Loving the Scriptures April 27, 2026 Issue

Garden of Eden

In the creation allegory in Genesis 2 and 3, the garden of Eden is the site of man’s supposed fall from divine grace. Contrary to the description of God’s all-good creative activity in Genesis 1, the garden represents a mixture of good and evil, of material pleasure and temptation. It is home to the crafty serpent, the mouthpiece of mortality.

Though Eden is significant purely as a metaphor, attempts have been made to identify its location based on scriptural references to four rivers (see 2:10–14). And in some later biblical texts, it symbolizes abundance and fertility (see examples in Isaiah 51:3 and Ezekiel 36:35). But Eden is inextricably tied to the sad—and fictitious—story of Adam and Eve.

Two trees in the garden figure in the tale. One, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is the focus of several subsequent verses in Genesis. Yet this tree is not mentioned again in Scripture. It is the tree of life that reappears in the Bible—in Proverbs, especially as a metaphor for wisdom (see 3:18, for instance), and in Revelation, as the source of divine nourishment and healing (see 2:7; 22:2, 14).

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