It’s clear from Isaiah that there was a cultic connection between gardens and tombs. Scholars have also noted that the pig was an animal associated with the underworld,[i] used by the Greeks in chthonian rituals[ii] and by the Amorites (and other pagan cultures) in their sacrifices to the dead. In fact, some scholars believe that the use of pigs primarily as sacrificial offerings to the gods of the underworld and the dead[iii] may be the reason for the taboo against eating pork.[iv]
This cultic use of gardens may be the reason that chroniclers of the Old Testament note that two of worst kings of the line of David were buried in a garden rather than the tombs of their forefathers. Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, “was buried in the garden of his house, in the garden of Uzza.”[v] Manasseh’s son Amon was likewise buried in the garden of Uzza.[vi]
All the previous kings of Judah, from David to Hezekiah, had been buried in the royal tombs in the City of David. Why did Manasseh break with tradition? It’s consistent with his other changes. Unlike his father, who “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord,”[vii] Manasseh is remembered as the most wicked king in Judah’s history.[viii]
He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem will I put my name.” And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.
— 2 Kings 21:2–6, ESV
In short, Manasseh went native and adopted the religion of the Amorites, which included, significantly, summoning the dead through mediums and necromancers. This is the first biblical record of a Judean king engaging in this occult practice, the visit by Saul to the medium of En-dor notwithstanding. This was so offensive to God that the author of 2 Kings wrote that Manasseh did things “more evil than all that the Amorites did,”[ix] which was bad enough to end God’s patience with the House of David.
Manesseh’s decision to be buried in the garden of Uzza (probably Uzziah, also known as Azariah, the great-grandfather of Hezekiah) appears to be part of his slide into full-blown paganism. Manasseh, and his son after him, apparently aspired to become Rephaim after death. This is supported by the message God delivered to Ezekiel during his vision of the Temple Mount:
While the man was standing beside me, I heard one speaking to me out of the temple, and he said to me, “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever. And the house of Israel shall no more defile my holy name, neither they, nor their kings, by their whoring and by the dead bodies of their kings at their high places, by setting their threshold by my threshold and their doorposts beside my doorposts, with only a wall between me and them. They have defiled my holy name by their abominations that they have committed, so I have consumed them in my anger. Now let them put away their whoring and the dead bodies of their kings far from me, and I will dwell in their midst forever.
— Ezekiel 43:6–9, ESV (emphasis added)
We don’t know where the King’s Garden was located, but it was apparently in close proximity to the Temple, probably in or adjacent to the City of David.
This is an excerpt from our 2019 book Veneration. If you want to own a copy, it’s available in paperback, as a Kindle e-book, and as an audiobook at Amazon and Audible.
The pagan neighbors of ancient Israel had a long history of venerating dead royalty in special gardens set aside for that cult. What made this long-running practice so disgusting to God was that it corrupted the concept of His original garden, Eden. And with Manasseh and Amon, it had reached His holy mountain.
Not all scholars agree that the Ugaritic gn and Eblaite/Akkadian gunu should be translated “garden.” However, the origin of the term is even more intriguing. Rather than “garden,” respected scholar Edward Lipiński concluded that the term more accurately meant “camp,” “enclosure,” or “compound.”[x] This is similar to a word from old Persian: “Pairidēza, borrowed into late Babylonian as pardēsu, into Hebrew as pardēs, and Greek as παράδεισος, appears to have meant originally ‘rampart,’ and hence a ramparted place, such as an enclosed royal garden.” And, as you’ve undoubtedly noticed, it’s where we get the English word “paradise.”
This is not a coincidence. If Eden doesn’t fit the definition of “paradise,” an enclosed royal garden, we would truly like to see the place that does.
Pastor Carl Gallups makes a strong case in his book Gods of Ground Zero that Eden was understood to be paradise by Jews of the Second Temple period.[xi] This is biblical. In Ezekiel 28, God condemns the king of Tyre by comparing him to the rebel in Eden, who was “an anointed guardian cherub” on “the holy mountain of God.”[xii] This places the garden on God’s holy mountain, Zion. This means that Mount Moriah, where Abraham was tested, and the threshing floor of Araunah, which David bought for the site of the Temple, are located right where Eden was, and will be again.
I realize that placing Eden in the middle of Jerusalem might seem a little too obvious, but bear with us.
The Book of Genesis describes the garden’s location:
A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. (
— Genesis 2:10–14, ESV
It’s easy enough to identify the Tigris and Euphrates, the rivers that flow down from Turkey through Iraq and Syria, defining the Fertile Crescent. Likewise, the Gihon is simple enough, if we understand that the reference to Cush to be allegorical; as Jerusalem’s only water supply, the Gihon Spring was vital to the holy city, and so probably the river meant by Moses in that passage.
That leaves only the Pishon. One intriguing explanation identifies it as the Nile, “from the Egyptian expression p3 šny, ‘the encompassing one,’ the river being conceptualised as an extension of the cosmic ocean surrounding the world.”[xiii] This is plausible; after all, Moses was raised in the court of the king, presumably speaking and writing Egyptian.
If this is correct, the account in Genesis is a sort of cosmic model. A river flowed out of Eden to become the three major sources of fresh water in the world known to the Israelites (not to mention the cosmic ocean) and the crucial spring that supplied water to the city God had chosen as His own.
No doubt the river in the garden was the same one Ezekiel described in his vision of the future Temple. This, of course, locates the river of Eden beneath the Temple, the very throne of God, which will be on the site of Solomon’s temple—Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
At the risk of putting too fine a point on it: Eden, the original garden, is in Jerusalem.
[i]. Stavrakapolou, op. cit., p. 9.
[ii]. Nicolas Wyatt, “After Death Has Us Parted.” In The Perfumes of Seven Tamarisks (Munster: Ugarit-Verlaine, 2014), p. 285.
[iii]. Ismar Schorsch, “The Story of Pig as Taboo,” Jewish Theological Seminary (April 17, 2004). http://www.jtsa.edu/the-story-of-pig-as-taboo, retrieved 7/13/19.
[iv]. Wyatt, op. cit.
[v]. 2 Kings 21:18. 2 Chronicles 33:20 notes simply that “Manasseh slept with his fathers, and they buried him in his house.”
[vi]. 2 Kings 21:26. 2 Chronicles 33 does not note the location of Amon’s burial.
[vii]. 2 Kings 18:3.
[viii]. Although, to be fair, 2 Chronicles 33:10–16 records that Manasseh repented and humbled himself before God.
[ix]. 2 Kings 21:11.
[x]. Wyatt, op.cit, p. 286.
[xi]. Carl Gallups, Gods of Ground Zero (Crane, Mo.: Defender, 2018). See especially pages 241–243.
[xii]. Ezekiel 28:13–14.
[xiii]. Wyatt, “A Royal Garden: The Ideology of Eden,” p. 11.
I’ve written extensively about this very thing in my Tree of Life, Second Edition. I appreciate seeing another author affirming it. Thanks! - Tim
Absolutely agree—your research has been spot on during all the time hubs and I have followed you & Sharon. Thanks for making the Bible come alive!
As an avid gardner, I’m curious if the current usage of the term, “garden” meaning “yard” (mainly found in British society and many of their former colonies) might be traced to historic roots of some type? Just a thought.