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The Greek Septuagint calls Eden the “orchard of delight,” and Isaiah 58 uses the same Greek word to describe the Sabbath as a day of “delight.” The Isaiah translator likely drew on the earlier Greek translation of Genesis.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
LXX Genesis 3:24
Septuagint
22 And God said, Look, Adam has become as one of us, to know good and evil, and now for fear that at any time he stretch forth his hand, and take of the tree of life and eat, and so he shall live forever... 23 So the Lord God sent him forth out of the garden of Delight to cultivate the ground out of which he was taken. 24 And he cast out Adam and caused him to dwell over against the garden of Delight, and stationed the cherubs and the fiery sword that turns about to keep the way of the tree of life.
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Isaiah 58:13
Septuagint
12 And your old waste desert places shall be built up, and your foundations shall last through all generations; and you shall be called a repairer of breaches, and you shall cause your paths between to be in peace. 13 If you turn away your foot from the sabbath, so as not to do your pleasure on the holy days, and shall call the sabbaths delightful, holy to your God; if you shall not lift up your foot to work, nor speak a word in anger out of your mouth, 14 then you will trust on the Lord; and he shall bring you up to the good places of the land, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken this.
Date: 100–1 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The idea that the Sabbath was a festive day comes from Isaiah 58:13, which calls it a day of “delight” (LXX: tryphera), a word that evokes the garden of Eden since Genesis 3:23–24 LXX calls Eden a garden of delight (tryphē). Similarly, while the Hebrew of Ezekiel refers to the garden of Eden (Ezekiel 28:13; 31:9), the LXX translator renders the Hebrew as “the garden of delight” (ho paradeisos tēs tryphēs). Philo calls the feast a symbol of the joy of the soul, using a term that includes and perhaps refers specifically to the Sabbath, a day on which it is fitting to be thankful to God. Elsewhere he says that Jews spend the Sabbath cheerfully and in tranquility. This understanding of the Sabbath is also implicit in the widespread prohibition of fasting on the Sabbath that can be found at Qumran, in Jubilees, and in later rabbinic literature. While not an explicit prohibition of fasting, the book of Judith portrays its protagonist fasting all the days of her widowhood except on the day before the Sabbath, on the Sabbath itself, and on festival days, because these were joyful days (Judith 8:6) ..."
Matthew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 215–216.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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