Genesis 2:8 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The Lord God planted Or, had planted, namely, on the third day, when he created the fruit-tree yielding fruit; a garden A place peculiarly pleasant, a paradise, separated, it seems, from the rest of the earth, and enclosed, but in what way, we are not informed; eastward From the place where Moses wrote, and from the place where the Israelites afterward dwelt. In Eden Although the word eden signifies delight and pleasure; and undoubtedly the situation of the garden was extremely delightful, yet it is here the name of a place, not that mentioned, Amos 1:5, which was in Syria, but another Eden in Mesopotamia, spoken of Genesis 4:16, and 2 Kings 19:12, in the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. There he put the man Not in a sumptuous palace or house of any kind, but in the open air. For as clothes came in with sin, so did houses. Our first parents in paradise needed them not. “The heaven was the roof of Adam's house,” says Henry, “and never was any roof so curiously ceiled and painted. The earth was his floor, and never was any floor so richly inlaid: the shadow of the trees was his retirement, and never were any rooms so finely hung. Solomon's, in all their glory, were not arrayed like them.”