Ecclesiastes 2:5

I designed ¹  royal gardens ²  and parks ³  for myself, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them.

I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them.

I made gardens and parks for myself and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees;

I made gardens and parks, filling them with all kinds of fruit trees.

designed gardens and parks and planted a variety of fruit trees in them,

I made myself gardens and fruit gardens, planting in them fruit-trees of all sorts.

I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.

I made myself gardens and orchards, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them.

I designed ¹  royal gardens ²  and parks ³  for myself, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them.

¹ tn Heb “made.”

² tn The term does not refer here to vegetable gardens, but to orchards (cf. the next line). In the same way the so-called “garden” of Eden was actually an orchard filled with fruit trees. See Gen 2:8-9.

³ tn The noun פַּרְדֵּס (pardes, “garden, parkland, forest”) is a foreign loanword that occurs only 3 times in biblical Hebrew (Song 4:13; Eccl 2:5; Neh 2:8). The original Old Persian term pairidaeza designated the enclosed parks and pleasure-grounds that were the exclusive domain of the Persian kings and nobility (HALOT 963 s.v. פַּרְדֵּס; LSJ 1308 s.v παράδεισος). The related Babylonian term pardesu “marvelous garden” referred to the enclosed parks of the kings (AHw 2:833 and 3:1582). The term passed into Greek as παράδεισος (paradeisos, “enclosed park, pleasure-ground”), referring to the enclosed parks and gardens of the Persian kings (LSJ 1308). The Greek term has been transliterated into English as “paradise.”