Sometimes Scripture passages that may be very easy to translate can be very difficult to explain. Take, for example, Genesis 2:8-15. Just what did Adam and Eve do in the garden? How do we answer children, who pose the hardest questions, when they ask, “But what kind of work could they do? They didn’t have any clothes to pick up or any dishes to wash.” Not having a good answer ourselves, we tell them, “There is always lots of work for little boys and girls who don’t have anything to do ….” They understand that message and they scurry off to play, but now we are left with the question.

We’ve all seen the Sunday school pictures, the flannelgraphs, with the man and the woman standing among the trees, artfully concealed by well-placed leaves – an idea that occurred to Adam and Eve, as well, when they left the garden! Even though adults know that there was no jungle (our jungles require rain and there wasn’t any rain), the question remains, what kind of garden was Eden? What kind of work did they do and how hard was it? Opening the Bible, we find that Genesis chapter 2 says that God put man and woman in the garden ‘to tend and keep it’ (Gen 2:15), but why were they needed? God himself planted the garden and He made it grow (Gen 2: 9, 10). There were certainly no weeds to hoe.

The text of Genesis, without pictures, does give more explanation about what the man and woman were supposed to do in Eden. The Bible states specifically that the plants and shrubs wouldn’t grow in the garden without rain or without a man to till the ground (Gen 2:5). What the garden needed was watering. God supplied the water by a river springing up out of the ground in the garden (Gen 2:10). Man “tilled the soil” to channel water to all the plants and trees.

Moses and the Israelites would have recognized this kind of garden. They came out from a land, Egypt, without rain, watered by a river. In fact, the common Egyptian hieroglyph mer pictured a widebladed hoe used for irrigation work.

The Garden of Eden was fruitful because water was channeled, regularly and abundantly, to the plants and trees like an orchard. What made the Garden of Eden unique in the newly created world was humans enjoying the delights of creation by participating in the work of God. Their work was necessary, immediately productive, immensely satisfying and a far cry from the toil and frustrating labor that we associate with the word “work.”

In Psalm 1, the blessed man is described “like a tree planted by rivers of water” (Psa 1:3). Our Western minds picture a graceful willow or a great oak tree on a riverbank. But men do not plant fruit trees on riverbanks. The phrase “rivers of water” (palgey mayim) is unique and descriptive in Hebrew. These are channels separating the earth into even rows, irrigation furrows, watercourses that supply water to fields and orchards.

The water in Psalm 1, verses 1 & 2, comes from the Law of the LORD, which delights and occupies the blessed man. His continual meditation in the Law, over and over, day and night, carves channels that direct the life-giving water to his tree, producing fruit and leaves and every good thing.

The work Adam and Eve did in Eden is the same work we do today. The deeper we dig with our hoe into the Word of God, the more deeply the water flows. With the proper irrigation of the water of life, any person, no matter how dry to begin with, can be a fruitful garden, a place and a life to honor the LORD and give fruit to hungry men and women all around.