Gardens in the Bible — Symbols in the Bible Course (Part 3)

Editor’s Note: In the next few weeks, we’ll be posting the audio from a 6-part course on biblical imagery. If you’d like to join the upcoming course on deconstruction, sign up here. The new course starts on September 4.

Catch Up On Sessions 1 & 2

• Session 1: The Sea of Chaos

• Session 2: The River of Life

Key Ideas in Session Three

• I came across a helpful way to picture the way the Bible references itself in Richard Hays’ book, Reading Backwards. Writing about the way the book of Luke deals with the Old Testament, Hays uses the analogy of a theater:

It is as though the primary action of the Gospel is played out on center stage, in front of the floodlights, while a screen at the back of the stage displays a kaleidoscopic series of flickering images from Israel’s scripture… If the viewer pays careful attention, there are many moments when the words or gestures of the characters onstage mirror something of the shifting backdrop (or is it the other way around?)… Sometimes the correspondence can be discerned only after the second event has occurred and imparted a new pattern of significance to the first.

• The garden in Eden is the archetypal place where humankind dwells with God. When humanity was exiled from the garden, God chose many other places where his creation could come meet with him again—and they were all echoes of Eden. This week we will look at the geography of Eden, the decorations in the temple, Jesus’s gardens, and the garden temple of the New Creation.

• G. K. Beale wrote in The Temple and the Church’s Mission that, “It was his intention that his human vice-regent, whom he installed in the garden sanctuary, would extend worldwide the boundaries of that sanctuary and of God’s presence.”

List of Key Passages and Notes

Genesis 2:5-24—The Garden in Eden was the first temple

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—then 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…

Genesis 3—Humanity is exiled from the garden

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Genesis 13:10—The promised land is like Eden

And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord…

Exodus 25-27—The Tabernacle the mobile “garden of God” in the wilderness

1 Kings 6:15, 31-36—Solomon decorates the temple in a garden theme

For the entrance to the inner sanctuary he made doors of olivewood; the lintel and the doorposts were five-sided. He covered the two doors of olivewood with carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers. He overlaid them with gold and spread gold on the cherubim and on the palm trees.

Psalm 75—The destroyers of the temple are described as lumberjacks

Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place;
they set up their own signs for signs.
They were like those who swing axes
in a forest of trees. 
And all its carved wood
they broke down with hatchets and hammers.
They set your sanctuary on fire…

(I explore this psalm more on The Darkling Psalter, a project to translate every Psalm and pair them with commentary and a new poem.)

Prophetic References—The prophets describe God’s wrath as an un-gardening of creation

1. Famine—Isaiah 51:19 "These two things have happened to you—who will console you?— devastation and destruction, famine and sword; who will comfort you?"

2. Drought—Haggai 1:10-11 "Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast and all their labors."

3. Discord with Animals—Jeremiah 9: 11:  "I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a lair of jackals, and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant."

4. Bad harvest/discord with food—Amos 4:9 "I struck you with blight and mildew; your gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured…”

5. Thorns in the vineyard—​​Isaiah 5:5  "And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste

6. And finally, the prophets foretell the exiles of both the northern and southern kingdom before it is happening and help them understand it during and after it has happened in terms of the garden, echoing Genesis 3.

Jeremiah 29 - Gardens in Babylon

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the  Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

John 15—Jesus is the Tree of Life

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Luke 22:39-46—The Second Adam faces temptation in a garden

And he came out and went bias was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.

John 19:38-42, 20:15—Buried in a garden, Jesus appears as a gardener

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

Revelation 21 & 22—The garden renewed

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations…