Adam and Eve Working Among the Flowers in EdenBible World
2:8Genesis 2:8
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
God planted a garden eastward in Eden and placed there the man He had formed, as part of a finished creation that was pure, holy and pronounced good. Beyond a world already perfect, the garden was a further token of His love and care to provide a comfortable, glorious home, filled with trees of every variety for beauty and food, fragrant fruit in abundance, and the tree of life in its midst with power to perpetuate life. There He gave man happy, healthful work in dressing and keeping the garden, schooling him through nature and walking with him face to face in fellowship with Himself and holy angels. Happiness and safety depended on obedience under a test of loyalty, but by eating of the one forbidden tree man transgressed, lost beautiful Eden, and was driven from the garden and the tree of life into death and woe. The lost home is to be restored through the sacrifice and blood of Jesus Christ, by which obedient overcomers are brought back to Paradise to eat again of the tree of life and live forever.
Garden Planted and Placed
God planted a garden eastward in Eden and put there the man He had formed, as part of a finished heaven and earth in which everything He could do was done. That creation needed no undoing, with nothing imperfect, incomplete, or left undone, and all the works of His hands were pronounced good. The dust of the ground from which man was formed was pure and the breath of life breathed into him was holy, the atmosphere of Eden was undefiled, and from sunbeams blessing the earth to fountains and streams watering the garden all was holy, clothed with spotless purity and unexcelled loveliness. All was in harmony with the character of the Father and the Son, by whom the worlds were made and in whom was life, and the life is the light of men, and in that beautiful setting untouched by sin Adam and Eve were to receive their education.
The garden was God's own handiwork, made by Himself beautiful and holy, clear, distinct, delightful, faultless and most desirable, a specimen of His work. He with His own hand plants great forest gardens and cares for them, promoting the growth of giant trees, shrubs and beautiful ferns, and His own work is seen in the streams of water on either side of the garden land. It contained every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food, four rivers ran by it, and the whole land was enriched with precious stones and gold and silver. Adam, created in His own image with finite mind and will and moral faculties after the similitude of God's mind and will, was placed there to labor together with God in harmony with His law with nothing interposed between Adam and Eve and their Maker, instructed how to care for the garden and given the pleasant employment of dressing and keeping it as the first man who labored together with God. Sin has desecrated the earth so Eden cannot now be expected to be found in it, and even the most desirable place will always have something to mar it. The land of promise with God's blessing upon it in Israel's possession would become a second Eden like it, with mountains clothed with cedars, hills of olives and vines, wide green plains bright with flowers and rich in fruitfulness, palm-trees, waving wheat and barley, sunny valleys with brooks and birds, fair gardens, goodly cities, lakes rich in abundance, grazing flocks, and honey even amid the rocks, blessed of the Lord with precious things of heaven, dew, the deep, fruits of the sun, chief things of the ancient mountains, and precious things of the earth and its fullness.
The earthly Eden points to an Eden above in heaven, where the blessing of God is seen in a fullness greater than anything experienced on this side of it. Eden holds riches far greater than this dark earth, and looking away from earth to those riches calls God's people to rid themselves of every hindrance, stand free, and press on to come off victorious, because heaven is cheap enough.
The record in Genesis 2 to which the verse belongs gives God's standard of right-doing and stands together with Exodus 20 as eternal truth that can never be changed, calling those training for the Lord's work to humble, meek, lowly devotion to God and obedience to His spoken words.
Eden is the measure of the earth's original beauty and perfection. Even after the curses brought by Adam's transgression and Cain's murder, the earth remained rich and lovely, but it was less fair than Eden and already showed signs of decay. The garden planted in Eden had glories that sinless eyes looked upon, standing in contrast with the earth's present state seen before human eyes now, and in His teaching Jesus opened divine, momentous truths from nature bound up with the beauty of natural things, yet made no mention of that contrast.
Beauty and Abundant Provision
Genesis 2:8 means that after forming man, God gave a further token of love beyond a creation already in the perfection of beauty and lacking nothing for happiness, by planting a garden especially as a comfortable, glorious, pure, lovely and perfect home and special residence. It was an expression of His love, care, goodness and desire to provide, blessed especially for Adam and Eve with his first wife until driven out for sin. There a portion of time was to be spent in the happy employment of dressing it, and a portion in receiving visits from angels, listening to their instruction, and in happy meditation, with labor not wearisome but pleasant and invigorating.
The garden contained trees of every variety for usefulness, beauty and food, many laden with fragrant and delicious fruit designed as food for the holy pair, with stately trees, plants, and abundant fruits, vegetables and grains supplying every physical need and everything lovely to the eye and required by physical necessity. In its midst stood the tree of life surpassing all other trees in glory, with fruit appearing like apples of gold and silver and having power to perpetuate life. God caused to grow out of the ground every variety, left no herb or flower or tree lacking for use or ornament to delight the senses, and surrounded them with a world of unsurpassed loveliness and glory as evidence of the goodness and love of a benevolent Creator.
Lovely upright vines of graceful appearance, unlike anything seen since the fall, did not trail on the ground or rest on trellises but stood upright with drooping branches bowed down by weight of fruit. They bore very large fruit called grapes of richest and most varied hues, nearly black, purple, red, pink, light green, tempting and of rich fragrance, beautiful to the eye and pleasant to the taste. It was the happy labor of Adam and Eve to train them into bowers and to make themselves a dwelling from living trees covered with foliage and fruit, forming beautiful bowers from branches of the vine into dwellings of nature's living trees and foliage laden with fragrant fruit. Fragrant flowers of every hue in rich profusion, every spire of grass and shrub and leaf and tree full of life, little birds with bright graceful plumage singing happy cheerful music, and an atmosphere filled with life made a place with no disease, decay or death, whose order and harmony declared infinite wisdom and knowledge. Adam and Eve kept discovering some new beauty and added glory in their home, joining the birds in harmonious songs of love, praise and adoration, with hearts filled with deeper love and lips bringing gratitude and reverence to the Creator.
