The ending of the Garden of Eden story is perhaps more enigmatic than the ending of many of the other stories in Genesis. This is probably intentional:  

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So, the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden, to work the soil from which he was taken. And having driven out the man, He stationed at the east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim and the flame of the ever-turning sword, to guard (lishmor) the way to the Tree of Life.” (Genesis 3:24)

 

Many Biblical commentators have given this passage a wide berth because it so puzzling. Nevertheless, this hardly makes the questions less pertinent. What is the significance of the “cherubim?” Is the Garden of Eden forever closed or can Paradise still be achieved?

 

The two verses at the very end of the story can be compared with a verse at its beginning when Adam is also called upon to “guard” the garden:  

 

And the Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and guard it (uleshomro) (Genesis 2:15).

 

The initial role of Adam was to “work” in and “guard” the Garden of Eden so as to preserve it. So, also, the role of the cherubim is to guard Paradise for future use. For if the Garden of Eden were to be closed forever, what reason would there be “to guard the way to the Tree of Life” (Genesis 3:24)?

 

Cherubim are found in two places in the Torah. They guard the Garden of Eden with their flaming, ever-turning sword. They were also found in the most holy of places in Judaism. In the Tabernacle, and later in the Temple, a curtain separated the Holy chamber from the Holy of Holies and on this curtain were pictorial representations of cherubim.45 Statutes of cherubim were also found within the Holy of Holies. Within this sacred space was the Ark. This contained a copy of the Torah and the two tablets on which was written God’s covenant, signed/etched by God Himself. The cover of the Ark was made from a single piece of gold and from it arose two golden cherubim with outstretched wings. God communicated with Moses from directly above the ark.  

 

The concept of cherubs (cherubim is the plural in Hebrew) is an unusual one for the Bible, since Judaism is usually opposed to the use of physical imagery within a religious context. Nevertheless, cherubs are the exception. They represent the portal to the heavenly realms and in the book of Psalms are considered support for God’s throne (Psalms 99:1). 

 

But in what way is the Garden of Eden still potentially open?

 

To answer this, it is helpful to consider the issue of death as conceptualized by the Mesopotamian world and then to compare this with the Jewish view.

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Let us consider again the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh myth. There is no direct evidence that the Garden of Eden story was polemicizing against certain aspects of the Gilgamesh myth, although it is a possibility. Nevertheless, the Bible is almost certainly addressing concerns of that period, which in turn were reflected in the Gilgamesh epic.

 

Death and immortality must have been particularly anxiety-provoking in the ancient Near East. This may even have accounted for the popularity of the Gilgamesh epic poem. There was good reason for this. Life in Mesopotamia was difficult and uncertain. Agriculture was difficult (which is why the gods wanted to hand over this task to humans), since much of Mesopotamia is sub-desert. Water from the two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, had to be led by ditches to the fields, and these ditches were maintained only with backbreaking work. Life was a struggle, and like the gods in their myths, the winnings went to the strongest. Stripped of its entertainment value, the Gilgamesh myth reflects the pervasive existential pessimism of Mesopotamian society.    

 

As described in one of the cuneiform tablets, Gilgamesh makes a perilous journey to the flood hero Utnapishtim who was made immortal by the gods. He has little of comfort to tell Gilgamesh. In a final tablet, Gilgamesh succeeds in bringing Enkidu back from the land of the dead. However, this is only a temporary reincarnation, and Gilgamesh has to finally accept that his search for the immortality of his friend is futile.  

 

The life that you are seeking you will never find. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping.1  

 

Gilgamesh now realizes that his path to immortality lies not in his overcoming death but in his material accomplishments, and in particular the walls of his city that he constructed as monarch. However, only a king can build the walls of a city. For a commoner, there was little cheer for an honorable life well led and no hope for respite or restitution in a future afterlife. 

 

This is how the netherworld is described in another Mesopotamian myth called Ishtar’s Descent to the Netherworld:

 

….. to the dark house, the abode of Irkalla, to the house which none leaves who has entered it, to the road from which there is no way back, to the house wherein the entrants are bereft of life, where dust is their fare and clay their food (where) they see no life, residing in darkness (where) they are clothed like birds, with wings for garments, (and where) over door and blot is spread like dust.2

 

In actuality, the netherworld may not have been quite as dismal as this, since the gods of the netherworld could be appeased with gifts from the living. Nevertheless, this myth is hardly a description of future hope, either physical or emotional.

 

Unlike in the Mesopotamian world, there was never pessimism about death in Judaism. 

But what exactly is the Bible’s answer to the pessimism of Near Eastern society, since at first glance Scripture seems to agree with Gilgamesh that the possibility of immortality is lost forever?  

 

The subjects of death and immortality are not fully addressed in the Pentateuch. There was good reason for this lack of clarity since Judaism is a religion that extols life and not death. Nevertheless, there are enough hints within the Garden of Eden story for Jewish theology to expand upon.  

