What was the Garden of Eden like?

Men have planted and developed magnificently beautiful gardens in our day, but when the Lord planted a garden in Eden before sin caused the curse to affect the ground, before weeds, thorns and thistles did their unsightly damage, the beauty of that garden must have been wonderful. The place was ideal in every way for the comfort and blessing of man. Every variety of fruit tree was there, beautiful to the sight and its fruit edible and good.

Men have planted and developed magnificently beautiful gardens in our day, but when the Lord planted a garden in Eden before sin caused the curse to affect the ground, before weeds, thorns and thistles did their unsightly damage, the beauty of that garden must have been wonderful. The place was ideal in every way for the comfort and blessing of man. Every variety of fruit tree was there, beautiful to the sight and its fruit edible and good.

Man being thus created, a Garden of delights was formed for his dwelling place. The name Eden has the meaning of "Pleasure," and every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food was there, so for the sustainment of life and the giving of pleasure nothing was lacking. Two trees are specially mentioned. The tree of life was surely a witness to the fact that there was a life distinct from that which man already possessed, and that it was put within his reach. On the other hand the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to remind him of his responsibility, and prove a test to it.

The location of Eden is indicated in verses 10-11. Two of the rivers can easily be identified; the other two very uncertainly. It seems certain that it lay somewhere to the east of the Euphrates, in a district noted for gold and precious stones and fragrant resin — for that is what bdellium is supposed to be.

Looking briefly at the picture in Genesis 2, we have in the early part of the chapter a description of the Garden of delights that God provided for man. Eden means "pleasure." It is God's delight to provide for the pleasure of His creature. Thus we find in the garden there is "every tree that is pleasant to the sight," to provide all things beautiful; there is every tree "good for food," to meet all the wants of man; there is the tree of life to give the capacity to enjoy the scene; and there is the tree of knowledge of good and evil with its prohibition, so that all this garden of delights might be enjoyed in relationship with God expressed by obedience to God.

"And Jehovah Elohim planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put Man whom He had formed. And out of the ground Jehovah Elohim 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 knowing good and evil" (verses 8, 9).

As for Israel long afterward, there was full preparation now. Nothing was lacking on Jehovah's part. "My well-beloved has a vineyard in a very fruitful hill; and he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein; and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes" (Isa. 5:1-2). 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 distinctly superior, and the object of peculiar care to God in His moral government. Man had to be tried; and no excuse was possible, no flaw could be alleged. If He planted the garden, all was there for use and beauty suitable to creation's unfallen estate. If He loves a cheerful giver, He is Himself the pattern of all bountifulness. He had "formed" Man exceptionally; and so did He "plant" the garden into which He put him; "and out of the ground Jehovah Elohim 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 knowing good and evil."

In the last clause we have the elements peculiar to the case, and to that epoch, which as they then were for a little moment did not exist for man at any other time, nor can they be so again. Innocence lost is irrecoverable. God may and does bring in for faith a better condition through the Second man at His first coming, as in manifest power at His second; but there is no restoration of the first estate. The continual tendency is to forget this, even among those otherwise taught of God. They exalt unduly the pristine condition of Adam. They fail to see the completeness of the ruin caused by sin. They lower or ignore the new creation in Christ. And the singular fact is that these errors are confined to no school of theology, though more prominent and glaring in some quarters than in others. Andover, Geneva, Leipzig, Leyden, Montauban, and Oxford differ considerably; but they fairly chime together in assigning too much to the first man, too little to the Last.

Thus it is by almost all men affirmed that Adam was created in righteousness and in holiness of the truth. Not so. This is how the apostle describes the new man exclusively. In no way can it apply to man as originally created for he was simply untainted and upright, but in no real sense cognisant of "the truth" any more than "righteous" and "holy." He was innocent; he had not 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. He knew that he was bound to obey God, though the test of his obedience lay solely in his not eating, as we shall see in ver. 17, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now holiness implies that, having this knowledge, we are separate from the evil to good. Adam had no such knowledge. Unfallen, he had no lust. He could not have understood the Ten Commandments, still less the Sermon on the Mount. He had neither father nor mother to honour. Nor was there a neighbour to traduce or aught to covet, to say nothing of theft, murder, and adultery. When neighbours began to be, man had been long an outcast from the garden, and the one prohibition in it applied no more. Henceforth as a fallen being he knew good and evil, but he had that knowledge with a bad conscience. As a heathen wrote of himself, we may say of fallen Adam and his race, that they saw the better and followed the worse. Such became the state of man till God intervened with fresh dealings which involved other responsibility.