The beauty of Eden shows that God loves and is pleased with what is beautiful, implanted love for beauty in the heart, and reveals His character, love and care. Its trees for usefulness and beauty, flowers and birds adding beauty and joy, and fruit meeting needs were gifts He intended people to enjoy and tend with happiness, giving reason to recognize Him and respond with gratitude, devotion and a correct view of Him. He requires them to give up only what would not be for their good and happiness, only what would harm happiness if kept.
Placed there, man began perfect in every physical, mental and spiritual endowment and in unfallen purity and holiness, pure and noble with no tendency or bias to evil, reflecting perfect workmanship and physical and intellectual excellence. Eden was the setting of that unfallen perfection, where everything in nature was pure and undefiled with fruits, flowers and beautiful lofty trees flourishing, where Adam was abundantly supplied with all required, walked and talked with God, lived in fellowship with God's Son and holy angels, and was in every way more favorably situated than Christ, connected with God and beloved by God. God surrounded him there with every inducement to remain loyal and obedient and placed His law around him as a safeguard, for it was not His purpose that man should be sinful. Even that perfect sinless humanity in innocence is so far below the Son of God that taking it would have been an almost infinite humiliation for Him, yet Jesus condescended still lower by not taking Adam's innocent Eden nature but accepting humanity as weakened and defiled by four thousand years of sin.
Eden is the pattern of God's original purpose for human life, diet and land, when simple fruits, grains and vegetables were provided as the best food for humanity. God would reform Israel's diet to bring the people as near as possible to Eden's original purity, though the promised land is described as a second Eden marred by the curse. With God's blessing in Israel's possession it would become like Eden, clear, distinct, beautiful and delightful, with mountains clothed with cedars, hills of olives and vines, wide green plains bright with flowers and rich in fruitfulness, palm-trees, waving wheat and barley, sunny valleys with brooks and birds, fair gardens, goodly cities, lakes rich in abundance, grazing flocks, and honey even amid the rocks, blessed of the Lord with precious things of heaven, dew, the deep, fruits of the sun, chief things of the ancient mountains, and precious things of the earth and its fullness.
Work and Education Pattern
God prepared a beautiful and abundant home and placed the man there as ruler of the domain, yet wealth and provision did not mean idleness, for He gave appointed work in dressing, keeping, cultivating, training and caring for the garden. Even in holy innocence happiness did not consist in doing nothing, for human beings were made for useful activity and the wonderful machinery of the human system needed something to call it into play. He who formed man knew what would be for his best happiness and no sooner created him than gave him employment, because without useful employment he would not be happy. A life of useful labor is therefore indispensable to physical, mental and moral well-being, and daily labor in the garden brought health, gladness, employment and happiness as pleasant and invigorating work.
Equal use of the mental and physical powers was the Lord's plan from the beginning, giving suitable and healthful employment for the physical powers in dressing the garden and keeping it to be combined with mental growth and with mental and moral training. Wise, useful employment of brain, bone and muscle fulfills one of God's purposes in creating the earth, and that Eden arrangement is the pattern to be carried out today, especially in schools, by joining manual training and useful labor with study of books so body, mind and character are developed together. That order to combine study with practical labor was planned in counsel with the Father before the world was, when useful labor was given as a safeguard in caring for fruit trees and cultivating and training vegetation. The order was to be perpetuated through all generations to the close of earth's history, so proper education means more than studying books and must exercise both physical and mental powers, training children from infancy to do useful work suited to their age and ability so they become independent and workers together with God.
Eden was the home of the first parents in a beautiful setting untouched by sin, where they were to receive their education through communion and daily lessons from God and joyful visits as He walked and talked with them. It was a model school in which the garden was the classroom, nature was the lesson book, God was the instructor, and Adam and Eve were the students. This first system of education, God's method of instructing Adam through communion with Himself, was intended as a model for all later time and for developing mankind.
In that garden home God instituted marriage as one of His first gifts, giving Adam Eve as a companion corresponding to him and joining them in the first marriage to love and be loved. Even beautiful scenes and delightful employments could not yield perfect happiness without human companionship of the same nature. The institution passed with Adam beyond Paradise after the fall into the fallen world as a continuing blessing that guards purity and happiness, provides for social needs, and elevates the physical, intellectual and moral nature when divine principles are obeyed. God Himself beautified that garden home where He placed Adam to dwell, and it was to be a pattern for other homes as his children went forth to occupy the earth.
It was not a gorgeous palace, for while men in pride delight in magnificent and costly edifices and glory in the works of their own hands, God placed Adam in a garden whose dome was the blue heavens, whose floor was the earth with delicate flowers and carpet of living green, whose canopy was the leafy branches of goodly trees, and whose walls were hung with the most magnificent adornings. The surroundings teach for all time that true happiness is found not in indulgence of pride and luxury but in communion with God through His created works. Giving less attention to the artificial and cultivating greater simplicity comes nearer to answering the purpose of God in creation, and while pride and ambition are never satisfied, those who are truly wise find substantial and elevating pleasure in the sources of enjoyment God has placed within the reach of all. As God planted and tenderly cared for a garden and placed the man He had formed in it, so He has planted and cared for people and expects them to bear the fruits of righteousness. Faithful cultivation of the soul and skillful work in His vineyard now prepares people to enter Paradise again, for Eden restored will be grand and beautiful and will be given to the faithful to cultivate under the supervision of God.
Communion Instruction Through Nature
In the garden the man and woman placed there lived in open fellowship with heaven, talking with their Creator face to face and joyfully greeting His visits as He walked and talked with them in the cool of the day. There they dwelt in the visible presence of God, of Christ as God's Son, and of holy angels, receiving daily instruction, happy meditation, and lessons taught by God Himself. Their unfallen perfection was the setting for this communion, and when sin entered the privilege was withdrawn so that man became subject to death and could no longer look upon the glory or live in that presence.
