Genesis 2.8-14-The Garden of Eden
Tuesday August 16, 2005
Genesis: Genesis 2:8-14-The Garden of Eden
Lesson # 10
Please turn in your Bibles to Genesis 2:8.
This evening we will study Genesis 2:8-14.
In Genesis 2:8-14, we have more details given to us by Moses regarding the sixth day of restoration and in particular, we have a description of the environment that Adam was to inhabit, namely, a garden located in a land called Eden.
This garden that was located in Eden would be the sight where the ancient prehistoric conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan would continue.
In eternity past, like Adam, Satan, who was called, “the bright morning star, son of the dawn,” was created perfect and lived in a garden called Eden.
Therefore, the garden of Eden of Genesis 2 and 3 is a “restored” one whereas the one that Satan lived in was the “original.”
Man was created by God to not only to have fellowship with God and to rule over the works of God’s hands but he was also created to resolve the conflict between Satan and God where Satan believes that evil and disobedience to God’s sovereign will is a viable alternative to fellowship with Him and obedience.
Satan believes he is justified in having a rival kingdom and desiring the worship of God’s creatures, thus he believes that God is unjust in sentencing him to the lake of fire forever and ever for his rebellion.
The garden of Eden was restored and mankind placed in this garden in order to demonstrate to Satan and all the angels, both elect and non-elect that Satan is wrong and that the creature cannot live independently of his Creator and be successful and find true happiness and fulfillment.
Mankind was also designed to demonstrate to the angels that God does love His creatures and that He has their best interests in mind and is willing to veil His glory and become a member of the human race to deliver them from sin and the lake of fire, which God’s holiness requires for disobedience to His commands.
Satan believes he is justified in disobeying God and rebelling against him and the creation of mankind was designed to demonstrate to all the angels, both elect and non-elect that the creature cannot find true happiness and fulfillment independently of Him.
In the garden of Eden, Adam and the Woman’s obedience would be tested by God.
God would allow Satan to test Adam and the Woman by permitting them to disobey in order that God’s incomparable grace and love would be revealed at the Cross of Calvary through the Lord Jesus Christ’s death on the Cross.
Therefore, the garden of Eden would be the place that Satan would launch his first attack against mankind and God in order to demonstrate that he is justified in his rebellion against God and that God is unjust for sentencing him to the lake of fire forever and ever.
God temporarily permits the existence of evil in His creation in order to demonstrate once and for all to both angels and men that it is impossible for the creature to ever live independently of his Creator.
God did not create evil but rather evil is the result of God’s creatures disobeying Him because they desire to live independently of Him.
God permits evil to temporarily exist in His creation because He created His creatures with a volition and freedom to choose for Him or against Him.
God is not unjust for creating His creatures with volition and permitting them to disobey Him but rather the creature is responsible for his own actions.
God has done everything through His Son Jesus Christ to prevent both men and angels from going to the lake of fire.
Therefore, the men and angels go to the lake of fire because they choose to live independently of God.
Genesis 2:8, “The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.”
“Garden” is the noun gan (wG^), which refers to “a protected enclosure.”
The LXX (Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) translates the Hebrew noun gan in Genesis 2:8 with the noun paradeisos (paravdeiso$), “Paradise.”
The term “paradise” is borrowed from the Persian by the LXX translators and suggests a “royal park.”
This garden or royal park was located in a place called “Eden.”
“Eden” is the proper noun `Edhen (/d#u@) which means, “delight” and comes from the Akkadian-Sumerian word eden, “plain, steppe.”
The early Sumerians got their word eden, “a plain” from the fact that the original Eden was a flat, fertile tract of land.
Therefore, the garden of Eden was a “garden of delight, a land of delight, a delightful royal park.”
“Towards the East” is composed of the preposition min (/m!), “towards” and the noun qedhem (sd#q#), “East” indicating that this garden that the Lord planted was located east of the land of Canaan or at least, the Jordan River, which was location of the recipients (Israel) of the book of Genesis.
We must remember that God views everything from the standpoint of the land of Israel, therefore the garden of Eden was located east of the land of Israel.
The garden of Eden mentioned and described in Genesis 2:8-14 is “not” the original one but a “restored” one with a different occupant.
Ezekiel 28:13 teaches that the original garden of Eden had as its occupant Satan who before his fall according to Isaiah 14:12 had the title Hallel Ben Shachar, “star of the morning, son of the dawn.”