God, in His great goodness, planted a garden in Eden with all kinds of trees, "pleasant to the sight, and good for food", among which were "the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Gen. 2:9). Out of this divinely-planted garden went a river to water the garden, to sustain and refresh the trees that God had made, and to provide for the man that God had formed and for the creatures that were under man. This river surely tells us of the goodness of God in His providential ways in caring for the creatures He had brought into the World. There was everything in that garden to gratify the nature of man, and the river ensured constant freshness and fragrance and abundant supply for the needs of the creature.

Passing from Eden, the river parted into four heads, indicating the commencement of God's ways universally. The first head became the river Pison, which encompassed the land of Havilah, a land which told of the richness, fragrance and glory of God's providence in its gold, bdellium and onyx stones. The other rivers, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates, bring before us countries that are prominent in the ways of God in one way and another. Ethiopia may indicate that God has before His eye even the distant lands; Assyria, that God is watching the land that is to be intimately associated with Israel; and the Euphrates, that God is already marking out the bounds of Israel. (See Genesis 15:18).

In verses 8 to 15 we have the Lord God providing a special place of abode for His creature. He planted a garden eastward in Eden. In this garden of delight He made to grow every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for food. In addition there were two trees of special significance, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Then there flowed a river to water the garden. As it proceeded on its way, it parted into four heads, embracing a wide area. There is no doubt that the climate at that time was different from what it now is. It must have been a perfectly delightful spot. If God chose and prepared it, it must have been most desirable.

There was a garden, eastward in the land of Eden, planted by the Lord God, (lit. Jehovah,) Himself. It was a scene of perfect earthly bliss and happiness, because the Lord God had made it, and sin was not known. No groan was heard, to disturb the constant peace and harmony, that pervaded the whole. Everything there was light, life and happiness, fresh and beautiful in its first bloom, as it had just come forth from the hand of its Maker.

And in that garden, which He had planted, the Lord God had placed man, made in God's own image, but formed by Him of the dust of the ground. (Alas! how soon did man forget the latter part of his being!) He had put Adam there to dress and keep it, not in the posture of a bondman, stooping, in the sweat of his face, to a ground, cursed for his sake, that yields to his labour, besides the herbs for his food, "thorns also and thistles" — the rods of chastisement, and constant memento's of his fall. No, God had placed Adam there as the king, centre and head of the whole of the lower creation, a figure of Him who was to come. He was to have "Dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over everything living that moveth upon the earth." The Lord of lords, and King of kings, who had invested Adam, his vassal-king on earth, with such power, and given him that lovely garden of Eden for his royal residence, had also Himself installed Adam in his place, and made the whole of the lower creation pass in review before its new sovereign, just as a king, on his accession to the throne, reviews his army, and makes his subjects, represented in their nobles or chiefs, pass before his presence, to bestow or confirm titles and names. Never since that day, has there been, or will there be, in this sinful world, such a coronation scene, until the millennial morn, that great coronation day, shall dawn, when the last Adam, under whose feet God has put all things — the heavens as well as the earth — shall come, as the Lord of lords, and King of kings, to reign over the earth. But He will not come alone. His Church, His Bride — "The Lamb's Wife" — most precious title! will come along with Him, to reign with Him over the blissful and peaceful millennial earth — that happy moment for which the whole creation, subject to the bondage of corruption for man's sake, is groaning and travailing in pain together until now.

The garden of Eden, in the wealth of its provision, was the home of man. That garden knew no lack, no desert existed within its charming domain. All that nature could desire was abundantly supplied, and God Himself deigned to enter its precincts. A wilderness then was unknown.

Only a word or two is called for as to the garden. It was a place of delights. Eden means pleasure. It has wholly disappeared, and it was meant that it should; only we find, by two at least of the rivers, that it was on this earth substantially as we have it. Jehovah Elohim had formed the man, Jehovah Elohim had planted the garden. The river of God to water the earth had its rise there. The fresh springs of God are found in the place of His delight. Man was set there to dress and keep it. Man and the earth are both now in ruin.