W E’VE LEARNED THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT DESCRIBES TWO HOUSEHOLD-FAMILIES of God, one human and the other nonhuman. Those two families were created as God’s representatives to serve him in different realms. In this chapter we’ll explore how descriptions of Eden reinforce these concepts.
We usually think of Eden as it’s described in Genesis 2:8, the place the first humans called home: “Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” But the description of Eden as the home of humankind deflects our attention away from Eden’s primary status.
Eden was God’s home on earth. It was his residence. And where the King lives, his council meets. As modern readers, we don’t see how that thinking is telegraphed in the biblical text. Ancient readers couldn’t miss it.
Eden can only be properly understood in light of the worldview the biblical writers shared with other people of the ancient Near East. Like Israel, the people of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, for example, also believed in an unseen spiritual world that was governed by a divine council. The divine abodes of gods—the places they lived and where they met for governing the affairs of the human world—were portrayed in several ways. Two of the most common were gardens and mountains. Eden is described as both in the Old Testament.
Ancient people thought of their gods living in luxuriant gardens or mountains for simple reasons. It made sense that the gods would have the best lifestyle because, well, they’re gods . Cosmic celebrities can’t possibly live like we do.
The ancient Near East was primarily an agrarian culture where most people subsisted day-to-day, hand-to-mouth. The few who didn’t live that way were kings or priests—and thinking as the ancients did, those few had been chosen for that elevated status by the gods. The environment was hot and arid. Life depended on finding water and harnessing its power. That’s why the world’s first civilizations were founded along rivers (e.g., the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates). Surely the gods lived in a place where water was abundant, where life-sustaining vegetation and fruit grew everywhere, where an abundance of animals were nourished to fatness. The gods lived in places where there was no conceivable lack. Paradise.
Mountain peaks were the domain of gods because no humans lived there. Ancient times were not like modern times. People didn’t recreationally climb mountains. They had no equipment with which to get very far if they tried. Mountains were remote and forbidding—the perfect places for gods to get away from pesky humans. Mountain peaks touched the heavens, which was obviously the domain of the gods.
This sort of thinking in part explains why Egypt’s temples are carved and painted with the imagery of luscious gardens, or why pyramids and ziggurats were built. These structures were mountains made by human hands which served as gateways to the spiritual world, the realm of the gods, in life or in death. They were metaphors in stone.
For our purposes, though, it is the less grandiose ancient civilization of Ugarit, a city-state in ancient Syria, just to the north of Israel, which is particularly relevant. 1
The site of Ugarit was discovered in 1928 and excavated in the decades that followed. One of the major finds was a library containing thousands of clay tablets, roughly 1400 of which were in an alphabetic language (now called Ugaritic) that was closer to biblical Hebrew than any other ancient language. The vocabulary and grammar are in many instances virtually identical.
Scholars have learned a lot from this library, about both Ugarit and the content of the Old Testament. The chief deity of Ugarit was El—one of the names that appear in the Old Testament for the God of Israel. El had a divine council whose members were “the sons of El,” and he had a coruler, Baal. Since El’s and Baal’s duties sometimes appeared to overlap, and since Ugarit was so geographically close to Israel, it was small wonder that Baal worship was such a problem in Israel. The discoveries at Ugarit put all of that Old Testament history in context.
El and Baal were, to say the least, markedly different in behavior from Yahweh of Israel. But the literature of Ugarit proved very illuminating in other respects, especially as to where El, Baal, and the Ugaritic divine council lived and held court. At Ugarit the divine council had three levels: the highest authority (El, who did most of his ruling through a coruling vizier, Baal), the “sons of El,” and messenger gods ( mal’akim ).
The council of El met on a mountain or lush garden. These were not different places. Rather, the same place was described in two different ways. The abode of El had an abundant water supply, as it was situated at the “source of the two rivers” in the “midst of the fountains of the double-deep.” The divine council met in a place called Tsapanu , the remote heights of the north ( tsapanu means “north”).
Council meetings were held in “the tents of El” or El’s “tent shrine,” whence divine decrees were issued. At times Baal’s palace was in view, with its “paved bricks” that gave his house “the clearness of lapis lazuli.”
All of this will sound familiar to someone who has read the Old Testament closely. The Hebrew Bible uses these same descriptions for the abode and throne room of Yahweh. And where Yahweh is, he is surrounded by his heavenly assembly, ready to conduct business (cf. Isa 6 ; 1 Kgs 22:13–28). The Old Testament has a three-tiered council structure like that at Ugarit. Yahweh is at the top. 2 His family-household (“sons of God”) are next in hierarchy. The lowest level is reserved for elohim messengers— mal’akim (the word translated “angels”).
The Tabernacle tent structure and the Tent of Meeting, both of which are mentioned throughout the books of Exodus through Judges, are clear parallels to places where God dwells and hands down his decrees. Yahweh could also be found on mountains (Sinai or Zion). In Psalm 48:1–2, Jerusalem, the city of God, is said to be located in the “heights of the north” ( tsaphon in Hebrew). 3 Mount Zion is the “mountain of assembly,” again located in the “heights of the north” (Isa 14:13). At Sinai, Moses and others saw the seated God of Israel, under whose feet was a pavement “like sapphire tile work and like the very heavens for clearness” (Exod 24:9–10).
The garden of Eden, of course, is a lush, well-watered habitation (Gen 2:5–14). Ezekiel 28:13 mentions the garden of Eden (“garden of God”), but then adds the description that the garden of God is “God’s holy mountain” (Ezek 28:14). 4 We naturally think of God’s mountain as Mount Sinai or Mount Zion. When it comes to garden imagery, the latter is spoken of in Edenic terms. Like Eden, Mount Zion is also described as a watery habitation (Isa 33:20–22; Ezek 47:1–12; Zech 14:8; Joel 3:18). Whether Sinai or Zion, the mountain of God is, in effect, his temple. 5
An ancient Israelite would have thought of Eden as the dwelling of God and the place from which God and his council direct the affairs of humanity. The imagery is completely consistent with how Israel’s neighbors thought about their gods. 6 But in biblical theology, there is additional messaging.
As we’ll see in the ensuing chapters, the biblical version of the divine council at the divine abode includes a human presence . The theological message is that the God of Israel created this place not just as his own domain, but because he desires to live among his people. Yahweh desires a kingdom rule on this new Earth that he has created, and that rule will be shared with humanity. Since the heavenly council is also where Yahweh is, both family-households should function together. Had the fall not occurred, humanity would have been glorified and made part of the council.
This is not speculation. In the last chapter we saw the beginning of the theological idea that humans are the children of God. It was God’s original intent to make them part of his family. The failure in Eden would alienate God from man, but God would make a way of salvation to bring believers back into that family (John 1:12; 1 John 3:1–3). We also saw that humanity’s presence showed that God’s original desire was for his human children to participate in his rule. Both of these theological threads wind through the Old Testament and create the context from which New Testament writers will talk about the kingdom and the glorification of believers. These are ideas we’ll return to in future chapters.
One more verse about Eden—one that will vault us into the next chapter: Eden is described in Ezekiel 28:2 as the “seat of the gods.” The phrase should be familiar to modern readers. It speaks of governing authority (“county seat”; “Congressional seat”). Ezekiel’s words draw attention to Eden as a seat of authority and action. There was work to be done. God had plans for the whole planet, not just Eden.