Contents | Index

Paradise

PARADISE (Gk. paradeisos, "park"). This term has been applied to Eden. In the later books of the OT it appears in the sense of a park or pleasure ground (Heb. pardes, rendered "forest," <Neh. 2:8>; "parks," <Eccles. 2:5>; "orchard," Song of Sol. 4:13).

The word in the Greek stands for a wide open park, enclosed against injury, yet with its natural beauty unspoiled, with stately trees, many of them bearing fruit, watered by clear streams on whose banks roamed large herds of antelope or sheep-- this was the scenery that connected itself in the mind of the Greek traveler with the word paradeisos and for which his own language supplied no precise equivalent.

Paradise, with no other word to qualify it, was the bright region that man had lost, which was guarded by the flaming sword. Paradise, or the Garden of Eden, became to the later Jews a common designation for the state of bliss that awaits the righteous after death-- by which they meant that delights like those of Eden are enjoyed by the departed-- they are in a paradise-like state.

It is employed in the NT to indicate the destiny and experience of the redeemed (Lk 23:43; Rev. 2:7; 22:2,14).