a "garden in Eden in the east." In the supreme sense, the "garden planted by Jehovah God in Eden in the east" is the Lord Himself. In the inmost sense, which is also the universal sense, it is the Lord's kingdom, and the heaven in which man is placed when he has become celestial. His state then is such that he is with the angels in heaven, and is as it were one among them; for man has been so created that while living in this world he may at the same time be in heaven. In this state all his thoughts and ideas of thoughts, and even his words and actions, are open, even from the Lord, and contain within them what is celestial and spiritual; for there is in every man the life of the Lord, which causes him to have perception.
100. That a "garden" signifies intelligence, and "Eden" love, appears also from Isaiah:—
Jehovah will comfort Zion, He will comfort all her waste places, and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of Jehovah; joy and gladness shall be found therein, confession and the voice of singing (li. 3).
In this passage, "wilderness," "joy," and "confession," are terms expressive of the celestial things of faith, or such as relate to love; but "desert," "gladness," and "the voice of singing," of the spiritual things of faith, or such as belong to the understanding. The former have relation to "Eden," the latter to "garden;" for with this Prophet two expressions constantly occur concerning the same thing, one of which signifies celestial, and the other spiritual things. What is further signified by the "garden in Eden," may be seen in what follows at verse 10.
101. That the Lord is the "east" also appears from the Word, as in Ezekiel:—
He brought me to the gate, even the gate that looketh the way of the east, and behold the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east; and His voice was as the voice of many waters, and the earth shone with His glory (xliii. 1, 2, 4).
It was in consequence of the Lord's being the "east" that a holy custom prevailed in the representative Jewish Church, before the building of the temple, of turning their faces toward the east when they prayed.
