The Tree in the Midst of the Garden and the Tree in the Midst of the Street
Old Testament: Genesis 2:9
And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Old Testament, also: Genesis 3:24
And he cast out Adam; and placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
New Testament: Apocalypse 22:2, 14
In the midst of the street thereof, and on both sides of the river, was the tree of life, bearing twelve fruits, yielding its fruits every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. ... Blessed are they that wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb: that they may have a right to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city.
The connection
The tree of life is planted "in the midst of paradise" (Genesis 2:9), and nothing ever goes wrong with it. It is not the tree that is eaten from, not the tree that is cursed, and not the tree that is taken away. What changes in Genesis 3 is not the tree but the road to it. God "placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life" (Genesis 3:24). The tree is not taken from man; he is fenced off from it, and the fence is a blade. Scripture then keeps the tree out of sight for the whole of the Law. It surfaces only in the wisdom books, and there as a figure rather than a place, wisdom being "a tree of life to them that lay hold on her" (Proverbs 3:18). Nothing given at Sinai reopens the way, and nothing given at Sinai attempts it. The Apocalypse ends by putting the tree back exactly where it stood, and the wording is the tell. John sees it "in the midst of the street thereof, and on both sides of the river" (Apocalypse 22:2), holding the same position in a city that it held in a garden, so that the world has a centre again and the centre is the one it always had. What is new is the approach. There is now "a right to the tree of life", and men "enter in by the gates into the city" (Apocalypse 22:14), where before there had been a sword and no gate at all. Genesis 3:24 closes a way; Apocalypse 22:14 grants one. The tree needed no repair. The road did. Between the two stands a third tree, and the word chosen for it settles the matter. The Greek of Genesis 2:9 calls the tree of life xylon, the Apocalypse calls it xylon again, and when the apostles preach the crucifixion they reach past the ordinary word for cross and take up that same noun: "hanging him upon a tree" (Acts 5:30), "his own self bore our sins in his body upon the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). Three trees and one word, and the choice is the writers' own rather than a later reader's. What the sword kept, moreover, was not the tree by itself. Genesis 3:24 in the Greek guards "the way of the tree of life", and the way is what the Gospel then names: "I am the way" (John 14:6). So the road is not reopened by the withdrawal of a guard. It is reopened because it turns out to be a person, and the person is the tree. The tradition has long heard a further answer in the blade as well, the sword that kept the way met at last by the spear that "opened his side" (John 19:34), though Scripture uses different words for the two weapons and joins them nowhere. What it does say, on the afternoon of the third tree, runs the whole story backwards in a sentence: "this day thou shalt be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). The first man was put out of paradise for reaching toward the tree. This one is let in while hanging on one.
Moral sense
What was lost in Eden was access and not the thing itself, so the despair that treats some good as destroyed has usually mistaken a barred road for a felled tree; the counsel of Genesis 3 is not to grieve the tree but to look for the way back to it.
Anagogical sense
At the last the tree is not seen or remembered, as the bow in the cloud still is, but eaten, bearing twelve fruits and yielding them every month, its leaves for the healing of the nations, which is the whole difference between a promise held in view and a promise consumed.
The Fathers
St John Damascene, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, ch. 11: "The tree of life which was planted by God in Paradise pre-figured this precious Cross. For since death was by a tree, it was fitting that life and resurrection should be bestowed by a tree." He gathers the same chapter's other wooden figures to it, Moses's rod, the bitter water made sweet, the rock rent and pouring forth streams of water, and the serpent lifted on a tree.
Warrant
The badge rests on the Apocalypse itself, and the echo was checked in the source languages rather than in the English. Genesis 2:9 in the Septuagint reads to xylon tes zoes en meso to paradeiso; Apocalypse 22:2 reads en meso tes plateias autes ... xylon zoes, the same noun phrase after the same en meso. The Hebrew agrees, betok haggan, in the midst of the garden. Apocalypse 22:2 is also drawing on Ezechiel 47:12, which supplies the river, the trees on both sides, the fruit every month and the leaves for healing; what comes from Genesis rather than from Ezechiel is the name, xylon zoes, which Ezechiel nowhere uses, and the position, since Ezechiel's trees line a bank while this one stands in the middle. Genesis 3:24 in the Greek guards ten hodon tou xylou tes zoes, the way of the tree of life, which is the word taken up at John 14:6, and xylon is also what the apostles call the Cross at Acts 5:30 and 1 Peter 2:24. The reading of the flaming sword as answered by the soldier's spear is a further step and is offered as the sense the tradition has long taken, since the Greek has rhomphaia for the one and lonche for the other and joins them nowhere. Apocalypse 22:14 is quoted in the Douay form, which follows the better attested reading, blessed are they that wash their robes.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1026.
The verses
Genesis 2:9 · Genesis 3:24 · Apocalypse 22:2 · Apocalypse 22:14
