The Garden Temple

In my previous post, I argued that Genesis 1 describes God creating a cosmic temple, with the visible and invisible creation being a temple designed and built by God ex nihilo (out of nothing). In this post I will make the point that God placed the first humans, Adam and Eve, into a miniaturized version of that temple.

It is common knowledge among both religious and nonreligious people that the Bible presents the first human habitat as being a paradise named the Garden of Eden; however, not many would think of this abode as a temple. Nonetheless, both obvious and more complex data from the text tells us that is exactly where God had placed them -- and what they ultimately forfeited. Understanding this opens up many windows to comprehending the rest of the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New.

The most obvious reason for thinking of the Garden of Eden as a temple is that it is the place that Adam and Eve met with God for fellowship and worship. At the end of Genesis 1, we are told that God made the first pair of humans in the divine image. Whatever else is implied by that phrase, which appears majestically in what is the first poem in the Bible, it signifies that Adam and Eve were created for covenant fellowship with their maker. God gives to this first couple a covenant command that enunciates the first statement of the Great Commission -- they are to be fruitful and multiply and "fill the earth." This signifies that while they would be placed in their initial home, their responsibility is not only to keep it, but to expand its borders to fill the earth. Of course, they failed in this responsibility, but I will later contend that the massive temple structures of Ezekiel 40-48 and Revelation 21 demonstrate that Jesus Christ would ultimately succeed where Adam had failed.

As a further note, I would point out that while some refer to the command of Genesis 1 as being a "cultural mandate," a phrase that has led to far reaching triumphalistic misinterpretations of Christian duty, I find it more accurate and helpful to think of it as a pre-Fall statement of the Great Commission.

Turning back to the temple theme, there are numerous additional reasons for thinking of the Garden of Eden as a miniaturized temple. Of course, everything that I said about the cosmic temple of Genesis 1 mirroring the threefold structure of the Jerusalem temple would also apply to the observational knowledge of Adam and Eve. There are numerous other associations with later temples:

1. The Garden of Eden opens to the east (that is where an angel was stationed to guard it from re-entry after the Fall). The Jerusalem temple also opened to the East.

2. Genesis 2 describes at length four rivers that water the Garden, and the association of rivers with temples is a common biblical theme. Psalm 46:4 declares, "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High" (ESV). The Ezekiel temple includes a description of a river that flows from underneath it toward the east, flowing as a life giving river into the Dead Sea, and Jesus made reference to that imagery with regard to himself on two occasions in John's Gospel. Revelation 22 describes the Garden temple of the future age as having a "river of life" flowing through it

3. Along with the rivers, the Garden of Eden is described as having an array of extravagant and expensive minerals. The New Jerusalem, the temple described in Revelation 21, also is described in this way.

4. Adam is instructed to "work and keep" the Garden  words that have an agricultural tone. However, it is significant that everywhere else in the Pentateuch that the Hebrew words translated here are used in close proximinity (within 15 words), they always describe the duties of priests. Thus, Adam as keeper of the garden is also being commissioned as priest of this early temple.

Adam and Eve were given a probationary covenant of works not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The curse for eating would be death; by implication, the reward for obeying the covenant would be eternal life for Adam and his posterity. Adam, having failed his duty to keep the Garden cleansed, joined with his wife in succumbing to the temptations of the serpent, was evicted  from the garden temple, and brought death and ruin to himself and to his posterity.

God could have left Adam and Eve in that state, but along with curses God provided a gracious covenant to the fallen couple. God would not allow the seeds of the woman and the serpent to remain friends in opposition to God; rather, he would put enmity between Eve's seed and the serpent's. Ultimately, the seed of the serpent would bruise the heel of the seed of the woman; but, the woman's seed would deal a crushing blow to the head of the serpent. Here, the pronoun switches to the singular and is a vague but discernable reference to the ultimate seed of the woman, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus, the remainder of the Bible would be about God's gracious dealings with his people in order to redeem and reclaim that which Adam had lost in this garden temple. One day, the true temple would come, and much of the future temple imagery we find in the Old Testament will point to the true temple, the Word that would become flesh and pitch his tent among us.