The Lord does not breathe into man the breath of life for him to exist in the abstract, nor for him to struggle to find purpose through some existential crisis; rather, the life that God imparts to man is to be understood concretely within the covenantal realm of the garden-kingdom where personal fellowship with God was to be experienced.[1] The Lord put the man he formed in the garden he planted, so that man’s life with God—a covenant communion bond exercised in the reciprocal giving of one’s whole self to the other—would be concretized in a holy realm. Immediately following God’s conferral of life upon man, he puts him in his personally cultivated garden-kingdom:

[T]hen the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed (Gen. 2:7-8).

Life cannot be possessed in the abstract, but only in relation to the source of life himself. As Kline writes,

Eternal life properly so called, the life signified by the tree of life, is life as confirmed and ultimately perfected in man’s glory-likeness to God, life in the fellowship of God’s Presence. Access to the tree of life and its fruit is only in the holy place where the Glory-Spirit dwells; to be driven from there is to be placed under judgment of death.[2]

This is the consistent testimony of Scripture.

Life is invigorated within a holy kingdom filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14).

The true path of life leads into a realm maximally charged with the presence of God where there is fullness of joy (Ps. 16:11).

Life is found there, where God receives unto himself a people to be his special possession and he gives himself to them as their God (Exod. 6:7; Lev. 26:12).

True life is nothing less than to possess God himself as one’s inheritance (Ps. 73:26; Rom. 8:17).

This concrete conception of life as a covenantal communion bond with God is evident from at least two elements contained in Genesis 1-3: (1) the garden of God and (2) the tree of life. We’ll consider the first in this article.

That the garden-kingdom was a theocentric realm where God placed man in personal relationship with himself is seen in that it was a garden he personally planted and was called the garden of God (Gen. 2:8; Ezek. 28:13; 31:8, 9). The garden, according to Vos, was “not in the first instance an abode for man as such, but specifically a place of reception of man into fellowship with God in God’s own dwelling-place.”[3] The garden was a created holy realm or kingdom that facilitated life, that is, union and communion with God.[4] It was the place where God walked with man in life-giving fellowship (Gen. 3:8).

The same point can also be argued by way of contrast. Death, as the opposite of life, is banishment from the kingdom where God’s presence abides and so to have the communion bond with the source of life severed.

In the Bible, death is the reverse of life—it is not the reverse of existence. To die does not mean to cease to be, but in biblical terms it means ‘cut off from the land of the living,; henceforth unable to act, and to enter another condition.[5]

Collins notes that מות can refer to a kind of “spiritual death,” that is “estrangement from a life-giving relationship with God.”[6] This sense is found in Prov. 12:28, “In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death” (see also Prov. 23:13-14). More pointedly, Vos writes,

It was intimated that death carried with it separation from God, since sin issued both in death and in the exclusion from the garden. If life consisted in communion with God, then, on the principle of opposites, death may have been interpretable as separation from God.[7]

So in carrying out the judgment of death in response to Adam’s disobedience, God drove man out of the garden of God, that is, out of his kingdom and so away from his life-giving presence (Gen. 3:24).[8] For this reason, the later exile of Israel from the promised land, in which the typological kingdom of God was established, was understood as a kind of death from which the nation would need to be resurrected like dry bones to new life (Ezek. 37:1-14).

[1] For an extensive argument for the garden as God’s covenant-kingdom see Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview, 22-61. See also G. K. Beale, New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, 617-22.

[2] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 94-95.

[3] Vos, Biblical Theology, 27.

[4] See Van Groningen, From Creation to Consummation, 1:71-72: “Eden … was the place of life.”

[5] Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis, 171.

[6] Collins, Genesis 1-4, 117.

[7] Vos, Biblical Theology, 40.

[8] Those who are sentenced to eschatological death in Revelation are found outside the gates of the city (Rev. 22:15), having no right of access to the tree of life (22:14).

