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.
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Comment: As would be expected skeptics try to compromise this record by claiming it to be copied from old records of other contemporary nations. I would argue that as humanity has a common origin, all nations had a memory of the past and, as a believer that the Bible is the Word of God, I accept this is a true version. Factual but maybe, if for some reason ‘on a to know basis’ only, incomplete. What we do see is a good (sinless) man put into a beautiful and rich area and told to get to work. Was he told not to eat an ‘apple’? Well it simply doesn’t say that. There is no basis, as some seek to make it to sexual intercourse and the experience of the joys thereof. We do know that it was a matter of ‘are you, man, prepared to listen to and obey Me’? Prior to this there is no use of the word ‘death’. Is it talking of physical death or a broken relationship? Apart from being alone the man seems in an ideal situation!
Prayer: Please help me to think deeply about, in these times, these usually avoided questions.
As I read it! 