Genesis 2:10

2:8-14 The place fixed upon for Adam to dwell in, was not a palace, but a garden. The better we take up with plain things, and the less we seek things to gratify pride and luxury, the nearer we approach to innocency. Nature is content with a little, and that which is most natural; grace with less; but lust craves every thing, and is content with nothing. No delights can be satisfying to the soul, but those which God himself has provided and appointed for it. Eden signifies delight and pleasure. Wherever it was, it had all desirable conveniences, without any inconvenience, though no other house or garden on earth ever was so. It was adorned with every tree pleasant to the sight, and enriched with every tree that yielded fruit grateful to the taste and good for food. God, as a tender Father, desired not only Adam's profit, but his pleasure; for there is pleasure with innocency, nay there is true pleasure only in innocency. When Providence puts us in a place of plenty and pleasure, we ought to serve God with gladness of heart in the good things he gives us. Eden had two trees peculiar to itself. 1. There was the tree of life in the midst of the garden. Of this man might eat and live. Christ is now to us the Tree of life, Re 2:7; 22:2; and the Bread of life, Joh 6:48,51. 2. There was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so called because there was a positive revelation of the will of God about this tree, so that by it man might know moral good and evil. What is good?

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden,.... Before man was created, as Aben Ezra observes, this river went out of Eden and watered it on every side; but what river is here meant, is hard to say. It is more generally thought to be the river Euphrates, when that and the Tigris met, and became one stream or river, and as such entered and passed through Eden; and as it was parted into four rivers afterwards, in two of which they retained their names: the learned Reland (k) thinks, this river is now lost; but the learned writer before referred to thinks, as has been observed, that it is the river Jordan; see note on Gen 2:8 and which, as Pliny (l) says, was a very pleasant river: and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads; after it had passed through Eden, and the garden in it, watering it, it divided into four parts or heads of water, or four chief principal rivers, hereafter mentioned; and which circumstance the above writer thinks makes it the more probable to be the river Jordan, which and with the four rivers are spoken of together by the son of Sirach, in the Apocrypha:"25 He filleth all things with his wisdom, as Phison and as Tigris in the time of the new fruits. 26 He maketh the understanding to abound like Euphrates, and as Jordan in the time of the harvest. 27 He maketh the doctrine of knowledge appear as the light, and as Geon in the time of vintage.'' (Sirach 24)of which in the following verses.

Genesis 2:10-14. A river went out of Eden — This river, branching itself into four streams, contributed much both to the pleasantness and fertility of the garden. Hiddekel and Euphrates are rivers of Babylon: but we need not wonder that the rise and situation of all these rivers cannot now be perfectly ascertained, considering the great changes produced in the state of the earth, as well by earthquakes as by the general deluge. Havilah had gold, and spices, and precious stones: but Eden had that which was infinitely better, the tree of life, and communion with God. And to these blessings we may have access, although shut out of the literal Eden. Reader, dost thou desire them?

(10) A river went out of Eden. —Out of the large region of which the garden formed a part. The tenses, too, are present, as if the main features of the country remained unchanged: “a river goeth forth from Eden, and thence outside of it is parted, and becometh four main streams.” The idea is that of a stream rising in Eden, and flowing through the Paradise, and at some distance outside of it divided into four great rivers. This has made many suppose that the site of Paradise was in the Persian Gulf, in a region now submerged; and the Babylonian legends actually place it there, at Eridu, at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates. The two other rivers they suppose to have been the Indus and the Nile, represented by the two coasts of the Persian Gulf. Sir H. Rawlinson suggests the Babylonian province of Gan-duniyas, where four rivers may be found; but in neither case could the ark have floated against the current of the flood up to the highlands of Armenia. We must add that many authors of note have regarded the whole as symbolical, among whom is the famous Syriac writer, Bar-Hebraeus, who regards it as a description of the human body.

10 . And a river went out ] The description of the river in this verse is as follows: (1) it took its rise in the land of Eden; (2) it flowed through the garden, and irrigated it; (3) after passing through the garden, it separated into four branches, or, as they are here called, “heads.” to water ] The same word as in Genesis 2:6 , “a mist … watered the whole face of the ground.” The account which follows (11–14) is irreconcilable with scientific geography. But the locality of a garden planted by the Lord God, containing two wonder-working trees, is evidently not to be looked for on maps. In the description of the four rivers, we must remember that the Israelites possessed only a very vague knowledge of distant lands. They depended upon the reports of travellers who possessed no means of accurate survey. Mediaeval maps often present the most fantastic and arbitrary arrangement of rivers and seas to meet the conjectures of the cartographist. We need not be surprised, if the early traditions of the Hebrews claimed that the four greatest known rivers of the world had branched off from the parent stream, which, rising in Eden, had passed through the garden of the Lord God.

The four rivers here mentioned are referred to in the order of Pishon, Tigris, Euphrates, and Gihon in Sir 24:25-27 . “Alexander the Great believed he had found the sources of the Nile in the Indus, because of the crocodiles and beans he saw there (Arrian, vi. i. 2 ff.; Str. xv. i. 25) … Pausanias records the tradition that ‘the same Nile is the river Euphrates, which was lost in a lake, and reemerged as the Nile in the remote part of Ethiopia’ ” (Gordon, p. 278). When such views of geography were held by the most enlightened Greeks, we need wonder at nothing in the primitive traditions of Palestine. 10–14. A Geographical Description of the Garden This is very probably a later insertion. It interrupts the sequence of thought.

A river, or, rivers, by a common enallage. Eden, the country in which Paradise was; where those rivers either arose from one spring, or met together in one channel. From the garden, it was divided into four principal rivers, concerning which there are now many disputes. But it is no wonder if the rise and situation of these rivers be not now certainly known, because of the great changes, which in so long time might happen in this as well as in other rivers, partly by earthquakes, and principally by the general deluge. And yet Euphrates and Tigris, the chief of these rivers, whereof the other two are branches, are discovered by some learned men to have one and the same original or spring, and that in a most pleasant part of Armenia, where they conceive Paradise was. See my Latin Synopsis.

9. tree of life—so called from its symbolic character as a sign and seal of immortal life. Its prominent position where it must have been an object of daily observation and interest, was admirably fitted to keep man habitually in mind of God and futurity. tree of the knowledge of good and evil—so called because it was a test of obedience by which our first parents were to be tried, whether they would be good or bad, obey God or break His commands.

Verse 10. - The precise locality of Eden is indicated by its relation to the great watercourses of the region. And a river (literally, a flowing water, applicable to large oceanic floods - Job 22:16 ; Psalm 24:2 ; Psalm 46:5 ; Jonah 2:4 - as well as to narrow streams) went out (literally, going out) of Eden to water the garden. To conclude from this that the river had its source within the limits of the garden is to infer more than the premises will warrant. Nothing more is implied in the language than that a great watercourse proceeded through the district of Eden, and served to irrigate the soil. Probably it intersected the garden, thus occasioning its remarkable fecundity and beauty. And from thence ( i.e. either on emerging from which, or, taking מן in its secondary sense, outside of, or at a distance from which) it was parted (literally, divided itself), and became into four heads. Roshim , from rosh , that which is highest; either principal waters, arms or branches (Taylor Lewis, Alford), or beginnings of rivers, indicating the sources of the streams (Gesenius, Keil, Macdonald, Murphy). If the second of these interpretations be adopted, Eden must be looked for in a spot where some great flowing water is subdivided into four separate streams; if the former be regarded as the proper exegesis, then any great river which is first formed by the junction of two streams, and afterwards disperses its waters in two different directions, will meet the requirements of the case.