical account of Eden does harmonize with scientific conclusions about the origin of mankind. Advocates of the evolution hypothesis are trying in our time to establish a theory of centers of human origin. This theory, however, is wholly conjectural, built on the assumption that certain archeological finds, in widely separated places of earth (skeletal parts, such as bones, teeth, etc.) are to be described as humanoidal and could point to separate developments of lower animal forms into, humankind. But biologists for the most part agree, I think, on the basis of the evolution hypothesis, that there has been but one biological development flowering in man as we know him (homo sapiens). Both the prehistoric and historic evidence now available agree with Scripture in putting the cradle of the human race in Southwest Asia, whence it dispersed westward via the Mediterranean Sea and the Danube Valley, and southwestward by way of the Nile and its tributaries; and eastward into what is now known as India and China, and finally by way of the Aleutians and Bering Strait into the Americas. Ethnologists are generally agreed that the American aborigines came from Mongoloid ancestry in Eastern Asia: the Eskimo is definitely Mongoloid.

(5) We must never overlook the profound importin the form of symbol and metaphorof the various aspects of this exquisitely-told account of mans original state. Surely the Garden itself does by symbol and metaphor point back to an original innocence and unhindered fellowship of man with God. The Eden story teaches us (a) that Gods purpose for man was that the latter should dwell in close communion with his Creator, and (b) that God had actually constituted him for, and ordained him to, happiness as his natural and proper intrinsic end in life. As a matter of fact, personal experience must convince us that mans natural impulses uniformly indicate that he has been ordained to happiness or well-being; that the normal human being does not set out deliberately to make himself ultimately and permanently miserable. Mans failures occur in his misguided efforts to find happiness in apparent goods (those which satisfy some appetite in isolation) instead of real goods (those which benefit the whole man by adding perfections or removing imperfections). In a word, mans depravity is expressed in his rebellious determination to find true happiness without God: this no man ever did or ever will do. The tragic fact is that he allowed his moral discernment to become vitiated by a wrong choice at the very outset of his existence (cf. Mat. 6:33). This Divine purpose is at the very heart of the Eden narrative: in his Edenic state, man had unhindered access to God: this fellowship he would still have, had he not forfeited the right to it by defying the Will and transgressing the law of God. But even the more tragic fact is that the story of the Gardenof mans losing his oneness with his Creatoris repeated in the life of every human being who reaches the age of moral discernment (Rom. 3:23). (It is interesting to note here that Breasted puts forward the idea that in the story of Adam and Eve we have the account of the birth of conscience in man, of his emergence from the Age of Power into the Age of Character, from the age of his struggle with nature into that of his struggle with himself; this struggle with himself Breasted designates an unfinished historical process (DC, 386). This is an interesting view, one with which, I should say, the account in Gen. 3:6-13 is in harmony.)

(6) Indeed, I raise the question here: Could not much of the account of the Garden of Eden be deliberately symbolical? The heart of the teaching here is that the river which originated somewhere in the subterranean deep, and flowed out of Eden to water the garden (Gen. 2:10) is symbolical (metaphorical) of the River of Life itself, the River which flows out timelessly from one source only, the throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev. 22:1); for let it be never forgotten that our God, the God of the Bible, is the living God (Mat. 16:16, Act. 14:15, Joh. 11:25-26, 1Th. 1:9; Heb. 3:12; Heb. 9:14; Heb. 10:31; Heb. 12:22; Rev. 1:17-18), the Source and Preserver of every form of lifenatural, spiritual, and eternal. This River of Life, with its Tree of Life, as the source and sustainer of life perpetually, plays a tremendous role in Biblical thought (Psa. 46:4, Eze. 47:1-12) and again in the consummation of the Biblical drama (that is, the actualization of the Eternal Purpose of God: cf. Rev. 2:7; Rev. 7:17; Rev. 22:1-2; Rev. 22:14-17; Rev. 22:19; Pro. 3:18). (This Garden of the Lord God became throughout the Scriptures the highest ideal of earthly excellence: cf. Isa. 51:3; Eze. 28:13; Eze. 31:9; Joe. 2:3.) It is profoundly meaningful that this River and this Tree first appearing in the story of Paradise Lost should reappear in the story of Paradise Regained. We must not overlook the fact that the Apocalypse was signified to John the Beloved (Rev. 1:1); this means that it is couched in prophetic symbolism throughout. Why, then, should not these terms which have symbolic meaning in Revelation be recognized as having the same import when first used in the book of Genesis? (We shall consider this matter again infra, in our study of the Trees of the primeval Garden.)

2. Man in the Garden. (1) God created (bara) the Man in His own image (Gen. 1:27); that is, He formed (specified) him a body-spirit unity, a living soul or living beinga complete person (Gen. 2:7); blessed him (Gen. 1:28), conferred on him dominion over the whole earth (Gen. 1:28, Psalms 8); planted a garden of delight for his first occupancy (Gen. 2:8); and then put him into the Garden to dress and to keep it (Gen. 2:15). (2) Gen. 2:9It seems evident that this statement refers exclusively to vegetation within the Garden, and not outside it. There is no implication in this verse that man preceded plant life in the over-all Creation. We are nowhere informed that the luxuriant vegetation of the Garden was brought into existence at the same time as the vegetation that spread generally over the earths surface. Eden, with its trees and flowers, was a special act of Providence. It seems equally obvious that the world at large was prepared for mans occupancy after his probationary state was terminated by his transgression of Divine law. (3) God blessed the first human pair, the Man and the Woman (Gen. 1:28). It should be noted that throughout the Scriptures Gods blessing is never a mere wish on His part, but always contains the means of self-fulfillment, if only properly applied by man. God never proposes to do for man what man can do for himself. (4) God put the Man in the Garden: obviously another anthropomorphism: that is, God did not pick him up bodily and put him down in the Garden; rather, He exerted some kind of influence on the inward man, on the mans spirit; the Man went where he was ordained to go, in consequence of a suggestion to his subconsciousness, some secret impulsion, or even an openly stated command of the Creator (cf. Act. 8:26; Act. 10:19; Act. 13:4; Act. 16:6-7).

(5) Two Divine injunctions directed the course of the Mans life in the Garden: In the first place, he was to dress and to keep it (Gen. 2:15); in the second place, he was to refrain from eating the fruit of a particular tree, known as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (6) The first of these commands signified that the Man was to till the soil of the Garden, to cultivate its vegetation (trees, plants, and flowers), and to protect this vegetation from the depredations of weeds and of wild beasts. Even the plants, flowers and trees of this bower of delight stood in need of human tending, lacking which they would surely have degenerated. (Does not nature, if left to her own resources, tend to degenerate, both in quantity and in quality? Plant tomatoes this year, and cultivate them, and you will have a good crop; but just let the seed drop into the ground and come up in what is called volunteer fashion next year, and you will have an inferior crop.) Nor were animals so domesticated that the Man did not need to protect (fence?) the Garden against their depredations. Do we have here an ominous hint of the greater Adversary who, even then, was going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it (Job. 1:7, 1Pe. 5:8)? (7) Work never was, never will be, a curse to man. Skinner (ICCG, 66): The ideal existence for man is not idle enjoyment, but easy and pleasant work, the highest aspiration of the Eastern peasant being to keep a garden. Note Gen. 3:17even here, in the statement of the penalty, it is not work that is declared to be a curse; rather, it is expressly stated that the curse (the penalty of sin) would proceed from the ground. That is, work in itself was not a part of the penalty; rather, the frustrations pursuant to honest labor, which would characterize mans life outside Eden, on the earth at large, would be the penalty. Corn-feld (AtD, 15): The curse is actually in the niggardliness of the soil or the fruitlessness of mans labor. Hester (HHH, 6768): God provided work for man before the Temptation and the Fall, because it is indispensable to life and is essential to the happiness of man. It is not a curse but a blessing. Without work people could not live and without it man would be miserable and useless. All really happy and useful people have learned the thrill and the satisfaction of achievement by hard work. Francisco (IOT, 23): Labor antedates the Fall; after the Fall, labor becomes toil. (Who would ever want to live the life of a grasshopper floating down stream? It is as true today as it ever was that an idle brain is the devils workshop. It is inconceivable that Heaven should be a life void of all activity: life is activity. Mans drive for security is fraught with frustrations; security never was, never will be, fully realized in this life. It may well be that God could have created a being incapable of vice and crime and sinbut surely such a creature would not be a man.)

(8) Gardens and God are always close to each other. The very idea of a gardena properly tended garden-suggests beauty: and does not our God love beauty? (Even the great Southwest desert is a thing of beauty and a joy forever to anyone who can appreciate its wondrously varied and unique plant and animal life.) A garden also suggests life and growth, for where there is life, there must be growth: the living thing that does not grow will stagnate and die. A garden also suggests the possibility of weeds, and hence the necessity of being tended by man, lest the weeds take over and smother the flowers and the fruits. In like manner, the Spiritual Life must be properly tended: the fruit of the Spirit must be protected against the encroachment of weeds, the wheat from the destructive activity of the tares (Mat. 13:24-30, Gal. 5:16-25). What an idyllic setting we find portrayed in this story of the Garden of Delight, Paradise! What more vivid symbolism of mans unbroken fellowship with God could the Holy Spirit have given us! What more meaningful picture could He have vouchsafed us to accentuate the terrible import of the account which followsthe account of the awful tragedy of mans deliberate wrecking of that fellowship!

3. The Tree of Life. (1) Is this term to be taken literally? That is, was this an actually existing tree? Certainly it could have been a real tree, bearing real fruit, the properties of which were specifically designed to renew physical youth and vigor. There is nothing incredible in such an interpretation. If God provides food to renew mans physical strength, as we know that He does (hence, Mat. 6:11), why should it be thought incredible that He should have prepared a special kind of food to renew and preserve mans physical youth? According to this view, the means provided for this purpose was the fruit of the Tree of Life; and Adam, though mortal by creation, had this means of counteracting his mortality. Thus had he maintained his innocence, and by unswerving obedience to Gods Will had grown into holiness, we may suppose that his body could have been transfigured and translated to Heaven without the intervention of physical death (its dissolution, or resolution into its physical elements). Moreover, when he did transgress the law of God, it became imperative that he should be expelled from the Garden, and that the way of the tree of life should be guarded, in order that in his state of rebelliousness, he might not gain access to its fruit and so renew his youth; that is to say, in order that the inherent laws of mortality might work out their course in his physical constitution (cf. Gen. 3:22-24; Gen. 5:5). It seems that in view of the possibility (or shall we say, likelihood?) of his making the fateful choice of transgression above obedience (1Jn. 3:4), Divine Wisdom had made ready the whole earth for his occupancy and lord tenancy, as the stage on which His Plan of Redemption, embodying His Eternal Purpose, should be executed (Isa. 46:8-11, 1Co. 15:20-28, Eph. 3:8-13, Joh. 17:1-6; Eph. 1:4, Heb. 4:3, 1Pe. 1:19-20, Rev. 13:8; Rev. 17:8). As Monser has written (TMB, 3941): As the Scheme of Redemption began gradually to unfold, then began this wondrous series of types . . . which opens with the Tree of Life. Like the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil it takes its name from the service it renders, but unlike that Tree, the very nature and quality of its fruit are productive of the immortal life. To Adam and Eve in their virgin innocence the use of its fruit would be natural since they were thus, conditionally, mortal beings, becoming mortal because of sin. Yet, as we reckon things, the design of the fruit seems peculiar. Other trees, and their fruits, might contribute to mans daily support. This was to preserve an undecaying vigor to one so supported. The inheritance of life was in it. It did not lose its valuable property when man sinned, but man lost his right to partake of it, being turned aside by the flaming sword of the cherubim, while the Tree was put under constant guard. To doubt or deny this is not only to challenge Holy Writ, but also to deny angel-life, and the frequent record of angelic presence found throughout the Scriptures.

(2) Certainly, however, this Tree of Life has symbolic significance for all mankind: obviously it was designed to be a symbol of unhindered access to God, (See discussion of symbols in Part Two.) Symbols are of such a nature as to be addressed to mans physical senses or to his mental images originally derived by way of sense-perception. Symbols are, as a rule, existent in some way in the physical realm; and Biblical symbols are for the purpose of presenting more clearly to the understanding the spiritual and abstract qualities of things, by means of outward signs and pictures addressed to the senses (Milligan, SR, 72). Hence, it was to be expected, because of the inadequacy of human language for the communication of Divine Thought, that the Remedial System should be one gorgeous array of picture-lessons (Monser). But it is in a metaphorical sense especially that this Tree of Life, whether it actually existed or not, has the most profound significance for man. The metaphor is a special kind of symbolan abridged form of comparison compressed into a single word or phrase. Hence we may rightly hold that the Tree of Life, the symbol of unbroken fellowship with God, is also the symbolin the form of a metaphorof the mediatorship of the Logos (1Ti. 2:5, Joh. 1:14, Heb. 12:24, Gen. 28:12, Joh. 1:51). Thus the Tree of Life takes its place along with other Scripture metaphors of the various aspects of the redemptive work of Christ, such metaphors as the Bread of Life (Joh. 6:32-35), the Water of Life (Joh. 4:13-14; Joh. 7:37-38; Rev. 7:17), the True Vine (Joh. 15:1-6), the Door to the Sheepfold (Joh. 10:7-16), the Smitten Rock (Exo. 17:6, Isa. 53:4-6, 1Co. 10:3), etc. This metaphorical import is clearly indicated in the references to the Tree of Life which appear again in the Book of Revelation (Rev. 2:7; Rev. 22:2; Rev. 22:19). In these passages it becomes evident that the Tree of Life is Christ Himself, the Great Physician, whose redemptive ministry is literally and specifically for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22:2; cf. Joh. 1:29, Isa. 54:4-5). After all, this is the meaning of the Tree of Life which has profound significance for Gods elect. As is the case invariably, the references in the Old Testament to this subjectas indeed to any subject of notecan be fully understood only in the light of the New Testament Scriptures relating to the same subject.

(3) Finally, it should be noted here that a tree of life appears frequently in the literature of the ancients. In the non-Biblical accounts, however, it was pictured as existing in some place inaccessible to man. But the Tree of Life in Genesis is said to have been in the midst of the Garden (Gen. 2:9) into which Yahweh Elohim put the Man. This undoubtedly indicates that God intended for the Man to enjoy the blessing symbolized by this Tree, the blessing of unhindered fellowship with Himself, the kind of fellowship which the Man broke by his act of disobedience, the act which brought sin to the earth, and, as a consequence, separation from God. This separation, in turn, brought into operation true religion, the religion that is essentially redemption and reconciliation, the binding anew of man to God (from religo, religare, to bind back or again: cf. 2Co. 5:18-21).