Life—understood biblically as the enjoyment of the covenant communion bond with God in a holy kingdom—is brought into close association with God’s word from the beginning. It was Adam’s response to the word of God (in either obedience or disobedience) that characterized his probation: obedience to it would entail eschatological life as symbolized in the tree of life, while disobedience would incur death away from the life-giving presence of God. Even in the pre-redemptive state, God’s word was to regulate the communion bond of life into which Adam was brought. The covenant relationship was not a joint-venture between God and Adam, but the sovereign imposition of God by which he brought man into personal fellowship with himself to be graciously and lovingly ruled by his word and so with him find fullness of life. Adam was to live in accordance with God’s interpretation of himself and his surroundings, not his own autonomous interpretation. Adam, for one, could not have intuited from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that it was forbidden and would lead to death without a special word revelation from God. Vern Poythress writes,

Verbal communication was one aspect of personal communion between God and man. Through his Words God also gave guidance and direction in both general [Gen. 1:28] and specific [Gen. 2:17] ways. … When he created man, God never intended that man should find his way in the world just by using his mind and observing the trees and the soil around him. God spoke. God instructed. And because it was God who spoke, he spoke with absolute authority, the authority of the Creator. This speech was designed to govern everything else in human life.[1]

From the beginning man was not to live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (see Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4; Jn. 4:34). This principle will run throughout redemptive-history as the communion bond between God and his people is established, maintained, and consummated by the power of his revealed word, which is to be life (even resurrection life) for them.[2]

[Y]ou have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for: “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:23-25).

In contrast to the life-giving word of God, the twisted words of the serpent stood in opposition as death stood in opposition to life. The words of the serpent sought to compromise and ultimately destroy the very communion bond that was Adam’s life by injecting into it suspicion and doubt as to the good and gracious character and purpose of God. Sinclair Ferguson captures this well,

In Eden the Serpent persuaded Eve and Adam that God was possessed of a narrow and restrictive spirit bordering on the malign. … [The serpent’s temptation] was intended to dislodge Eve from the clarity of God’s word. … But it was more. It was an attack on God’s character. … The Serpent’s tactic was to lead her into seeing and interpreting the world through her eyes (what she saw when she looked at the tree) rather than through her ears (what God had said about it). … In both mind and affections God’s law was now divorced from God’s gracious person. Now she thought God wanted nothing for her. Everything was myopic, distorted ‘now.’ … [W]hat the Serpent accomplished in Eve’s mind, affections, and will was a divorce between God’s revealed will and his gracious, generous character. Trust in him was transformed into suspicion of him by looking at ‘naked law’ rather than hearing ‘law from the gracious lips of the heavenly Father.’ God thus became to her “He-whose-favor-has-to-be-earned.”[3]

The Serpent’s words were a targeted attack aimed at severing the wholesome life-giving fellowship of union and communion that Adam enjoyed with God. For Adam to submit to the word of God meant life, but for him to submit to the word of the serpent meant death. So because of his silence before the forbidden tree, Adam failed to counter the serpent’s venomous lies with the truth of God and so incurred death away from the life-giving presence of God. Rather than experiencing joy in the presence of God, a lethal fear entered his heart, a fear of the source of life, God himself (3:10).

Into this situation the grace and mercy of God resounds in the words of curse pronounced upon the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” The dark communion bond between the woman and the serpent is severed by the interjection of enmity and ultimate triumph over the serpent is promised. The communion bond of life with God is restored and consummated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ whose Gospel Word and Spirit are now the power of life for all who are united to him by faith.

[1] From the forward to John Frame, Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief, ed. Joseph E. Torres (2^nd ed.; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2015), xix. For more on this see Vern S. Poythress, In the Beginning Was the Word: Language: A God-Centered Approach (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009). See also Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology: Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God, ed. William Edgar (2^nd ed.; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), 125-26.

[2] For a concise biblical theology of the centrality of the word of God in human living, see Vern S. Poythress’s forward to John Frame, Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief, xviii-xxii.

[3] Sinclair Ferguson, The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, & Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (Wheaten, IL: Crossway, 2016), 80, 81, 82.

The garden of Eden was not just some Mesopotamian farmland, but an archetypal sanctuary or a temple-garden.[1] Though we often speak of “the Garden of Eden” as a single place, a close reading of the text reveals that Eden and the garden are distinct. Note especially Genesis 2:8, “The LORD God planted a garden in Eden.” It’s been suggested that the garden is attached to Eden, with Eden itself being the temple since “a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden” (Gen. 2:10).[2]

However, Genesis 1-3 does not explicitly state that Eden has an architectural structure, nor does it even use the word “temple” or “sanctuary” to describe it. So how do we know that it was a temple? Numerous scholars have argued for this understanding of Eden based on the many parallels that exist between the garden and later Israelite sanctuaries.[3] Here are twelve of those arguments in summary form.[4]

