The garden in Scripture is a touchstone for numerous motifs and a picture of a richly nourished life. Next to heaven, it is the preeminent image of human longing. Woven throughout the Bible, it is a significant thread, representing life at its fullest.
Humanity has always envisioned perfection as an enclosed, lush, and tranquil garden. This image reflects the Bible’s depiction of how God intended human life to be lived. The garden of Eden is more than a place—it represents a way of life, a state of the soul. Because God planted it, the imagery of the garden is not only descriptive but also prescriptive.
The term paradise originates from the Persian word for a walled garden. Eden is the Bible’s version of Paradise. It is a place of secluded protection—an idea reinforced after the expulsion of Adam and Eve, when a flaming sword barred re-entry, implying the presence of a gate leading into the garden.
The enclosed nature of the perfect garden itself captures its essential quality—its distinction from ordinary life. The simplicity of life in the garden sets it apart from the complexities of civilization, a contrast that is reflected in the unashamed nakedness of Adam and Eve.
Another motif of the garden thread is provision. Because gardens are watered, they are places of abundant vegetation. Such a garden is a picture of the perpetual abundance and nourishment of nature, similar to the tree of Psalm 1 that never withers. A garden is also a place of natural beauty, pleasing to the eye (Genesis 2:9), and also provides nourishment through its fruits. It is timeless and a place to be visited in the mind often.
Eden also serves as an image of human work and striving, as gardens require cultivation. Adam was “to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15 NIV). The terms used for plants and animals in Genesis 2 are different from those used in Genesis 1. They refer to humans’ role in cultivating and controlling plants and animals, in contrast to the cosmic, broader scope described in the previous chapter. In this way, Eden reflects humanity's active participation in God's creation and its care.
These two themes of relaxation and human labour suggest that God continually provided spaces of rest and nourishment while also promising new and more perfect places to come. Humankind is called to collaborate with God, participating in the unfolding divine purpose through obedience. The progression from Eden to Canaan to heaven represents a sequence of gifts from a loving, providing God—each one contingent on humanity’s acceptance and obedience.
Harmony is a central theme of the garden thread. Adam and Eve are in harmony with the plants and animals of nature, with each other, and with God. In a very real sense, the Garden of Eden is the first temple, a sacred space where God visits and communes with them. However, when they are expelled from the garden, they lose more than just their physical home; they lose their spiritual communion with God. This separation marks the disruption of the original harmony that God had designed.
Eden is also a place of continuous moral testing, as indicated by the presence of a forbidden tree in the middle of the garden. The garden is a place of radical choice, where the first humans were faced with a pivotal decision that shaped the course of history. In that choice, paradise was lost.
Progressing through Scripture, threads from Eden emerge again. For example, the motif of the abundant growth and therefore human prosperity is referred to in Genesis 13:10 when Lot “took a long look at the fertile plains of the Jordan Valley…The whole area was well watered everywhere, like the garden of the Lord.” The Tabernacle is described as a mobile “garden of God” in the wilderness (Exodus 25-27). And Solomon decorates the temple in a garden theme (1 Kings 6).
When Isaiah envisions Zion restored, he says, “Her desert will blossom like Eden, her barren wilderness like the garden of the Lord” (Isaiah 51:3). While Eden was directly planted by God, the gardens of the world are often symbols of human status, achievement, and cultivated beauty associated with the courtly life. For example, when Solomon lists his material accomplishments, he says, “I made gardens and parks, filling them with all kinds of fruit trees” (Ecclesiastes 2:5). It is noteworthy that the Bible makes no sharp distinction among the terms garden, orchard, grove, and park.
A main theme of the garden paradise is love, with the Song of Songs being the most famous. The paradisal motifs are transformed into romantic realities. The beauty of the garden surroundings becomes an extension of the beauty of the beloved, while the sensory pleasures of the garden mirror the joy and fulfilment the couple experience in their mutual love.
The abundance and provision of the garden are metaphoric of the richness and value the two lovers find in each other. The enclosed nature of the garden of love captures the seclusion, privacy, intimacy, and security that the couple feel in their love, symbolizing how they are a world completely to themselves. The harmony the couple shares with their environment reflects the deep harmony in their relationship with each other.
In the New Testament, there are two gardens associated with Jesus, who is the Tree of Life, with His Father being the gardener (John 15). First, the Garden of Gethsemane is a place of temptation for the second Adam, Jesus. It is also a place of ultimate anguish, suffering, betrayal, arrest, and violence. It is like an “antigarden”—an inversion of expected qualities of a garden. However, like Eden, it is a sacred space where a radical decision was made that reverses the course of human history.
The other garden is the resurrection garden, where Jesus was entombed and where Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Jesus for the gardener (John 20:15). The first garden accommodated the first gardener, Adam. The Easter garden accommodated Jesus, the second Adam.
The Resurrection offers a new horizon for humankind, with a world defined not by death but by life, with the promise of growth into the fullness of the stature of Christ. All of this is enriched when we allow the conventional meanings of the garden—abundant provision, human longing satisfied, harmony achieved, love triumphant—to flow into this one.
Finally, the garden thread in the Bible also makes Paradise a heavenly reality. In Revelation 22:1–2, we are given a vision of the New Jerusalem, a walled city with paradisal features, including a river with the tree of life on either side, yielding fruit for the nations. This heavenly paradise is not inhabited by just two people but is instead more populated and open (Revelation 21:25). Both the heavenly paradise and, to a lesser extent, the original paradise are built around a paradox: they are closed and yet open.
In the first garden, we lost our connection to God. In the second garden, God is found in the midst of our suffering. In the third garden, hope is found in Resurrection. The final garden is the place of ultimate victory and overcoming. Paradise regained!
The garden thread in the Bible presents an image of the ideal that elevates whatever activity occurs in it. It symbolizes nature, romantic love, human well-being, and spiritual reality all at their best. It serves as a moral and spiritual norm against which our fallen experience is judged and toward which our hearts aspire.