(4) A most important principle must be stated in this connection (one to which we shall be harking back frequently as we continue our study of Genesis) as follows: Concepts that are widespread, woven into the traditions of peoples everywhere, no matter how degenerate they may have become as a result of popular diffusion, point back unmistakably to genuine originals. No counterfeit ever existed that did not presuppose a genuine. Hence, the purity of the accounts in Genesis of such events as the Tree of Life, mans Golden Age of innocence, his Temptation and Fall, the role of Satan in these events, the institution of Sacrifice, Noahs Flood, etc., we have every right to contend that we have the true original or ancestral forms, in a word, the facts which became corrupted in theory and practice by popular diffusion from their original locusthe cradle of civilization, From the very beginning, human tradition and speculation have brought about the corruption of Divinely revealed truth.

Note Pfeiffers summary here (BG, 20): Among the many trees which grew in the garden, Gen. 2:9 specifies two as of particular significance: the tree of life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life was designed to confirm man in the possession of physical life, and to render death an impossibility. Because of mans sin, it never came to be used. Man was expelled from the garden, after his sin, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever (Gen. 3:22-23).

And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Gen. 2:16-17).

4. The Beginnings of Liberty and Law. Note that God first went to great pains to impress upon the Man the scope of the liberty which he was to enjoy: he would be free (note, freely eat) to partake of the fruit of every tree of the Garden, with just one exception. Of the fruit of one particular tree he was not to partake: this was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This reminds us forcefully of the fact that genuine human liberty is enjoyed only within the circumference of obedience to the law; that outside that circumference liberty becomes prostituted into license. (Cf. Mat. 7:24-27; Joh. 14:15; Joh. 15:10; Joh. 15:14; 1Co. 6:19-20; Gal. 5:1; Heb. 5:9; Jas. 1:25; Jas. 2:8; 1Jn. 3:4). Multitudes sell themselves to the Devil either in pursuit of unrestrained personal liberty, or in the pursuit of illicit knowledge. Man, from the beginning of his existence, has ever engaged in the futile business of trying to play God.

5. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. (1) The knowledge of good and evil may signify (a) the power of moral judgment; hence the partaking of it marked the beginning of mans actual experience of sin and the consequent birth of conscience; or (b) the maturity that man acquires through personal experience of sin and its consequences (cf. for the meaning of maturity in Scripture, Num. 1:3; Num. 1:20; Num. 1:22; Num. 14:29-30; Num. 26:2; Num. 32:11; 1Ch. 27:23; Lev. 27:3, etc.); or (c) the awakening of the physical sex drive in man resulting in physical coition (the view that has always been rather widespreadbut if true, Does this mean that the Male and the Female prior to their partaking of this forbidden fruit had the power to reproduce their kind exclusively by thought?); or (d) perhaps all these views taken together, or (e) the entire gamut of possible knowledge (omniscience).

(2) The argument is often heard that this Tree was so named because until man ate of its fruit he could have no adequate understanding of sin and its consequences. It is said that incapacity to know good and evil may be a characteristic of unconscious childhood and unreflecting youth, or of debilitated age, but it is not conceivable of one who was created in Gods image, invested with moral dominion, and himself constituted the subject of moral government. The reply usually given to this argument is that Adam and Eve, prior to their first transgression of the Divine law (1Jn. 3:4) were not totally incapable of knowing good and evil, but, rather, were without the experience of sin in their lives. Experience, it is said, is a dear school, but, nevertheless, it is the only one in which we can learn anything perfectly (cf. Joh. 7:17, Rom. 12:2). Strong (ST, 583): Adam should have learned to know evil as God knows itas a thing possible, hateful, and forever rejected. He actually learned to know evil as Satan knows itby making it actual and a matter of bitter experience. The fact is that the choice required of the Man (and the Woman) was the choice between self and God, between ones own way of doing things and Gods way of doing things. It is the choice which every human being makes, one which he cannot avoid, as he goes through this life, The first human pair chose self, and sin entered the world; selfishness is at the root of every sin that man commits; the essential principle of sin is selfishness. Hence, God has sought to achieve through redemption and immortalization what might have been brought about by spiritual growth and transfiguration. Knowledge of good and evil is the power to distinguish between good and evil, not in act only, but in consequence as well. This faculty is necessary in order that man my reach moral maturity.

(3) Did this particular Tree, then, have a real existence; that is, did it exist in the manner that a tree is known to exist in the forest? Those who so contend base their conviction largely on the contention that the condition of the heart is invariably made known by the outward act. By their fruits ye shall know them (Mat. 7:15-20). On the eating or not eating of the fruit of this Tree were suspended the issues of life and death. Hence the relationship between this first human pair and their Creator was not changed until the former manifested their selfish choice in the overt act of disobedience to God. Not that there was harm in the particular thing which was eaten; rather, the harm came about in the partaking of anything which had been expressly forbidden by the Divine Will. A father may command his son to bring him a book and to put it on the piano, when to lay it upon the library table would be just as satisfactory (it would seem)that is, if the father had not specifically ordered that it be placed on the piano. The fathers command would be sufficient for an obedient childhe would put the book in the place where his father has told him to put it. Thus, the fathers command would become a proof of the childs love and obedience. So it was with the Fathers command issued to Adam and Eve: their defiance of it was evidence of their lack of faith, trust and love; and this defiance was consummated in the overt act which was itself proof of their rebellious hearts. Moreover, as it was in the case of the mans Fall, so it is in respect to his Restoration: Conversion is not complete until man demonstrates his faith and repentance and his voluntary choice of Christ as his personal Redeemer, Priest and King, in the external act of Christian baptism. Faith changes the heart, repentance the life, and baptism the relationship (Gal. 3:27). Baptism is an overt witnessing to the facts of the Gospel, the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, and is also the overt act whereby the penitent believer commits himself to Christ in such a way that the whole world can see this commitment, testify to it, and be influenced by. the example of it.

(4) Speculation as to what kind of fruit this Tree produced naturally would be foolish and unprofitable, granting, of course, that the Tree and its fruit were existent as-objects in the external world. There would be no reason to suppose that, in any case, any injurious properties were inherent in it. The death that was to follow on the transgression was to spring from the eating, and not from the fruit; from the sinful act, and not from the creature, which in itself was good (Whitelaw). Why, sneeringly asks the skeptic, suspend the destiny of the world on so trivial a circumstance as the eating of an apple? Milligan (SR, 3740) states the case substantially as follows: Such a question arises from total ignorance of the subject. A few observations will suffice: (1) It was exceedingly important, in the very beginning, that the first creatures of the human race know themselves, and know whether or not their hearts were strictly loyal to God. (2) No better proof of their loyalty or disloyalty could have been made than that which, according to Moses, God appointed for this purpose. (3) It was of such simplicity that they easily understood it; hence violation of this first precept had to arise from a spirit of pure disloyalty, It was a positive law, and positive law requires a thing to be done simply and solely because the Divine Lawgiver demands it. Those very acts which irreverent men have styled mere outward acts, mere external performances, have been means used by the Lord to prove the faithor lack of iton the part of His creatures. (4) Hence, it follows that this positive precept, originally given to man as a test of his loyalty, was in no sense the cause of his disloyalty; it was simply the occasion and proof of it. The spirit of disloyalty cherished in the heart will as certainly lead to a mans condemnation and final ruin as will the open and overt transgressions of any law, whether it be moral or positive. (The student should note here that there is no mention of an apple in the Genesis account: here, mention is made only of the fruit of this particular Tree (Gen. 3:6), without any specification of the particular kind of fruit. The notion of an apple was brought into the story by John Milton, in Paradise Lost. Was this idea of an apple borrowed from the Greek tradition of the Golden Apples which Ge (Earth) gave to Hera at her marriage with Zeus? According to the legend, these apples were guarded by the Hesperides in their specially prepared gardens near the river Oceanus in the extreme West, perhaps near the Atlas Mountains of North Africa between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert?). Cf. Pfeiffer (BG, 20): Man was blessed by God in the beautiful Garden of Eden, but man had one responsibility: obedience to the express command of God. God chose a tree as the means whereby Adam could be tested, We need not assume any magic quality in the tree. It was the act of disobedience which would mar mans fellowship with God. Kraft (GBBD, 47): Just one simple prohibition in an environment otherwise apparently completely safe and freebut therein was the fatal opportunity of choice: to obey or not to obey.

6. The Knowledge of Good and Evil. (1) The present writer must admit his agreement with Biblical students who hold that the knowledge of good and evil, in the text before us, is a phrase which signifies complete knowledge (total wisdomas someone has put it); in a word, omniscience. Strictly speaking, good and evil are terms that have reference to more than moral acts, to a great deal more than knowledge of the physical sex life; as a matter of fact, they have reference to the constructiveness or destructiveness of all human motivation and action. Moral or ethical knowledge embraces the fundamental facets of every other branch of human knowledge, and cannot be isolated from human activity in general. (Cf. 2Sa. 14:17, Isa. 7:15-16.) Certainly mature knowledge includes knowledge of the ways and means of reproducing the human species. But this is only a partand indeed a rather small partof the totality of human knowledge. It seems to me that the fundamental truth embodied in this prohibition (Gen. 2:17) was that man was never to leave God out of his life, nor in overweening pride and ambition aspire to illicit knowledge, the kind of knowledge and wisdom (wisdom is the right use of knowledge) which God alone possesses and which God alone knows how to use for the benefit of all His creatures. Dr. J. B. Conant, in his little book entitled, Modern Science and Modern Man, advances the thesis that the prime fallacy of which man has been guilty for the last one hundred years or more is that of thinking himself capable of attaining unlimited knowledge. This, says Dr. Conant, is to claim omniscience, and omniscience man does not have; to be sure, his capacity for knowledge is indefinite, but it is not infinite. This, Conant points out, is the great moral and spiritual truth which is taught us in the Book of Job (cf. Job. 11:7, also chs. 3841). Elliott (MG, 4546): Basically, the sin involved is pride, trying to be as God. Man too often feigns or desires omniscience, thus putting himself at the center of the stage rather than God. God wanted man to have life (the tree of life), but it was to be obtained only as God granted the experiences (tree of knowledge) validating life (cf. Joh. 10:10).

(2) Again I raise the question: Was this particular Tree a real tree, bearing real fruit of some kind? Or is the account of this Tree one that is clothed entirely in symbol or metaphor? I do not deny that it could have been an actual tree bearing real fruit: far be it from me to impose limitations on the Wisdom and Power of God: hence I have presented in the excerpts quoted above the views of writers who propose the literal interpretation. The problem involved here is this: Was the outward act, in the case of our first parents, that of eating some kind of real fruit of some kind of real tree, or is the account of the eating of the fruit of the Tree in question symbolic of some other overt act of disobedience to God. I do not question the fact that an overt or outward act of defiance of Gods Will was involved. Let me repeat, however, that this is not the point at issue. That point is the problem of the character of this act: Was it a partaking of literal fruit of some kind, or was this story of mans eating the forbidden fruit designed to describe metaphorically any unspecified human act of human disobedience to God. Such disobedience, of course, whatever form it may take, is sin (1Jn. 3:4). In short, whether a literal tree is indicated in this story or not, a human act of rebellion against God, the Sovereign of the universe, is clearly indicated; and this is the essential import, for all mankind, of the story of this Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and of the tragic role which it played in the moral and spiritual history of the race.

7. The Assured Penalty: in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Shook (GB, 62): The clause of the prohibition, Thou shalt surely die, evidently refers to physical death and means no more than thou shalt become dieable. Literally rendered, this clause is, dying, thou shalt die. Adam Clarke paraphrases it: From that moment thou shalt become mortal, and shall continue in a dying state till thou die. (It is a known biological fact in our time that the human being begins to die from the moment he is born.) Thou shalt be mortal (the Greek of Symmachus) Thou shalt be subject to death (The Targum of Jonathan). (But there is no evidence that Adam had ever been in any sense immortal; rather, the context of this whole story indicates that he was created mortal.) The death indicated here is obviously twofold: (a) the resolution of the body into its physical elements, or physical death (Gen. 3:19; Gen. 5:5; Heb. 9:27-28, Rom. 5:12-21; 1Co. 15:22-23), and (b) the separation of the inward man from God, the Source of all life (Act. 17:24-28; Luk. 15:24; Luk. 15:32; Eph. 2:1-3; Col. 2:13). By the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil man forfeited his liberty to eat of the tree of life (Dummelow). C. H. M., (NBG, 3132): In the midst of the fair scene of creation, the Lord God set up a testimony, and this testimony was also a test for the creature. It spoke of death in the midst of life. In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. . . . Adams life was suspended upon his strict obedience. The link which connected him with the Lord Cod was obedience, based on implicit confidence in the One who had set him in his position of dignityconfidence in His truthconfidence in His love . . . I would here suggest to my reader the remarkable contrast between the testimony set up in Eden and that which is set up now. Then, when all around was life, God spoke of death; now, on the contrary, when all around is death, God speaks of life: then, the word was, in the day thou eatest, thou shalt die. Now, the word is, believe and live. (Cf. Joh. 14:6; Joh. 11:25-26; Joh. 17:3, etc.).

And Jehovah God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him. And out of the ground Jehovah God formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them: and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And the man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the heavens, and to every beast of the field; but for man there was not found a help meet for him (Gen. 2:18-20).

8. The Beginning of Language. (1) The Man, from adamah, red (red earth); according to Rotherham (EB, 34), probably akin to adhamah, ground (Gen. 2:7, 1Co. 15:47), hence, Adam. This name indicates here collective humanity according to its origin in the first human pair, or in the one man in general, who was certainly the universal primitive man and the individual Adam in one person (Lange, CDHCG, 192). Note also that God is said to have formed out of the ground every living thing of the field (Gen. 2:19); that Adam is said to have given names to all the tame-beasts, and to the birds of the heavens, and to all the wild beasts of the field (Gen. 2:20), according to the Rotherham translation. (Cf. cattle, for tame-beasts, Gen. 1:24). Cornfeld (AtD, 14): In a profound way the story portrays the character of human existence, its interdependence with God, with the soil, with woman, and with animal life. (Note that the operation of the penalty of sin was to proceed from the ground: Gen. 3:17-19). (2) What the Man Did. It must be kept in mind that we are dealing here with events that occurred on the sixth day of the Creation. There is no reason for assuming that all this happened after God had finished his work which he had made (Gen. 2:1-2). Hence, on this sixth day, in addition to what God did, the Man is said to have named the birds and the beasts as they gathered in his presence, and then, after falling into a deep sleep during which the woman was created, and then brought to him at his awakening, to have recognized and accepted her as his counterpart: and so the institution of marriage was established. (No reference is made in the Genesis Cosmogony to brute females, but we infer, from the Divine ordination (Gen. 1:22) to be fruitful and multiply, that the brute females had been created along with the brute males.)

