Meaningful is a study of four prominent gardens of the Bible: Eden, Gethsemane, the Garden Tomb, and Paradise. On Lord’s day, May 30, 1971, in a room at the airport hotel in Tel Aviv, the worship service included a sermon on "The Four Gardens" capably delivered by Gene Priest to three listeners: Joe and Harold Bryant and this writer. The four had recently visited two of the four gardens.

Eden. Moses gave clear information that the garden of Eden God had placed in ancient Mesopotamia, present day Iraq (Genesis 2:10-14). Two of the four rivers irrigating Eden are still known to geographers: Tigris and Euphrates. Civilization thus had its beginning in the Mesopotamian valley.

The name "Eden"(`eden, from `dn, to live luxuriously) means "pleasantness," and since everything the Lord had made was "very good" (Genesis 1:31), the garden of Eden must have been delightful: no thorns, brambles, thistles, diseases, death, or decay. Out "of the ground Yahweh God caused to grow every tree pleasant to see and good for food" (Genesis 2:9).

Two of the trees not only produced edible food but had miraculous power. One of them was "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," and the other was "the tree of life" (Genesis 2:9). Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil Adam and Eve were not to eat (Genesis 2:17).

Their sin caused them to be ejected from the garden, which also cut them off from the tree of life, of which they could have eaten and have lived "forever" (Genesis 3:22). The garden of Eden has long since disappeared, and so the story of the first Bible garden ends in sadness. We look for a restoration in another garden, the fourth in this study.

Gethsemane. The garden of Gethsemane was on the west side of Mount Olive and east of the walls of Jerusalem "beyond the brook Kidron" where "Jesus often went" with "his disciples" (John 18:1-2). The name "Gethsemane" means an oil press, and the garden was located where multitudes of olive trees grew. Shown to tourists today are eight very thick and aged trees still producing olives. They may well be the growth from the roots of the trees which Jesus saw there.

When General Titus in 70 A.D. destroyed Jerusalem he "ordered that they should bring timber together, and raise banks against the city, ... So the trees were now cut down immediately, and the suburbs left naked" (Josephus, WARS OF THE JEWS, V-VI, 2). Hardly could trees so close by as Gethsemane’s have been spared.

The garden containing the present day eight old trees is supervised by the Franciscans. A church building there is called "The Basilica of the Agony" (or, "The Church of All Nations," because sixteen nations made contributions). A tourist is told that the church houses the "rock" (?) where Jesus kneeled and prayed.

Adjacent to the garden with the eight old trees is another garden of Gethsemane. It is supervised by Russian Orthodox nuns. In it the trees are much younger. Also a church is there called "The Church of St. Mary Magdalene." An escorting nun said that no one knows the exact site of the garden where Jesus prayed, but it is certain that it was somewhere in the area now marked off by the two gardens.

Oil pressing was done in the fall, and the garden would have been abandoned in the spring when Jesus went there. Jesus’ perspiration, compared to "great drops of blood falling down upon the ground" (Luke 22:44), was not because of a hot night, because the night that Jesus was there (Thursday, April 6, A.D. 30) was "cold" (psuchos), requiring, when people were outside, a warming "charcoal fire" (anthrakia, John 18:18, 25).

Jesus was outside, but he had no warming fire. His sweating was because of his mental anguish and agony, "even to death" (Matthew 26:38), hoping against hope that there might be some other way for him to save sinners without his death. As a human being he offered up "both petitions and pleas with loud crying and tears to the One who could save him from death" (Hebrews 5:7), yet always qualifying his begging, "Not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39).

The Garden Tomb. A living, sweating, agonizing human was in the garden of Gethsemane around midnight, and the next afternoon before the sun went down, his corpse was taken into another garden. "Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new tomb" (John 19:41). This third garden could be called a garden of hope, for there, early on Sunday morning, a startled Mary Magdalene heard encouraging words: "Go to my brothers, and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and my God, and your God’" (John 20:17).

Paradise. The fourth garden is called "the Paradise of God," a figurative description of heaven (Revelation 2:7). The word "paradise" means a park, a place of pleasure. The word is found in the Septuagint Greek translation of Genesis 2:8 describing the garden of Eden: paradeisos. That the translators used the best possible word is borne out by the fact that Jesus used the same word in describing heaven: "To him who overcomes, to him I will give to eat of the tree of life in the Paradise of God" (Revelation 2:7).

Thus heaven is pictured as a restored garden of Eden. The "tree of life," on "both sides of" a "river of the water of life (clear as crystal," is in the restored garden "bearing twelve fruits monthly" (Revelation 22:1-2). The curse placed on the original garden of Eden (Genesis 3:17-19) will be gone forever, for in "the Paradise of God" there "shall be no curse any more" (Genesis 3:17-19; Revelation 2:7; 22:3).

5-29-2000