Eden: Delight.1. The garden in which our first parents dewlt
(Genesis 2:8-17) No
geographical question has been so much discussed as that bearing
on its site. It has been placed in Armenia, in the region west
of the Caspian Sea, in Media, near Damascus, in Palestine, in
Southern Arabia, and in Babylonia. The site must undoubtedly be
sought for somewhere along the course of the great streams the
Tigris and the Euphrates of Western Asia, in "the land of
Shinar" or Babylonia. The region from about lat. 33 degrees
30 to lat. 31 degrees, which is a very rich and fertile
tract, has been by the most competent authorities agreed on as
the probable site of Eden. "It is a region where streams abound,
where they divide and re-unite, where alone in the Mesopotamian
tract can be found the phenomenon of a single river parting into
four arms, each of which is or has been a river of consequence."
Among almost all nations there are traditions of the primitive
innocence of our race in the garden of Eden. This was the
"golden age" to which the Greeks looked back. Men then lived a
"life free from care, and without labour and sorrow. Old age was
unknown; the body never lost its vigour; existence was a
perpetual feast without a taint of evil. The earth brought forth
spontaneously all things that were good in profuse abundance."
2. One of the markets whence the merchants of Tyre obtained richly
embroidered stuffs
(Ezekiel 27:23) the same, probably, as that
mentioned in
(2 Kings 19:12; Isaiah 37:12) as the name of a region
conquered by the Assyrians.
3. Son of Joah, and one of the Levites who assisted in reforming
the public worship of the sanctuary in the time of Hezekiah
(2 Chronicles 29:12)