The whole natural world around them was designed to be an interpreter of God, full of His knowledge and teeming with divine instruction. It was vocal with the voice of wisdom to attentive ears, speaking to the eye and received into the heart, so that through created works they communed with God. In the objects of nature surrounding them were clearly seen and demonstrated His existence, eternal power, Godhead, divine character, and love for human intelligences. On everything upon the earth, from the loftiest tree of the forest to the lichen that clings to the rock, from the boundless ocean to the tiniest shell on the shore, may be beheld His image and superscription, with the Presence pervading all created things and the Voice speaking through nature's utterances in silent reminders of the spiritual and eternal. Before the fall their minds were unclouded with clear perception, perfectly conformed to the will of God and surrounded by His beautiful light, so that God instructed the holy pair through the works of His hands and they beheld beauty in every object upon which their eyes rested.
When they transgressed the law of the Most High the brightness from the face of God departed from the face of nature, dimming its witness. Nature is now marred and defiled and blighted by sin, no longer seen in undimmed brightness. Yet God's object-lessons are not obliterated, and traces of original loveliness remain in its beauty and variety, still revealing His handiwork, power, care, and glory. Rightly studied and interpreted nature still speaks of her Creator, reflecting as from a mirror the divine truth revealed in Holy Writ so that through creation the Creator becomes known. It remains a great lesson book and unfailing source of instruction and delight to guide lost sheep back to the fold, with the Holy Spirit flashing conviction into the mind through the study of His works, not by logical reasoning but by a deeper grasp through eye and ear still able to see and hear God, impressing the sublime spiritual truths of the written word on the heart.
The Garden of Eden is a picture of the Scriptures, for as God caused beautiful trees good for food to grow there, so the Word holds heavenly truths that feed the soul, strengthen and ennoble the mind with elevating thoughts, and fill the heart with purest emotions. Unlike Eden after sin, no cherubim with flaming sword blocks access to the tree of life in this garden, and every member of the human family whom Christ has redeemed by giving His life as their Substitute for a second probation may reach out to the soul-reviving fruit, eat freely, and live forever. The things of nature are still an expression of the love of God, and though marred by sin they still speak of that Eden home and are meant to remind of the time when it shall be restored and the earth shall be filled with praise. Beautiful flowers live on as memories of Eden pointing to the blessed country the faithful will soon enter, and the flowers and trees placed there carry health-giving properties for human good. Christ taught this care through nature, pointing to the simplicity and marvelous beauty of the lily and to God clothing the grass of the field. The account of the first parents in holy innocence in Eden, enjoying communion with God and sinless angels, provides the starting point for tracing the introduction of sin and its consequences through human history.
Testing Fall and Loss
God prepared a beautiful garden and placed Adam and Eve there with everything needed for happiness, to enjoy His favor, converse with Him and live in fellowship with Him, yet their life there included a test of loyalty in which evil was not kept beyond their reach and Satan was permitted to tempt them. Even that holy place made by God Himself was not closed to the tempter, who found entrance and left sin and disobedience there, so no place set apart for divine work is shut against him and against temptation to pride, vanity and love of display. Enduring that trial would have secured perpetual favor with God and with the heavenly angels.
Their happiness and safety depended on obedience, for Satan could exercise no power over them unless they disobeyed and lost God's favor. They were created pure and noble with no tendency or bias to evil, and it was never God's purpose that man should be sinful; instead He surrounded them in Eden with every inducement to remain loyal, true to allegiance and obedient. He placed His law around them as a safeguard and gave permission to eat of every tree in the garden but one.
The beauty of that garden home prepared for the happy, holy pair stirred Satan's envy and jealousy while they were happy in obedience to God's law. From the earliest history of man he began his efforts to deceive the race, seeking to cause their fall, gain power over them and take possession of the earth. Looking upon its beauty he was excited to bring the whole creation to unite with him in warfare against the government of God, and he immediately laid his plans in darkness, concealing his purpose.
By eating the forbidden fruit and transgressing God's law Adam and Eve lost beautiful Eden for themselves, were driven from the garden and the tree of life, and opened the floodgates of woe, death, grief and anguish upon the world. Eden was the Garden of God, a faultless and most desirable home of beauty and abundance, but sin blights and mars everything beautiful and has desecrated the earth, so Eden cannot now be expected to be found here and the most desirable place will always have something to mar it. Through the sacrifice of Christ alone fallen man in God's wise plans has been granted another trial, and after the faithful dead are resurrected Adam will see Eden restored and with repentance and faithful obedience again receive access to the tree of life.
Adam himself delineated the perfections of that lost home and his fall with its dreadful results to his children and children's children to the ninth generation. Living among men for nearly a thousand years as a witness to the results of sin, he carefully treasured what God revealed and was commanded to instruct his posterity in the way of the Lord, repeating the history of the fall, the load of grief from the rupture in his family ending in the death of Abel, and how his sufferings had taught him the necessity of strictly adhering to God's law. He declared that sin in whatever form will be punished, entreated them to obey, love and fear God to receive mercy, explained the merciful provisions for salvation, and faithfully sought to stem the tide of evil, yet few gave heed and he was often met with bitter reproaches for the sin that had brought woe upon his posterity.
At first, though marred by sin, the blight and curse rested lightly upon that lovely, glorious home of blooming beauty, fruitful trees, shady avenues, beautiful forests and gardens, with rich gifts of earth to enrich life and remind men of God. Because men were ungrateful, forgot God and disobeyed His law, the Flood utterly destroyed that home, uprooting its trees and groves and burying its lovely places under rubbish, earth and upthrown rocks, turning its fruitful surface into a broken, uneven, frightful solitude still seen in deep gorges and seamed and cleft rocks. Their example and the result of their transgression should lead every soul to avoid sin and abhor it as the hateful thing it is, feeling in view of the sufferings sin is sure to inflict that it is better to suffer loss of all things than to depart from the least of God's commandments.
