A Garden in Paradise: Genesis 2.4-17, Part 1

The other day, we looked at the Bible’s second creation story, Genesis 2.4-3.24, in the big picture. We saw that where Genesis 1 seems likely to have been written to combat the despair of the Exile, Genesis 2 offers a less hopeful, but more relatable message: We humans are unfaithful and struggle to live up to our responsibilities to God and each other, but God remains faithful always. Today we’re going to start digging down into the details of the story, by looking at how it talks about the Garden and Adam’s life within it.

Text

[2.4] In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, [5] when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; [6] but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— [7] then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the [human] became a living being. [8] And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the [human] whom he had formed. [9] Out of the ground the LORD God made 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.

[10] A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. [11] The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; [12] and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. [13] The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. [14] The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

[15] The LORD God took the [human] and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. [16] And the LORD God commanded the [human], ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; [17] but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’ (Genesis 2.4-17, NRSV)

Experience & Encounter

When reading these verses today, what stood out to me was how much of it is formulaic and how little story there actually is here. Of the fourteen verses, eight (2.4-6 and 10-14) provide background information on the setting (and even then only just barely!), leaving only six for the action (2.7-9, 15-17). Few of the details about the setting ever appear again in the Bible, which makes me wonder why they were included and curious about how they tie into Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) literary norms. In terms of the the story, I’m curious about the odd portrayal of God (called by the covenant name YHWH) in the story; for lack of a better word, YHWH seems unprepared, creating the human before any of the things the human needs to survive. And finally, I wonder about the relationship in the story between God and the human.

So these are the questions that will guide the study of this passage.

• How does the description of the world, and later, Eden, fit in with ANE culture?
• What is the story telling us about God and the human here?

Today I’ll be focusing on the first of these. Next time I’ll turn to the second.

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The Setting Formulas

Just as we saw in the Genesis 1 story, the Genesis 2 story begins by describing a the primordial state before God’s creative acts. Here this is done not by talking not about what is was like (e.g., ‘formless and purposeless’) but about what is missing: There are no plants or vegetation, no rain, and no one to undertake agriculture. There is, however, a spring that brings water to the dry ground. This type of negative formula was a common way ANE creation myths began. Compare, for example, the opening of the Enuma Elish:

When on high the heaven had not been named,
Firm ground below had not been called by name, …
No reed hut had been matted,
no marsh land had appeared,
When no gods whatever had been brought into being,
Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined …

So in this respect, Genesis 2 fits in well with ANE precedents.

The detail of the spring at the end of the formula in 2.6 is picked up in the description that starts in 2.10. Let’s look at this description again:

[10] A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches:
[11] The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
[12] and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.
[13] The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush.
[14] The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria.
And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

This is a strange little passage. First, note that it describes the river and its branches, not Eden or the garden. This is an odd narrative choice and likely indicates it was an existing unit before this version of the story was told. It may have been included as a way of heightening narrative tension, by diverting attention away from the garden itself (Carr).

This river flows out of Eden to water the garden. This means that Eden and the garden are not synonymous, though closely linked — not ‘the garden called Eden’ but ‘the garden belonging to or adjacent to Eden’. This is a helpful distinction because both terms have their own, though again closely linked, connections in broader ANE civilization.

The name Eden comes from the common Semitic root `dn. In Hebrew, this root connotes luxury writ large, including delicacies and delights, but looking at cognate languages it seems it originally referred primarily to luxuriant, well-watered lands (Carr, Sarna (1989) 18).* This connection makes sense in the context of ANE peoples building civilizations in a famously arid part of the world (Barton & Muddiman 43). And it seems Eden continued to carry both connotations in the Hebrew imagination. Here, we have the description of the four rivers flowing out of the garden, and the Prophets often used Eden as a contrast to desolate places (Isaiah 51.3, Ezekiel 36.25; Joel 2.3). But the more general connection with luxury persists, as in Ezekiel 28.13, where Eden is described as being covered in jewels: “carnelian, chrysolite, and moonstone, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald; and worked in gold were your settings and your engravings.”

