Returning to Eden? An Island of Wholeness in a Fractured World PDF Free Download
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Returning to Eden?
An Island of Wholeness in a Fractured World
Rabbi Shai Held
Biblical texts remember a perfect past and dream of a redeemed
future. Jewish life offers us glimpses of those idealized moments in
the hopes that they will nourish, sustain, and inspire us as we make
our way through a far-less-than-perfect present.1 Dreaming of a
perfect world is deeply rooted in the Jewish psyche. And yet potent
and powerful as they are, dreams of perfection also have their
dangers: They can keep us so rooted in a longed-for future that we
grow indifferent—or even oblivious—to the blessings and possibilities of the present.
A midrash teaches that Adam was created from the site where the Temple would one day
stand (Genesis Rabbah 14:8). Another adds that he brought sacrifices on “the great altar in
Jerusalem” (34:9). At the beginning of time, a third suggests, Adam donned the garments of
the High Priest and offered sacrifices (Numbers Rabbah 4:8). When God expelled Adam from
the Garden, still another avers, God showed
him the destruction of the Temple (Genesis
Rabbah 21:8). This array of midrashic images
raises an obvious question: What do Adam in
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Parashat Terumah (Exodus 25:1-27:19) – Shevat 5775
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1 Cf. what I have written about Shabbat in “Another World to Live in: The Meaning of Shabbat,” CJLI Parashat
Behar 5774, available here.
What do Adam in the Garden of
Eden and the Temple have to do
with one another?
the Garden of Eden and the Temple have to do with one another?
The answer, as we shall see, is quite a lot.
During their time in Eden, Adam and Eve had everything they needed provided for them. It
was a time devoid of want or fear. For the Torah, “the Garden of Eden is the symbol of all
good—birth and blessing, life and knowledge, order and communication—which can be
found on earth.”2 The world in which we live, so suffused with suffering and predation, is a
far cry indeed from the wholeness portrayed in Eden. Not surprisingly, although the place
called Eden disappeared long ago, the dream it represents and hope for its restoration have
had an enduring place in Jewish religious consciousness. “Set in the primordial past… Eden
imagery reflects a memory of human harmony on earth and so nurtures hope for its
restoration.”3
Longing in exile for a better day, the prophets imagined an utterly transformed status for the
people and the land of Israel; in their visions, “the ‘Eden’ motif… emerged with singular force
and clarity.”4 Thus, for example, Ezekiel foresees a radically new era: “Thus said the Lord
God: ‘When I have cleansed you of all your iniquities, I will people your settlements, and the
ruined places shall be rebuilt; and the desolate land, after lying waste in the sight of every
passerby, shall again be tilled.’” The transformation will be so profound that “men shall say:
‘That land, once desolate, has become like the Garden of Eden; and the cities, once ruined,
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2 Michael Fishbane, Text and Texture: Close Readings of Selected Biblical Texts (1979), p. 112.
3 Fishbane, Text and Texture, p. 112.
4 Fishbane, Text and Texture, p. 116.
desolate, and ravaged, are now populated and fortified” (Ezekiel 36:33-35). Isaiah dreams in
similar terms: “Truly the Lord has comforted Zion, comforted all her ruins; [the Lord] 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). In strikingly evocative
imagery, Ezekiel and Isaiah assure the people that the pains of the present will be erased in
the future; the yearnings that seem so far away now will soon be fulfilled. A return to Eden is
indeed within reach.
When God shows Ezekiel a rebuilt Temple, the
prophet is reminded of Eden. Genesis tells us
that “a river issues forth from Eden to water
the garden” (Genesis 2:10).5 He sees water
flowing eastward from under the Temple and
is told that this water will give and renew life: “Every living creature that swarms will be
able to live wherever this stream goes; the fish will be very abundant once these waters have
reached there… All kinds of trees for food will grow up on both banks of the stream. Their
leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail; they will yield new fruit every month, because the
water for them flows from the Temple. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for
healing” (Ezekiel 47:1-12). Bible scholar Michael Fishbane explains that for Ezekiel, “the new
Temple, on a mountain, is an Eden: Waters of sustenance and life flow from the threshold and
altar of the shrine.” In Ezekiel’s vision of the Temple, “the rich power of [the Eden] motif is…
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5 Of course, this verse raises the question of the exact relationship between “Eden” and “the garden,” which are
clearly not synonymous, since one is said to water the other.
Ezekiel and Isaiah assure the people
that the pains of the present will be
erased in the future.
fully evident. It arises from and taps the most primal of yearnings: A harmonious life on
earth, with the grace of God.”6
Eden thus features powerfully both in memories of the past and in hopes for the future, but
what of the (biblical) present?