(3) The Meaning of Good. This is a very ambiguous word as it is bandied about by thoughtless purveyors of cliches. For the real meaning of the word, however, we must go to the Bible. We read that following His work of Creation, God looked out upon it and pronounced it all very good (Gen. 1:31). That is to say, all created things were doing what the Creator had designed them to do in relation to the totality of being. In order that anything be good it must be good for something: that is, good for what by its very nature it is constituted to do. Hence, when, on the sixth day, God looked out upon what had been done, he discovered there was a great lackessential needs to be provided forin relation to the Man, the crown of His whole Creation. Hence the pronouncement, It is not good that the man should be alone. Now that which is a good for any created being must be something that perfects its nature, something that fulfils its potentialities as a creature. So it was with the Man. Obviously, it was not good for the Man to be alone, because, lacking a proper counterpart, a creature answering to his needs, his own potentialities could never have been actualized in himself nor handed down to his posterity: in a word, the whole human race would have perished with him, would have died a-borning. There were four reasons especially why the creation of the Woman was necessary: (a) the Man needed the Woman in order to reproduce their kind; (b) the Man, himself a social being by nature, needed the society of his own kind (Robinson Crusoe, it will be recalled, found no happiness in the association of brutes only); (c) the Woman was needed that she might become a type of the Bride of the Redeemer; and (d) the Woman was indispensable, for the profound reason that the entire Plan of Redemption was wrapped up, so to speak, in the Seed of a Woman (Gen. 3:15). (Skinner (ICCG, 47): Of the revolting idea that man lived for a time in sexual intercourse with the beasts, there is not a trace.) Hence, Yahweh Elohim caused the beasts and the birds to assemble in the Mans presence, perhaps to pass in a grand review before him, and the latter, obviously exercising the gift of speech, gave names to them. This act was a striking attestation of the Mans intelligence: it seems that each name selected by him met with Divine approval. Moreover, this grand review must have stirred within him a profound sense of disappointment, even frustration, in the fact that no creature appeared before him who was adapted to his own particular needs. The latent social instinct in his bosom, the craving for companionship of his own kind, was aroused. To satisfy these needs, God created the Woman and brought her unto the Man. (Note that the Mans naming of the animal species was prima facie evidence of his ability and his right to hold dominion over them.)

(4) The Beginning of Language. It is certainly of far-reaching import that the means of communication among personsthat is, meaningful spoken languageshould have been originated in preparation for the beginning of human society in the first conjugal union. It seems that the animal species were brought before the man to see what he would call them: to make him aware of the fact that he could recognize in none of them the counterpart which he himself needed. His spontaneous ejaculations proved sufficient for the origin of human speech, but failed to satisfy his aroused sense of need of companionship of his own kind. All this boils down to the obvious conclusion, namely, that the Man gave expression to these names as a result of Divine inspiration. This brings us to the consideration of one of the most significant facts of human history, namely, that as yet, even down to our man time, no satisfactory purely naturalistic theory of the origin of language has ever been formulated by man. The origin of languageof propositional, syntactical speechis still enshrouded in mystery.

In the course of the history of human science, twoand only two of any consequencenaturalistic theories of the origin of language have been advanced: these are designated the interjectional and the onomatopoetic (or onomatopoeic) theories. According to the interjectional theory, speech-sound-units were originally of subjective origin that is, they derived from emotive utterances. But surely our experience of language proves beyond any possibility of doubt that words which are expressive of emotion (interjections) are negligible in relation to any linguistic system as a whole; in a word, they are the least important and least used of all speech elements. Sapir (Lang., 45): . . . under the stress of emotion we do involuntarily give utterance to sounds that the hearer interprets as indicative of the emotion itself. But there is all the difference in the world between such involuntary expression of feeling and the normal type of communication of ideas that is speech. The former kind of utterance is indeed instinctive, but it is non-symbolic . . . Moreover, such instinctive cries hardly constitute communication in any strict sense . . . The mistake must not be made of identifying our conventional interjections (our oh! and ah! and sh!) with the instinctive cries themselves. These interjections are merely conventional fixations of the natural sounds. They differ widely in various languages in accordance with the specific phonetic genius of each of these . . . There is no tangible evidence, historical or otherwise, tending to show that the mass of speech elements and speech processes has evolved out of the interjections. According to the onomatopoetic theory, human language had an objective source; that is, it had its origin in the imitation of sounds in nature. This theory has little to recommend it, for two reasons especially: in the first place, there is no possible way of ascertaining what the first form of human speech was; hence no possible way of comparing the first phonemes (units of speech-sound) with the sounds in nature from which they are supposed to have been derived; and in the second place, sound-imitative phonemes of words that make up fully developed languages which are propositional and relational in their thought content, are obviously so rare as to be of little consequence. Again Sapir (Lang., 7): What applies to the interjections applies with even greater force to the sound-imitative words. Such words as whippoorwill, to mew, to caw are in no sense natural sounds that man has instinctively or automatically reproduced, They are just as truly creations of the human mind, flights of human fancy, as anything else in language. They do not directly grow out of nature, they are suggested by it and play with it. Hence the onomatopoetic theory of the origin of speech, the theory that would explain all speech as a gradual evolution from sounds of an imitative character, really brings us no nearer to the instinctive level than is language as we know it today. Again (p. 8): However much we may be disposed on general principles to assign a fundamental importance in the languages of primitive peoples to the imitation of natural sounds, the actual fact of the matter is that these languages show no particular preference for imitative words. I repeat, therefore, that there is no naturalistic theory of the origin of human language that will stand the test of critical scrutiny. The lesson which Gen. 2:19-20 conveys is that language is of Divine origin, by communication from the Spirit of God to the God-breathed human spirit.

And Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof: and the rib, which Jehovah God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man, And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed (Gen. 2:21-25).

9. The Beginning of Human Society. (1) Society is defined as a permanent moral union of two or more persons, for the attainment of common ends (goods) through their co-operative activity. Man is by nature a social being: he lives with others, works with others, is benefited by others, and himself benefits others, universally and inevitably, These are facts of history and of ordinary observation and experience. Man is by nature a political animal, wrote Aristotle; that is, a social being, a dweller in a polis (city-state). Temporal society is of two kinds, namely, domestic society (from domus, household) which consists of the conjugal and the parental-filial relationships, and civil societythat of the state, of persons living under the direction of a ruling regime. The Church, of course, does not belong in the category of temporal societiesit is, rather, a supernatural spiritual society.

(2) Adams deep sleep. As a result of the grand review of the animal species, the facts became evident that no fresh creation from the ground could be a fit companion for Adam: that this companion (counterpart) must be taken from his own body. Hence, God is said to have caused a deep sleep to fall upon him. What was the character of this deep sleep? Skinner suggests (ICCG, 68): a hypnotic trance induced by supernatural agency, the purpose being to produce anesthesia, with perhaps the additional idea that the divine working cannot take place under human supervision. While Adam knows no sin, God will take care he shall feel no pain (M. Henry). (Note the typical import of this account: see infra, Adam as a Type of Christ).

(3) The Creation of the Woman. (a) While Adam was in this deep sleep, God, we are told, removed one of his ribsthis rib He is said (literally) to have builded into the Woman. The place in mans body from which this part was taken is most significant: as M. Henry puts it (CWB, 7): Not out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved. (Cf. the term rib with the oft-repeated popular phrase, bosom companion). (b) Were the sexes separated or isolated from a common hermaphroditic ancestor or ancestry? Obviously, this crude notion that the first human being was androgynous (from andros, man, or husband, and gynaikos, woman or wife) and later became separated into male and female, has not one iota of support in the Genesis account. (For a facetious presentation of the tale of the androgynous man, see the account proposed by the Greek comedy writer, Aristophanes, in Platos Symposium).

(c) Do we not have here another example of the fundamental truth that in Gods Cosmic Plan, in both the physical and spiritual phases of it, life springs out of real or apparent death? In this instance, out of the deep sleep of the Man emerged the life of the creature answering to his needs. (Cf. Mat. 10:39; Mat. 16:25; Mar. 8:35; Luk. 9:24; Joh. 3:16; 1Co. 15:35-49). (d) Gen. 2:21, rib, literally something bent or inclined. Those who scoff at this old rib storyand their name is Legionmiss the point of the whole account, both its naturalistic import (the Womans nearness to, and oneness with, the Man in marriage), and its positivistic significance (i.e., its typical reference, for which see infra, Eve as a Type of the Church). Skinner (ICCG, 68): the story doubtless suggests a deeper significance, that is, the moral and social relation of the sexes to each other, the dependence of woman upon man, her close relationship to him, and the foundation existing in nature for . . . the feelings with which each should naturally regard the other. (The quote here is from Driver). (e) Why does not the male man lack one rib today? Because it was only Adams individual skeleton that was affected by the removal of one of his ribs. Moreover, the Lamarckian theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics is rejected by the science of our day (except perhaps, in Russia, where the Russian biologist, Lysenko, has been lauded for re-affirming it). It must be understood, too, that this particular actthe removal of a rib from Adams framewas not of the character of a naturally acquired modification; Scripture makes it clear that it was a special Divine act performed only once, and that at the fountainhead of the race. (f) I suppose that no story in the Old Testament has been viciously attacked and ridiculed as extensively as this old rib story. In this instance especially, the thought expressed in one verse of a great religious poem is surely confirmed. That line is: Blind unbelief is bound to err. To be sure, unbelief is bound to err, because it is blind, because it is the product of a closed mind.

(g) It should be noted that, having created the Woman, God Himself brought her unto the man. This means that our Heavenly Father performed the first marriage Himself. It means infinitely more: it means that He would have all men to know that marriage is a Divinely ordained institution. It means, too, that marriage is the oldest institution known to humankind: it was established prior to worship, sacrifice, religion, and all human government. Its antiquity and universality are paralleled only by human language.
(h) That domestic society in its various aspects is an ordination of the laws of nature and of natures God is evident from the following facts: from the definition of the word natural as that for which there is in mans make-up a genuine ability or capacity, a genuine inclination, and a genuine need; from the constitution of human nature itself (no man can realize his potentialities living in isolation from his kind); from the natural division of the human race into the two sexes, male and female, and from the union of the two as natures modus operandi for procreating and preserving the race; from the natural physiological and psychological powers of both male and female to enter into the conjugal union; from the natural inclination of both sexes to enter into this union; from the wondrous complementary character of the two sexes per se; from the genuine need of both male and female, as physiologically constituted, for the conjugal relation (as the natural and moral outlet for the sex drive); and especially for the genuine need of human children for the protection, care and love of parents. There is no kind of offspring that is as helpless, and as helpless for as long a time, as the human infant. Animal offspring mature in a few weeks or months at the most; the human child needs from eighteen to twenty-one years to mature physically, and many more years to mature mentally and spiritually. Maturation, in the case of the person and personality, is a lifelong process: it is never complete, in all its aspects, in the life on earth. Thus it is seen to be evident beyond all possibility of doubt that the conjugal union must be the origin and basis of all human society, and the home the origin and basis of all political and social order.

(i) Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, said Adam, on receiving the Woman unto himself. Whitelaw (PCG, 52): The language is expressive at once of womans derivation from man (1Co. 11:8; 1Co. 11:12) and likeness to man. The first of these implies her subordination or subjection to man, or mans headship over woman (1Co. 11:3), which Adam immediately proceeds to assert by assigning to her a name; the second is embodied in the name which she receives. (I see no reason to think that this dominion or headship needed to be exercised prior to the entrance of sin, and the disorder caused by sin, into our world. Cf. Gen. 3:16). It seems to me that the most fundamental fact expressed here in Adams statement, is that of the oneness of the male and female in marriage. Note the now here (This is now, etc.): that is, in our state of matrimony: obviously, the words could not apply to the male and female generally, that is, outside of marriage. Hence, the breaking of this oneness, by such acts as fornication, adultery, homosexuality, or any of the numerous forms of sex perversion (unnatural uses of the sex power and privilege) is sin. Pfeiffer (BG, 21): Life is realized in its fullest dimensions when man and woman dwell together in that unity which God purposed and established.

(j) She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Rotherham (EB, 35): Heb., ishshah, female-man, from ish, man or husband. Her generic name is Woman; her personal name, bestowed on her later, like the first, by Adam, was Eve (Gen. 3:20). 10. The Sanctity of Marriage. (1) Gen. 2:24Were these words spoken by Adam, or by the inspired author of the Torah? By the first husband, or by the historian? (Cf. the words of Jesus, Mat. 19:1-9, Mar. 10:2-12). In either case, they must be understood as the Divine declaration of the law of marriage; as affirming, once for all, the Divine ordination of the conjugal union and the sanctity of its function, especially in the procreation and education of the race. (2) The basis of marriage is, according to this Scripture (Gen. 2:24; cf. Mat. 19:5-6, Mar. 10:7-8 1Co. 6:16, Eph. 5:31) the conjugal union actualized by the first pair at their creation; its nature, a forsaking (by the woman as well as the man) of parents, especially in the matter of habitation, and, relatively, in respect of affection, and the mans cleaving unto his wife, in the joining together of the two in both body and soul; its result, their becoming into one flesh. This language points to a unity of persons and not simply to a conjunction of bodies, or a community of interests, or even a reciprocity of affections. Malachi (Gen. 2:15) and Christ (Mat. 19:5) explain this verse as teaching the indissoluble character of marriage and condemning the practice of polygamy (White-law, PCG, 52). (3) Having looked over all the animal pairs and found no fulfilment for his potentialities nor satisfaction for his need, Adam did find all this in the Woman. This was part of Gods blessing in Creation. The perpetuation of this blessing was to be assured through monogamy (Gen. 2:24). It seems that polygamy was permitted at different times in the Old Testament Dispensations (Act. 17:30). But the most fruitful statethe right state-is for each man to cleave unto his wife and unto her only. Jesus so states the case in Mat. 19:4-6 and in Mar. 10:6-9). (4) It should be noted that New Testament teaching, in completing these accounts of the institution of the conjugal union (Gen. 1:27; Gen. 2:23-24) does not put any emphasis on the strength of sex; rather, it places the emphasis on the sanctity and inviolability of marriage (cf. again Mat. 19:4-6, also 1Co. 6:16), as the symbol of the mystery of Christs relationship with His Church (Eph. 5:28-33). (However, it should be noted here that the teaching of Jesus does allow divorce and remarriage (the phrase, except for fornication, applies with equal force to what follows it, shall marry another, as to what precedes it, whosoever shall put away his wife): cf. Mat. 5:31-32; Mat. 19:3-9). We also learn, from Paul in 1Co. 7:10-16, that in cases of desertion in which the deserting party is an unbeliever, the marriage covenant may be regarded as permanently dissolved. I know of no other Scriptural ground to justify remarriage after divorce.) (5) Some will say that the existence of sex in human life was a natural thing and a blessing. Mankind, we are told, was created male and female (Gen. 1:27; Gen. 5:2), and the Divine blessing was bestowed upon them with the command (Gen. 1:29) to be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth (that is, populate it). Someone has said that this reads almost like a wedding benediction. All this is true, no doubt. It is true that sex in human life was, and is, a natural thing, that is, if rightly used; the sin comes in the misuse and abuse of it. It is a power, however, which has been perverted and degraded by man into some of the most iniquitous of human acts. We are living in an age when unholy emphasis on the so-called sex drive (libido) is universal and threatens to undermine the very foundations of American home life. Sex is included with hunger and thirst as the basic organic drives; to be sure, we know that a man cannot live very long without food and drink; but who ever heard of a man dying of sex frustration? Freudianism, at the hands of its over-zealous disciples, has become a kind of sophisticated pornography that is spread abroad in the college and university classroom under the specious cover of academic freedom. Dr. Will Durant has said that the inhibition (discipline) of sex is the first principle of civilization. This is true: it is the first step out of the jungle and the barnyard. History proves that a nations morale is dependent on its morality; and that its morality is determined largely by its sex morality, that is, upon its home life which is rooted by nature in the sex life of parents.