Ezekiel 28:13, “You were in Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone was your covering: The ruby, the topaz and the diamond; The beryl, the onyx and the jasper; The lapis lazuli, the turquoise and the emerald; And the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets, Was in you. On the day that you were created they were prepared.”
The original garden of Eden was destroyed as a result of God’s judgment of Satan’s rebellion since according to Genesis 1:2 the earth was an empty desolation and was enshrouded in darkness and flooded with water.
Genesis 2:8, “The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.”
Genesis 2:8 indicates that Adam was created and his physical body constructed outside of this garden that was located in Eden since the passage says the Lord “placed” Adam in the garden implying that he was outside of this garden.
Genesis 2:9, “Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing 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.”
The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” was the only tree in the garden that had a prohibition attached to it in order that God would test the obedience of Adam and the Woman and Satan could have an opportunity to prove God unjust for sentencing him to the lake of fire for his disobedience.
If Adam and the Woman ate the fruit from the “tree of life” it would continue to perpetuate their life of their physical bodies.
If Adam and the Woman ate the fruit from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” they would separate themselves from God, which is called spiritual death.
Not only did God tell Adam to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but He told him why, which is that he would die spiritually meaning he would be separated from God for his disobedience.
Genesis 2:16, “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely.’”
Genesis 2:17, “but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
The fact that the Lord told Adam why he cannot eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil demonstrates God’s love and concern for Adam and that He had his best interests in mind.
We will have more to say about these two trees when we study Genesis 2:15-18.
Now Genesis 2:10-14 gives us a greater description of the garden of Eden.
Genesis 2:10, “Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers.”
A river flowed out of Eden through the garden and divided into four heads.
It is interesting that the New Jerusalem will have something very similar.
Revelation 22:1, “Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”
Revelation 22:2, “in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life (group or row of trees called the “tree of life”), bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
Genesis 2:11, “The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.”
Genesis 2:12, “The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there.”
The water flow in the river of Eden must have been very large since it traversed the garden and separated into four “distributaries,” each of which was a large and long river.
The first river was named “Pishon,” which means, “increase” and is described as encompassing the entire land of Havilah that contained gold that was of the highest quality as well as the onyx.
The Pishon more than likely was in the Arabian peninsula since the person Havilah, the ancestor of the land, was the brother of Ophir, a region associated with the Arabian peninsula and known for its fine gold (Gen. 10:29; 1 Chr. 1:23).
Genesis 2:13, “The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush.”
The second river was named “Gihon” is described as encompassing the entire land of Cush, which in most of the Old Testament refers to Ethiopia but here it refers to the Sudan.
Genesis 2:14, “The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.”
The “Tigris” ran east of Assyria but in history it was known to have been on the west side of Assyria and this is due to the fact that Noahic flood changed the geography of planet earth.
The Tigris rises in the mountains of Armenia, latitude 38 degrees 10 minutes, longitude 39 degrees 20 minutes, only a few miles from the main branch of the Euphrates.
The total length of the river is 1,146 miles.
It now joins the Euphrates about 40 miles Northwest of the Persian Gulf, the two streams there forming the Shat el Arab.
But in early historical times they entered the Persian Gulf by separate mouths, the Gulf then extending a considerable distance above the present junction of the rivers, the sediment of the streams having silted up the head of the Gulf to that distance.
The “Euphrates” river was located in southern Mesopotamia.
This river rises in the mountains of Armenia Major and flows through Assyria, Syria, Mesopotamia, and the city of Babylon, from 1,700 to 1,800 miles into the Persian Gulf.
It is navigable for small vessels for 1,200 miles from its mouth.
It floods like the Nile, becoming swollen in the months of March, April, and May by the melting of the snows.
The “Tigris” and “Euphrates” rivers exist today but the “Pishon” and “Gihon” are not identifiable to us today since the geography of planet earth was changed dramatically because of the Noahic flood.
Prior to the flood of Noah, there were no continents but rather a super continent, which during the flood was broken up into the seven continents we have today.
There is no way of knowing the exact location of this garden that was planted by the Lord in Eden since it was destroyed during the flood of Noah but since the Tigris and Euphrates exist today we can infer that it was could have been located somewhere in the Persian Gulf area or the area now known as Iraq.