Attempts have been made to find out what rivers are here spoken of by Moses, and where they are to be found. But the description in Genesis was purposely intended to baffle and defy any geographical identification. Paradise was never meant to be trampled by the feet of them that travel for pleasure or write for gain. There is no river on earth that parts itself into four heads. Are these words, then, but solemn trifling with the natural curiosity of man, affecting to tell him something, yet really telling nothing? What are we taught by this mixture of the straightforward and matter-of-fact with the (geographically speaking) impossible?
I. They teach us by a very simple parable that Paradise is real, most real; that it is intimately connected with earthly realities, but that it is not to be realised itself on earth, not to be discovered by worldly knowledge or inherited by flesh and blood.
II. The myths of the nations, entangled with false ideas of cosmogony, are broken against the hard facts of modern lore: the record of Genesis, shaking itself free from a merely earthly geography, retains its spiritual teaching and consolation for all generations. To the simple Christian this region is very real and very clear: it is his own inheritance in Christ not, indeed, to be sought on this earth, but to be expected in that better world.
R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions,p. 1.
Reference: Genesis 2:10-14. Expositor,3rd series, vol. v. p. 201.