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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Paradise
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(See EDEN.) From Sanskrit paradesa, "a foreign ornamental garden" attached to a mansion (; "gardens," "orchard," pardes). An earthly paradise can never make up for losing a heavenly paradise (; -2; ). Compare the Holy Land turned from a garden of Eden into a wilderness, with Israel's wilderness made like Eden the garden of Jehovah (; ; ; ; contrast ). Paradise is the blessed resting place with Jesus to which the penitent thief's soul was received until the resurrection of the body ().
Paul in a trance was caught up even to the third heaven, into paradise (; ). In Eden Adam and Eve lived solitary, exhibiting the perfection of the individual. The heavenly home shall be not merely a garden, but a city, the perfect communion of saints (; Revelation 21; 22). Earthly cities, Nineveh, Babylon, and Thebes, rested on mere force; Athens and Corinth on intellect, art, and refinement, divorced from morality; Tyre on gain; even Jerusalem on religious privileges more than on love, truth, righteousness, and holiness of heart before God. But the coming city shall combine all that was excellent of the first Eden, with the perfect polity that rests on Christ the chief corner stone, in which symmetry, grace, power, and the beauty of holiness shall shine for ever.