Leaving Eden

While the Garden of Eden is set geographically in the fertile region of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, there does not seem to any major tourist attraction there to attract religious pilgrims.  When the Lord God drove Adam and Eve from that land, it seems to have disappeared except in the memory of those who told the stories of faith.  Actually, as we carefully read those early chapters of the narrative, it seems that the descendants of the Garden of Eden couple lingered in the region a long time. 

 

It is only with the story of Abram (later to be called Abraham) that the movement away from that region really begins to take place.  After Abram's father moves the family lock stock and barrel away from Ur, they end up settling not in the land of his destination which would have been Canaan, but Haran,  a place up river.  The Lord God finally gets them back on the road as He says to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you...So Abram went..."  (Genesis 12:1, 4)  If we could pick the mind of God, we might be curious enough to ask why He wanted them to go to Canaan instead of back to Eden. 

 

Perhaps, Eden was about the past and Canaan was about the future.  Perhaps, the Garden of Eden spoke of the origins of all of humanity and Canaan was about the origins of a people who would be set aside for the worship of the One true God.  Whatever the divine reason, from the time of Abraham on through the story, the Promised Land, the land of Canaan is in clear view and not the Garden of Eden.  In the land of promise a new chapter in the story of God and humanity would be written which would finally provide a way for the failures of Eden to be redeemed.