Eden: the well watered, richly fruitful land where God planted the first garden, and afterward the measure of what a land blessed by God looks like
Eden is a place name, and in Hebrew it is also a word with a meaning of its own. The root behind it points to land that is lush, well watered, and abundant, and the same root gives Hebrew its ordinary word for luxury and rich living (עֵדֶן). So the name itself told a Hebrew reader what sort of place this was: ground soaked in water and growth. A stone statue found in Syria, inscribed in two languages, put that beyond much doubt: its Aramaic word from this root stands opposite an Akkadian word meaning "who makes lands abound".
Genesis is careful in a way English usually blurs. God plants a garden (גַּן) in Eden, and a river flows out of Eden to water that garden. Eden is the land; the garden is the plot inside it. By the time Cain settles east of Eden, the name has become a fixed point on the story's map, a landmark the reader is expected to know.
The prophets stop keeping the land and the garden apart, and use the name for what it means:
- Isaiah promises a wilderness turned into Eden, the garden of the LORD.
- Ezekiel plants the trees of Eden in the garden of God, then sends them down to the grave with the fallen cedar.
- Ezekiel and Joel measure a ruined land by how nearly it once looked, or will look again, like the garden of Eden.
Where Eden lay is an old argument the word itself does not settle. Some scholars read the four rivers as a real attempt at geography; others treat Eden as the place before all places, described in relation to the storyteller rather than plotted on a map. Either way the name says what the place was like: drenched in the abundance God gives.
Nuances
Disputed
Where the name עֵדֶן comes from, and therefore what a Hebrew ear heard in it.
- majorityThe name belongs to a West Semitic root ע־ד־נ meaning "to be lush, well watered, abundant", with "luxury, pleasure, delight" as a secondary development. The bilingual statue from Tell Fekheriye, whose Aramaic מעדן stands opposite Akkadian muṭaḫḫidu "who makes abundant", is treated as decisive.; Alan R. Millard, "The Etymology of Eden," Vetus Testamentum 34 (1984): 103-106; Jonas C. Greenfield, "A Touch of Eden," in Orientalia J. Duchesne-Guillemin Emerito Oblata, Acta Iranica 23 (1984): 219-224; Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part I (Magnes, 1961), 107-108; TDOT, s.v. עֵדֶן
- minorityThe name was borrowed from Sumerian edin "plain, steppe" by way of Akkadian edinu, which suits a Mesopotamian floodplain setting for the garden.; Friedrich Delitzsch, Wo lag das Paradies? (Leipzig, 1881); Heinrich Zimmern, Akkadische Fremdwörter als Beweis für babylonischen Kultureinfluss (Leipzig, 1917); E. A. Speiser, Genesis (Anchor Bible 1, 1964), 16
Whether עֵדֶן names a region the writer took to be real and locatable, or a primeval place described only in relation to the narrator.
- contestedThe writer had a real region in view, and the river list of Genesis 2:10 to 14 is a genuine geographical description, whether of the head of the Persian Gulf or of the highlands where the Tigris and Euphrates rise.; E. A. Speiser, Genesis (Anchor Bible 1, 1964), 16, 19-20; Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (Word Biblical Commentary 1, 1987)
- contestedEden functions as a primeval and symbolic locale: מִקֶּדֶם situates it relative to the narrator rather than on a map, and the four rivers are a later attempt to anchor a fundamentally mythic place.; Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary (Augsburg, 1984); Howard N. Wallace, The Eden Narrative, Harvard Semitic Monographs 32 (Scholars Press, 1985); Terje Stordalen, Echoes of Eden (Peeters, 2000)