A garden (as fenced)
Reading a lexicon entry
What this page is: Each lexicon entry shows the original Hebrew or Greek word behind the English translation: its meaning, its range of use, and where it appears in Scripture.
Strong's number: The Strong's code (H- or G-) is the standard reference number for this word. It connects this entry to chapter and passage language tabs.
Where it appears: The witness passages show where this word is used in context. Click any to open the study page for that passage.
This lexicon entry is part of our ongoing editorial review. If you notice missing content, unclear wording, or a possible correction, please send us a note through theConnect page. Screenshots are helpful.
גַּן (gan) is the Hebrew word for garden — and in several theologically significant passages it carries more than an agricultural sense. In these selected passages, gan becomes a theological space associated with creation, divine-human encounter, loss, and promised restoration.
Reader summary
Full entry for גַּן (H1588) · Open the biblical lexicon
גַּן (gan) is the Hebrew word for garden — and in several theologically significant passages it carries more than an agricultural sense. In these selected passages, gan becomes a theological space associated with creation, divine-human encounter, loss, and promised restoration.
The BSB source-word alignment has 42 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include garden (9), in the Garden (7), of the garden (6), like the garden (3), the garden (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 2:8. Its strongest book concentrations include Genesis (14), Song Of Solomon (8), 2 Kings (5), Ezekiel (5).
גַּן (gan) is the Hebrew word for garden — and in several theologically significant passages it carries more than an agricultural sense. In these selected passages, gan becomes a theological space associated with creation, divine-human encounter, loss, and promised restoration. Every garden in Scripture resonates with the primordial gan-Eden and points forward to the garden-city of Revelation 22.
Genesis 2:8 places the gan at the beginning of everything: 'YHWH Elohim planted a garden (gan) in Eden, eastward; and there he put the man he had formed.' The gan-Eden is not humanity's construction — it is YHWH's. He plants it (nata, to plant), he puts the man in it (yasem, to place/appoint), and he causes all desirable trees to grow in it (v. 9). The garden is the prepared space where the creature lives within the Creator's care. The man's task in the garden is to till (abad, to work) and to keep it (shamar, to guard) — the same two verbs used for priestly service at the tabernacle (Num 3:7-8). The gan-Eden is a sanctuary and the man is its priest.
Ezekiel 28:13 gives the gan-Eden its prophetic-polarity use: 'You were in Eden, the garden of God (gan-Elohim); every precious stone was your covering.' Ezekiel addresses the king of Tyre under the form of the cherub who was in the garden and fell: the one who was in the gan-Elohim and was cast out because of iniquity (v. 16). The primordial expulsion from the garden is the template for every act of divine judgment that removes the creature from the divine presence. To be in the garden is to be in YHWH's presence; to be cast from the garden is to be separated from it.
Song of Songs 4:12-16 gives the gan its covenant-intimacy form: 'A locked garden (gan naal) is my sister, my bride; a locked spring, a sealed fountain. Your trees are an orchard of pomegranates ... Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its finest fruits.' The bride is a garden; the bridegroom comes to his garden. The Song's garden-imagery is the covenant relationship in its most intimate form: the gan is the space of love, delight, and mutual presence. The movement from the locked garden (v. 12) to the open garden (v. 16 — 'let my beloved come to his garden') mirrors the movement from inaccessibility to invitation.
Isaiah 51:3 gives the gan its eschatological-restoration form: 'For YHWH has comforted Zion; he has comforted all her waste places and has made her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of YHWH (gan-YHWH); joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.' The eschatological restoration is described as the restoration of the gan: the desolate waste becomes Eden; the desert becomes the YHWH-garden. The endpoint of redemption is where the beginning was — a YHWH-planted garden, full of joy, music, and his presence.
For the preacher, גַּן (gan) gives the congregation the spatial grammar of redemption: the story begins in a garden (Gen 2), falls in a garden (Gen 3), is redeemed in a garden (John 18-20 — Gethsemane and the resurrection garden), and ends in a garden (Rev 22).
גַּן (gan) is a focused garden term. Its theological center is the gan-Eden (Garden of Eden) as the primordial sanctuary of YHWH's presence (Gen 2:8), the covenant-intimacy space of the Song of Songs (Song 4:12-16), and the eschatological-restoration image of Isaiah and Ezekiel (Isa 51:3, Ezek 36:35). Ezekiel uses gan-Eden as the polarity image: to be in the garden is to be in YHWH's presence; to be cast from it is exile.
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, where He placed the man He had formed.
YHWH plants the garden: 'YHWH Elohim planted a gan in Eden eastward; there he put the man.' The gan is YHWH's planting — not a natural wilderness, not a human cultivation, but the sovereign Creator's prepared space for the creature. The man's placement in the garden (yasem) is a commissioning: he is put there to work (abad) and guard (shamar) — the priestly vocabulary.
The garden is the sanctuary; the man is the priest-gardener. The trees of life (H6086 ets ha-chayyim) and the knowledge of good and evil stand at the garden's center (v. 9) — the space is defined by these two trees of test and gift.
Therefore the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
Expulsion from the garden: 'YHWH Elohim sent him out (shilach, the same verb as divorce) from the gan-Eden to work the ground (adamah) from which he was taken.' The expulsion from the garden is the expulsion from the YHWH-presence. What had been priestly work in a sanctuary becomes hard labor in a cursed ground. The cherub with the flaming sword guards the way back to the tree of life (v.