Eden Preserved and Restored
God planted the garden in Eden and especially blessed it as pure and lovely and perfect, and there He placed the man He had formed with his first wife until they were driven out for sin. After their expulsion the garden remained on earth as a specimen of His perfect creation, kept free from the curse placed on the earth and from sin's curse. Its cherubim-guarded entrance stood in sight for many centuries with the glory of God revealed there, a silent witness to truth giving unequaled opportunity to gain knowledge of God through His works, so that skepticism could not deny Eden while watching angels bar its gate. In providence God withdrew it and caught it up from the earth before the Flood so it would not feel the marks of the curse, preserving it unspoiled, and He will return it to the earth again more gloriously adorned than before. Moses was shown that lovely preserved garden as a specimen of His handiwork, and joy came over his face as he beheld it.
Its gate became the place of the first worshipers, where altars were reared and offerings presented and where Cain and Abel brought their sacrifices and God communicated with men. The order of creation, the object of the garden, and the history of its two trees so closely connected with man's destiny remained undisputed facts. The existence and supreme authority of God and the obligation of His law were truths men were slow to question while Adam was among them.
The Eden home God prepared for our first parents as an expression of His love was lost when Adam and Eve transgressed God's law, but that lost home is to be restored to man through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Jesus pleaded with the Father and offered His life as a ransom and took the sentence of death upon Himself so man could find pardon, and through the merits of His blood and obedience to God's law pardoned sinners gain God's favor and are brought back into the beautiful garden to eat of the fruit of the tree of life. The ransom price paid to redeem men from Satan opens the way back, and return comes through being in right relation to God, searching the Scriptures, refusing to transgress as Adam and Eve did, obeying all God's requirements, and overcoming as Christ overcame by perfect obedience to His Father's commandments. Bending footsteps heavenward toward that home points others to it, and those who heal the sick and medical and healing institutions established in quiet secluded places as far from cities as is consistent are to instruct patients concerning the love of God and the Eden home to be restored while using all the restorative agencies He has provided.
The garden contained the tree of life whose fruit possessed supernatural virtue as the antidote of death so that to eat was to live forever, with leaves for the sustaining of life and immortality, and the tree of life was a type of Christ the one great Source of immortality and fountain of life and bread of life whose words are spirit and life. The garden also contained the tree of the knowledge of good and evil whose fruit was forbidden to touch as Adam's test, and Adam ate and failed and through disobedience death entered the world and opened woe upon it and shut man off from access to the tree of life. Now life and immortality are brought to light only through Jesus Christ, and obedience to Him is the life-giving power that gladdens the soul. To him that overcomes will be granted to eat of the tree of life in the midst of the Paradise of God, and after the faithful dead are resurrected Adam sees Eden restored and again receives access to the tree of life with repentance and faithful obedience accompanying his return.
Eden's garden-and-field life is a picture of life on the restored earth, where people will enjoy their homes and the fruit of their labor. Eden restored will be grand and beautiful, and it will be given to the faithful to cultivate under the supervision of God, for faithful cultivation of the soul and skillful work in God's vineyard now prepares people to enter Paradise again. A home where the presence of Christ dwells becomes like that Eden of bliss, with the common waters of life turned into the wine of heaven. When husband and wife cooperate and the mother consecrates herself and her offspring to God both before and after birth, her ministries of love shape the home after Eden, and the family becomes a beautiful symbol of the family in heaven.
Pattern for Homes Today
God planted a garden and put man there because it was never His purpose for people to be crowded together in cities, huddled in terraces and tenements, but to live in a garden amid beautiful sights and attractive sounds, with good air and room and ground for cultivation. In the beginning He placed the first parents in such a garden for happiness and not for continual worry, and at creation man was perfectly happy in untainted purity. That garden was an emblem of heaven and of the love of God, where flowers showed beauty and loveliness with grateful fragrance, fruit trees bore precious treasures for man's good, and birds on every tree sang praise to God, which Adam and Eve delighted to hear. Those same sights and sounds are what He wants men and women to rejoice in today, delighting in His works as Adam and Eve in purity did, with varied trees, flowers, shrubs, birds, and pleasant sights and sounds around them.
The more nearly life comes into harmony with that original garden plan, the more favorable the position for recovery and preservation of health. Living more nearly in harmony with that plan favors health of body, mind, and soul. Nature's attractive surroundings can divert the sick from themselves and lift their thoughts to God, for the garden is the Lord's garden. Sanitariums, schools, and medical institutions should therefore be in quiet country places where God works wonderfully to restore, and where patients learn of His love and of the Eden to be restored.
The garden given as the first home for the man He had formed makes the home on earth to be a symbol of and preparation for the home in heaven. Choosing a home should therefore serve what is lasting and encourage simplicity, purity, health, and real worth rather than wealth, fashion, or social custom, and choosing natural surroundings for institutions follows the same plan. His people are not to crowd into the cities but to live where they can have elbow room, taking their families out of the cities to better prepare for eternal life, purchasing a little piece of land where they can have a garden. There children can watch the flowers growing and learn lessons of simplicity and purity, with parents pointing them to the roses and lilies and pinks and then to the living God to teach His love for them, while flowers now give a little taste of that Eden as an expression of God's love.
A home where the presence of Christ dwells becomes like that Eden of bliss, with the common waters of life turned into the wine of heaven. When husband and wife cooperate and the mother consecrates herself and her offspring to God both before and after birth, her ministries of love shape the home after Eden, and the family becomes a beautiful symbol of the family in heaven. Sin marred God's purpose and brought the care and anguish that rends hearts, but God has not abandoned the earth. His image is to be impressed on souls again, angels filling human hearts with the peace of heaven, His people joyful as they repose in Him and realize His goodness, mercy and love, while sinners are to be converted to Him.
In a little while they will have to leave the cities because the cities are filled with wickedness of every kind, with strikes and murders and suicides, where Satan controls minds for destruction. They are to get out as soon as possible. God wants people to delight in the beautiful things of His creation and to see in them what He will do for them, with peace and gladness and joy filling life.