1. Just as the temple was the place of God’s unique presence experienced by the priests, so Eden was the place where God walked with Adam. G.K. Beale notes, “The same Hebrew verbal form (Hithpael) used for God’s “walking back and forth” in the garden (Gen. 3:8) also describes God’s presence in the tabernacle (Lev. 26:12; Deut. 23:14 [23:15 MT]; 2 Sam. 7:6-7; Ezek. 28:14).”[6]
2. Adam is depicted as a priest with respect to his task, namely, “to work” (עָבְדָ֖) and “to keep” (שָׁמְרָֽ) the garden, which is the priest’s task in the temple (Num. 3:7-8; 8:25-26; 18:5-6; 1 Chron. 23:32; Ezek. 44:14).[7] Adam also donned priestly attire (Ezek. 28:13ff.).
3. The cherubim assumed Adam’s function to guard the tree of life (Gen. 3:24), which became memorialized in the tabernacle (cf. Exod. 25:18-22).
4. The “tree of life” (Gen. 2:9) was probably a model of the lampstand in the tabernacle (Exod. 25:31ff).[8]
5. Israel’s tabernacle and temple had wood carvings that gave it a garden-like ambiance (1 Kings 6:18, 29, 32, 35; 7:18-20).
6. Just as the entrance to Israel’s later temple was to face east and be on a mountain, and just as the end-time temple of Ezekiel was to face east (Ezek. 40:6) and be on a mountain (Ezek. 40:2; 43:12), so the entrance to Eden faced east (Gen. 3:24) and was situated on a mountain (Ezek. 28:14-16).
7. The ark, which contained the law, in the Holy of Holies echoed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as both lead to wisdom.
8. As a river flowed out from Eden (Gen. 2:10), so a river flows from the eschatological temple (Ezek. 47:1-12; Rev. 21:1-2; cf. Ps. 36:8-9; Rev. 22:1-2).
9. Just as gold and onyx are in the garden (Gen. 2:11-12), so they are used to decorate the later sanctuaries and priestly garments (Exod. 25:7, 11, 17, 31).
10. Just as the temple had a tripartite structure of concentric circles of holiness (Holy of Holies > Holy Place > Courtyard), so the garden of Eden had the same (Eden > Garden > Outer World).
11. Ezekiel refers to “Eden, the garden of God… the holy mountain of God” and also alludes to it containing “sanctuaries” (28:18; cf. 7:24; Lev. 21:23; Jer. 51:51).
12. Just as the climax and purpose of creation was rest (Gen. 2:1-3), so the construction of the tabernacle culminates with rest (Exod. 31:12-17).

[1] G.J. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies 9 (1986), 19.

[2] J.H. Walton, “Eden, Garden Of.” In T.D. Alexander and D.W. Baker (eds.), Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2003), 202. The same idea is presented by G.K. Beale in God Dwells Among Us: Expanding Eden to the Ends of the Earth (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014), 22, which includes a helpful figure.

[3] The following arguments are indebted to G.J. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” 19-25 and G.K. Beale, New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 617-22; cf. Beale, G.K. “The Final Vision of the Apocalypse and its Implications for Biblical Theology of the Temple.” In Heaven on Earth: The Temple in Biblical Theology, eds. Alexander, T.D. and S. Gathercole (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004), 197-199; idem., The Temple and the Church’s Mission (Downers Grove, IL: Apollos IVP, 2004), 66-80; idem., “Eden, the Temple, and the Church’s Mission in the New Creation,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48 (2005), 7-10. For an argument against viewing Eden as a temple see Daniel Block, “Eden: A Temple? A Reassessment of the Biblical Evidence.” In From Creation to New Creation: Biblical Theology and Exegesis, eds. Daniel M. Gurtner and Benjamin L. Gladd (Peabody MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2013). While I do not find Block’s essay persuasive, it does call for more caution in connecting the garden and the tabernacle/temple.

[4] For more detail see Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology, 617ff. and Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism,” 19-25.

[5] Beale, God Dwells Among Us, 51.

[6] Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology, 59.

[7] See Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview, 54.

[8] See Meyers, Carol L. The Tabernacle Menorah: A Synthetic Study of a Symbol from the Biblical Cult (ASORDS 2: Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976), 180.