24) — The gan has a guardian now, and the way back is closed. Every act of divine restoration in Scripture is the movement back toward the garden: the tabernacle is a garden-sanctuary, the land of Canaan is a garden-land (Deut 8:7-9), the eschatological city has the tree of life (Rev 22:2).
My sister, my bride, you are a garden locked up, a spring enclosed, a fountain sealed.
The locked garden-bride: 'a garden locked (gan naal) is my sister, my bride.' The Song's use of gan for the bride is the covenant-intimacy application of Eden-imagery: the bride is the garden-of-delight that awaits the bridegroom. The locked garden (naal, bolted/secured) is the state before the invitation (4:16 — 'let my beloved come to his garden'). The movement from locked to open mirrors the movement of the covenant: YHWH creates the conditions for access, and the bride invites the bridegroom in.
The Song's garden is Eden recovered in covenant relationship — the space of mutual delight that was broken in Genesis 3.
For the Lord will comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and melodious song.
Eschatological gan-restoration: 'YHWH comforts Zion and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the gan-YHWH.' Isaiah 51:3's eschatological vision is the reversal of Genesis 3's expulsion: the wilderness (midbar, the place of wandering and exile) becomes Eden; the desert becomes the YHWH-garden. The restoration is not merely agricultural — it is a return to the primordial state of YHWH's presence: 'joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.'
The eschatological gan is a place of sound, of music, of worship — the garden is the sanctuary restored.
Then they will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden. The cities that were once ruined, desolate, and destroyed are now fortified and inhabited.’
Post-exile garden-restoration: 'they shall say: this desolate land has become like the garden of Eden (gan-Eden).' Ezekiel 36's restoration oracle (v. 24-38) culminates in the nations recognizing the desolate land as the restored Eden. The restoration is not just the return of Israel to the land but the transformation of the land itself into a gan: fertile, inhabited, and YHWH-blessed.
The nations are witnesses to the restoration (v. 36: 'then the nations that are left around you shall know that I YHWH have rebuilt the ruined places') — the gan-restoration is a public act of divine glory.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Bounded, cultivated space; emphasis on enclosure and intentional separation from wilderness
Bounded, cultivated space; emphasis on enclosure and intentional separation from wilderness
a garden (as fenced) BDB: enclosure Usage: garden.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 42 lexical occurrence verses.
גַּן is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
גַּן (gan) gives the congregation the spatial grammar of the entire redemptive story: beginning, fall, redemption, and consummation all happen in a garden. Genesis 2 begins in YHWH's planted garden. Genesis 3 is the story of the garden lost. The Song of Songs is the covenant-intimacy of the garden recovered in the relationship between YHWH and his people. Isaiah 51 and Ezekiel 36 are the prophets' vision of the garden restored.
And then John 18-19 places Jesus's arrest in a garden (Gethsemane), and John 20 places the resurrection in a garden where Mary mistakes Jesus for 'the gardener' — as if John is signaling: the second Adam is in the garden, doing what the first Adam failed to do. Revelation 22:1-5 ends the story with the river of life flowing from the throne through the middle of the city, and the tree of life on both banks — the garden of Genesis 2 has become the garden-city of the new creation.
The sermon on gan does not need to force the typology — the garden simply carries its freight all the way through Scripture, and the preacher's work is to let the congregation feel the weight of standing in a tradition that ends where it began: in YHWH's own garden.
Gen.2.8
גַּן (gan) is derived from the root גָּנַן (ganan, to surround/protect/cover) — the garden is an enclosed, protected space. The feminine form is גַּנָּה (gannah, H1593). The related noun גָּנֵן (ganen, to defend/shield) is used in Isaiah 31:5: 'Like birds hovering, so YHWH of hosts will protect (ganan) Jerusalem; he will protect and deliver it.' The garden's protection motif (enclosed, guarded) echoes in this use.
The garden of the Song of Songs is described as 'locked' (naal, H5274) — the same root used for sandal-fastening. In NT Greek the primary heir of gan is kepos (G2779, garden/orchard) — used in John 18:1 (Gethsemane, 'a garden'), John 18:26 (the garden where Jesus was arrested), John 19:41 (the garden near the cross), John 20:15 (Mary thinks Jesus is the garden-keeper).
John's fourfold use of kepos (garden) in the passion-resurrection narrative is the most concentrated NT echo of the gan-theology in the Gospels.
The NT's most significant gan-echo is John's garden narrative in chapters 18-20. Jesus is arrested in a garden (John 18:1 — 'he went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley where there was a garden [kepos]'). The first resurrection appearance is in a garden: Mary sees Jesus and thinks he is 'the gardener' (ho kepoures, John 20:15) — an identification that John's narrative wants the reader to feel the weight of: Jesus is the last Adam, the new gardener, restoring what the first Adam lost.
Revelation 22:1-5 closes the canon in a garden-city: the river of life flows from the throne, and the tree of life (present in both Gen 2:9 and Rev 22:2) bears fruit twelve months a year, its leaves for the healing of the nations. The garden of Eden becomes the garden-city of the new Jerusalem: the sanctuary and the city are unified, and YHWH's face is there (v.
4 — 'They will see his face'). 2 Corinthians 12:4 uses 'paradise' (paradeisos, the Greek word for an enclosed garden/park — the Persian loanword from which Eden-imagery descends) for the third heaven Paul was caught up to: the garden-of-YHWH and the paradise-of-God are the same space.