 

It is very likely that the early Israelites, like the Mesopotamians and Canaanites, held that the nether-world exists deep within the earth. The Book of Psalms, for example, talks about death being a descent into the “pit.”3 

 

Nevertheless, later Jewish tradition strongly promoted the concept of the immortality of the soul and that the souls of the righteous return to the heavenly realms. Rabbinic Judaism was also deeply vested in the concepts of the Resurrection and Messiah. These concepts were never put into sequential order by either the Mishnah, Midrashim or Talmud.4 Nevertheless, it was believed that proximity to God would be achieved by the righteous in the heavenly World to Come and also in the earthly World to Come at the time of Resurrection. Because of their proximity to God, both these places were considered akin to the Garden of Eden.

 

In the following Talmudic passage, R Yohanan ben Zakkai, one of the leaders of the people in the 2nd Temple period, expresses concern that his soul may be unworthy of soaring into Gan Eden but would descend to Gehinnam:

 

When R. Yohanan ben Zakkai fell ill, his disciples went in to visit him. When he saw them, he began to weep. His disciples said to him: “Lamp of Israel, pillar of the right hand, mighty hammer!  Why are you weeping? He replied: . . . . Moreover, there are two roads before me, one leading to Gan Eden and the other to Gehanna, and I do not know by which I shall be taken. Shall I not weep?5 

 

In this second passage, also from the Talmud, the Garden of Eden concept is closely related to the Resurrection:

 

Ulla Bira'ah said in the name of R. Eleazar: “In the days to come the Holy One, blessed be He, will hold a chorus for the righteous and He will sit in their midst in the Garden of Eden and every one of them will point with his finger towards Him, as it is said: ‘And it shall be said in that day: Lo, this is our God, for whom we waited, that He might save us; this is the Lord for whom we waited, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.’”’6

 

The Garden of Eden in its totality will only be experienced in these two worlds yet to come. In the meantime, the pathway to these worlds is achieved by serving God in this world. Jewish tradition also understood that it is possible to experience a fragment of the Garden of Eden experience here on earth. 

 

In the Garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve realized they were naked after partaking of the forbidden fruit, the Bible says:

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They heard the sound of YKVK Elokim walking (mithalech) (מתהלך) in the garden toward the direction of the sun; and the man and his wife hid from before YKVK Elokim among the trees of the garden (Genesis 3:8).

 

The Hebrew verb lehithalech means to walk about, to move to and from, to walk freely and is used in the Torah with respect to God and man walking together with each other. The verb “mithalech” is used with respect to man: “And Enoch walked (vayithalech) with Elokim (Genesis 5:24). When used with respect to God it is an indicator of YKVK’s tangible movements in this world. This happened in the Garden of Eden and will also happen in the camp of the Israelites:

 

I will place my Tabernacle among you; and My soul will not purge itself of you. I will walk (vehithalachti) among you, I will be a God to you and you will be a people to me (Leviticus 26:11-12)

 

A similar idea is expressed in the Book of Deuteronomy:

 

For YKVK your God walks (mithalech) in the midst of your camp to rescue you and to deliver your enemies before you; so your camp shall be holy, and He will not see among you a shameful thing and turn away from behind you (Deuteronomy 23:15).

 

Moreover, the Land of Israel is a place where God manifests Himself more than in other places of the globe and also where a glimpse of the fertility of the Garden of Eden can be seen:

 

Truly the Lord has comforted Zion,

Comforted all her ruins;

He has made her wilderness like Eden,

Her desert like the Garden of the Lord.

Gladness and joy shall abide there,

Thanksgiving and the sound of music (Isaiah 51:3).

 

Jewish tradition also understood that the Torah itself had now become the “Tree of Life” and the pathway to spiritual eternity:

 

 As a Midrash states: 

 

God hid the tree that granted eternal life to all who ate from it and in its place He gave us His Torah. This is the Tree of Life, for it says: “She is a Tree of Life for those who grasp her” (Proverbs 3:18). When a man beholds it, and sees in it God’s wisdom, and His righteous and just laws and statutes, he is immediately induced to adopt a new mind, and observe them. In so doing he acquires for himself reward in this world and in the world to come, as it says: “The Lord commanded us to observe all these laws for our lasting good and to grant us life” (Deuteronomy 6:24).7

 

Unlike in the Mesopotamian world, there was never pessimism about life or death in Judaism. Although the pathway to an earthly Paradise is now guarded and permanently closed, one can still attempt to create a replica of this garden here on earth. The heavenly Garden of Eden is also open for those who strive towards it.

 

This is the legacy of the Garden of Eden story and its “flaming swords.”

 

References

1. Myths from Mesopotamia. Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh and Others by Stephanie Dalley, Atrahasis. Tablet 1, p94. Oxford University Press, 2008.

  

2. From Ishtar’s Descent to the Netherworld, quoted in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East by Jack M Sasson. Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Mesopotamian Thought by Jo Ann Scurlock, p1883, volume 3 1995, Charles Scribner’s Sons, USA.

 

3. See for example Psalm 88, verses 5-7: “I am counted with those who go down into the pit; I am like a man who has no strength. Free among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you do not remember any more; and they are cut off from your hand. You have laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the depths.”

 

4. The Messianic Era and World to Come according to Maimonides and Nachmanides in The Struggle for Utopia. A History of Jewish, Christian and Islamic Messianism by Arnold Slyper. Kochav Press, Israel. 2022.

 

5. TB Berakhot 28b.

 

6. TB Ta’anith 31a.

 

7. Midrash Hagadol Bereishis 3:24