God planted a garden eastward in Eden and placed there the man He had formed, as part of a finished creation that was pure, holy and pronounced good. Beyond a world already perfect, the garden was a further token of His love and care to provide a comfortable, glorious home, filled with trees of every variety for beauty and food, fragrant fruit in abundance, and the tree of life in its midst with power to perpetuate life. There He gave man happy, healthful work in dressing and keeping the garden, schooling him through nature and walking with him face to face in fellowship with Himself and holy angels. Happiness and safety depended on obedience under a test of loyalty, but by eating of the one forbidden tree man transgressed, lost beautiful Eden, and was driven from the garden and the tree of life into death and woe. The lost home is to be restored through the sacrifice and blood of Jesus Christ, by which obedient overcomers are brought back to Paradise to eat again of the tree of life and live forever.
Garden Planted and Placed
God planted a garden eastward in Eden and put there the man He had formed, as part of a finished heaven and earth in which everything He could do was done. That creation needed no undoing, with nothing imperfect, incomplete, or left undone, and all the works of His hands were pronounced good. The dust of the ground from which man was formed was pure and the breath of life breathed into him was holy, the atmosphere of Eden was undefiled, and from sunbeams blessing the earth to fountains and streams watering the garden all was holy, clothed with spotless purity and unexcelled loveliness. All was in harmony with the character of the Father and the Son, by whom the worlds were made and in whom was life, and the life is the light of men, and in that beautiful setting untouched by sin Adam and Eve were to receive their education.
The garden was God's own handiwork, made by Himself beautiful and holy, clear, distinct, delightful, faultless and most desirable, a specimen of His work. He with His own hand plants great forest gardens and cares for them, promoting the growth of giant trees, shrubs and beautiful ferns, and His own work is seen in the streams of water on either side of the garden land. It contained every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food, four rivers ran by it, and the whole land was enriched with precious stones and gold and silver. Adam, created in His own image with finite mind and will and moral faculties after the similitude of God's mind and will, was placed there to labor together with God in harmony with His law with nothing interposed between Adam and Eve and their Maker, instructed how to care for the garden and given the pleasant employment of dressing and keeping it as the first man who labored together with God. Sin has desecrated the earth so Eden cannot now be expected to be found in it, and even the most desirable place will always have something to mar it. The land of promise with God's blessing upon it in Israel's possession would become a second Eden like it, with mountains clothed with cedars, hills of olives and vines, wide green plains bright with flowers and rich in fruitfulness, palm-trees, waving wheat and barley, sunny valleys with brooks and birds, fair gardens, goodly cities, lakes rich in abundance, grazing flocks, and honey even amid the rocks, blessed of the Lord with precious things of heaven, dew, the deep, fruits of the sun, chief things of the ancient mountains, and precious things of the earth and its fullness.
The earthly Eden points to an Eden above in heaven, where the blessing of God is seen in a fullness greater than anything experienced on this side of it. Eden holds riches far greater than this dark earth, and looking away from earth to those riches calls God's people to rid themselves of every hindrance, stand free, and press on to come off victorious, because heaven is cheap enough.
The record in Genesis 2 to which the verse belongs gives God's standard of right-doing and stands together with Exodus 20 as eternal truth that can never be changed, calling those training for the Lord's work to humble, meek, lowly devotion to God and obedience to His spoken words.
Eden is the measure of the earth's original beauty and perfection. Even after the curses brought by Adam's transgression and Cain's murder, the earth remained rich and lovely, but it was less fair than Eden and already showed signs of decay. The garden planted in Eden had glories that sinless eyes looked upon, standing in contrast with the earth's present state seen before human eyes now, and in His teaching Jesus opened divine, momentous truths from nature bound up with the beauty of natural things, yet made no mention of that contrast.
Beauty and Abundant Provision
Genesis 2:8 means that after forming man, God gave a further token of love beyond a creation already in the perfection of beauty and lacking nothing for happiness, by planting a garden especially as a comfortable, glorious, pure, lovely and perfect home and special residence. It was an expression of His love, care, goodness and desire to provide, blessed especially for Adam and Eve with his first wife until driven out for sin. There a portion of time was to be spent in the happy employment of dressing it, and a portion in receiving visits from angels, listening to their instruction, and in happy meditation, with labor not wearisome but pleasant and invigorating.
The garden contained trees of every variety for usefulness, beauty and food, many laden with fragrant and delicious fruit designed as food for the holy pair, with stately trees, plants, and abundant fruits, vegetables and grains supplying every physical need and everything lovely to the eye and required by physical necessity. In its midst stood the tree of life surpassing all other trees in glory, with fruit appearing like apples of gold and silver and having power to perpetuate life. God caused to grow out of the ground every variety, left no herb or flower or tree lacking for use or ornament to delight the senses, and surrounded them with a world of unsurpassed loveliness and glory as evidence of the goodness and love of a benevolent Creator.
Lovely upright vines of graceful appearance, unlike anything seen since the fall, did not trail on the ground or rest on trellises but stood upright with drooping branches bowed down by weight of fruit. They bore very large fruit called grapes of richest and most varied hues, nearly black, purple, red, pink, light green, tempting and of rich fragrance, beautiful to the eye and pleasant to the taste. It was the happy labor of Adam and Eve to train them into bowers and to make themselves a dwelling from living trees covered with foliage and fruit, forming beautiful bowers from branches of the vine into dwellings of nature's living trees and foliage laden with fragrant fruit. Fragrant flowers of every hue in rich profusion, every spire of grass and shrub and leaf and tree full of life, little birds with bright graceful plumage singing happy cheerful music, and an atmosphere filled with life made a place with no disease, decay or death, whose order and harmony declared infinite wisdom and knowledge. Adam and Eve kept discovering some new beauty and added glory in their home, joining the birds in harmonious songs of love, praise and adoration, with hearts filled with deeper love and lips bringing gratitude and reverence to the Creator.
