Up and down their empire, in various places, the Persian kings had these paradises--parks or pleasure grounds--surrounded and shut off from the neighbouring country by a high fence or wall.

These paradises were places of beauty and loveliness, where the king and his 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.