(6) A prominent contributor to a well-known periodical writes of the mythology that has grown up around the subject of sex, as follows: the myth that sex is natural and therefore automatically self-adjusting and self-fulfilling (all the techniques in the world cannot fill the emptiness which grows between two people who no longer have anything important to say to each other, therefore no ground exists for blaming the estrangement on some lack in the physical relationship in marriage); the myth that there is a right man for a right woman; the myth that sex can be treated casually (I-can-take-it-and-leave-it-when-I-am-ready point of view); the myth that sex is something I have to have or I will be sick (the argument often used by the male to win the acquiescence of the female: many a young woman has been lured into illegitimacy by the specious plea of love or need, when she has done nothing but contribute to the vanity of the male animal by adding to his conquests), etc. This writer goes on to say (having misplaced the original of this excerpt, I cannot give proper credit) that the sexual crisis in our time is the sign of that chaos which afflicts men and women whose capacity to love has been lost or taken from them. Parental instruction concerning the pitfalls which young people face in our present-day complex and lawless society must be given them in early childhood. No safeguards exist any longer but the moral standards set by our home life and training.
(7) The primary ends of marriage are procreative and unitive. By procreative we mean, of course, that marriage is essentially for the procreation and training of offspring and the consequent reproduction and preservation of the human species. Generation without proper training would, in most cases, contribute to the increasing momentum of lawlessness. Some of the silliest cults of our time are the cults of so-called self-expression. The natural order demands that children not just be born and then be tossed out to grow up willy-nilly, like Topsy. Lack of discipline in infancy and childhood is one of the main sources of juvenile delinquency. We train our dogs and our horses: why, then, do we allow our children to grow up without any discipline whatever? Someone has rightly said that it is far better for a child to learn respect for proper authority in the high-chair than to grow up and have to learn it, when it is too late, in the electric chair. But marriage is also unitive in character. Mutual love and helpfulness contribute continuously to the personality development of the married couple. The man has a home; the wife has security; both have affection (that mutual love which is the union of spirits as well as of bodies); the result is the most tender, intimate, and sacred covenant relationship, with the sole exception of the covenant of grace, into which human hearts can enter. The physical union is an important factor in true marriage, of course: it is characteristically unitive in its enhancement of the intimacy of the conjugal relation. But it is not the most important factor. There must be a union of spirits, well as of bodies, to make a marriage permanent. It is true, however, that sexual coition, sanctified by Christian love, is the most poignant bliss that human beings can experience short of the Beatific Vision (Union with God) itself. Nor is there any relationship into which human hearts can enter that is as fruitful, as productive of wellbeing and of genuine happiness as the relationship of a long and happy marriage. Fortunate indeed is the man and woman who can contract and maintain such an ever increasingly fruitful relationship as they grow old together. There is nothing that can compare with it in human experience. Small wonder, then, that the Apostle writes of it as a kind of prototype of the spiritual relationship between Christ and His elect, the Church! (Eph. 5:22-33; Eph. 4:10-16; Rom. 6:3-7; 1Co. 6:19-20; Act. 20:28; 2Co. 11:2, etc.).

(8) Gen. 2:25naked, but not ashamed. Keil (KD, BCOTP, 91): Their bodies were sanctified by the spirit which animated them. Shame entered first with sin, which destroyed the normal relation of the spirit to the body, exciting tendencies and lusts which warred against the soul, and turning the sacred ordinance of God into sensual impulses and the lusts of the flesh. Delitzsch (quoted by Whitelaw, PCG, 52, and by Lange, 210): They were naked, yet they were not so. Their bodies were the clothing of their internal glory, and their internal glory was the clothing of their nakedness. Lange (CDHCG, 210): Nakedness is here the expression of perfect innocence, which, in its ingenuousness, elevates the body into the spiritual personality as ruled by it, whilst, on the contrary, the feeling of shame enters with the consciousness of the opposition between spirit and sensual corporeity, whilst shame itself comes in with the presentiment and the actual feeling of guilt. I find no clear evidence, or even intimation, to support the view that Adam and Eve were united in physical coition prior to the admission of sin into their lives. It seems to me that the meaning of the names given to their sons, Cain and Abel, respectively a spear (was not Cains murderous act truly a spear driven into the heart of Mother Eve?) and a breath or a vapor (what Abels short existence truly was) refute such a view. Surely these names could not have applied to circumstances of the Edenic state of innocence! I must therefore agree with those who hold that a partbut only a partof the knowledge acquired by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was the awareness and the experience of the physical sex union. Not that this union was wrong, or a sin, in itself, but that in consequence of mans rebelliousness it was bound to become a prolific source of the most vicious and depraved of human acts (cf. Rom. 1:26-32).

11. Paradise, O Paradise! From the beginning of his existence, man has always dreamed of such a blissful state of being as that portrayed in the Genesis story of the Garden of Delight. This is reflected in the numerous visions of an ideal earthly state as represented by the utopias (from the Greek negative prefix, ou, no, and noun, topos, place; hence, no place) which have appeared in practically every period of human literature. The completely secularistic and hedonistic note is struck by our old friend, Omar, in the Rubaiyat. For Paradise enow writes Omar, give me

A Book of Verses underneath the bough;
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness.

The French artist, Paul Gauguin, describes such an earthly paradise as a life filled brimful with happiness and radiant like the sun, in perfect simplicity, seeking refreshment at the nearest brook as, I imagine, the first man and woman did in paradise.

In all ages, the vision of a spiritual celestial Paradise seems also to have stirred the hope that springs eternal in the human breast. In this category, we have the Sumerian Garden of the gods, the Greek Gardens of the Hesperides, the Homeric Elysian Fields (Islands of the Blessed), the Hindu Uttarakuru, the Norse Asgard, the Teutonic Valhalla, the Aztec Garden of Huitzilopochtl, the Celestial Oasis of the Moslems, the Happy Hunting Grounds of the American Indians, and many others. (See The Quest for Paradise, in medical magazine, MD, June, 1965). (See also the four successive races of men as envisioned by the 7th century B.C. Greek poet, Hesiod, in his Works and Days, namely, the golden race, the silver race, the race of demigods, and the last, the iron race, described as vicious, corrupt, and filling the earth with violence: cf. Gen. 6:5; Gen. 6:11-12). Truly, where there is no vision, where the music and the dream of life is lost, there the people cast off restraint: cf. Pro. 29:18).

Is it not reasonable to hold that the universality of this dream, even in its most degraded (materialistic) forms, presupposes such a state of being, spiritual and eternal, such a fulfilment for those who have prepared themselves in this world to appreciate it, by living the Spiritual Life, the life that is hid with Christ in God (Col. 3:3), awaiting them at some time, somewhere beyond the blue, in the City of God, New Jerusalem, the antitype, of which the type is the Edenic Garden of the book of Genesis. In a word, that we have in the Genesis narrative and its fulfilment in Revelation, the truth respecting the eternal Paradise or Heaven, the future home of the redeemed sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty (Heb. 11:10; Heb. 12:22; Gal. 4:12, 2Co. 6:18; Isa. 65:17-19; Isa. 66:22-23; 2Pe. 3:8-13; Rev. 2:7; Rev. 21:1-7; Rev. 22:1-5). (For interesting reading, in this connection, the following are suggested: The Myth of Er, in the last book of Platos Republic, the concluding chapters of Bunyans great allegory, The Pilgrims Progress, and Book 18 of Augustines classic work, The City of God).

12. Summary of the Circumstances of Mans Original State (cf. Ecc. 7:29): It was a state (1) of personal life, of self-consciousness and self-determination; (2) of untried innocence (holiness differs from innocence in the fact that it is not passivity, but is the product of continuous moral activity in obedience to the Divine Will); (3) of exemption from physical death (as death is in the world, because sin is in the world, and because sin had not yet been committed, the penalty of death had not yet been pronounced upon the race); (4) of special Divine providence; (5) of unhindered access to God; (6) of dominion over all the lower orders; (6) of liberty within the circumference of the moral law and its requirements; (7) of intimate companionship with a helper answering to the mans needs. Generally speaking, it would seem that this Edenic existence was a probationary state. Milligan (SR, 50): The whole earth, was created, and from the beginning arranged with special reference to the wants of man. But to make a world free from all decay, suffering, and deaththat is, such a world as would have been adapted to the constitution, wants, and condition of man had he never fallen, when at the same time God foresaw that he would sin and become mortalto do so would have been very inconsistent with Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Benevolence. Even erring man would not act so unwisely. And hence we find that the world in general was from the beginning constituted and arranged with reference to man as he is, and not man as he was, in Eden. Paradise was a mere temporary abode for him, during the few days of his primeval innocence. On the basis of this view, it is the conviction of the present writer that Gods Plan of Redemption is an integral part of His whole Cosmic Plan of Creation, and that Creation will not be complete until the righteous stand in the Judgment, clothed in glory and honor and immortality, redeemed in spirit and soul and body.

FOR MEDITATION AND SERMONIZING

Adam as a Type of Christ

(Review concerning types and antitypes in Part Two.)

Rom. 5:14, 1Co. 15:45. Note the points of resemblance, as follows:

1. Both came by Divine agency: the First Adam, by Divine inbreathing (Gen. 2:7); the Second Adam, by Divine overshadowing of the womb of the Virgin (Gen. 3:15; Luk. 1:26-37; Mat. 1:18-25; Joh. 1:1-14; Gal. 4:4; 1Ti. 3:16).

2. Both said to be the image of God: the First, the personal image (Gen. 1:26-27; Gen. 5:1; Gen. 9:6; 1Co. 11:7); the Second, the very image (i.e., both personal and moral: Heb. 1:3; Joh. 10:30; Joh. 14:6-11; Col. 2:9; 2Co. 5:21; 1Co. 1:30; 1Pe. 2:22; 1Jn. 3:5; Heb. 4:15; Heb. 7:26-27). The fundamental revelation of the Old Testament is that God created man in His own image (Gen. 1:27); that of the New Testament is that God took upon Himself the likeness of the creature, man (Joh. 1:14, Heb. 2:14-15, Php. 2:5-8).

3. Both were tempted by the Devil: the First, in a Garden where all the environmental factors supported him, and yet he yielded (Gen. 3:1-7); the Second, in a wilderness where the environmental factors all favored the Tempter, but, by reliance on the Word of God, and in the strength of perfect manhood, He resisted the temptation (Mat. 4:1-11, Heb. 4:15). Sin lies not in the temptation, but in the yielding to it (Cf. Mat. 26:36-46).

4. Both were to subdue the earth: the First Adam, in a physical sense (Gen. 1:28Adam, in its generic sense, takes in all mankind, and human science is but the fulfilment of this Divine injunction); the Second Adam, in a spiritual sense (Mat. 28:18; 1Co. 15:20-28; Php. 2:9-11; Col. 1:13-20; Eph. 1:20-23). The Lord Jesus holds spiritual sovereignty over the whole of created being: He is Lord of the cosmos and the Absolute Monarch of the Kingdom of Heaven (Act. 2:36, Rev. 1:17-18).

5. The First Adam was the first-born and head of the physical creation (Gen. 1:26-27). Christ, the Second Adam, is the firstborn from the dead and the Head of the spiritual creation (the Regeneration: Eph. 5:23; Eph. 1:22; Joh. 3:1-8; Tit. 3:5; Mat. 19:28; Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:15; Col. 1:18; Heb. 12:23, etc.).

Here the analogies end. The contrasts, on the other hand, are equally significant: (1) Rom. 5:17-19, 1Co. 15:21-23 : Whatever was lost by the disobedience of the First Adam is now regained by the obedience of the Second (Joh. 1:29): regained, for the innocent and irresponsible, unconditionally (Luk. 18:16; Mat. 18:3-6; Mat. 19:14), but, for the accountable, conditionally, that is, on the terms of admission into the New Covenant (Act. 16:31; Act. 2:38; Mat. 10:32-33; Luk. 13:3; Rom. 10:9-10; Gal. 3:27; Rom. 6:3-11). (Children who grow up to be adults responsible for their acts will experience personality development as a result of the impact of the factors of this terrestrial environment. This is a psychological fact. Does not this prove that babies who die in infancy, before reaching accountable age, will experience personality development through the impact of the factors of the celestial (heavenly) environment into which they will immediately enter? In either case, Christian redemption is the redemption of the whole being, in spirit and soul and body (1Th. 5:23). (2) We belong to Adam by generation (Act. 17:24-28, Heb. 12:9, Mal. 2:10). We belong to Christ by regeneration (Joh. 3:1-8, Tit. 3:5, Mat. 19:28; 2Co. 5:17; Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24, etc.). (3) The First Adam was created a living soul (Gen. 2:7, 1Co. 15:45). The Second Adam, by bringing life and immortality to light through the gospel (2Ti. 1:10) became a life-giving spirit (1Co. 15:45; Joh. 5:21; Joh. 6:57; Joh. 11:25-26; Rom. 8:2; Rom. 8:11.). (4) We are all the posterity of the First Adam by ordinary or natural procreation, and we look to Eve as the mother of all living (Gen. 3:20). But the time came when God had to set aside all flesh: the sad fact is that all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). The whole world is concluded under sin, put under Divine condemnation (Joh. 3:16-18), that all might return to God by one Way: that Way is Christ (Joh. 14:6, 2Co. 5:17-20). Fleshly birth no longer avails anything: Ye must be born again (Joh. 3:3-8). By the new birth we become partakers of the divine nature (2Pe. 1:4), and so belong to Christ (1Co. 5:11; 1Co. 6:20; 1Co. 7:23; Gal. 3:13; 1Pe. 1:18-20; Act. 20:28). (5) Hence, true brotherhood is in Christ and in Him only. (Rom. 8:1, 2Co. 5:17, Gal. 3:27-28). We hear so much today about the universal brotherhood of man, but the prevailing conception expressed in this phrase is that of a social, rather than a spiritual, brotherhood. A study of the Scriptures reveals the fact clearly that God no longer places any particular value on fleshly brotherhood of any kind. Men can no longer come to God on the basis of anything within themselves: they must come through Christ. Hence the utter folly of trying to substitute fraternalism, social service, eugenics, civic reform, or any other human device, for the church of the living God. Spiritual brotherhood in Christ is the noblest relationship known in Heaven or on earth: it is an eternal relationship. While our false prophets of the dawn are vainly trying to substitute civic righteousness, social service, respectability, and the like, for the things that abide, every Gospel preacher needs to be at his post preaching repentance and remission of sins in the name of Christ (Luk. 24:47, Act. 2:38). Good citizenship is not the basis of membership in the Body of Christ: a new birth is, however (Mat. 12:50).