The beauty of Eden shows that God loves and is pleased with what is beautiful, implanted love for beauty in the heart, and reveals His character, love and care. Its trees for usefulness and beauty, flowers and birds adding beauty and joy, and fruit meeting needs were gifts He intended people to enjoy and tend with happiness, giving reason to recognize Him and respond with gratitude, devotion and a correct view of Him. He requires them to give up only what would not be for their good and happiness, only what would harm happiness if kept.
Placed there, man began perfect in every physical, mental and spiritual endowment and in unfallen purity and holiness, pure and noble with no tendency or bias to evil, reflecting perfect workmanship and physical and intellectual excellence. Eden was the setting of that unfallen perfection, where everything in nature was pure and undefiled with fruits, flowers and beautiful lofty trees flourishing, where Adam was abundantly supplied with all required, walked and talked with God, lived in fellowship with God's Son and holy angels, and was in every way more favorably situated than Christ, connected with God and beloved by God. God surrounded him there with every inducement to remain loyal and obedient and placed His law around him as a safeguard, for it was not His purpose that man should be sinful. Even that perfect sinless humanity in innocence is so far below the Son of God that taking it would have been an almost infinite humiliation for Him, yet Jesus condescended still lower by not taking Adam's innocent Eden nature but accepting humanity as weakened and defiled by four thousand years of sin.
Eden is the pattern of God's original purpose for human life, diet and land, when simple fruits, grains and vegetables were provided as the best food for humanity. God would reform Israel's diet to bring the people as near as possible to Eden's original purity, though the promised land is described as a second Eden marred by the curse. With God's blessing in Israel's possession it would become like Eden, clear, distinct, beautiful and delightful, with mountains clothed with cedars, hills of olives and vines, wide green plains bright with flowers and rich in fruitfulness, palm-trees, waving wheat and barley, sunny valleys with brooks and birds, fair gardens, goodly cities, lakes rich in abundance, grazing flocks, and honey even amid the rocks, blessed of the Lord with precious things of heaven, dew, the deep, fruits of the sun, chief things of the ancient mountains, and precious things of the earth and its fullness.
Work and Education Pattern
God prepared a beautiful and abundant home and placed the man there as ruler of the domain, yet wealth and provision did not mean idleness, for He gave appointed work in dressing, keeping, cultivating, training and caring for the garden. Even in holy innocence happiness did not consist in doing nothing, for human beings were made for useful activity and the wonderful machinery of the human system needed something to call it into play. He who formed man knew what would be for his best happiness and no sooner created him than gave him employment, because without useful employment he would not be happy. A life of useful labor is therefore indispensable to physical, mental and moral well-being, and daily labor in the garden brought health, gladness, employment and happiness as pleasant and invigorating work.
Equal use of the mental and physical powers was the Lord's plan from the beginning, giving suitable and healthful employment for the physical powers in dressing the garden and keeping it to be combined with mental growth and with mental and moral training. Wise, useful employment of brain, bone and muscle fulfills one of God's purposes in creating the earth, and that Eden arrangement is the pattern to be carried out today, especially in schools, by joining manual training and useful labor with study of books so body, mind and character are developed together. That order to combine study with practical labor was planned in counsel with the Father before the world was, when useful labor was given as a safeguard in caring for fruit trees and cultivating and training vegetation. The order was to be perpetuated through all generations to the close of earth's history, so proper education means more than studying books and must exercise both physical and mental powers, training children from infancy to do useful work suited to their age and ability so they become independent and workers together with God.
Eden was the home of the first parents in a beautiful setting untouched by sin, where they were to receive their education through communion and daily lessons from God and joyful visits as He walked and talked with them. It was a model school in which the garden was the classroom, nature was the lesson book, God was the instructor, and Adam and Eve were the students. This first system of education, God's method of instructing Adam through communion with Himself, was intended as a model for all later time and for developing mankind.
In that garden home God instituted marriage as one of His first gifts, giving Adam Eve as a companion corresponding to him and joining them in the first marriage to love and be loved. Even beautiful scenes and delightful employments could not yield perfect happiness without human companionship of the same nature. The institution passed with Adam beyond Paradise after the fall into the fallen world as a continuing blessing that guards purity and happiness, provides for social needs, and elevates the physical, intellectual and moral nature when divine principles are obeyed. God Himself beautified that garden home where He placed Adam to dwell, and it was to be a pattern for other homes as his children went forth to occupy the earth.
It was not a gorgeous palace, for while men in pride delight in magnificent and costly edifices and glory in the works of their own hands, God placed Adam in a garden whose dome was the blue heavens, whose floor was the earth with delicate flowers and carpet of living green, whose canopy was the leafy branches of goodly trees, and whose walls were hung with the most magnificent adornings. The surroundings teach for all time that true happiness is found not in indulgence of pride and luxury but in communion with God through His created works. Giving less attention to the artificial and cultivating greater simplicity comes nearer to answering the purpose of God in creation, and while pride and ambition are never satisfied, those who are truly wise find substantial and elevating pleasure in the sources of enjoyment God has placed within the reach of all. As God planted and tenderly cared for a garden and placed the man He had formed in it, so He has planted and cared for people and expects them to bear the fruits of righteousness. Faithful cultivation of the soul and skillful work in His vineyard now prepares people to enter Paradise again, for Eden restored will be grand and beautiful and will be given to the faithful to cultivate under the supervision of God.
Communion Instruction Through Nature
In the garden the man and woman placed there lived in open fellowship with heaven, talking with their Creator face to face and joyfully greeting His visits as He walked and talked with them in the cool of the day. There they dwelt in the visible presence of God, of Christ as God's Son, and of holy angels, receiving daily instruction, happy meditation, and lessons taught by God Himself. Their unfallen perfection was the setting for this communion, and when sin entered the privilege was withdrawn so that man became subject to death and could no longer look upon the glory or live in that presence.
