In Genesis 2, God forms the first human — and then plants a garden for him to live in.

Picture this: God planting. Not speaking the garden into existence, but planting it. Designing it, tending it, and preparing it to be a perfect home for humanity. Only then did he set us inside, within the protection of the garden. This specific detail, which can easily slide past us in reading, actually carries a great deal of weight. In Hebrew, the word for garden, gan, carries the meaning of something enclosed and guarded. The garden wasn't a prettier version of wilderness — it was a deliberately designed and bounded space, shaped for habitation before its inhabitants even existed.

This first episode in our Plants in the Bible series uses the garden as a lens for some surprisingly difficult questions. Why plant a tree that humans clearly couldn't resist, and then leave it accessible? Where was the garden, what was the forbidden fruit, and do relics of them even exist on our version earth? We explore the possibility that barring access to the tree of life after the fall may have been an act of protection: eternal life in a broken state would have meant eternal suffering, blocking our path to restoration.

The garden, it turns out, was never just a setting. It's a statement about what God wants for us — and a preview of where we're heading.

Also, a fig is a fig and a date is a date, and neither is an apricot.