Life in God’s garden (Genesis 2:5-17)

The all-powerful God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1). God breathes his existence into us:

Genesis 2:7 (NIV)
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Because he lives, we live. That’s the message of the Bible. The life God shared with us is what we share with one another.

We’re also part of the earth. The human (ā·ḏām) is formed from the ground (ǎḏāmāh). Humans are the marriage of heaven and earth.

And God provides us with a home, with everything we need to live well:

Genesis 2:8-14 (NIV)
⁸ Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹ The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
¹⁰ A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. ¹¹ The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) ¹³ The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. ¹⁴ The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

Eden was not the name of a garden; Eden was the region where the garden was, a region east of Israel (verse 8). A river flowed from the region of Eden to water the garden (verse 10). While we’re not sure of the Pishon and Gihon rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates were the rivers of Babylon (Iraq today).

But this is no literal river. Rivers begin as streams that combine as they flow towards the sea, like the three headwaters of the Jordan to the north of Israel. This river does the opposite: it starts as a single river, dividing into four, spreading out to water the earth.

This is the river of life that flows from the source of life. God himself is the source. The river spreading out in all four directions represents God’s abundant provision for creation. Water is foundational for all life (flora and fauna). This imagery of the river of life keeps recurring throughout Scripture (Ezekiel 47; John 4:14; 7:37-38; Revelation 21:6, 22:1-2, 17).

The tree of life also symbolizes God’s life. They had access to God’s sustaining life until the day they disconnected from God and started to die (3:19-24).

God’s provision is abundant: all kinds of trees … pleasing to the eye and good for food. God calls them to partner with him in meaningful work, trusting them with tending and protecting his fruitful creation as gardeners and guards:

Genesis 2:15-17 (NIV)
¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Everything was theirs, with one exception: the knowledge of good and evil. God decides good and evil. The one thing we must not do is to take the one thing the Sovereign has reserved for himself. To disconnect from our life-source is to die.

When I define good and evil for myself, it ends up becoming “what’s good for me.” In all our power relationships (where one person has the power to decide), that’s the problem.

So what?

If God invited humans to live in his garden, where was God living? Should we understand Eden as a kind of temple, the place where God was present among people?

Greg Beale makes that case in The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004). The temple was the centre of life for Jewish people in the Old Testament. God’s earthly house is a beautiful way to describe creation. In the end, creation is restored as a temple, a cleansed creation where God lives openly among us (Revelation 21:22). What do you think?

Related posts

• Was Eden God’s palace? (Gen 2:1-14)
• What does it mean to be human? (Gen 2:15-25)