friends might meet and walk together, and enjoy each other's society.

Is not this the Lord's own picture of the place He went to prepare for
His people? Did He not say to the thief on the cross, 'To-day thou shalt
be with Me in Paradise?' It was a new name taken by our Lord from these
paradises of the Persian kings, and given by Him to that new place which
He went to prepare for His people, even the Garden of the Lord, the
pleasure ground of the King of kings, the place to which His people go
when they die. There they enjoy His company, and see His face, and walk
with Him and talk to Him, waiting for that glorious day when they shall
pass from the garden of the King into the palace itself.

We are not told where this particular paradise was, of which Asaph was
the keeper, but probably it was the place which the kings of Judah had
always made their pleasure ground. This was at Etam, about seven miles
from Jerusalem, where Solomon had fine gardens, and had made large lakes
of water, fed by a hidden and sealed spring.

Solomon himself twice used the word paradise of his gardens, and these
are the only places in which the word occurs in the Old Testament,
except in Neh. ii. 8.

Solomon says, Eccles. ii. 5, 'I made me gardens and paradises.' In Cant.
iv. 13 he speaks of 'a paradise of pomegranates, with precious fruits.'

For three purposes Nehemiah wanted wood from Asaph's paradise, and asked
the king to give him an order for it, that he might deliver to the
keeper.

He wanted it (1) for the gates of the palace of the house. _The_