The mishkan (tabernacle) is intended to serve, I
would suggest, as an island of Eden in a
decidedly non-Edenic world.7 Like Ezekiel’s
future Temple (though less dramatically), the
mishkan is portrayed in terms strikingly
reminiscent of the Garden. Like the Garden, the mishkan and the Temple in Jerusalem are
entered from the east.8 God commands Moses to make two cherubim of gold and station
them on either side of the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies (Exodus 25:18-20). This,
too, echoes the Garden, which was similarly guarded by two cherubim (Genesis 3:24).9
God commands Moses to erect a menorah (lampstand) in the mishkan. Bible scholar Carol
Meyers points out that “the significance of the lampstand lies more in its iconic value than in
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6 Fishbane, Text and Texture, p. 119.
7 On the mishkan as “counter-world,” cf. what I have written in “Order Amidst Chaos: Connecting to
Leviticus,” CJLI Parashat Va-Yikra 5774, available here.
8 Cf. Gordon J. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” Proceedings of the World Congress
of Jewish Studies 9 (1986), pp. 19-25; passage cited is on p. 21,
9 According to Wenham, in the ancient Near East, cherubim “were the traditional guardians of holy places.”
Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism,” p. 21. Gregory Beale suggests that the cherubim serve to replace Adam as
guardians of God’s garden; when he failed, they took over. G.K. Beale, The Temple and the Church's Mission: A
Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (2004), p. 70.
The mishkan (tabernacle) is
intended to serve as an island of
Eden in a decidedly non-Edenic
world.
its pragmatic function… The various terms
used for its constituent parts are replete with
botanical imagery: calyxes, petals, branches
and almond blossoms.” More than that, the form of the menorah—a central stand with three
branches extending from each side of it—is itself suggestive of a tree. Such stylized “trees of
life” were common in ancient times; they “connote the divine power that provides the fertility
of plant life.”10 It hardly seems like a leap to conclude that the menorah in the mishkan was
intended, at least in part, to evoke the tree of life in the Garden. Just as God’s blessings and
presence could be found there, the tree-like lampstand suggests, so also are they present here.
God places Adam in the Garden “to till and to tend it” (le-ovdah u-le-shomrah). This pair of
verbs (la’avod and lishmor) is used together in only three other places in the Torah—all of
them, tellingly, to describe the tasks of the Levites in guarding and doing the work of the
mishkan (Numbers 3:7-8, 8:26, 18:5-6). Linguistically, a strong link is thus implied between
the Garden and the mishkan.
The holiest items in the Temple were fashioned from gold; Eden was in or near “the land of
Havilah, where the gold is” (Genesis 2:11). That land also contains an abundance of shoham
(likely either lapis lazuli or onyx) (Genesis 2:12); the same stone is used to adorn the priestly
vestments (Exodus 25:7; 28:9,20).11
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10 Carol Meyers, Exodus (2005), p. 232. Cf. also Carol L. Meyers, The Tabernacle Menorah (1976).
11 Cf. I Chronicles 29:2.
The form of the menorah is itself
suggestive of a tree.
Cumulatively, all of this suggests a deep connection between the Garden and the mishkan.12
A number of scholars have argued that these links suggest that the Garden of Eden was the
first Temple.13 They are probably right—although that interpretation has recently been called
into question14—but my interest is in the reverse: The mishkan is, as I have suggested, an
attempt to re-create Eden, to erect “a microcosm of the only spotless point in creation,
Eden.”15 As Bible scholar Daniel Block nicely puts it, “while functioning as replicas of [God’s]
heavenly residence, both tabernacle and Temple were also constructed as miniature Edens.
Decorated with images of cherubim and palm trees, lit by the menorah—a symbol of the tree
of life—and served by a priest decked out in royal colors and precious stones, these motifs
hark back to the garden where God first put human beings.”16
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12 Some find another strong tie between Eden and the mishkan in God’s promise of a blessed life to an obedient
Israel: “I will establish my abode (mishkani) in your midst, and I will not spurn you. I will walk about (ve-
hithalakhti) in your midst; I will be your God and you shall be My people” (Leviticus 26:11-12). Arguing that
mishkani should be rendered here—as often—as “my tabernacle,” they suggest that we find here a close
connection between the mishkan and Genesis’ description of God’s voice “moving about (mithalekh) in the
garden” (Genesis 3:8): “The Lord walked in Eden as he subsequently walked in the tabernacle.” Wenham,
“Sanctuary Symbolism,” p. 20; cf. also Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (1979), pp. 329-330. But Jacob
Milgrom has convincingly shown that in this context, mishkani cannot refer to the mishkan—as he explains, “the
verb ve-natati (I will establish) would testify that there is no sanctuary building at the moment, which patently is
not the case [in Leviticus].” In Leviticus 26, then, mishkani refers to God’s presence, not God’s tabernacle. To be
clear: The allusion to Eden may well be intended, but the point would be that “in the paradisiacal conditions of
the blessed land… God himself (not his voice) will move about.” The land, and not the mishkan in particular, is
here connected to the Garden. Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27 (2001), pp. 2299, 2301. Cf. Ezekiel 36 and Isaiah 51,
discussed above.
