This word, according to Spiegel, was derived from the Zendic pairi-daêza, a hedging round, and passed into the Hebrew in the form פּרדּס (Sol 4:13; Ecc 2:5; Neh 2:8), a park, probably through the commercial relations which Solomon established with distant countries. In the garden itself God caused all kinds of trees to grow out of the earth; and among them were tow, which were called “the tree of life” and “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” on account of their peculiar significance in relation to man (see Gen 2:16 and Gen 3:22). הדּעת, an infinitive, as Jer 22:16 shows, has the article here because the phrase ורע טוב דעת is regarded as one word, and in Jeremiah from the nature of the predicate.
verses 10-14
“ And there was a river going out of Eden, to water the garden; and from thence it divided itself, and became four heads;” i.e., the stream took its rise in Eden, flowed through the garden to water it, and on leaving the garden was divided into four heads or beginnings of rivers, that is, into four arms or separate streams. For this meaning of ראשׁים see Eze 16:25; Lam 2:19. Of the four rivers whose names are given to show the geographical situation of paradise, the last two are unquestionably Tigris and Euphrates. Hiddekel occurs in Dan 10:4 as the Hebrew name for Tigris; in the inscriptions of Darius it is called Tigrâ (or the arrow, according to Strabo, Pliny, and Curtius), from the Zendic tighra, pointed, sharp, from which probably the meaning stormy ( rapidus Tigris, Hor. Carm. 4, 14, 46) was derived. It flows before (קדמת), in front of, Assyria, not to the east of Assyria; for the province of Assyria, which must be intended here, was on the eastern side of the Tigris: moreover, neither the meaning, “to the east of,” nor the identity of קדמת and מקדם has been, or can be, established from Gen 4:16; 1Sa 13:5, or Eze 39:11, which are the only other passages in which the word occurs, as Ewald himself acknowledges. P'rath, which was not more minutely described because it was so generally known, is the Euphrates; in old Persian, Ufrâtu, according to Delitzsch, or the good and fertile stream; Ufrâtu, according to Spiegler, or the well-progressing stream. According to the present condition of the soil, the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris are not so closely connected that they could be regarded as the commencements of a common stream which has ceased to exist. The main sources of the Tigris, it is true, are only 2000
