"One River - Four Branches"

July 8, 2016

“One River - Four Branches”

Blessings folk!

More about the garden the Lord made for man…

Gen 2:10-14

Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers.

The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.

The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there.

The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush.

The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.


There were two trees in the midst of the garden.
There was a river also.
A river that watered the garden
A river that flowed out of Eden…makes one wonder what the “out of Eden” was like.
When the river flowed out of the garden it divided into four rivers.

Interesting details about these rivers.

They are numbered.
Important?
Perhaps.

The first - Pishon. The word means “Increase”. It flowed around the whole land of Havilah. There was gold there. Good gold. Also bdellium and onyx. Interesting details. I wonder about the purpose of the elemental detail?

The second - Gihon. The word means “bursting forth”. It flowed around the land of Cush.

The third - Tigris. The word means “rapid”. It flowed east of Assyria.

The fourth is Euphrates. The word means “fruitfulness”.

The location of the Tigris and Euphrates is known today.
The exact position of Pishon and Gihon is unknown.

Then there is this.
Things today are substantially different geographically than in the days of Eden.
The judgment of God - the world-wide flood - changed the topography, hydrological cycle, the very structure of creation at the cellular level.

The general region is the same.
The location and flow of the rivers would be different.

The garden the Lord prepared for man was abundant in resources, abundant in food, abundant in water.

It was paradise.

What could possibly go wrong?