One River in … (Gen 2:10)

Into and Out of the Garden

¹⁰ A river was coming forth from Eden to water the garden וְנָהָרּ֙ יֹצֵ֣א מֵעֵ֔דֶן לְהַשְׁק֖וֹת אֶת־הַגָּ֑ן

Just when it seems that the action is starting to get rolling, the story is interrupted yet again for more background info about the water situation. According to Jonas Greenfield, the great Aramaic scholar, the root meaning of עדן is “liquid luxuriance,” so perhaps I should not be as surprised as I am.

• In Gen 1:2, there was “darkness over Deep and a God-wind hovering over the water.”

• In Gen 2:5, “God had not yet made it rain on the earth.”

• In Gen 2:6, “a haze would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.”

• Now in v. 10 we suddenly discover that there was a river watering the garden.

I find this all very puzzling. I can only guess that we are being alerted to the fact that water is a much more important aspect of life than it seems to most of us who get it by turning on a tap or opening a bottle. In the big picture, how much water there is in any particular place and who gets to use it is as life-threatening an issue now as it ever was, but that’s a threat that most of us do not have to face (yet) on a daily basis.

What’s really presented to us in vv. 10–14 is the location of the garden and its apparent status as the water source for the inhabited world (as it was known to the biblical writers). Metaphorically, and in this picture geographically, the garden is the wellspring of civilization.

I translated the verb יֹצֵ֣א yotzei as “was coming forth”; the basic meaning of יצא y-tz-[aleph] is “go out” or “exit.” This form of the verb serves as the Modern Hebrew present tense, but in Biblical Hebrew it’s a participle, that is, a verbal adjective. We have them in English too, of course: “Let sleeping dogs lie” uses the same verbal adjective as “the dog is sleeping.” In Biblical Hebrew, that makes this another nominal sentence. When we add the verb “to be” in order to turn this into good English, we have to choose a tense that fits the context:

• was going

• is going

• will be going

The future tense is obviously not in play here; this is background information. It might seem trivial to ask whether this river “is” or “was” coming forth from Eden, but the choice has subtle implications:

• “Is” — this is a real geographical location. This river is still flowing and still doing what it has been doing since the beginning of time.

• “Was” — this is a mythical location. Even if this river is still flowing, you will not find it on any map nor ever see photographs of it.

As we’ll see, the further description of this river seems to leave that question open. Meanwhile, with regard to the precise geography being described here, Nahum Sarna writes in the JPS Torah Commentary: