Genesis 2:8-14
The river and the four heads
The account maps the place before anything happens in it, which is what makes it read as a location rather than a symbol.
Places of the Bible
Eden
A garden with a river, two named trees, and one instruction.
Eden is planted eastward and a river runs out of it, dividing into four heads whose names the account gives as carefully as a surveyor would. The man is put there to work it and keep it, which makes it a place with a job attached rather than a place to rest. Two trees are named out of everything growing there. Only one of them is closed, and it is the closing that the rest of the chapter turns on.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Eden
- 01
- 02
Genesis 2:15-17
To work it and keep it
The garden comes with responsibility and one boundary. Everything else in it is open.
- 03
Genesis 3:1-7
The conversation
The one closed thing becomes the only thing in view. The garden does not change, the people in it do.
- 04
Genesis 3:22-24
The gate
The way back to the tree of life is barred. It is the first time in Scripture a place is closed to people.
Why it matters
Eden is the picture the whole Bible keeps measuring distance from. Exile begins here, the way back is barred here, and the last pages of Scripture answer it directly with a city that has a river running through it and the tree of life growing on both banks. It is less a lost paradise than an unfinished one.
6 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