Eve as a Type of the Church

1. Adam was in need of a helper meet for his needs. It was not good that he should be alone: that is, alone he could not actualize his potentialities nor fulfil Gods design in creating him, that of procreating the human race (his kind). Eve was, therefore, provided to meet this need. (Note Gen. 2:18not a helpmeet, but a helper meet for (answering to) the mans need,his counterpart.) In like manner, when our Lord returned to the Father, having accomplished the work the Father had given Him to do (Joh. 17:4-5), it became necessary for a helper to be provided answering to His need: for this purpose the Church was brought into existence (Joh. 1:29, 1Co. 3:9, 2Co. 11:2-3, Eph. 5:22-32, Rom. 7:4, etc.). It was necessary that a sanctuary be provided in this temporal world for the habitation of God in the Spirit (Eph. 2:22): this sanctuary is the Church (Rom. 5:5, Act. 2:38, 1Co. 3:16; 1Co. 6:19; Gal. 3:2; Gal. 5:22-25): no other institution on earth is, or can be, this sanctuary. It was necessary also that provision be made to actualize Christs redemptive work: the Church was established to meet this need. The mission of the Church is twofold, and only twofold, namely, to preserve the truth of God, and to proclaim that truth unto the uttermost parts of the earth (Mat. 16:16-20; Mat. 28:18-20; Act. 1:8). No institution but the Church is divinely commissioned to proclaim the Gospel to all the nations (Mat. 24:14). Hence, the Church is described in Scripture as the pillar and ground of the truth, not only of its preservation, but also of its worldwide proclamation. (1Ti. 3:15; Joh. 8:31-32; Joh. 16:7-15; Joh. 17:17; Rom. 1:16, 1Ti. 3:4; 2Ti. 1:13; 2Ti. 2:2; 2Ti. 3:16-17).

2. As Eve was the bride of Adam, so the Church is the Bride of the Redeemer. The Church is described in the New Testament under such striking metaphors as (1) the Body of Christ, a metaphor suggesting a fellowship of parts, a living organism (Rom. 12:4-5; Eph. 1:22-23; Eph. 2:16; Eph. 4:4; Eph. 4:12; Eph. 4:25; 1Co. 12:12-31). (2) the Temple of God, a metaphor suggesting, stability, solidarity, permanence (Eph. 2:19-22, 2Th. 2:4, 1Co. 3:16, 2Co. 6:16), (3) the Household of God, a metaphor suggesting spiritual familial affinity (Gal. 6:10, Eph. 2:19; Eph. 3:15; Heb. 3:6; 1Pe. 2:5; 1Pe. 4:17), and (4) the Bride of Christ, a metaphor suggesting constancy and purity (Joh. 3:29; Rev. 19:6-9; Rev. 21:2; Rev. 21:9; Rev. 22:17).

3. While Adam was in a deep sleep, God removed the material out of which He made, (literally, which He builded into) the Woman (Gen. 2:22). In like manner, while Jesus slept the deep sleep of death, on the Cross, one of the soldiers thrust a spear into His side, and straightway there came out blood and water (Joh. 19:34), the materials out of which God has constructed the Church. We are cleansed, purged of the guilt of sin, through the efficacy of Christs blood (the Atonement which He provided by giving His life for us). (Cf. Joh. 1:29, Lev. 17:11, Heb. 9:22, 1Jn. 1:7, 1Co. 10:16, Heb. 9:14, Mat. 26:28, 1Co. 11:25, Eph. 1:7, Col. 1:20; 1Pe. 1:18-19; 1Pe. 2:21-24; Rev. 1:4). And the placethe only placeDivinely appointed for the repentant believer to meet the efficacy of this cleansing blood is the grave of water (Christian baptism). (Cf. Mat. 28:18-20, Tit. 3:5, Joh. 3:5, Act. 2:38, Gal. 3:27, Rom. 6:3-7, 1Pe. 3:20-21, etc.).

4. As Eve was a partaker of the corporeal nature of Adam (Gen. 2:23), so the Church is a partaker of the spiritual nature of Christ (2Pe. 1:4, Eph. 2:10).

5. Adam was divinely appointed to rule over his wife (Gen. 3:16). This Divine ordination, it will be noted, followed their fall into sin. Authority is necessary to any form of society, even domestic society (that of the household), because of the selfish and rebellious impulses in the human heart (Rom. 3:23). Hence, when sin entered, and thus introduced disorder into their lives, God saw fit to vest the authority in the man as the head of the household; and human experience testifies that this was a wise provision. This sovereignty must be exercised, however, as a sovereignty of love (Eph. 5:23-24). In like manner, Christ is the sole head over all things to the Church (Eph. 1:22-23, Col. 1:18). Mat. 28:18here all means all-or nothing. Eph. 4:4one Lord, not one in Heaven and another on earth. Act. 2:36both Lord and Christ, that is, Acting Sovereign of the universe and the Absolute Monarch of the Kingdom of Heaven. (Php. 2:9-11, 1Co. 15:24-28). Christ delegated His authority to the Apostles as the executors of His Last Will and Testament (Mat. 17:5; Joh. 16:7-15; Joh. 20:21-23, Luk. 24:44-49, Act. 1:1-8). There is not one iota of Scripture evidence that the Apostles ever delegated their authority to any man or group of men. Rather, apostolic authority is incorporated in the Word, as communicated by the Spirit (1Co. 1:10-15, 1Th. 2:13), that is, in the New Testament Scriptures (Act. 2:42). The Church is a theocracy, with each local congregation functioning under the direction of elders and deacons (Act. 11:30; Act. 14:23; Act. 15:4; Act. 16:4; Act. 20:17-36; 1Ti. 3:1-13, Tit. 1:5-9, Eph. 4:11, etc.). Denominationalism is the product of the substitution of human theology and human authority for the authority of Christ and His Word. The grand theme of all Christian preaching should be the Lordship of Christ. But is it? How often does one hear this message sounded out from the modern pulpit?

6. Adam name his wife (Gen. 3:20): her generic name was Woman; her personal name, Eve. Likewise, Christ named His elect, the Church. Cf. Isa. 65:15; Isa. 56:5; Isa. 62:2; Act. 11:26; Act. 15:15-18; Rev. 22:4. Mat. 16:18my church. Rom. 16:16the churches of Christ. This could be just as correctly translated Christian churches; the adjectival form Christian is just as correct as the genitive of possession, of Christ. Both names mean belonging to Christ (Act. 20:28, 1Co. 6:20, Gal. 3:27-29). In the New Testament, individual Christians are named disciples, believers, saints, brethren, priests, etc. But these are all common names: to elevate any one of them to a proper name is to make it a distinguishing, hence denominational, designation. The same is true of all such human names as those of Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Campbell, etc. (1Co. 1:10-17; 1Co. 3:1-7). The name of Christ is the only name (authority) in which salvation is granted to men (Act. 4:11-12; cf. Php. 2:9-11; Act. 2:38; Act. 26:28; 1Pe. 4:16; Col. 3:17).

7. Adam had only one wife. In like manner, Christ has only one Bride, one Body, one Temple, one Household, etc. Joh. 10:16they (Jew and Gentile) shall become one flock, one shepherd. Mat. 16:18my church, not churches. Eph. 4:4There is one body. For this spiritual Body to have more than one Head, or for this Head to have more than one Body, would be an unexplainable monstrosity. Yet this is the picture presented today by the denominationalism and hierarchism of Christendom, and the price that has been paid for this state of affairs is, as John R. Mott once put it, an unbelieving world. Denominationalism is a fungus growth on the Body of Christ, having its source in human (theological) speculation and presumption. It is anti-Scriptural, and it is an open violation of the Will of Christ as expressed in His sublime intercessory prayer (Joh. 17:20-21). There is no salvation in any denomination per se, simply because all denominationalism is of human authority and hence extraneous to the Body of Christ. Salvation is possible only in Christ, and to be in Christ is to be in His Body (Gal. 3:27, Act. 4:11-12, Rom. 8:1, 2Co. 5:17, Gal. 6:15; Eph. 2:10; Eph. 4:24).

8. As Eve was the mother of all who live upon the earth naturally (physically), so the Church is the mother of all who live spiritually (Gen. 3:20, Act. 17:25-26, Joh. 3:3-5, Gal. 4:26). To the union of Adam and Eve sons and daughters were born in the flesh (Gen. 5:1-5); to the union of Christ and His Church sons and daughters are born into the Heavenly Family (Joh. 3:7, 1Pe. 1:23, Rom. 8:14, Eph. 3:14-15, Heb. 8:8-12).

As the material creation would have been incomplete, even non-existent, without Eve, so the spiritual creation (the regeneration) would be non-existent without the Church. Hence, the Eternal Purpose of God looked forward to the Woman as the counterpart of the Man, and to the Church as the counterpart of Christ, her Head (Eph. 1:4-5, Rom. 8:28-30). Man was first brought into existence, then Woman was viewed in him, and taken out of him, In like manner, Christ was lifted up, then the Church was viewed in Him, and taken out of Him (Joh. 3:14-15; Joh. 12:32). There was no other creature so near to Adam as was his bride, and there is no people so near to Christ as His Bride, the Church; hence the Church is said to be the fulness of him that filleth all in all (Eph. 1:23; Eph. 4:15-16).

C. H. M. (NBG, 1517): When we look at the type before us, we may form some idea of the results which ought to follow from the understanding of the Churchs position and relationship. What affection did not Eve owe to Adam! What nearness she enjoyed! What intimacy of communion! What full participation in all his thoughts! In all his dignity, and in all his glory, she was entirely one. He did not rule over, but with her. He was lord of the whole creation, and she was one with him . . . All this will find its full antitype in the ages to come. Then shall the True Manthe Lord from heaventake His seat on the throne, and, in companionship with His bridethe Churchrule over a restored creation. This Church is quickened out of the grave of Christ, is part of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. He the Head and she the Body, making one Man, as we read in the fourth chapter of Ephesians,Till we all come, in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. The Church, being thus part of Christ, will occupy a place in glory quite unique. There was no other creature so near to Adam as Eve. because no other creature was part of himself. So in reference to the Church, she will hold the very nearest place to Christ in His coming glory. (Note that Adam apparently did rule with Eve, not over her, prior to their fall into sin, as stated above.)

REVIEW QUESTIONS ON PART NINE

1.

What does the name Paradise signify?

2.

What are the two views of the possible location of Eden?

3.

What two rivers, in the Genesis account, seem to locate Eden geographically, and why?

4.

In what respect does the Biblical story of Eden accord with scientific thought concerning the origin of mankind?

5.

What is the apparent symbolical import of the Garden of Eden?

6.

What lesson does this story have for us with respect to all mankind?

7.

What significance does Breasted find in the story of Eden?

8.

Explain the metaphor, the River of Life, as it is further developed in the New Testament.

9.

What two Divine commands directed the Mans life in the Garden?

10.

What was the Mans work in the Garden?

11.

What does this teach us about honest labor? When did this become toil?

12.

In what respects are gardens and God in close relationship?

13.

How may the Tree of Life be explained as having actual existence and fruit? What function could this fruit have served?

14.

What does the Tree of Life symbolize?

15.

What is the metaphorical significance of the Tree of Life?

16.

In what sense is the Biblical story of the Tree of Life unique in comparison with non-Biblical traditions?

17.

What fundamental truth is indicated by the fact of the universality of certain traditions, as, e.g., those of a prehistoric Golden Age, of Sacrifice, of a Flood, etc.?

18.

In what verse of Genesis do we have the account of the beginning of liberty and of law?

19.

What does this Scripture teach about the relation between liberty and law?

20.

State the rather common views of the significance of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

21.

Concerning the theory that this knowledge was, and is, the maturity that man acquires through the personal experience of sin and its consequence, does this imply that man fell upward?

22.

How is holiness to be distinguished from innocence?

23.

Are we to suppose that the Tree of Knowledge had real existence? On the basis of this view, what was the intent of the prohibition regarding the fruit of this Tree?

24.

Explain what is meant in Scripture by a positive law. What is the chief function of positive law?

25.

What kind of choice was involved in the decision to eat of the fruit of this Tree?

26.

What kind of choice is involved in every sin?

27.

What is the view adopted in this text of the nature of the knowledge of good and evil indicated by the Genesis account of this Tree?

28.

What is probably the full meaning of the phrase, good and evil?

29.

Why do we reject the view that the only knowledge indicated in this account was physiological sex knowledge?

30.

What would be the symbolic meaning of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

31.

Regardless of whether this Tree was real or only symbolic, or even only metaphorical, what kind of human act was involved in the eating of its fruit?

32.

What was the twofold character of the death consequent upon eating of the fruit of this Tree?

33.

How, according to Genesis, did human language originate?

34.

What is the evident meaning of the word good, as used in Gen. 2:18?

35.

State the two naturalistic theories of the origin of language and point out the inadequacy of each.

36.

How is society to be defined?

37.

What are the two kinds of human society?

38.

What was the significance of Adams deep sleep?

39.

What profound naturalistic and positivistic truths are to be derived from the account of Womans creation out of part of Adams body?

