Adam's expulsion becomes, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 3:24), a sweeping theological statement about everything God made before He made anything.
God drove the man out from the place where the glory of the Shekhinah had dwelt "at the first between the two Kerubaia" — the two cherubim. These are the same cherubim who will later guard the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies. The garden, the Targumist reminds us, was the first Holy of Holies.
Four things older than the world
Then the Targum enumerates what existed before creation itself:
"Before He had created the world, He created the law." The Torah, in rabbinic tradition, is the blueprint from which the world was drawn (Bereshit Rabbah 1:1).
"He prepared the garden of Eden for the righteous, that they might eat and delight themselves with the fruit of the tree; because they would have practised in their lives the doctrine of the law in this world, and have maintained the commandments." Eden becomes, after Adam's fall, the waiting room for the righteous after death.
"But he prepared Gehinnam for the wicked, which is like the sharp, consuming sword of two edges; in the midst of it He hath prepared flakes of fire and burning coals for the judgment of the wicked who rebelled in their life against the doctrine of the law."
Torah, Eden, and Gehinnom — all three pre-exist the world. The moral architecture of reward and consequence is older than matter itself. And the Targumist closes with a remarkable pivot: "To serve the law is better than to eat of the fruit of the tree of life." The Torah is the real tree of life. Adam lost one tree; every Jew who studies gains another.