2:10-14 — 10A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12(The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin1 and onyx are also there.) 13The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. 14The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
[T - OL ]
Not only was the garden planted with "all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food" as well as holding the greatest secrets of life, it was well watered by a river that in turn issued into four other rivers, two of which were the most important—culturally and commercially—and well known in the ancient world, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Water has always been a matter of life and death for the ancients and features significantly as a motif of divine largess and mercy in the OT; withholding water in drought or inundation by floods signify divine displeasure. NIV's rather passive rendition of the river "watering the garden" is too weak; the Hebrew is more purposefully focused: the river flowed out of Eden lehashqot, "to cause the garden to refresh itself" . This was a well-tended garden indeed; even Capability Brown, for once, would be dumbfounded.3
Not only was the garden well-tended, the river nourishing it was so inexpressive that "after having watered the garden, [it] could still enclose the entire world with four arms and fructify it. All the water outside of Paradise, which supplies all civilizations, is, so to speak, only a remainder or residue from the water of Paradise!"4 We have already seen earlier how the author frames his plotline (see below, again). Notice again how the reference to the great rivers is sandwiched by what God was doing in the garden of Eden:
A. Yhwh God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Then Yhwh God planted a garden in Eden—there He put the man, 2:7-8.
B. Yhwh made " all kinds of trees (kol-'ets) grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food (ma'akal)," 2:8-9a.
C. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," 2:9b.
X. Location of Eden with its River Nourishing Mesopotamia, 2:10-14
A'. Yhwh God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work
it and take care of it, 2:15.
B'. "And Yhwh God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat ('akol
to'kel) from any tree (kol 'ets) in the garden," 2:16.
C'. "but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die,'" 2:17.
Here is another way of saying the same thing.
A. Yahweh God puts the Man in the Garden (vv8-9):
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for eating. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
B. Location of Eden (vv10-14):
The Four Rivers Nourishing Eden
A'. Yahweh God puts the Man in the Garden (vv15-19):
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
In doing this, the author may be suggesting that for all the fame and successes the four rivers were known to be associated with—Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia—they paled in significance to what God is doing with the garden in which the First Man was placed. These world famous civilizations may boast of the finest gold and precious commodities, but they are nourished only the the tailends of the water that waters Eden.
There in the Garden of Eden—God's Garden—God would "take the man and put him to work and take care of" the garden. All four verbs are important, and we shall soon turn to them.
Pihon is not a geographically identifiable river and appears here only in the OT. Gihon, as a river also appears only here. Though the main source of water for Jerusalem was a spring named Gihon, it is obvious that it could not be what is referenced here since this one "winds through the entire land of Cush". Cush almost always refers to the land we now know as Ethiopia. A better proposition is suggested by E. A. Speiser that Cush in this verse should rather be understood as the land of the Kassites,5 a people native to the Zagros Mountains (in northern modern Iran) who established the longest dynasty in Babylonian history. Their land were fed by rivers from the mountains that empty into the Tigris. The Tigris and the Euphrates mark out the other limits of Eden. Given the broad strokes used and the scarcitiy of specific information, any attempt to locate the Garden exactly will be an exercise in futility. These rivers together, however, set Eden somewhere in the northern part of what we now call Mesopotamia or the ancient Near East, where most archaeologists believe the most important of the oldest human civilizations began (Egypt excepted). Beyond that we can say no more.6
Notice also that though gold and precious stones are mentioned, they do not belong in Eden but outside it, in Havilah. Whether this makes a deliberate point is not certain, though Victor Hamilton makes the tantalizing observation that while "water, food, and monogamous marriage are a part of Eden, riches and precious metals are not."7
You may wish to read the following commentaries-expositions:
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2016