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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Genesis 2:8 - 2:8
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The abode, which God prepared for the first man, was a “garden in Eden,” also called “the garden of Eden” (Gen 2:15; Gen 3:23-24; Joe 2:3), or Eden (Isa 51:3; Eze 28:13; Eze 31:9). Eden (עֵדֶן, i.e., delight) is the proper name of a particular district, the situation of which is described in Gen 2:10.; but it must not be confounded with the Eden of Assyria (2Ki 19:12, etc.) and Coelesyria (Amo 1:5), which is written with double seghol. The garden (lit., a place hedged round) was to the east, i.e., in the eastern portion, and is generally called Paradise from the Septuagint version, in which the word is rendered παράδεισος. This word, according to Spiegel, was derived from the Zendic pairi-daêza, a hedging round, and passed into the Hebrew in the form פַּרְדֵּס (Son 4:13; Ecc 2:5; Neh 2:8), a park, probably through the commercial relations which Solomon established with distant countries. In the garden itself God caused all kinds of trees to grow out of the earth; and among them were tow, which were called “the tree of life” and “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” on account of their peculiar significance in relation to man (see Gen 2:16 and Gen 3:22). הַדַּעַת, an infinitive, as Jer 22:16 shows, has the article here because the phrase ורע טוב דעת is regarded as one word, and in Jeremiah from the nature of the predicate.