The whole natural world around them was designed to be an interpreter of God, full of His knowledge and teeming with divine instruction. It was vocal with the voice of wisdom to attentive ears, speaking to the eye and received into the heart, so that through created works they communed with God. In the objects of nature surrounding them were clearly seen and demonstrated His existence, eternal power, Godhead, divine character, and love for human intelligences. On everything upon the earth, from the loftiest tree of the forest to the lichen that clings to the rock, from the boundless ocean to the tiniest shell on the shore, may be beheld His image and superscription, with the Presence pervading all created things and the Voice speaking through nature's utterances in silent reminders of the spiritual and eternal. Before the fall their minds were unclouded with clear perception, perfectly conformed to the will of God and surrounded by His beautiful light, so that God instructed the holy pair through the works of His hands and they beheld beauty in every object upon which their eyes rested.
When they transgressed the law of the Most High the brightness from the face of God departed from the face of nature, dimming its witness. Nature is now marred and defiled and blighted by sin, no longer seen in undimmed brightness. Yet God's object-lessons are not obliterated, and traces of original loveliness remain in its beauty and variety, still revealing His handiwork, power, care, and glory. Rightly studied and interpreted nature still speaks of her Creator, reflecting as from a mirror the divine truth revealed in Holy Writ so that through creation the Creator becomes known. It remains a great lesson book and unfailing source of instruction and delight to guide lost sheep back to the fold, with the Holy Spirit flashing conviction into the mind through the study of His works, not by logical reasoning but by a deeper grasp through eye and ear still able to see and hear God, impressing the sublime spiritual truths of the written word on the heart.
The Garden of Eden is a picture of the Scriptures, for as God caused beautiful trees good for food to grow there, so the Word holds heavenly truths that feed the soul, strengthen and ennoble the mind with elevating thoughts, and fill the heart with purest emotions. Unlike Eden after sin, no cherubim with flaming sword blocks access to the tree of life in this garden, and every member of the human family whom Christ has redeemed by giving His life as their Substitute for a second probation may reach out to the soul-reviving fruit, eat freely, and live forever. The things of nature are still an expression of the love of God, and though marred by sin they still speak of that Eden home and are meant to remind of the time when it shall be restored and the earth shall be filled with praise. Beautiful flowers live on as memories of Eden pointing to the blessed country the faithful will soon enter, and the flowers and trees placed there carry health-giving properties for human good. Christ taught this care through nature, pointing to the simplicity and marvelous beauty of the lily and to God clothing the grass of the field. The account of the first parents in holy innocence in Eden, enjoying communion with God and sinless angels, provides the starting point for tracing the introduction of sin and its consequences through human history.
Testing Fall and Loss
God prepared a beautiful garden and placed Adam and Eve there with everything needed for happiness, to enjoy His favor, converse with Him and live in fellowship with Him, yet their life there included a test of loyalty in which evil was not kept beyond their reach and Satan was permitted to tempt them. Even that holy place made by God Himself was not closed to the tempter, who found entrance and left sin and disobedience there, so no place set apart for divine work is shut against him and against temptation to pride, vanity and love of display. Enduring that trial would have secured perpetual favor with God and with the heavenly angels.
Their happiness and safety depended on obedience, for Satan could exercise no power over them unless they disobeyed and lost God's favor. They were created pure and noble with no tendency or bias to evil, and it was never God's purpose that man should be sinful; instead He surrounded them in Eden with every inducement to remain loyal, true to allegiance and obedient. He placed His law around them as a safeguard and gave permission to eat of every tree in the garden but one.
The beauty of that garden home prepared for the happy, holy pair stirred Satan's envy and jealousy while they were happy in obedience to God's law. From the earliest history of man he began his efforts to deceive the race, seeking to cause their fall, gain power over them and take possession of the earth. Looking upon its beauty he was excited to bring the whole creation to unite with him in warfare against the government of God, and he immediately laid his plans in darkness, concealing his purpose.
By eating the forbidden fruit and transgressing God's law Adam and Eve lost beautiful Eden for themselves, were driven from the garden and the tree of life, and opened the floodgates of woe, death, grief and anguish upon the world. Eden was the Garden of God, a faultless and most desirable home of beauty and abundance, but sin blights and mars everything beautiful and has desecrated the earth, so Eden cannot now be expected to be found here and the most desirable place will always have something to mar it. Through the sacrifice of Christ alone fallen man in God's wise plans has been granted another trial, and after the faithful dead are resurrected Adam will see Eden restored and with repentance and faithful obedience again receive access to the tree of life.
Adam himself delineated the perfections of that lost home and his fall with its dreadful results to his children and children's children to the ninth generation. Living among men for nearly a thousand years as a witness to the results of sin, he carefully treasured what God revealed and was commanded to instruct his posterity in the way of the Lord, repeating the history of the fall, the load of grief from the rupture in his family ending in the death of Abel, and how his sufferings had taught him the necessity of strictly adhering to God's law. He declared that sin in whatever form will be punished, entreated them to obey, love and fear God to receive mercy, explained the merciful provisions for salvation, and faithfully sought to stem the tide of evil, yet few gave heed and he was often met with bitter reproaches for the sin that had brought woe upon his posterity.
At first, though marred by sin, the blight and curse rested lightly upon that lovely, glorious home of blooming beauty, fruitful trees, shady avenues, beautiful forests and gardens, with rich gifts of earth to enrich life and remind men of God. Because men were ungrateful, forgot God and disobeyed His law, the Flood utterly destroyed that home, uprooting its trees and groves and burying its lovely places under rubbish, earth and upthrown rocks, turning its fruitful surface into a broken, uneven, frightful solitude still seen in deep gorges and seamed and cleft rocks. Their example and the result of their transgression should lead every soul to avoid sin and abhor it as the hateful thing it is, feeling in view of the sufferings sin is sure to inflict that it is better to suffer loss of all things than to depart from the least of God's commandments.
