Children of Eden
Children of Eden
ed’n ( , bene edhen): In 2Ki 19:12; Isa 37:12 the children of Eden that were in Telassar are mentioned in connection with Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph as having been destroyed by the Assyrians who were before the time of Sennacherib. The expression, the children of Eden that were in Telassar, undoubtedly referred to a tribe which inhabited a region of which Telassar was the center. Telassar means the hill of Asshur and, according to Schrader, it was a name that might have been given to any place where a temple had been built to Asshur. Inasmuch as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph were in Mesopotamia it would seem probable that the children of Eden that were in Telassar belonged to the same locality. The children of Eden is quite probably to be identified with the Bt Adini of the inscriptions and this referred to a district on the middle Euphrates. According to the inscriptions Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and Bt Adini were destroyed by Sennacherib’s forefathers, and this is in accord with the account in 2 Kings and Isaiah.
The Eden of Eze 27:23 is usually taken as the name of a place in Mesopotamia with which Tyre had commercial relations, and probably belongs to the region of the chilrden of Eden, discussed above.
Some writers think the Beth-eden of Am 15 the Revised Version, margin (the American Standard Revised Version Aven) is to be identified with the Bt Adini of the inscriptions and hence, with the children of Eden, but this is doubtful. This was perhaps in Syria in the neighborhood of Damascus.