Park/orchard/forest: pardes, masculine noun (Strong’s 6508).
Hebrew Text…
פַרְדֵּס
First and foremost, Happy Father’s Day to all who are celebrating. I am visiting my parents this weekend and I’m happy to be with my Dad, who has been such an incredibly great supporter throughout my life. I always know that I’ll have his love and encouragement in whatever I set my mind and heart to do. I’m so thankful to God who has blessed me with such a great earthly Father! Today we will head out and share onion rings together (our tradition) and enjoy the sunshine that is warming up Saint Andrew’s, New Brunswick. But first, let’s talk about some Hebrew!
Last week I posted the sermon I gave titled, “Almost Paradise”. It reviewed where the Greek word Paradeiso (Paradise) shows up in the Bible and highlighted it’s meaning. I briefly mentioned that it had a connection to the Hebrew word pardes. Today we’ll explore that word.
Honestly, I found it surprising that Paradise only shows up three times in the B’rit Chadashah (New Testament). I was even more surprised to find that pardes also only shows up three times in the Tanakh (Old Testament). It’s a rare word and appears to be a loan word of foreign origins. Much like we use loan words in English vocabulary (think croissant or hallelujah), ancient Hebrew borrowed words from neighbouring territories. Pardes likely comes from the ancient proto-Iranian paradaijah (meaning ‘walled enclosure’). This word was borrowed by the Assyrians who used pardesu to describe a walled garden domain. In the Hebrew language, the end ‘u sound in the Assyrian pardesu was dropped and pardes indicated an elaborate, royal, garden.
Pardes * Paradeisos * Paradise
You can clearly hear the etymology of the English word paradise from its antecedents: pardes became paradeisos in Greek, paradisus in Latin, and paradis in French. Although it’s common today, its rarity in scripture stands out, especially when you consider how prevalent the concept of Paradise is in our modern thoughts on the afterlife.
But what was the Biblical idea of paradise? Last week’s posting highlighted the association of the word paradise with the image of a royal Garden. So, when Yeshua said to the criminal beside Him at the crucifixion, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43), He was painting a picture of what the afterlife looked like: “Today you will be with me in the Garden”. Yeshua unfolded the mystery of our endgame. We would return to Eden, the Garden of God’s throne room, where we can walk in the Presence of YHWH.
There are other words for garden in Greek (kepos) and Hebrew (see postingGan: the Garden and the Gardener), but Yeshua chose the rarer word because Paradise was a garden beyond all gardens.
Seeing as paradeiso was connected to the Hebrew word pardes, it’s worth looking at the three rare instances pardes shows up in the Tanakh, starting with…
Song of Songs 4:12-15
“A locked garden is my sister, my bride, a locked spring, a sealed fountain. Your branches are an orchard [pardes פַּרְדֵּ֣ס] of pomegranates with delicious fruits, henna with nard plants, nard and saffron, spice reed and cinnamon, with all the trees of frankincense, myrrh, and aloes, along with all the finest balsam oils.
You are a garden spring, a well of fresh water, and flowing streams from Lebanon.”
The most common Biblical Hebrew word for garden is gan. Pardes stands out from gan in that it always seems to focus on trees. In the Song of Songs, it is a pardes of pomegranates.
In Ecclesiastes it was a park. Solomon, highlighting his support of a kingly gardenscape, said:
Ecclesiastes 2:4-6
I enlarged my works: I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself; I made gardens and parks [w-far’desim וּפַרְדֵּסִ֑ים] for myself, and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees; I made ponds of water for myself from which to irrigate a forest of growing trees.
Solomon had gardens and parks (although I would argue a better translation might be orchards), filled with fruit trees which were supported by proper irrigation. This was a time consuming, expensive, endeavor and essential to prove your worth as an ancient king.
Israel wasn’t the only ancient society to put an emphasis on royal gardens. King Nebuchadnezzar had his Hanging Gardens of Babylon. King Cyrus of Persia had the Pasargadae geometric gardens which were commonly called pairidaeza. (Sound familiar?)
According to Nehemiah, king Artaxerxes of Persia had a royal pardes:
Nehemiah 2:1-8
And it came about in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, that wine was before him, and I picked up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. So the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, though you are not ill? This is nothing but sadness of heart.”
Then I was very much afraid. And I said to the king, “May the king live forever. Why should my face not be sad when the city, the site of my fathers’ tombs, is desolate and its gates have been consumed by fire?”
Then the king said to me, “What would you request?”
So I prayed to the God of heaven. Then I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favour before you, I request that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it.”
Then the king said to me, with the queen sitting beside him, “How long will your journey be, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me, and I gave him a definite time.
And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me for the governors of the provinces beyond the River, so that they will allow me to pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king’s forest [ha-pardes הַפַּרְדֵּ֜ס], so that he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel which is by the temple, for the wall of the city, and for the house to which I will go.”
And the king granted them to me because the good hand of my God was on me.
Nehemiah wanted trees from the Persian king’s forest to rebuild Jerusalem, and he needed proof of permission to give to Asaph, the keeper of the king’s pardes. Ancient kings had forest wardens. They recognized the value of their woodlands. Parks/orchards/forests had great value and was worthy of protection.
Pardes was one of those Hebrew words that has been inconsistently translated. Each verse has been given a different translation. Most commonly orchard has been chosen for the Song of Songs verse, forest in Nehemiah, and park in Ecclesiastes… but the one commonality in all three verses: trees! Paradise was a garden where trees flourished. Of the three times paradise showed up in the NT (Luke 23:43, 2 Corinthians 12:2-4, Revelation 2:7), only the one in John’s Revelation specifically highlighted a tree:
Revelation 2:7
The one who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who overcomes, I will grant to eat from the Tree of Life, which is in the Paradise of God.
Yeshua said to the criminal, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” or, in other words, “Today you will be with Me in the Garden”. And when Mary saw the resurrected Yeshua by the garden tomb, she thought He was the Gardener. She wasn’t entirely wrong. Yeshua is the King Gardener of Paradise… the Garden above all gardens.
The renewed Heavens and Earth, YHWH’s throne room, will be the King’s Garden, the Royal Orchard, the Park that houses the Tree of Life… Paradise! What a vision of beauty that will be!
With Yeshua’s sacrifice we have been freely offered a Passport to Paradise. Seize it and let’s be the Paradise People we were born to be, because Genesis 1:28-30 tells us that we are to cultivate the earth, nourish it, and help it grow. We are to be Kingdom gardeners today, sharing love and encouragement to all of YHWH’s Creation… animals, plants, fellow humans! We may wait for Paradise, when God will renew the earth to the glory of Eden, but we should be living like it’s here, now! Go, set your judgements aside, and be the kind of Paradise People who encourages the whole of creation to freely experience God’s love!
Next week: Sermon- Living Right in Righteousness
