eden Summary and Overview

delight. (1.) The garden in which our first parents dewlt (Gen. 2:8-17). No geographical question has been so much discussed as that bearing on its site. It has been placed in Armenia, in the region west of the Caspian Sea, in Media, near Damascus, in Israel, in Southern Arabia, and in Babylonia. The site must undoubtedly be sought for somewhere along the course of the great streams the Tigris and the Euphrates of Western Asia, in "the land of Shinar" or Babylonia. The region from about lat. 33 degrees 30' to lat. 31 degrees, which is a very rich and fertile tract, has been by the most competent authorities agreed on as the probable site of Eden. "It is a region where streams abound, where they divide and re-unite, where alone in the Mesopotamian tract can be found the phenomenon of a single river parting into four arms, each of which is or has been a river of consequence." Among almost all nations there are traditions of the primitive innocence of our race in the garden of Eden. This was the "golden age" to which the Greeks looked back. Men then lived a "life free from care, and without labour and sorrow. Old age was unknown; the body never lost its vigour; existence was a perpetual feast without a taint of evil. The earth brought forth spontaneously all things that were good in profuse abundance." (2.) One of the markets whence the merchants of Tyre obtained richly embroidered stuffs (Ezek. 27:23); the same, probably, as that mentioned in 2 Kings 19:12, and Isa. 37:12, as the name of a region conquered by the Assyrians. (3.) Son of Joah, and one of the Levites who assisted in reforming the public worship of the sanctuary in the time of Hezekiah (2 Chr. 29:12).

(pleasure). 1. The first residence of man, called in the Septuagint Paradise. The latter is a word of Persian origin, and describes an extensive tract of pleasure land, somewhat like an English park; and the use of it suggests a wider view of man's first abode than a garden. The description of Eden is found in #Ge 2:8-14| In the eastern portion of the region of Eden was the garden planted. The Hiddekel, one of its rivers, is the modern Tigris; the Euphrates is the same as the modern Euphrates. With regard to the Pison and Gihon a great variety of opinion exists, but the best authorities are divided between (1) Eden as in northeast Arabia, at the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris, and their separation again, making the four rivers of the different channels of these two, or (2), and most probably, Eden as situated in Armenia, near the origin of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, and in which same region rise the Araxes (Pison of Genesis) and the Oxus (Gihon). 2. One of the marts which supplied the luxury of Tyre with richly-embroidered stuffs. In #2Ki 19:12| and Isai 37:12 "the sons of Eden" are mentioned with Gozan, Haran and Rezeph as victims of the Assyrian greed of conquest. Probability seems to point to the northwest of Mesopotamia as the locality of Eden. 3. BETH-EDEN, "house of pleasure:" probably the name of a country residence of the kings of Damascus. #Am 1:5|

E'DEN (pleasantness), a Levite in the days of Hezekiah. 2 Chr 29:12; 2 Chr 31:15.

("delight".) ("Paradise",) the Septuagint translation of "garden," a park and pleasure ground. From the Zendic pairidaeza, a hedging round. In N.W. Mesopotamia an Eden is mentioned near the Tigris (2 Kings 19:12; Isaiah 37:12; Ezekiel 27:23). Another, in Coelosyria, near Damascus (Amos 1:5). The primitive Eden was somewhere in the locality containing the conjoined Euphrates and the Tigris (or Hiddekel) which branch off northward into those two rivers, and southward branch into two channels again below Bassera, before failing into the sea, Gihon the E. channel, and Pison the W. Havilah, near the W. channel, would thus be N.E. Arabia; and Cush (or Ethiopia), near the E. channel, would be Kissia, Chuzestan, or Susiana. The united rivers are called the Shat-el-Arab. Eden, was but a temporary nursery for the human family: from there people, if they had remained innocent, would have spread out in every direction until the whole earth became "the garden of the Lord." God's purpose, though deferred, will, in His own time, be realized by the Second Adam, the Lord Jesus from heaven. The rivers are named as they were after the flood, which must have altered the face of the ancient Eden. The four took their rise in it, as their center, which is not true of the present Tigris ("arrow") and Euphrates ("the good and fertile".) Armenia's highlands are the traditional cradle of the race; thence probably, from Eden as their source, flowed the two eastern rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, and the two western ones through the regions answering to Arabia and Egypt. Man was to dress and keep the garden, for without human culture, grain and other plants will degenerate. As nature was made for man, his calling was to ennoble it, and to make paradise, which though so lovely, was susceptible of development, a transparent mirror of the Creator's glory. It was designed also as the scene of man's own spiritual development by its two trees, of life and of knowledge. Here also the "beasts of the field," i.e. that live on its produce (game and tame cattle, as distinguished from "beasts of the earth"), were brought to him to develop that intellect which constitutes his lordship and superiority to the brutes. His inner thought in observing their natures found expression in names appropriate. The Paradise regained can never be lost by those who overcome through the Lord Jesus (Revelation 2:7; Revelation 22:14). The traditions of almost all nations have preserved the truth, in some form, that there was an original abode of man's innocence; the Greek and Latin garden of the Hesperides; the Hindu golden Mount Meru; the Chinese enchanted gardens; the Medo-Persian Ormuzd's mountain Albordj (compare Ezekiel 28:13; Joel 2:3). The Hindus' tradition tells of a "first age of the world when justice, in the form of a bull, kept herself firm on her four feet, virtue reigned, man free from disease saw all his wishes accomplished, and attained an age of 400 years." In the Teutonic Edda, Fab. 7, etc., corruption is represented as suddenly produced by strange women's blandishments who deprived men of their pristine integrity. In the Tibetan, Mongolian, and Singhalese traditions, a covetous temper works the sad change. The Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese had the tradition of man's life once reaching thousands of years. The Greeks and Romans made it from 800 to 1,000 years.