13 For two important and influential examples, cf. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism,” and Beale, The Temple, pp.
66-80.
14 Daniel I. Block, “Eden: A Temple? A Reassessment of the Biblical Evidence,” in From Creation to New Creation:
Biblical Theology and Exegesis, ed. D.M. Gurtner and B.L. Gladd (2013). pp. 3-29. Block readily acknowledges that
in arguing against the idea that the Garden is a Temple, he is “swimming against an overwhelming current of
scholarly opinion” (3).
15 Peter Enns, Exodus (2000), p. 553.
16 Block, “Eden: A Temple?” p. 4.
It seems reasonable to conclude that the “design and function [of the mishkan] intended to
capture something of the original creation, perhaps even to represent in miniature the original
environment in which human beings were placed.”17 But what was that environment really
like? Bible scholar Terence Fretheim warns against “overly romantic… descriptions of
paradise.” In describing Eden, he argues, Genesis actually “shows remarkable restraint. It
emphasizes basics: life, freedom, food, a place to call home, a family, harmonious
relationships, and a stable natural environment.” It would be a mistake, Fretheim insists, to
imagine that suffering emerges only in the broken, post-Edenic world; suffering is
undoubtedly intensified after the expulsion
from Eden, but it is not introduced then.18 Some
degree of suffering, at least, is constitutive of
the human condition.
Christian theologian Douglas Hall writes about the ways that some suffering is simply built
into life; it cannot be escaped, nor should it be. He mentions loneliness, which is not a good
in itself, but which “provide[s] a background against which relationship with another might
contain a dimension of wonder and ecstasy”; limits, which provide “graceful boundaries”
within which we can pursue “the grandeur appropriate for our kind (e.g. we are embodied
and mortal, conditions within which we strive to achieve our full humanity); temptation,
which enables us to develop both “rational powers of discernment” and “moral capacities for
goodness”; and anxiety, which “as a background awareness of our finitude, makes possible a
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17 Block, “Eden: A Temple?” p. 21.
18 Terence E. Fretheim, “The Book of Genesis: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New
Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 1 (1994), p. 366.
Suffering is undoubtedly intensified
after the expulsion from Eden, but it
is not introduced then.
depth of reflection and compassion without which neither wisdom nor art nor courage would
be likely.” It is important to tread carefully here, lest we fall into the temptation to glorify
suffering or see it as inherently redemptive in some way. Hall is talking about the kind of
suffering that serves life, not the kind that destroys it. The former is a kind of low-grade
existential pain; this is “the suffering that which is necessary to creaturely becoming
(integrative suffering),” not “the suffering that detracts from life (disintegrative suffering).”
Fretheim’s suggestion is that “integrative suffering” existed even in Eden. After all, as Hall
maintains, “life without suffering would be no life at all; it would be a form of death. Life—
the life of the spirit like the life of the body—depends in some mysterious way on the struggle
to be.”19
Regardless of whether or not one accepts
Fretheim’s interpretation of life in the Garden,
the point that both he and Hall and raise is a
crucial one: Overly romanticized dreams of
what could be often prevent us from
appreciating—or from being able to receive at
all—the blessings already before us. The Eden-like mishkan holds out the possibility that
greater degrees of wholeness are possible even in the midst of a (for now) irreparably broken
world. The biblical people of Israel could enter an actual physical space; students of Torah
are invited to enter imaginatively, through reading.20 But for the mini-Edens we enter to
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19 Douglas John Hall, God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross (1986), pp. 64-65, 68, 60.
20 Cf. what I have written in “Order Amidst Chaos,” cited above, n6.
Overly romanticized dreams of
what could be often prevent us from
appreciating—or from being able to
receive at all—the blessings already
before us.
serve life, we must eschew illusory images of wholeness which only sow more sorrow and
discontent. The dream of Eden represents another reality, but it is—still and always—a
human reality. Jews dream of a world transformed, but we will not—we cannot—transcend
the human condition. Our hope is for our humanity to be fulfilled, not overcome.
Shabbat Shalom.
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See Shai Held’s other divrei Torah on parashat Terumah:
•!5774 – Being Present While Making Space, Or: Two Meanings of Tzimtzum
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