Eden Preserved and Restored
God planted the garden in Eden and especially blessed it as pure and lovely and perfect, and there He placed the man He had formed with his first wife until they were driven out for sin. After their expulsion the garden remained on earth as a specimen of His perfect creation, kept free from the curse placed on the earth and from sin's curse. Its cherubim-guarded entrance stood in sight for many centuries with the glory of God revealed there, a silent witness to truth giving unequaled opportunity to gain knowledge of God through His works, so that skepticism could not deny Eden while watching angels bar its gate. In providence God withdrew it and caught it up from the earth before the Flood so it would not feel the marks of the curse, preserving it unspoiled, and He will return it to the earth again more gloriously adorned than before. Moses was shown that lovely preserved garden as a specimen of His handiwork, and joy came over his face as he beheld it.
Its gate became the place of the first worshipers, where altars were reared and offerings presented and where Cain and Abel brought their sacrifices and God communicated with men. The order of creation, the object of the garden, and the history of its two trees so closely connected with man's destiny remained undisputed facts. The existence and supreme authority of God and the obligation of His law were truths men were slow to question while Adam was among them.
The Eden home God prepared for our first parents as an expression of His love was lost when Adam and Eve transgressed God's law, but that lost home is to be restored to man through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Jesus pleaded with the Father and offered His life as a ransom and took the sentence of death upon Himself so man could find pardon, and through the merits of His blood and obedience to God's law pardoned sinners gain God's favor and are brought back into the beautiful garden to eat of the fruit of the tree of life. The ransom price paid to redeem men from Satan opens the way back, and return comes through being in right relation to God, searching the Scriptures, refusing to transgress as Adam and Eve did, obeying all God's requirements, and overcoming as Christ overcame by perfect obedience to His Father's commandments. Bending footsteps heavenward toward that home points others to it, and those who heal the sick and medical and healing institutions established in quiet secluded places as far from cities as is consistent are to instruct patients concerning the love of God and the Eden home to be restored while using all the restorative agencies He has provided.
The garden contained the tree of life whose fruit possessed supernatural virtue as the antidote of death so that to eat was to live forever, with leaves for the sustaining of life and immortality, and the tree of life was a type of Christ the one great Source of immortality and fountain of life and bread of life whose words are spirit and life. The garden also contained the tree of the knowledge of good and evil whose fruit was forbidden to touch as Adam's test, and Adam ate and failed and through disobedience death entered the world and opened woe upon it and shut man off from access to the tree of life. Now life and immortality are brought to light only through Jesus Christ, and obedience to Him is the life-giving power that gladdens the soul. To him that overcomes will be granted to eat of the tree of life in the midst of the Paradise of God, and after the faithful dead are resurrected Adam sees Eden restored and again receives access to the tree of life with repentance and faithful obedience accompanying his return.
Eden's garden-and-field life is a picture of life on the restored earth, where people will enjoy their homes and the fruit of their labor. Eden restored will be grand and beautiful, and it will be given to the faithful to cultivate under the supervision of God, for faithful cultivation of the soul and skillful work in God's vineyard now prepares people to enter Paradise again. A home where the presence of Christ dwells becomes like that Eden of bliss, with the common waters of life turned into the wine of heaven. When husband and wife cooperate and the mother consecrates herself and her offspring to God both before and after birth, her ministries of love shape the home after Eden, and the family becomes a beautiful symbol of the family in heaven.
Pattern for Homes Today
God planted a garden and put man there because it was never His purpose for people to be crowded together in cities, huddled in terraces and tenements, but to live in a garden amid beautiful sights and attractive sounds, with good air and room and ground for cultivation. In the beginning He placed the first parents in such a garden for happiness and not for continual worry, and at creation man was perfectly happy in untainted purity. That garden was an emblem of heaven and of the love of God, where flowers showed beauty and loveliness with grateful fragrance, fruit trees bore precious treasures for man's good, and birds on every tree sang praise to God, which Adam and Eve delighted to hear. Those same sights and sounds are what He wants men and women to rejoice in today, delighting in His works as Adam and Eve in purity did, with varied trees, flowers, shrubs, birds, and pleasant sights and sounds around them.
The more nearly life comes into harmony with that original garden plan, the more favorable the position for recovery and preservation of health. Living more nearly in harmony with that plan favors health of body, mind, and soul. Nature's attractive surroundings can divert the sick from themselves and lift their thoughts to God, for the garden is the Lord's garden. Sanitariums, schools, and medical institutions should therefore be in quiet country places where God works wonderfully to restore, and where patients learn of His love and of the Eden to be restored.
The garden given as the first home for the man He had formed makes the home on earth to be a symbol of and preparation for the home in heaven. Choosing a home should therefore serve what is lasting and encourage simplicity, purity, health, and real worth rather than wealth, fashion, or social custom, and choosing natural surroundings for institutions follows the same plan. His people are not to crowd into the cities but to live where they can have elbow room, taking their families out of the cities to better prepare for eternal life, purchasing a little piece of land where they can have a garden. There children can watch the flowers growing and learn lessons of simplicity and purity, with parents pointing them to the roses and lilies and pinks and then to the living God to teach His love for them, while flowers now give a little taste of that Eden as an expression of God's love.
A home where the presence of Christ dwells becomes like that Eden of bliss, with the common waters of life turned into the wine of heaven. When husband and wife cooperate and the mother consecrates herself and her offspring to God both before and after birth, her ministries of love shape the home after Eden, and the family becomes a beautiful symbol of the family in heaven. Sin marred God's purpose and brought the care and anguish that rends hearts, but God has not abandoned the earth. His image is to be impressed on souls again, angels filling human hearts with the peace of heaven, His people joyful as they repose in Him and realize His goodness, mercy and love, while sinners are to be converted to Him.
In a little while they will have to leave the cities because the cities are filled with wickedness of every kind, with strikes and murders and suicides, where Satan controls minds for destruction. They are to get out as soon as possible. God wants people to delight in the beautiful things of His creation and to see in them what He will do for them, with peace and gladness and joy filling life.