40.

What lessons are to be derived from the identity of the particular part of Adams body that God used to build into the Woman?

41.

What is the significance of the statement that God, after creating the Woman, brought her unto the man?

42.

State the grounds on which we regard domestic society as a natural, and therefore divinely ordained, society.

43.

Explain the significance of the phrases, bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.

44.

Explain how the entire account of the Creation of the Woman emphasizes the sanctity of marriage.

45.

What error is involved in the notion that the sex drive is in the same class of organic drives as the drives for food and drink?

46.

State and explain the primary ends of marriage.

47.

Explain the relation of physical coition to the unitive aspect of marriage.

48.

Explain how the morale and morality of a people are related to their sex morality.

49.

Show how the inviolability of marriage and the home is related to national morality and stability.

50.

Explain the significance of the statement that Adam and Eve were naked, but not ashamed.

51.

List the circumstances of mans original state.

52.

Review the material on Types and Antitypes in Part Two.

53.

List and explain the points of resemblance between Adam and Christ.

54.

List the points of difference between Adam and Christ.

55.

List the points of resemblance between the bride of Adam and the Bride of the Redeemer.

56.

What should these truths teach us regarding the glory and dignity of the Church?

57.

What should these truths teach us about the mission of the Church?

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(8) The Lord God planted a garden.The order followed in the text, namely, man first and the garden afterwards, is not that of chronology, but of precedence. In Gen. 2:15 we find that the garden was ready as soon as man needed a home. It was a separate plot of ground, fenced off from the rest of Eden, and planted with trees and herbs that were of choicer kinds, more fit for food, and more beautiful in foliage and blossom, than elsewhere. The word Paradise, usually applied to it, is a Persian name for an enclosed park, such as the kings of Persia used for hunting.

Eastward in Eden.This does not mean in the eastern portion of Eden, but that Eden itself was to the east of the regions known to the Israelites. The name Eden, that is, pleasure-ground, occurs elsewhere, but for regions not identical with that in which the paradise was situated (2Ki. 19:12; Isa. 37:12; Isa. 51:3; Eze. 27:23; Amo. 1:5). Of its site no certain conclusions have been established, and probably the flood so altered the conformation of the ground as to make the identification of the four rivers impossible. But there can be no doubt that an eastern district of Asia is meant, and that the details at the time the narrative was written were sufficient to indicate with sufficient clearness where and what the region was. The rendering of several versions in the beginning instead of eastward is untenable.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

8. Planted a garden eastward in Eden The word Eden is here first introduced, and without any explanation . It seems most natural to understand it as the proper name of the land ( ) of the preceding narrative . The word signifies pleasure, delight, and thus corresponds with the Greek . The Septuagint and Vulgate translate , garden, by the word paradise, (a park,) and the word came at length to be used as a proper name for the garden of Eden, and also for the abode of disembodied spirits. Compare Luk 23:43; 2Co 12:4. The Vulgate never renders Eden as a proper name; and the Septuagint only here, in Gen 2:10, and in Gen 4:16. Accordingly some translate:

God planted a garden in a delightful region. But the word eastward ( , from the east, or, on the east, that is, in the eastern part) serves to put on Eden the character of a proper name. And a most suitable name it was for the land where man first appeared, created in the image of God. That land, from the dust of which Adam was formed, in which every tree and shrub and herb was very good, being supernaturally produced by the power of God, might well be called Eden. The garden was planted in the eastern section of this Eden-land.

There he put the man whom he had formed These words, taken in connexion with Gen 2:15, are supposed to imply that Adam was created outside of paradise, and afterward transported thither. But the word , here used, and , in Gen 2:15, both convey the idea of establishment in some place without any necessary allusion to a previous state . We might say of Eve, as well as of Adam, that God took her and placed her in paradise, without necessarily implying that she was created outside of the garden . The order of the narrative would indicate that man was formed before the garden was prepared for him . But the order of the narrative by no means implies, or requires us to assume, a corresponding chronological sequence of the things narrated .

It would require volumes to chronicle all the opinions and discussions relative to the location of the garden of Eden, and the four rivers mentioned Gen 2:11-14. Three theories have been particularly urged one which locates the garden near the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates, or somewhere between that junction and the Persian Gulf; another which locates it in the highlands of Armenia, near the sources of these rivers; and a third which places it in the far East, in the mountainous highlands of Central Asia, near the sources of the Indus, the Helmend, the Oxus, and the Jaxartes rivers. All these theories become worthless the moment we allow that the deluge may have borne the family of Noah far away from the primeval home of man. The notion that the rivers and countries subsequently known as Hiddekel, Euphrates, Havilah, Cush, etc., are identical with the lands and rivers of Eden is also destitute of any sure foundation. For we must remember the universal habit of migratory tribes and new colonies to give old and familiar names to the new rivers, mountains, and countries which they discover and occupy. Nothing could have been more natural than for the sons of Noah to give to new objects names from the old fatherland. Prof. W.F. Warren, in his Paradise Found, the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole, Boston, 1885, adduces a variety of arguments to prove that the primitive Eden was at the Arctic pole. Nothing in the legitimate interpretation of this Scripture is inconsistent with such an hypothesis; but we make no attempt to determine the site of paradise, inasmuch as we find nothing in this narrative that appears sufficient to solve that problem. It is, however, very probable that the original Eden of the human race was submerged and obliterated by the deluge.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘And the Lord God planted a tree-covered area (gan – possibly a “place shaded over” i.e. by trees) in Eden, eastward, and there he put the man whom he had formed.’

The word ‘planted’ is a vivid anthropomorphism. God caused it to grow.

The word ‘gan’ signifies a protected place of fruitfulness. The use of ‘garden’ is fine as long as we do not over-press the word, and rather recognise that it was not a cultivated, enwalled garden, but a fruitful, tree-covered area of land set apart by God for man’s use. Eze 31:8-9 brings out something of the nature of the trees in the ‘gan’ in its exaggerated praise of Pharaoh.

Note that it is a tree-covered plain ‘in Eden’. Eden is the country in which it is found, not the name of the ‘gan’. The name may be taken from the Sumerian ‘edin’ meaning plain. Later, because it is in Eden or in ‘the plain’, it will be called ‘the gan of Eden’ Gen 2:15. ‘Eastward’ may signify that it was in the east of Eden, or that it was eastward from where the writer was.

Again we remember that Hebrew verbs are not exact as to tense. They indicate rather completed or incompleted action without indicating when the activity took place. Thus it is not necessary for us to assume that man was made before the ‘garden’. The writer is not describing the order in which things were made, but is bringing them in as they apply, and stressing that God had made them too. He is saying ‘God did this’ and ‘God did that’ without meaning they happened in sequence. We who are more chronologically oriented could translate, ‘now God had planted a tree-covered plain in Eden and there he put the man whom he had formed’.

So God has made good provision for man. Unlike later, man does not have to search out his food or work for it. The place where he first becomes man is fruitful and plenteous, self-producing, and provides plenty of shade. (LXX will describe it as ‘Paradise’).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The Garden of Eden

v. 8. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom He had formed. Although the entire work of creation was perfect, God chose to do still more for man by planting an enclosed garden, or park, commonly called Paradise, in Eden, a country toward the east. Into this covered and sheltered place the Lord put the man whom He had formed. That was to be his earthly home, a place of wonderful bliss, a fitting vestibule for the eternal home with its unequaled Sabbath rest.

v. 9. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This shows the manner in which the Lord prepared the garden. Jehovah God caused to sprout and grow out of the soil trees of every kind, pleasing to the eye and with fruit that was good for food, the agreeable thus being combined with that promoting health. But, above all, there was in the midst of the garden the tree of life, whose fruit would have given to man perfect health and strength always and thus prepared him for the perfection of eternal life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, placed there for the purpose of testing man; for by obedience to God’s command concerning it Adam would retain his concreated righteousness and holiness and progress to the perfection of heavenly bliss, while by disobedience he would become guilty of sin with all its attendant harm.

v. 10. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. This great river thus had its beginning in the land of Eden, flowed through the entire length of the garden, and then divided into four beginnings, or heads of streams, which formed separate arms, or rivers.

v. 11. The name of the first is Pison; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

v. 12. and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone. Although the garden of Eden was long since destroyed and the entire contour of the country changed by the great Flood, it is probable that we may assume its location to have been in the central tableland of Asia or Armenia. There was the river Pison, the full-flowing, whose place may now have been taken by the Indus or by the Kur. It flowed through a sandy land, where gold in great quantity and of an excellent quality was found, also bdellium, an odoriferous and very costly gum, and onyx, or sardius, a precious stone which had the color of human finger-nails.

v. 13. And the name of the second river is Gihon; the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. This river has been identified most plausibly with the Ganges or with the Araxes, and the country which it watered with Kossaia, which extended in a westerly direction to the Caucasus.

v. 14. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. This seems to point quite definitely to the TigrIsaiah And the fourth river is Euphrates.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

Gen 2:8

In accordance with a well-known characteristic of Hebrew composition, the writer, having carried his subject forward to a convenient place of rest, now reverts to a point of time in the six days antecedent to man’s appearance on the earth. In anticipation of his arrival, it was needful that a suitable abode should be prepared for his reception. Accordingly, having already mentioned the creation of plants, trees, and flowers, the narrative proceeds to describe the construction of Adam’s early home. And the Lord God (Jehovah Elohim) plantedi.e. specially prepareda garden (gan, a place protected by a fence, from ganan, to cover; hence a garden: cf. Deu 2:10; 1Ki 21:2; Isa 51:3; LXX; ; Vulgate, paradisus; whence English, paradise, Luk 23:43) eastward (mekedem, literally, from the front quarter, not from the beginning, , Aquila; , Theodotion; a principio, Vulgate,but in the region lying towards the east of PalestineLXX; ) in (not of, as Murphy, who renders “in the east of Eden”) Eden (delight; Greek, : cf. Hedenesh, or Heden, the birthplace of ZoroasterKalisch). The word is not merely descriptive of the beauty and fertility of the garden (paradisus voluptatis, Vulg; of. , LXX. (Joe 2:3). On the ground of possessing similar qualities, other districts and places were subsequently termed Edens: cf. 2Ki 19:12; Isa 37:12; Isa 51:3; Eze 27:23; Amo 1:5), but likewise indicates its locality, which is afterwards more exactly defined (Amo 1:10, Amo 1:14). In the mean time it is simply noted that, this enchanting paradise having been specially prepared by Jehovah, there he put the man (Adam) whom he had formed.

Gen 2:9

And out of the ground made the Lord God (Jehovah Elohim) to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sightliterally, lovely to see; i.e. beautiful in form and colorand good for food. In the preparation of man’s pristine abode respect was had to ornamentation as well as utility. Every species of vegetation that could minister to his corporeal necessities was provided. Flowers, trees, and shrubs regaled his senses with their fragrance, pleased his eye with their exquisite forms and enchanting colors, and gratified his palate with their luscious fruits. Hence the garden of the Lord became the highest ideal of earthly excellence (Isa 51:3). In particular it was distinguished by the presence of two trees, which occupied a central position among its multifarious productions. The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That these were not two separate trees, but only one tree distinguished by different names, has been maintained, though with no weightier reason than the statement of Eve in Gen 3:3. The opinion of Witsius, Luther, Kennicott, and Hengstenberg, that classes of trees, and not individual trees, are meant by the phrases “tree of life” and “tree of knowledge,” is precluded by the language of Jehovah Elohim in Gen 2:17 and Gen 3:24. As regards their significance, consistency requires that they should both be explained on the same principle. This, accordingly, disposes of the idea that the tree of life (literally, the tree of the lives: of. , Rev 2:7; Rev 20:1-15 :19) is simply a Hebraism for a living tree, as by no sort of ingenuity can the tree of knowledge be transformed into a knowing tree. It likewise militates against the notion that the two trees were styled from the peculiar effects of their fruits, the one conferring physical immortality on Adam’s body (Scotus, Aquinas, Fairbairn, Kalisch, Luther), and the other imparting moral and intellectual intuitions to his soul (Josephus, Kalisch). But even if the life-giving properties of the one tree could be demonstrated from Gen 3:24, proof would still be required with regard to the other, that the mere physical processes of manducation and digestion could be followed by results so immaterial as those of “rousing the slumbering intellect, teaching reason to reflect, and enabling the judgment to distinguish between moral good and moral evil” (Kalisch). Besides, if this was the immediate effect of eating the forbidden fruit, it is difficult to perceive either why it should have been prohibited to our first parents at all, it being “for their good to have their wits sharpened” (Willet); or in what respect they suffered loss through listening to the tempter, and did not rather gain (Rabbi Moses); or wherein, being destitute of both intellectual and moral discernment, they could be regarded as either guilty of transgression or responsible for obedience. Incapacity to know good and evil may be a characteristic of unconscious childhood and unreflecting youth (Deu 1:39; Isa 7:15; Jon 4:11), or of debilitated age (2Sa 19:36), but is not conceivable in the case of one who was created in God’s image, invested with world-dominion, and himself constituted the subject of moral government. Unless, therefore, with ancient Gnostics and modem Hegelians, we view the entire story of the probation as an allegorical representation of the necessary intellectual and ethical development of human nature, we must believe that Adam was acquainted with the idea of moral distinctions from the first. Hence the conclusion seems to force itself upon our minds that the first man was possessed of both immortality and knowledge irrespective altogether of the trees, and that the tree character which belonged to these trees was symbolical or sacramental, suggestive of the conditions under which he was placed in Eden. “Arbori autem vitae nomen indidit, non quod vitam homini conferrer, qua jam ante praeditus erat; sod ut symbolum ac memoriale esset vitae divinitus acceptae” (Calvin). For a further exposition of the exact significance of these trees see below on Gen 3:16, Gen 3:17.

Gen 2:10

The precise locality of Eden is indicated by its relation to the great watercourses of the region. And a river (literally, a flowing water, applicable to large oceanic floodsJob 22:16; Psa 24:2; Psa 46:5; Jon 2:4as well as to narrow streams) went out (literally, going out) of Eden to water the garden. To conclude from this that the river had its source within the limits of the garden is to infer more than the premises will warrant. Nothing more is implied in the language than that a great watercourse proceeded through the district of Eden, and served to irrigate the soil. Probably it intersected the garden, thus occasioning its remarkable fecundity and beauty. And from thence (i.e. either on emerging from which, or, taking in its secondary sense, outside of, or at a distance from which) it was parted (literally, divided itself), and became into four heads. Roshim, from rosh, that which is highest; either principal waters, arms or branches (Taylor Lewis, Alford), or beginnings of rivers, indicating the sources of the streams (Gesenius, Keil, Macdonald, Murphy). If the second of these interpretations be adopted, Eden must be looked for in a spot where some great flowing water is subdivided into four separate streams; if the former be regarded as the proper exegesis, then any great river which is first formed by the junction of two streams, and afterwards disperses its waters in two different directions, will meet the requirements of the case.

