Since the name Eden
itself evoked the image of an agriculturally productive area, it is not
surprising that the word appears in the name of another locale. The prophet
Amos refers to a kingdom called Beth Eden, bēyt ‘ēden, part of a coalition
of Aramaic- speaking groups centered on Damascus (Amos 1:5; see also 2 Kings
19:12 = Isa 37:12). This place is identified with Bit Adini, a kingdom located
on both sides of the Euphrates where the Balikh River flows into it from the
north. Its name translates as “House of Bounty.” The Garden was planted in a
place called “Bountiful.”
The major wonder of
this particular garden on the eastern side of Eden/Bountiful may have
been its landlord, who could guarantee rain. The river flowing through it made
watering in dry seasons a simple matter of digging and maintaining systems of
sluice gates and small channels to bring water to the plant plots and tree
groves (Gen 2:5, 10). In this natural setting, the Garden offered the best of
Egypt, with its regular supply of irrigation water from the Nile, and the best
of the land within which the tribes of Israel lived, with its fairly
predictable pattern of generous rainfall: “from the rain of the heavens it
drinks water” (Deut 11:11). (H. C. Brichto, The Names of God: Poetic Readings in Biblical Beginnings, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 73.) (Ziony Zevit, What
Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? [New Haven: Yale University Press,
2015], 88-89, emphasis in original)
