Garden of Eden- Hebrew/Jewish LocationLocation · Realm"Garden of God"

The Planting

God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and placed in it the man he had formed. The Hebrew eden means "delight." Every tree pleasant to sight and good for food grew from its soil. A river flowed out of Eden and divided into four: the Pishon and Gihon, now lost to memory, and the Tigris and Euphrates, still flowing (Genesis 2:10-14). God set Adam in the garden to work it and keep it. In the cool of the day, God walked among the trees.

At the garden's center stood two trees. The Tree of Life offered immortality. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden: "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 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 surely die."

The Fall

The serpent was the most cunning of the wild animals. It approached Eve: "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" Eve corrected the serpent but added her own words: "neither shall you touch it." God had not said that.

The serpent contradicted God directly: "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." She saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for wisdom. Eve ate and gave some to Adam. He ate.

Their eyes opened. They knew they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. When they heard God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hid among the trees.

The Expulsion

God called: "Where are you?" Adam deflected into blame. "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." Eve blamed the serpent.

God cursed the serpent to crawl on its belly and eat dust. Between the serpent's offspring and the woman's he set enmity: "He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." The woman would know pain in childbearing. The ground was cursed for Adam's sake: thorns and thistles would grow where fruit once came freely, and he would eat bread by the sweat of his face until he returned to the dust he was made from.

God made garments of skin for Adam and Eve, provision that required the death of an animal, the first death in the story. Then he drove them out and stationed cherubim at the eastern edge of the garden, armed with a flaming sword that turned every way, guarding the path to the Tree of Life.

In the Life of Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve lingered outside the sealed gate, weeping, visible paradise just beyond reach. The garden was not destroyed. It stood behind its guards, intact, inaccessible.

Eden in Prophecy

The prophets invoked Eden's imagery. Ezekiel placed the king of Tyre "in Eden, the garden of God," adorned with precious stones, walking among stones of fire, until iniquity was found in him and he was cast out (Ezekiel 28:13-16). Joel described the land before an invading army as "like the garden of Eden" and behind them "a desolate wilderness" (Joel 2:3).

But the prophets also looked forward. Isaiah promised that God would "make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord" (Isaiah 51:3). Ezekiel's vision of the restored Temple included a river flowing from the sanctuary that healed the Dead Sea and fed trees bearing fruit every month, their leaves for healing (Ezekiel 47). The river of Eden, flowing again.

The World to Come

In rabbinic tradition, Gan Eden names not only the garden of Genesis but the paradise where the righteous dwell after death. The Talmud describes seven chambers, each more glorious than the last, with the righteous seated beneath their crowns, beholding the radiance of the Shekhinah.

The midrash filled the earthly garden with wonders. Genesis Rabbah records that the Tree of Life was so vast it would take five hundred years to walk around its trunk. Its fragrance filled the world. The Tree of Knowledge, the rabbis debated: Genesis Rabbah identifies it as a grapevine; others said a fig tree, since Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves for covering. The light that filled Eden was the primordial light of creation's first day, hidden away by God for the righteous in the age to come.