The ending of the Garden of Eden story is more enigmatic than most other stories in the Book of Genesis — probably intentionally so: 

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So, YHWH/Elohim 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).

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Questions spring to the fore. What is the significance of the “cherubim?” And is the Garden of Eden forever closed or can Paradise still be regained? 

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These two final verses suggest comparison with a verse near the beginning of the Garden of Eden story when Adam is called upon to “guard” the garden:

 

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

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The role of Adam was to “work” in and “guard” the Garden of Eden to preserve it. Now, also, the role of the cherubim is to guard Paradise for future use. For if the Garden of Eden and everything in it, especially the Tree of Life, are irrevocably closed forever, what reason is there “to guard the way to the Tree of Life”?1

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Cherubim are mentioned in one other place in the Torah. They were found in the Tabernacle, and there were pictorial representations of cherubim on a curtain separating the Holy chamber from the Holy of Holies, and cherubim were also found within the Holy of Holies itself, with two golden cherubim with outstretched wings arising from the cover of the Ark which was made from a single piece of gold. The Ark contained a copy of the Torah and the two tablets of stone on which was written the Ten Commandments, etched by God on Mount Sinai, as if signed by God Himself. God would continue to communicate directly with Moses from above the ark and between the two cherubim (Exodus 25:22 and Numbers 7:89). Cherubim were also present in the Temple for much of the first Temple period, although not in the Second Temple.

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The concept of cherubim (cherubim is the plural in Hebrew of cherub) is an unusual one for the Bible, since Judaism is generally opposed to physical imagery within a religious context. Nevertheless, cherubs are the exception. From other places in the Bible, it is apparent that they were recognized as a support for God’s throne, thus representing a portal to the heavenly realms:

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When YHWH will reign, nations will tremble before Him Who is enthroned on cherubim, the earth will quake (Psalms 99:1).

 

And also:

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YHWH, Master of Legions, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim: You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the world. You made heaven and earth (Isaiah 37:16).

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An alternative way of interpreting this sentence about cherubim quoted at the beginning of this essay is from an allegorical perspective. In other words, one of the functions of the Garden of Eden story was to promote an approach to death, an approach which would have been revolutionary for that historic period.2 These ideas, and others, are expressed in beautiful midrashim, which function as snapshots of oral Jewish tradition.

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Consider first the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh myth. This myth is of particular interest to Bible scholars because of its flood story. There is no direct evidence that the Garden of Eden story was polemicizing against aspects of this myth, although it is certainly a possibility. Nevertheless, the Bible is almost certainly addressing concerns of that period, which in turn were reflected in the Gilgamesh epic.

 

The Epic of Gilgamesh concerns a king called Gilgamesh and his quest for the secret of immortality following the death of a very close male friend. In this quest, Gilgamesh visits an individual called Utnapishtim who has achieved immortality, and Gilgamesh discovers that he has gained immortality not by dint of wisdom but as a gift from the gods following his survival from a great flood. Utnapishtim has little of comfort to tell Gilgamesh. In a final tablet, Gilgamesh succeeds in bringing his male companion Enkidu back from the land of the dead. However, this is only a temporary reincarnation, and Gilgamesh will finally accept that his search for immortality for his friend is futile:  

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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.3  

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

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Because of this, death may have been particularly anxiety-provoking in the ancient Near East, and its discussion of death may even have accounted for the popularity of the Gilgamesh epic poem. Life in Mesopotamia was difficult and uncertain. Agriculture was back-breaking (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 grueling 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.

   

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

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. . . 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.4

 

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 hardly provides comfort.

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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?

 

Death and immortality are never fully addressed in the Torah. 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 story for Jewish theology to expand upon.  

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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 many times as being a descent into the “pit”:

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I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a man who has no strength, like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom You remember no more, for they are cut off from Your hand. You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep (Psalm 88:4–6).

 

Nevertheless, later Jewish tradition strongly promoted the concept of the immortality of the soul and the return of the souls of the righteous to God. Rabbinic Judaism was also deeply vested in the concept of the Resurrection. These concepts were never put into sequential order by the Mishnah, midrashim or Talmud.5 Nevertheless, it was believed that proximity to God would be achieved by the righteous in a spiritual World to Come, and also in an earthly World to Come at the time of Resurrection. Because of the proximity to God that would be attained, both places were considered akin to the Garden of Eden.