Beyond the name Eden itself, paradises also have a long history in ANE mythology; the Sumerians, for example, had a myth that spoke of an island called Dilmun, known for its purity, peace among the wild animals, and the absence of illness, aging, and death (Sarna (1966) 24f and (1989) 18). But most commonly, these paradises were imagined as gardens. Perhaps the most famous and relevant here is the Gilgamesh Epic, which describes a garden of delights in which the trees bear jewels for fruit (Sarna (1966) 25). We know from both ANE mythology and archaeology, that luxurious gardens were an important feature of these civilizations’ royal symbolism; bringing exotic and abundant life to the desert was a resonant sign of the king’s power and ability to bring fertility to the nation (Carr). These were places of incredible prestige, and, far from the drudgery of canal-building, working these gardens would have been seen as an honour. From scattered texts in the Old Testament, it’s clear that the Hebrews had a popular story about a divine royal garden. Even our story here is worded in such a way that it seems to expect the reader will already be familiar with elements such as the garden, the trees, and, later, the cherubim and fiery sword (3.24) (Sarna (1966) 24, Brueggemann). But Genesis 2 does something interesting, and as far we know, unique among the ANE gardens. As we’ve seen in previous posts, in ANE creation myths humanity was often created for agricultural hard labour; but here, the human is placed in the garden, where, yes, there may be work to do, but enjoyable work — gardening, not ditch-digging (Carr)!

But again, this passage only mentions Eden and the garden in passing, focusing instead on the river that branches into four as it leaves the garden. The last two mentioned, the Tigris and Euphrates, are of course the two rivers that formed the lifeblood of the ANE. (Indeed, the name ‘Mesopotamia’ means ‘land between the rivers’.) The identity of the other two remains unknown, but the names and descriptors possibly suggest locations in Arabia, Egypt, or Nubia (Sarna (1989) 20, Carr). These rivers play no further role in the story, but Ezekiel — the only other Old Testament book that references the garden story — employs rivers as a symbol for healing and provision (Ezekiel 47.1-12), and it seems certain this is their intended signification here (Brueggemann). In a dry land in which rivers, more than rain, are associated with fertility and sustenance, this stands to reason.

Finally, we have to talk about the two trees around which the drama of the story hinges. These need to be handled separately, for they have very different relationships to ANE culture. The tree of life was a common cultural image, from an assortment of myths and legends about the quest for immortality, especially in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where there is a tree whose fruit gives immortality to those who eat it (Sarna (1966) 25, Carr). It also likely had a connection to royal ideology, symbolizing the kings’ priestly duties promoting and protecting life (Brueggemann). In the Bible, the image is picked up in Wisdom literature, especially in the Proverbs, where “it is used to refer to anything which enhances or celebrates life” (Brueggemann, see Proverbs 3.18, 11.30, 13.12, 15.4). In the New Testament, the image will reappear in Revelation 27, where it symbolizes eternal life in communion with God. So we actually can see how the image evolved over time depending on the genre and theological aims of the stories: from mythological origins about a human quest for immortality and royal symbolism about a king’s responsibilities to the life of his people, through a philosophical quest for ‘the good life’, to its use as an apocalyptic symbol of life in the age to come. In this story, there is no prohibition against eating from this tree so long as the humans live in communion with God. This is likely why it became an important symbol in early Christianity: with communion with God restored, the tree was once again opened to the faithful.

Compared to this long history and extensive development for the tree of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is the more important of the two for the story, stands out as being (to the best of our knowledge) unique in ANE culture (Sarna (1989) 19, Carr). In 3.22, we learn that ‘knowledge of Good and evil’ is an inherently divine characteristic. Similarly in 2 Samuel 14.17, it is ascribed to the angels. Here there is some ANE analogy, as Enkidu’s knowledge of good and evil is said to make him like the angels (Epic of Gilgamesh, cited by Sarna (1989) 25). It seems that the most likely way of understanding this is as consciousness and conscience: the ability to moral judgements for oneself (Sarna (1989) 19, Carr). It’s difficult to see this as a bad thing. After all, moral reasoning is an important part of human development! A likely reason, which we’ll have to explore further as the story goes on, is that what the story is getting at is independent moral reasoning, reasoning apart from our relationships with God and others.

Expand

So, how does this study expand our awareness and understanding of the story? On the one hand, today’s post has been mostly about the setting, and so probably doesn’t contribute all that much. But on the other hand, we’ve seen that the details of the story’s setting are not random. It deploys common, shared cultural symbols and tropes to communicate its unique vision of an original paradise. What sets this vision apart from other ANE ways of looking at the world is demonstrated in the contrast of the two trees. In a sense, they offer the human a choice: life in communion with God and each other, or life outside those relationships, which is no life at all.

* Please see the series bibliography for full information on sources.