The garden, the trees, and the command (Genesis 2:8–17)
Says The Lord God plants a garden in Eden and places the man there. A river parts into four heads; Tigris and Euphrates are named. In the middle stand the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The command is given to the man before the woman is built: every tree but one is given for food; “in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” He is placed in the garden “to cultivate and keep it.”
Implies The death threatened in 2:17 is carried out in 3:19 and 5:5, as the Romans notes read it. See the notes on Romans 5.
Uncertain Where Eden lay, and whether the garden is pictured as a sanctuary, are open; see the Hebrew notes. No lean is taken here. Early views of the location, and comparisons with Mesopotamian clay-formation scenes, are gathered in the historical note. No dependence either way is claimed.
Uncertain What “knowledge of good and evil” means, what the work of 2:15 is, and how “in the day” works, are treated in the Hebrew notes, with no lean. A thousand-year reading of the “day” is noted as early in the historical note, not as a live option. Whether bodily death would have come without the trespass is not settled in Genesis 2 alone.
Claims
- SaysThe Lord God plants a garden in Eden and places the man there; a river parts into four heads; in the middle stand the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The command is given to the man before the woman is built; he may eat of every tree but one, and “in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” He is placed in the garden “to cultivate and keep it.”
- ImpliesThe death threatened in 2:17 is carried out in 3:19 and 5:5, as the Romans notes read it. See the notes on Romans 5.
- UncertainWhere Eden lay, and whether the garden is pictured as a sanctuary, are open; see the Hebrew notes. Early views of the location, and comparisons with Mesopotamian clay-formation scenes, are gathered in the historical note. No dependence either way is claimed. No lean is taken here.
- UncertainWhat “knowledge of good and evil” means, what the work of 2:15 is, and how “in the day” works, are treated in the Hebrew notes, with no lean. A thousand-year reading of the “day” is noted as early in the historical note, not as a live option. Whether bodily death would have come without the trespass is not settled in Genesis 2 alone.
Citations
- BSB public domain Gen 2:1–25
- OSHB CC BY 4.0 Gen 2:1–25 (WLC/OSHB), cantillation removed
- LXX (Swete) CC BY-SA 4.0 Gen 2:1–24 and Swete 3:1 (ENG 2:25), vol. 1, pp. 3–4 (oldtestamentingr01swetuoft, viewer leaves n34–n35); read on the page images
Quotations from LXX (Swete) are used under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credits
2026-11-10
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