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

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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 Gahanna, and I do not know by which I shall be taken. Shall I not weep?6 

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

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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.”7

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An explicit reference to death and cherubim guarding Gan Eden is found in the following midrash:

 

He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim.” Rabbi Yohanan said: “These cherubim guard the way to the Garden of Eden. If a person is worthy, they allow him to enter. If he is not worthy, they do not allow him to enter.”8

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As a biological being man must decay. Adam lost the possibility of physical immortality in the Garden of Eden (although it is not clear from the Bible whether the Tree of Life was ever intended to be used). But this is not the end of the story. Pessimism about death is unwarranted. Spiritual immortality remains because the concept of the Garden of Eden still exists.9 Therefore, life need not be directionless but is the arena for spiritual and material growth.

 

Another direction for the explication of our quoted verse about cherubim is to appreciate that aspects of the Garden of Eden can be seen here on earth. This is evident through the implications of the Hebrew verb “hithalech.”

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

 

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

 

The Hebrew verb lehithalech means to walk about, to move to and from, and to walk freely, and is used in the Torah with respect to God and man walking together.

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When used with God as the subject it is an indicator of YHWH’s almost tangible movement in this world. This happened in the Garden of Eden and will happen also in the camp of the Israelites:

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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 when the camp of the people becomes holy because of the removal of all excrement:

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For YHWH 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).

 

This verb may also be used with man as the subject:

 

And Enoch walked (vayithalech) with Elohim (Genesis 5:24),

 

and:

 

Noah was a righteous man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked (hithalech) with Elohim (ibid 6:9).

 

When Avram was 99 years old, YHWH appeared to Abram and said to him: “I am El Shaddai, walk (hithalech) before me and be perfect.” (Genesis 17:1)

 

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

 

 As stated by a Midrash: 

 

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).10

 

Building on this is the idea is that the spirituality of the Sanctuary and following this the Temple have replaced the Garden of Eden. This is expressed by the following midrash:

 

He took him from the Garden of Eden and placed him on Mount Moriah [the site of the Temple] to serve God until the day of his death.11

 

The tablets of stone within the ark, representing the entire Torah, and which are protected by the cherubim, have now become the substitute for the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.12

 

One further idea is that the Land of Israel is a place where God manifests Himself more than other places on the globe. This is also a country 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).

 

In summary, unlike in ancient Mesopotamia, there was no pessimism about death in the Jewish world. The pathway to an earthly Paradise may be guarded and permanently closed, but it is still possible to create a replica of this garden here on earth through the Torah, which is a Tree of Life. By following in this “way” one merits to enter a spiritual Garden of Eden after death and experience the full manifestation of God.

 

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

 

References

1. In contrast to the allegorical explanation that I give, Rashi explains that the Garden of Eden does exist and the purpose of the cherubim is to prevent humans from eating from the Tree of Life and being able to lead people astray by their saying that they too ares a god. Rashi to Genesis 3:22 based on Bereishis Rabba 9:5. Mizrachi explains that this is why God did not want man to live forever. In a straightforward interpretation, Ibn Ezra sees that return to Eden is completely impossible through angelic beings that obstruct “the way.”

2. Gersonides (Ralbag) does view this sentence from an allegorical perspective and sees the cherubim and sword as barriers that prevent humans from living forever in a state of imperfection of character and understanding.

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

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. TB Berakhot 28b.

7. TB Ta’anith 31a.

8. Genesis Raba 21:8.

9. Nachmanides is of the opinion that the Garden of Eden continues to exist. He also explains in Torat Ha-Adam, Sha'ar Ha-Gemul that Gan Eden is the intermediate spiritual place where righteous souls go after death. He therefore sees Gan Eden as part of the afterlife structure. However, Olam Ha-Ba is the ultimate resurrected state after the resurrection of the dead. (Sha'ar Ha-Gemul, section discussing reward of the soul after death (standard printed editions, near the beginning of the discussion of Gan Eden and Gehinnom).

10. Midrash HaGadol Bereishis 3:24.

11. Midrash HaGadol Bereishis 3:23.

12. “Temple as Garden of Eden” in The Temple. Its Symbolism and Meaning Then and Now by Joshua Berman, Jason Aronson Inc, Northvale, New Jersey, London. Chapter 2, pp21-34, 1995.