Ee´duhn
The garden in which the first man and woman were placed and from which they were driven because of their breach of divine law. Its location “in the east” (Gen 2:8) probably places it in the area at the head of the Persian Gulf. Eden is the source of four great rivers (Gen 2:10-14) and the site of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, both of which are “in the midst of the garden” (Gen 2:9; Gen 3:3). After Genesis, the most important source of references to Eden is the book of Ezekiel. In (Ezek 28:11-19), a variant of the Eden story in Genesis, the prophet describes Eden as the “garden of God” (Gen 28:13) situated on God’s holy mountain, from which primal man was expelled by the cherub because of his iniquity. The Garden of Eden is used as a metaphor for the renewal of the land of Israel by God after the exile (Ezek 36:35; Isa 51:3), where “Eden” is paralleled by “garden of Yahweh”). In (Joel 2:3), the transformation of the land from Garden of Eden to devastated wilderness is part of an oracle forecasting the Day of Yahweh.
