Difficult Questions: How Long Were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?

From time to time, we dig into Scripture and seek answers to difficult questions from the Bible. Today, we are asking the question: “How long were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?”

Scripture does not tell us exactly how long Adam and Eve were in the garden before they sinned and were removed. First of all, we do not know for sure how long Adam was in the garden before God made Eve to be his helper. However, I would venture to say we can conclude that once Eve entered the picture, the two of them were in garden together for a fairly short period of time before being forced to leave. Let me explain how I come to this conclusion.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Genesis 2:21-25 (KJV) emphasis mine

God created Eve, gave her to Adam, and I do not think the two of them just stood there looking at each other. I believe they came together in sexual intimacy. The meaning of cleave means to join. We might assume they came together to have marital relations. We do not know exactly when they consummated their union, but I don’t think it would have been too long.

There was no sin on the earth in those days, so there would have been nothing to hinder growth and fruitfulness. I believe we could safely say that, in the garden, Eve would become pregnant quickly with nothing to hinder the fruitfulness of Adam’s seed and her womb. However, when they were cast out of the garden in Genesis 3, there was no mention of children going with them. The first mention of children came in Genesis 4.

So, if Adam and Eve did have sexual relations and left the garden without children, we could assume that the two of them were there just a short time. Of course, I am making some assumptions with this concept and this should not be taken as absolute truth or the basis for any doctrine. However, I am basing it on what I see in Scripture, and I believe it has some merit.

The bottom line is that we do not know for sure how long they lived in the garden, but it is possible that their time there together was brief. Regardless of the amount of time they spent there, the sin of Adam required that another man, Jesus, come and restore mankind to the garden. And that is the most important thing for us to know.