Eden

Eden is both the name of one person and two places in the OT.

Places:

1. The land where God established a garden into which He placed the first man He had formed, and from which, as a consequence of their obedience in eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were banished.

Given the limited information provided in the Gen 2 account, it is futile trying—despite many attempts—to locate the place more precisely than to say that it is somewhere in what we call the Middle East today, and where archaeologists believe the earliest human civilizations arose. Many scholars now do not think Eden is a proper name, but a common noun possibly derived from Sumerian and meaning 'plain,' or 'steppe.' Perhaps it may be both; just as the Prairie is a well-known region so prairie is also any treeless rolling plain covered in grass.

Though Eden is famously associated with Genesis, most of the references to Eden in the OT are found elsewhere, most notably in Ezekiel where it found as often as in Genesis (see concordance iteming below). Though the word paradise does not appear in the OT accounts of Eden, paradise comes close to the general picture of Eden portrayed in there.

Resources:

Gregory K. Beale, "Eden, The Temple, and the Church's Mission in the New Creation," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48/1 (March 2005): 5-31.

2. A town/city "in Tel Assar" mentioned in the item of cities whose gods Sennecherib claimed his forefathers had destroyed in his attempt to weaken to the resolve of Hezekiah during his sieze of Jerusalem (2 Ki 19:12//Isa 37:12). This is probably the same city mentioned by Ezekiel as having traded "beautiful garments, blue fabric, embroidered work and multicoloured rugs with cords twisted and tightly knotted" with Tyre (27:23-24) and, possibly, also called Beth-Eden by the prophet Amos (1:5). It was probably located in Syria.

Person:

One of the Levites set to work on cleansing the temple in Jerusalem in the reign of Hezekiah, and identified as "the son of Joah" (2 Chron 29:12). Most probably he should also be identified with the person of the same name involved in the reorganization of the priests and levites in 31:15.

Concordance (Place, NIV):

Gen 2:8 — Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

Gen 2:10 — A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters.

Gen 2:15 — The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

Gen 3:23 — So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

Gen 3:24 — After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Gen 4:16 — So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Isa 51:3 — The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.

Eze 28:13 — You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared.

Eze 31:9 — I made it beautiful with abundant branches, the envy of all the trees of Eden in the garden of God.

Eze 31:16 — I made the nations tremble at the sound of its fall when I brought it down to the grave with those who go down to the pit. Then all the trees of Eden, the choicest and best of Lebanon, all the trees that were well-watered, were consoled in the earth below.

Eze 31:18 — Which of the trees of Eden can be compared with you in splendour and majesty? Yet you, too, will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the earth below; you will lie among the uncircumcised, with those killed by the sword. "`This is Pharaoh and all his hordes, declares the Sovereign Lord.'"

Eze 36:35 — They will say, "This land that was laid waste has become like the garden of Eden; the cities that were lying in ruins, desolate and destroyed, are now fortified and inhabited."

Joel 2:3 — Before them fire devours, behind them a flame blazes. Before them the land is like the garden of Eden, behind them, a desert waste—nothing escapes them.