Gen 2:11, Gen 2:12

The name of the first (river is) Pishon, or “the full-flowing.” This is the first of those marks by which the river, when discovered, must be identified. It was palpably a broad-bosomed stream. A second is derived from the region through which it flows. That is it which compasseth (not necessarily surrounding, but skirting in a circular or circuitous fashionNum 21:4; Jdg 11:8) the whole land of Havilah. Havilah itself is described by three of its productions. Where there is gold. I.e. it is a gold-producing country. And the gold of that land is good. Of the purest quality and largest quantity. There also is bdellium. Literally bedolach, which the manna was declared to resemble (Exo 17:14; Num 11:7). The LXX; supposing it to be a precious stone, translate it by in the present passage, and by in Num 11:7a view supported by the Jewish Rabbis and Gesenius. The majority of modern interpreters espouse the opinion of Josephus, that it was an odorous and costly gum indigenous to India, Arabia, Babylonia, and Bactriana. The third production is the onyx (shoham, from a root signifying to be pale or delicate in color, like the finger-nails), variously conjectured to be the beryl, onyx, sardonyx, sardius, or emerald. From this description it appears that Havilah must be sought for among the gold-producing countries of Asia. Now among the sons of Joktan or primitive Arabs (Gen 10:29)”whose dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest, unto Sephar, a mount of the east”are Ophir and Havilah, whence Gesenius concludes that India, including Arabia, is meant. Other countries have their advocates, such as Arabia Felix, Susiana, Colchis, &c.; and other rivers, such as the Ganges (Josephus, Eusebius), the Phasis (Reland, Jahn, Rosenmller, Winer), the Indus (Schulthess, Kalisch).

Gen 2:13

And the name of the second is the Gihon, or “the bursting,” from , to break forth. “Deep-flowing,” T. Lewis renders it, connecting it with , and identifying it with Homer’s . The same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia (Cush). Under the impression that the African Cush was meant, the Alexandrine Jews discovered the Gihon in the Nilean opinion in which they have been followed by Schulthess, Gesenius, Furst, Bertheau, Kalisch, and others. But Cush, it is now known, describes the entire region between Arabia and the Nile, and in particular the southern district of the former lying between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Hence Tayler Lewis finds the Gihon in the ocean water sweeping round the south coast of Arabia. Murphy detects the name Kush in the words Caucasus and Caspian, and, looking for the site of Eden about the sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris in Armenia, thinks the Gihon may have been the leading stream flowing into the Caspian. Delitzsch advocates the claim of the Araxis to be this river.

Gen 2:14

And the name of the third river is the, Hiddekel, or “the darting,” from and , a sharp and swift arrow, referring to its rapidity. It is unanimously agreed that this must be identified with the Tigris; in the present language of the Persians designated tir, which signifies an arrow. It is styled in Aramaic diglath or diglah. That is it which goeth towards the east of Assyria. Its identity is thus placed beyond a question. And the fourth river is Euphrates, or “the sweet,’ from an unused root, parath, signifying to be sweet, referring to the sweet and pleasant taste of its waters (Jer 2:18). Further description of this great water was unnecessary, being universally known to the Hebrews as “the great river” (Deu 1:7; Dan 10:4), and “the river” par excellence (Exo 23:31; Isa 7:20). The river still bears its early name. In the cuneiform inscriptions deciphered by Rawlinson it is called “Ufrata.” Recurring now to the site of Eden, it must be admitted that, notwithstanding this description, the whole question is involved in uncertainty. The two solutions of the problem that hive the greatest claim on our attention are,

(1) that which places Eden near the head of the Persian Gulf, and

(2) that which looks for it in Armenia. The latter is favored by the close proximity to that region of the sources of both the Euphrates and the Tigris; but, on the other hand, it is hampered by the difficulty of discovering other two rivers that will correspond with the Gihon and the Pison, and the almost certainty that Cush and Havilah are to be sought for in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf. The former (Calvin, Kalisch, T. Lewis) is supported by this last consideration, that Cush and Havilah are not remote from the locality, though it too has its encumbrances. It seems to reverse the idea of , which according to Le Clerc indicates the direction of the stream. Then its advocates, no more than the supporters of the alternate theory, are agreed upon the Gihon and the Pison: Calvin finding them in the two principal mouths of the Euphrates and the Tigris, which Sir Charles Lyell declares to be of comparatively recent formation; Kalisch identifying them with the Indus and the Nile; and Taylor Lewis regarding them as the two sides of the Persian Gulf. Sir H. Rawlinson, from a study of the Assyrian texts, has pointed out the coincidence of the Babylonian region of Karduniyas or Garduniyas with the Eden of the Bible; and the late George Smith finds in its four rivers, Euphrates, Tigris, Surappi, and Ukui, its known fertility, and its name, Gandunu, so similar to Ganeden (the garden of Eden), “considerations all tending towards the view that it is the paradise of Genesis”.

Gen 2:15

Having prepared the garden for man’s reception, the Lord God took the man. “Not physically lifting him up and putting him down in the garden, but simply exerting an influence upon him which induced him, in the exercise of his free agency, to go. He went in consequence of a secret impulse or an open command of his Maker” (Bush). And put him into the garden; literally, caused him to rest in it as an abode of happiness and peace. To dress it. I.e. to till, cultivate, and work it. This would almost seem to hint that the aurea aetas of classical poetry was but a dreama reminiscence of Eden, perhaps, but idealized. Even the plants, flowers, and trees of Eden stood in need of cultivation from the hand of man, and would speedily have degenerated without his attention. And to keep it. Neither were the animals all so peaceful and domesticated that Adam did not need to fence his garden against their depredations. Doubtless there is here too an ominous hint of the existence of that greater adversary against whom he was appointed to watch.

Gen 2:16, Gen 2:17

And Jehovah Elohim commanded the man (Adam), saying. Whether or not these were the first words listened to by man (Murphy), they clearly presuppose the person to whom they were addressed to have had the power of understanding language, i.e. of interpreting vocal sounds, and representing to his own mind the conceptions or ideas of which they were the signs, a degree of intellectual development altogether incompatible with modern evolution theories. They likewise assume the pre-existence of a moral nature which could recognize the distinction between “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.” Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; literally, eating, thou shalt eat. Adam, it thus appears, was permitted to partake of the tree of life; not, however, as a means of either conferring or preserving immortality, which was already his by Divine gift, and the only method of conserving which recognized by the narrative was abstaining from the tree of knowledge; but as a symbol and guarantee of that immortality with which he had been endowed, and which would continue to be his so long as he maintained his personal integrity. This, of course, by the very terms of his existence, he was under obligation to do, apart altogether from any specific enactment which God might enjoin. As a moral being, he had the law written on his conscience. But, as if to give a visible embodiment to that law, and at the same time to test his allegiance to his Maker’s will, which is the kernel of all true obedience, an injunction was laid upon him of a positive descriptionBut of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. Speculations as to what kind of tree it was, whether a vine, a fig, or an apple tree, are more curious than profitable. There is no reason to suppose that any noxious or lethiferous properties resided in its fruit. The death that was to follow on transgression was to spring from the eating, and not from the fruit; from the sinful act, and not from the creature, which in itself was good. The prohibition laid on Adam was for the time being a summary of the Divine law. Hence the tree was a sign and symbol of what that law required. And in this, doubtless, lies the explanation of its name. It was a concrete representation of that fundamental distinction between right and wrong, duty and sin, which lies at the basis of all responsibility. It interpreted for the first pair those great moral intuitions which had been implanted in their natures, and by which it was intended they should regulate their lives. Thus it was for them a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It brought out that knowledge which they already possessed into the clear light of definite conviction and precept, connecting it at the same time with the Divine will as its source and with themselves as its end. Further, it was an intelligible declaration of the duty which that knowledge of good and evil imposed upon them. Through its penalty it likewise indicated both the good which would be reaped by obedience and the evil which would follow on transgression. For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die; literally, dying, thou shalt die. That this involved death physical, or the dissolution of the body, is indicated by the sentence pronounced on Adam after he had fallen (Gen 3:19). That the sentence was hot immediately executed does not disprove its reality. It only suggests that its suspension may have been due to some Divine interposition. Yet universal experience attests that permanent escape from its execution is impossible. In the case of Adam it was thus far put in force on the instant, that henceforth he ceased to be immortal. As prior to his fall his immortality was sure, being authenticated for him by the tree of life, so now, subsequent to that catastrophe, his mortality was certain. This, more than immediateness, is what the language implies. For the complete theological significance of this penalty see Gen 3:19.

HOMILETICS

Gen 2:8

The garden of Eden.

I. A SCENE OF BEAUTY. Whether situated in Armenia or Babylonia (see Exposition), it was a fair spot in a sunny region of delights (Eden). This beauty was

1. Luxuriant. Milton has lavished all the wealth of his creative genius in an attempt to depict “the happy rural seat of the first pair” (‘Par. Lost,’ bk. 4.). Yet it is questionable if even he has succeeded in reproducing the gorgeous spectacle, the endlessly diversified assortment of lovely forms and radiant colors that seemed to compress “in narrow room nature’s whole wealth,” entitling Eden to be characterized as “a heaven on earth.”

2. Divinely prepared. Jehovah Elohim caused it to spring up and bloom before the wondering eye of man. All the world’s beauty is of God. The flowers and the herbs and the trees have all their symmetry and loveliness from him. God clothes the lilies of the field; the raiment, outshining the glory of royal Solomon, in which they are decked is of his making. If nature be the loom in which it is woven, he is the all-wise or Weaver by whom its wondrous mechanism is guided and energized. Let us rejoice in the earth’s beauty, and thank God for it.

3. Exceptional. We are scarcely warranted, even by Gen 3:17, to suppose that, prior to the fall, the whole world was a paradise. Rather, geologic revelations give us reason to believe that from the first the earth was prepared for the reception of a sinful race, death and deformity having been in the world anterior to man’s arrival upon the scene (cf. Bushnell, ‘Nat. and Super.,’ Gen 7:1-24.), and that the Edenic home was what the Bible says it wasa fair spot, specially planted and fenced about, for the temporary residence of the innocent pair, who were ultimately, as transgressors, to be driven forth to dwell upon a soil which was cursed because of sin. Let it humble us to think that the earth is not a paradise solely because of human sin.

4. Prophetic. Besides being a picture of what the world would have been, had it been prepared for a sinless race, it was also a foreshadowing of the renovated earth when sin shall be no more, when “this land that was desolate shall have become like the garden of Eden.” Let it stimulate our hope and assist our faith to anticipate the palingenesia of the future, when this sterile and disordered world shall be refitted with bloom and beauty.

II. A SPHERE OF WORK. Adam’s work was

1. God-assigned. So in a very real sense is every man’s life occupation appointed by God. “To every man his work” is the law of God’s world as well as of Christ’s kingdom. This thought should dignify “the trivial round, the common task,” and enable us, “whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, to do all to the glory of God.”

2. Pleasant. And so should all work be, whether arduous or easy, especially to a Christian. To be sure, Adam’s work was light and easy in comparison with that which afterwards became his lot, and that which now constitutes ours. But even these would be joyous and exhilarating if performed by the free spirit of love, instead of, as they often are, by the unwilling hands of bondmen.

3. Necessary. Even in a state of innocence it was impossible that man could he suffered to live in indolence; his endowments and capacities were fitted for activity. His happiness and safety (against temptation) required him to be employed. And if God who made him was ever working, why should he be idle? The same arguments forbid idleness today. Christianity with emphasis condemns it. “If a man will not work, neither shall he eat.”

III. AN ABODE OF INNOCENCE. This abode was

1. Suitable. It was not suitable for sinners, just as the world outside would not have been adapted for a pair who were sinless; but it was peculiarly appropriate for their innocence. He who appointeth to all men the bounds of their habitation always locates men in spheres that are exactly suited to their natures and needs.

2. Provisional. Their possession of it was contingent on their remaining sinless. If their souls continued pure, their homes would continue fair. It is man’s own sin that defaces the beauty and mars the happiness of man’s home. When men find themselves in positions that are not compatible with their happiness and usefulness, it is sin that has placed them there.

3. Quickly lost. How long they continued innocent is useless to conjecture, though probably it was not long. More important is it to observe that not much was required to deprive them of their lovely homeone act of disobedience! See the danger of even one sin.

4. Ultimately recoverable. This truth was taught by the stationing of the cherubim at its gate (q.v.). Rev 22:1 tells us it has been regained for us by Christ, and will in the end be bestowed on us.

IV. A HOME OF HAPPINESS.

1. Everything was absent that might mar man’s felicity. No sin, no error, no sorrow.

2. Everything was present that could minister to his enjoyment. There was ample gratification for all the different parts of his complex nature.

(1) For his bodily senses, the fair scenes, melodious sounds, crystal streams, and luscious fruits of the garden.

(2) For his mental powers, the study of the works of God.

(3) For his social affections, a loving and lovely partner.

(4) For his spiritual nature, God. To reproduce the happiness of Eden, so far as that is possible in a sinful world, there is needed

(a) communion with a gracious God;

(b) the felicity of a loving and a pious home;

(c) the joy of lifephysical, intellectual, moral.

V. A PLACE OF PROBATION. This probation was

1. Necessary. Virtue that stands only because it has never been assaulted is, to say the least of it, not of the highest kind. Unless man had been subjected to trial it might have remained dubious whether he obeyed of free choice or from mechanical necessity.

2. Easy. The specific commandment which Adam was required to observe was not severe in its terms. The limitations it prescribed were of the smallest possible descriptionabstinence from only one tree.

3. Gracious. Instead of periling the immortality of Adam and his posterity upon every single act of their lives, he suspended it upon the observance, doubtless for only a short space of time, of one easily-obeyed precept, which he had the strongest possible inducement to obey. If he maintained his integrity, not only would his own holiness and happiness be confirmed, but those of his descendants would be secured; while if he failed, he would involve not himself alone, but all succeeding generations in the sweep of a terrific penalty. The clearness with which that penalty was made known, the certainty of its execution, and the severity of its inflictions, were proofs of the grace of God towards his creature man.

HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD

Gen 2:8-17

Man’s first dwelling-place.

The description of Eden commences an entirely new stage in the record. We are now entering upon the history of humanity as such.

I. The first fact in that history is a state of “PLEASANTNESS.” The garden is planted by God. The trees are adapted to human life, to support it, to gratify it; and in the midst of the garden the two trees which represent the two most important facts with which revelation is about to deal, viz; immortality and sin.

