Genesis 2:8

8. Planted a garden eastward in Eden The word Eden is here first introduced, and without any explanation . It seems most natural to understand it as the proper name of the land ( ארצ ) of the preceding narrative . The word signifies pleasure, delight, and thus corresponds with the Greek ηδονη . The Septuagint and Vulgate translate גן , garden, by the word paradise, (a park,) and the word came at length to be used as a proper name for the garden of Eden, and also for the abode of disembodied spirits. Compare Luke 23:43; 2 Corinthians 12:4. The Vulgate never renders Eden as a proper name; and the Septuagint only here, in Genesis 2:10, and in Genesis 4:16. Accordingly some translate:

God planted a garden in a delightful region. But the word eastward ( מקדם , from the east, or, on the east, that is, in the eastern part) serves to put on Eden the character of a proper name. And a most suitable name it was for the land where man first appeared, created in the image of God. That land, from the dust of which Adam was formed, in which every tree and shrub and herb was very good, being supernaturally produced by the power of God, might well be called Eden. The garden was planted in the eastern section of this Eden-land.

There he put the man whom he had formed These words, taken in connexion with Genesis 2:15, are supposed to imply that Adam was created outside of paradise, and afterward transported thither. But the word שׂום , here used, and נוח , in Genesis 2:15, both convey the idea of establishment in some place without any necessary allusion to a previous state . We might say of Eve, as well as of Adam, that God took her and placed her in paradise, without necessarily implying that she was created outside of the garden . The order of the narrative would indicate that man was formed before the garden was prepared for him . But the order of the narrative by no means implies, or requires us to assume, a corresponding chronological sequence of the things narrated .

It would require volumes to chronicle all the opinions and discussions relative to the location of the garden of Eden, and the four rivers mentioned Genesis 2:11-14. Three theories have been particularly urged one which locates the garden near the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates, or somewhere between that junction and the Persian Gulf; another which locates it in the highlands of Armenia, near the sources of these rivers; and a third which places it in the far East, in the mountainous highlands of Central Asia, near the sources of the Indus, the Helmend, the Oxus, and the Jaxartes rivers. All these theories become worthless the moment we allow that the deluge may have borne the family of Noah far away from the primeval home of man. The notion that the rivers and countries subsequently known as Hiddekel, Euphrates, Havilah, Cush, etc., are identical with the lands and rivers of Eden is also destitute of any sure foundation. For we must remember the universal habit of migratory tribes and new colonies to give old and familiar names to the new rivers, mountains, and countries which they discover and occupy. Nothing could have been more natural than for the sons of Noah to give to new objects names from the old fatherland. Prof. W.F. Warren, in his Paradise Found, the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole, Boston, 1885, adduces a variety of arguments to prove that the primitive Eden was at the Arctic pole. Nothing in the legitimate interpretation of this Scripture is inconsistent with such an hypothesis; but we make no attempt to determine the site of paradise, inasmuch as we find nothing in this narrative that appears sufficient to solve that problem. It is, however, very probable that the original Eden of the human race was submerged and obliterated by the deluge.