And out of the ground Jehovah Elohim made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; and the tree of life, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
God filled Eden with trees that were beautiful and good for food. At its centre stood two named trees, and the whole human story turns on them: one offered life, the other tested obedience.
The verse first describes plain abundance: trees for the eye and trees for the table. One writer notes that both needs were met at once:
God created man in this way, and then made a garden of delights to be his home. The name Eden means "Pleasure." Every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food was there. Nothing was lacking to support life or to give pleasure. The verse gives special mention to two trees. The tree of life was surely a witness to a life different from the one man already had. God put that life within his reach. The other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was there to remind him of his responsibility and to test it.
The care behind the planting is itself the point. One writer sees the same pattern God later used with Israel's vineyard:
As with Israel long afterward, there was full preparation now. Nothing was lacking on Jehovah's part... So at the beginning Jehovah Elohim planted a garden eastward in Eden. However fair all the earth might be before ruin came through sin, and everything that God had made "very good," the garden was clearly superior, and the object of special care to God in His moral government. Man had to be tried; and no excuse was possible, no flaw could be alleged.
The verse names the two trees separately, and commentators say that separation matters:
But there is revealed in verse 9 another fact of the deepest interest. The tree of life was distinct from the tree of knowing good and evil. The test of responsible obedience was one thing; the means of life was quite another. From the very first they are separate. When man disobeyed by eating from the one tree, God drove him out, in case he should take from the other as well and make his fallen sinful state last for ever. The point is marked clearly here: responsibility and life are wholly separate.
A whole history turned on one piece of fruit. Kelly answers that the smallness was the design:
People often find it hard that God made the moral history of the world turn on touching that tree or eating that fruit. To the mere mind of man it seems a great problem that something which looks so small should carry such terrible results. Do you not understand that this was the very essence of the trial? The key feature of the trial was this: it turned only on God's authority in forbidding, not on some grave moral evil.
The name of the second tree points to something Adam did not yet have:
Almost all men say that God created Adam in righteousness and in holiness of the truth. Not so... He was innocent; he did not have what Scripture here calls "the knowledge of good and evil." Man only gained it by the fall. He had, of course, the consciousness of responsibility... Now holiness implies that, having this knowledge, we are separate from the evil to the good. Adam had no such knowledge. Unfallen, he had no lust.
Because the two trees are distinct, merging them goes against the record:
The constant effort of man, especially of religious man, is to treat the two trees as one. That is, to make life depend on fulfilling responsibility. This idea flies in the face of the facts when man was innocent. It is even more plainly false once man was a sinner, expressly shut out from the tree of life... Sin morally compelled God to be a judge. Love, divine grace, made Him a Saviour.
Commentators say the two lines meet in one Person only:
In the garden of Eden there was the tree of life, and there was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Life stood on one side, responsibility on the other. Man failed, ate of the tree of knowledge, and could not get to the tree of life. Now the law took up the same principle... and said, "Do this and live." Then the Lord Jesus Christ, the second Man, comes. He does His Father's will in everything, and sovereign grace takes up our responsibilities. He takes the consequences of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and He is the life.
The tree itself reappears at the end of Scripture, in a better setting:
If in the earliest chapters of the Bible we find man shut out from the tree of life in the middle of a paradise of innocence, in the closing chapters we find him redeemed through Christ's precious blood, and in the paradise of God — the paradise of holiness — eating of the Tree of Life, in a higher sphere and condition than before.
- Planted — God made a garden of delights for man first. Nothing was lacking, for life or for pleasure.
- Two trees — one offered a life beyond what man already had; the other tested whether he would obey.
- Separate — life and responsibility stand apart from the first page. Eating from the test tree cost man the tree of life.
- Innocent — Adam was upright, but not holy. Man gained the knowledge of good and evil by the fall, not before it.
- United in Christ — He bore the consequence of our responsibility, and He is Himself the life. So we eat from the tree of life again, in the paradise of God.
And a river went out of Eden, to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four main streams.
One stream rises in Eden. It waters the garden, then splits into four great rivers that run out into the wider world. The details sound like geography, yet Scripture never names the main river. So what is this short account for?
Commentators read this as history, not poetry. They still admit the map is hard to draw. One writer places the garden where these rivers rise:
The point matters little in itself. What matters is that we hold the whole account of Paradise to be history in the strictest and fullest sense. More than that, the position of these rivers seems to me to explain the account given here, which has often been a difficulty to many. If the garden of Eden lay in that region (that is, in Armenia), in the part where the springs or watershed of these rivers rise, they would all lie within one limited area, surrounding this garden.
Two of the four are still household names today, but the land they cross is not what it was:
The last two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, are well-known rivers today, though the flood will have changed the shape of the land so much that their courses cannot be the same.
Scripture names the four branches. It never names the river they come from. One writer sees that silence as deliberate:
Notice that in these verses we first hear of a "river." Which river it was that went out from Eden to water the garden seems to be withheld on purpose. If it vanished when the garden was no longer seen, the wisdom of Scripture's silence is not hard to see. Some argue, like the poet Milton, that the Tigris watered paradise. Others say it was the Euphrates and the Tigris joined together. Both certainly do violence to the inspired text.
A reference work comes at it from the other side. Every search for the garden has failed, because "it belonged to the time of innocence, and as that has gone, the earthly paradise has long ceased to exist" (Morrish Bible Dictionary).
Notice the order in the verse. The water reaches the garden first. Only then does it divide.
The source of these rivers was the territory from which God had ordered that blessing should flow. River-streams took their source in Eden. This is how the garden was watered, and all their freshness was there. From there the waters flowed here and there. They surrounded other countries and gave them their character… The garden was the first object, but from there they flowed around the world, which needed them.
The number of the branches carries its own meaning:
"Four" is a number with a definite meaning attached to it. The river with four heads went out of Eden to water the garden, and through it the whole earth received its refreshment from the original fountain. Four Gospel writers record the life of Him who was sent to be the Saviour of the world, and their testimony is for the whole earth.
The river is not only a water supply. The same picture returns at the end of the Bible:
Scripture also mentions a river flowing out of the garden. It clearly rose from a spring in the earth, but it watered the garden as it flowed. This speaks of the blessing of God by His word and Spirit. So does the "river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb," described in Revelation 22:1. But this river from the garden of Eden parted into four different rivers, showing blessing increasing as the waters flowed.
The link to Revelation is also a contrast. The difference is in the dividing:
The reference to Genesis 2 is unmistakable: "A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden." The heavenly city's river does not part "into four heads," as the river of Eden did. Nor does it part into east and west, like the living waters of Zechariah. One river flows throughout the city, and one joy is shared by all. In the same way there is only one tree of life, not two trees named on their own, as in the garden on earth. Moses mentions the tree of life first. John refers to the river of life first.
- Source. One unnamed river rises in Eden — the place from which God ordered blessing to flow.
- Garden. Its first work is the garden itself. The freshness is there before it goes anywhere else.
- Four. From there it parts into four heads — the number tied to the whole earth.
- Silence. Scripture never names the main river or fixes the site. That paradise belonged to innocence, and innocence has gone.
- City. Eden's river divided; the last river does not — one river, one tree, one joy, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.