II. OUTSPREAD BLESSING. The RIVER breaks into four fountains, whose description carries us over enormous regions of the world. It is the river which went out of Eden to water the garden; so that the conception before us is that of an abode of man specially prepared of God, not identical with Eden in extent, but in character; and the picture is carried out, as it were, by the channels of the outflowing streams, which bear the Eden life with them over the surface of the earth, so that the general effect of the whole is a prophecy of blessing. Eden-like beauty, and pleasantness, over the whole extent of the world.

III. THE PREPARED GARDEN WAITED FOR ITS INHABITANT. “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden” (literally, made him to rest in the garden) “to dress it and to keep it.” Perhaps the simplest view of these words is the most significant. Man is led into a life of pleasantness, with only such demands upon him as it will be no burden to meet; and in that life of pure happiness and free activity he is made conscious, not of mere dependence upon his Creator for existence, not of laws hanging over him like threatening swords, but of a Divine commandment which at once gave liberty and restrained it, which surrounded the one tree of knowledge of good and evil with its circle of prohibition, not as an arbitrary test of obedience, bat as a Divine proclamation of eternal righteousness. “Evil is death.” “Thou shalt not eat of it,” for this reason, that “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” It is not a subjection of a new-made creature to a test. It would be a harsh demand to make of Adam, unless he understood that it was founded on the nature of things.

IV. THE TREE OF LIFE AND THE TREE OF DEATH STAND TOGETHER in the midst of the garden. They hold the same position still in every sphere of human existence. But the book of Divine grace, as it teaches us how the sin-stricken, dying world is restored to a paradise of Divine blessedness, reveals at the last, in the vision of the Christian seer, only the tree of life beside the water of life; the evil cast out, and the death which it brought with it, and the new-made inhabitants “taking freely“ of “the pleasures which are forevermore.”R.

HOMILIES BY J.F. MONTGOMERY

Gen 2:9, Gen 2:10

The tree of life and the water of life.

These two features of Eden claim special attention.

I. THEIR RECURRRNCE IN SCRIPTURE. They link the paradise of unfallen man to that of redeemed man. Actual channels of life and blessing, they were also figures of that salvation which the history of the world was gradually to unfold. But sin came, and death; present possession was lost. What remained was the promise of a Savior. We pass over much of preparation for his coming: the selection of a people; the care of God for his vineyard; the ordinances and services foreshadowing the gospel. Then a time of trouble: Jerusalem a desolation; the people in captivity; the temple destroyed; the ark gone; sacrifices at an end. “Where is now thy God?” Where thy hope? Such the state of the world when a vision given to Ezekiel (Eze 47:1-12), reproducing the imagery of Eden, but adapted to the need of fallen man. Again we have the stream; now specially to heal. Its source the mercy-seat (comp. Eze 43:1-7; Eze 47:1; Rev 22:1). And the trees; not different from the tree of life (Eze 47:12 : “It shall bring forth new fruit”); varied manifestations of grace; for food and for medicine. But observe, the vision is of a coming dispensation. Again a space. Our Savior’s earthly ministry over. The Church is struggling on. The work committed to weak hands; the treasure in earthen vessels. But before the volume of revelation closed, the same symbols are shown in vision to St. John (Rev 22:1, Rev 22:2). The “river of water of life” (cf. “living water,” Joh 4:10), and the tree whose fruit and leaves are for food and healing. Meanwhile our Lord had said, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness.” A link to connect this with Gen 2:1-25. is Rev 2:7 (cf. also Rev 12:11). And again, the word used for “tree” in all these passages is that used for the cross in Gal 3:13 and 1Pe 2:24.

II. THEIR SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE. The tree with its fruit and leaves are the manifestation of Christ to the soulto sinners pardon, to the weak support and guidance, to saints communion. And the stream is the gospel (the four-parted river in Eden has been likened to the four Gospels), spreading throughout the world, bringing healing, light, and life; enabling men to rejoice in hope. But mark, the drops of which that stream is composed are living men. The gospel spreads from heart to heart, and from lip to lip (cf. Joh 7:38). Forming part of that healing flood are preachers of the gospel in every place and way; and thinkers contending for the faith; and men mighty in prayer; and those whose loving, useful lives set forth Christ; and the sick silently preaching patience; and the child in his little ministry. There is helping work for all. The Lord hath need of all. To each one the question comes, Art thou part of that stream? Hast thou realized the stream of mercy, the gift of salvation for thine own need? And cans, thou look at the many still unhealed and be content to do nothing? Thou couldst not cause the stream to flow; but it is thine to press the “living water” upon others, to help to save others Art thou doing this? Is there not within the circle of thy daily life some one in grief whom Christian sympathy may help, some anxious one whom a word of faith may strengthen, some undecided one who may be influenced? There is thy work. Let the reality of Christ’s gift and his charge to thee so fill thy heart that real longing may lead to earnest prayer; then a way will be opened.M.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Gen 2:8. Planted a garden It pleased God to provide for man, when formed, a proper place of reception, a garden. The Hebrew word gan, which we render garden, and frequently, paradise, signifies, properly, a fenced or enclosed garden: eastward, must be taken in reference to the situation of Moses when he wrote this, which being generally supposed to have been in the wilderness of Arabia, eastward must be understood to refer to the east of that wilderness, or of Judaea. This garden was planted in Eden, beeden. The Hebrew word eden, or Eden, signifies pleasure: accordingly the Vulgate renders it, paradisum voluptatis, a garden of pleasure.

REFLECTIONS on the garden of Eden (from Gen 2:8-15). 1. It was a garden. When no inclement sky had yet begun to lour; when storms and tempests had not learnt to roar; when nature, ever-blooming, filled the eye with pleasure, and the air with fragrance, a palace of gold had been a confinement, and beds of ivory mean, compared with the delicious groves of Eden, and those couches of amaranthine flowers which decked this happy place. The starry canopy of heaven was extended over them; the wide earth around served as the courts to grace the temple; while this secluded spot, the blest abode provided by their bounteous Maker, shone with brighter beauties than ever adorned the house of Solomon, though overlaid with gold. Imagination could not conceive, nor desire wish for a greater profusion of delights.

2. The situation. The choice of the spot was from God, and the furnishing it his work. It was no doubt the best of that which was all very good. No traces of it however now remain: as sin drove man out, the deluge swept it away:
To teach us that God attributes to place No SANCTITY, if none be thither brought By men who there frequent, or therein dwell.

3. Its produce; every thing pleasing to the eye, and good for food. God consulted the pleasure, as well as the profit of his creatures.
4. Its peculiarities. Many were the trees which adorned the garden, but two there were of wonderful efficacy. The first was the tree of life; whether so called, because of some property contained in it of preserving the human body from decay, or because appointed of God as the pledge and seal of man’s immortality, whilst he continued in a state of obedience. 2. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil; so called, from its design to point out the knowledge of good and evil to man; forasmuch as it was to stand as a test of his obedience or disobedience to the positive command of God, enjoining him to abstain from it: and further, as it eventually served to convince him, when, contrary to the command, he dared to eat of it, of the good he lost, and of the evil, which else he had never known.

But even in Paradise man was not to be idle: though it was made ready to his hands, he was to dress and keep it. Hence we may observe, 1. That if Adam was created to work, it can be the prerogative of none of his descendants to plead exemption from it. To waste therefore our time in indolence, or to squander it away in vain pleasures, will bring a dreadful reckoning, when the Master of the vineyard shall come and visit the slothful servant. 2. That secular employments very well consist with a life of communion with God. The sons and heirs of heaven have a province to fill up on earth, which must have its share of their time and thoughts: and if they do it with an eye to God, they are as truly serving him in it, as when they are upon their knees. 3. The gardener and husbandman may comfort themselves in their laborious employment, that it is the first trade God taught to man, and affords abundant matter of meditation to lead us up to him.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Gen 2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Ver. 8. And the Lord God planted. ] Had planted (to wit, on the third day, when he made trees) for man’s pleasure, a garden or paradise in Eden, whence , in the upper part of Chaldea, whereabout Babel was founded. It was destroyed by the deluge; the place indeed remained, but not so the pleasantness of the place, the rose fell and remained thorny. cecidit rosa, mansit spina And yet that country is still very fruitful, returning, if Herodotus and Pliny a may be believed, the seed beyond credulity.

He put the man whom he had formed. ] And formed him not far from the garden, say the Hebrews; to mind him that be was not here to set up his rest, but to “wait till his change should come.”

a D , Herod., l. i. Pliny, l. vi. c. 26. Donec a spe ad speciem transiret

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

verses 8-14 Figure of speech Parecbasis. App-6.

garden. This garden may be additional to Gen 1:11, Gen 1:12; Gen 2:4, Gen 2:5 -. That creation concerns the “plants of the field” (1st occ). This may have been a special planting, and lost when the garden and Eden were lost. Note the three gardens: (1) Eden, death in sin; (2) Gethsemane, death for sin; (3) Sepulchre, death to sin.

eastward in Eden = “in Eden, eastward”.

Eden. In the cuneiform texts = the plain of Babylonia, known in the Accado-Sumerian as edin = “the fertile plain”, called by its inhabitants Edinu. In Hebrew. eden, Septuagint paradise. Occurs Gen 2:8, Gen 2:10, Gen 2:15; Gen 3:23, Gen 3:24; Gen 4:16. Isa 51:3. Eze 28:13; Eze 31:9, Eze 31:16, Eze 31:18, Eze 31:18; Eze 36:35. Joe 2:3.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

a garden: Gen 13:10, Eze 28:13, Eze 31:8, Eze 31:9, Joe 2:3

eastward: Gen 3:24, Gen 4:16, 2Ki 19:12, Eze 27:23, Eze 31:16, Eze 31:18

put the: Gen 2:15

Reciprocal: Num 24:6 – as gardens Ecc 2:5 – I planted Isa 37:12 – Eden Isa 51:3 – like the Eze 36:35 – like the

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Gen 2:8. The Lord God planted Or, had planted, namely, on the third day, when he created the fruit-tree yielding fruit; a garden A place peculiarly pleasant, a paradise, separated, it seems, from the rest of the earth, and enclosed, but in what way, we are not informed; eastward From the place where Moses wrote, and from the place where the Israelites afterward dwelt. In Eden Although the word eden signifies delight and pleasure; and undoubtedly the situation of the garden was extremely delightful, yet it is here the name of a place, not that mentioned, Amo 1:5, which was in Syria, but another Eden in Mesopotamia, spoken of Gen 4:16, and 2Ki 19:12, in the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. There he put the man Not in a sumptuous palace or house of any kind, but in the open air. For as clothes came in with sin, so did houses. Our first parents in paradise needed them not. The heaven was the roof of Adams house, says Henry, and never was any roof so curiously ceiled and painted. The earth was his floor, and never was any floor so richly inlaid: the shadow of the trees was his retirement, and never were any rooms so finely hung. Solomons, in all their glory, were not arrayed like them.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in {f} Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

(f) This was the name of a place, as some think in Mesopotamia, most pleasant and abundant in all things.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

The modern equivalent of the Pishon River is unknown for certain. Commentators have suggested that it was the Indus, the Ganges, a river of Arabia, or a river of Mesopotamia. The land of Havilah seems to have been in southwestern Arabia (cf. Gen 25:18). The Gihon may be the preflood Nile since Cush in the Old Testament usually describes modern Ethiopia (cf. Gen 10:6-8; Num 12:1; 2Sa 18:19-33; 2Ki 19:9; 2Ch 14:9-15; Isa 37:9; Jer 13:23; Jeremiah 38-39). [Note: See J. Daniel Hays, "The Cushites: A Black Nation in Ancient History," Bibliotheca Sacra 153:611 (July-September 1996):270-80; and idem, "The Cushites: A Black Nation in the Bible," Bibliotheca Sacra 153:612 (October-December 1996):396-409.] However some interpreters believe this site was in the land of the Cassites east of Mesopotamia. [Note: E.g., Ross, "Genesis," p. 31.] The Tigris and Euphrates are now in Babylonia. Eden (meaning delight, pleasure, or perhaps place of abundant waters) therefore appears to have lain in the general area of the Promised Land (Gen 2:11-14; cf. Isa 51:3; Eze 36:35; Joe 2:3; Zec 14:8; Rev 22:1-2). The Garden of (sometimes "in") Eden seems to have been in the eastern part of Eden. This rather extensive description sets the stage for Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden in Gen 3:24. It probably also encouraged the Israelites to anticipate the Promised Land.

"It can hardly be a coincidence that these rivers, along with the ’River of Egypt,’ again play a role in marking boundaries of the land promised to Abraham (Gen 15:18)." [Note: Sailhamer, The Pentateuch . . ., p. 99.]

The trees in the garden were beautiful and edible, an orchard for man to enjoy (Gen 2:9). The tree of life appears to have been a means whereby God sustained Adam and Eve’s lives. Again, God’s desire to bless man comes through. The knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:9; Gen 2:17) probably refers to man’s ability to decide for himself what is best for him and what is not (i.e., wisdom). [Note: Waltke, Genesis, p. 86. For some other views, see Hamilton, pp. 164-66; or Wenham, pp. 63-64.] "Good" and "evil" may be a merism for all the things that protect and destroy life.

Similarities between the descriptions of the garden and the tabernacle are also interesting (cf. Exodus 25-27). Both places reflected the glory of God’s presence in their beautiful surroundings (cf. Hag 2:7-8; Rev 21:18). [Note: Sailhamer, "Genesis," p. 43.]

The Hebrew word translated "put" in Gen 2:15 (wayyannihehu) is not the same one rendered "put" in Gen 2:8 (wayyasem). The latter term is the normal one for putting something somewhere. However the former one connotes rest and safety (cf. Gen 19:16; Deu 3:20; Deu 12:10; Deu 25:19) as well as dedication in God’s presence (cf. Exo 16:33-34; Lev 16:23; Num 17:4; Deu 26:4; Deu 26:10). God put man in the garden where he could be safe and rest and where he could have fellowship with God (cf. Gen 3:8). His primary responsibility there was to worship and obey God rather than to cultivate and keep the garden, as many English versions state. [Note: Ibid., p. 45.] Adam served and thereby worshipped God by tending the garden. Work is essentially a good gift of God, not a punishment for sin.

"The Garden of Eden is a temple-garden, represented later in the tabernacle. Cherubim protect its sanctity (Gen 3:24; Exo 26:1; 2Ch 3:7) so that sin and death are excluded (Gen 3:23; Rev 21:8)." [Note: Waltke, Genesis, p. 85.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)