| Genesis 2:8
| And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed.
| Of pleasure, Hebrew Eden, which may be either the name of a country, as Genesis 4:16, or it may signify pleasure, in which sense Symmachus and St. Jerome have taken it. --- From the beginning, or on the 3d day, when all plants were created, Hebrew mikedem, may also mean towards the east, as the Septuagint have understood it, though the other ancient interpreters agree with St. Jerome. Paradise lay probably to the east of Palestine, or of that country where Moses wrote. The precise situation cannot be ascertained. Calmet places it in Armenia, others near Babylon, etc. Some assert that this beautiful garden is still in being, the residence of Henoch and Elias. But God will not permit the curiosity of man to be gratified by the discovery of it, Genesis 3:24. How great might be its extent we do not know. If the sources of the Ganges, Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates, be not now changed, and if these be the rivers which sprung from the fountains of Paradise, (both which are points undecided) the garden must have comprised a great part of the world, (Haydock), as the Ganges rises in Judea [India?], and the Nile about the middle of Africa. (Tirinus)
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