Why Did Eden Have Four Rivers?
And what do we know about the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates?
This is the sixth part of our series examining the image of water in the Bible. Over the next months, we’ll be looking at these verses to follow the image of water as it flows from Genesis to Revelation. This time we’ll look at the rivers in Eden and the other lands they flowed into.
Here are the verses in focus:
“And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” (Genesis 2:8)
“A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.” (Genesis 2:10-14)
Genesis 1 and 2 present many clues as to the nature of Eden.
There are no idle words in the Bible, but that is doubly true for the early chapters of Genesis. Genesis packs dense layers of meaning into a small amount of text. It is a book crafted with an incredible amount of intention and attention to detail. When we approach the text we should assume everything is there for a purpose, or rather, for many purposes. Like fertile soil, a multitude of rich meanings grow from every seed that falls into it.
That being the case, why is the flow of the creation of Adam and Eve in the garden in chapter 2 interrupted for what might seem like a random geographical digression about rivers?
What Do We Know About the Rivers?
The river that rises in Eden splits into four streams inside the garden and each branch of the river is given a name and flows into a different region. Of these four primordial rivers (Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates), rivers that bear the names of the Tigris and the Euphrates are easily identifiable on maps today. The Tigris and the Euphrates were major rivers in the map of the Ancient Near East, perhaps second only to the Nile in Egypt. The Euphrates was so significant in the minds of the writers of the Bible that it is sometimes simply referred to as The River (Joshua 24:3). Both the Tigris and the Euphrates pass through the territory of what would become the territory of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires.
The Pishon and the Gihon we know less about.
The text tells us that there is gold in Havilah, leading some commentators to locate it in Arabia, where there are rich gold deposits. Satellite photos have even discovered the remains of an ancient river there. There is a small spring in Jerusalem that bears the name Gihon. Beyond that, there are few details that will let us identify the Pishon and Gihon with present-day rivers.
Where was the “Real Eden”?
This line of observations often gives rise to questions about the location of the “real Eden.” These questions assume that we can use the geographical clues in the Bible to plot the location of Eden on a modern map. After all, doesn’t the text mention the Tigris and the Euphrates, two modern rivers that have a common source north of modern-day Israel? Doesn’t it follow that if we can find the location of the other two rivers named in Genesis 2 (the Gihon and the Pishon), then we can find the location of the “real Eden”?
The short answer is: No.
I’m not convinced the authors of Genesis want us to go hunting for a physical place in order to find the “real Eden.” Yes, the Tigris and the Euphrates are named in Genesis 2:10-14 and we have rivers that also bear those names. However, the question presupposes that Genesis 2 is the kind of literature to which it is appropriate to bring questions about historical location, like a Lonely Planet: Eden. But that isn’t the kind of literature we’re dealing with in the book of Genesis.
Genesis 2:10-14 is a “meaning map,” not a literal map.
Bringing modern expectations (and modern questions) to an ancient text can be unfair to the text itself. If we are going to avoid that trap, we have to learn to take off our modern lenses and come to the text with fresh eyes, asking the kind of questions that rise out of careful observation, not 21st-century presuppositions.
When we come to the text with that mindset, we can take the givens of the text at face value and start asking exploratory questions about them. How is Genesis 2 related to Genesis 1 and 3? What else is happening in Genesis 2 and why does this seeming aside land where it does? Where does the river come from? What things does the river pass as it splits into four? Where does it split? What is the relationship between Eden and the garden? Why is the garden in the east? East of what? Why are we given names for each of the rivers and where do those names appear elsewhere in the Bible?
In this case, that last question leads to a particularly interesting set of answers.
What Does Genesis 10 Have To Do With Genesis 2?
The long genealogy in Genesis 10 is the key to unlocking some of the meaning of the rivers of Genesis 2.
Before diving into Genesis 10, however, let’s list the relevant facts about the rivers from Genesis 2:
The Pishon. It flowed around the land of Havilah, where there is gold, bdellium, and onyx.
The Gihon. It flowed around the land of Cush.
The Tigris. It flowed “east of Assyria.”
The Euphrates. No additional information is given in about the Euphrates in Genesis 2 but it is known as the eastern boundary of the promised land (Deuteronomy 11:24), is mentioned many times in the Bible, and is associated with the land of Babylon, through which it ran.
In Genesis 9, when Noah and his family emerge from the ark, Noah plants a vineyard, gets drunk, and his nakedness is seen (and perhaps worse) by his son Ham. Ham’s brothers Shem and Japheth walk backward into the tent where their father is lying and cover Noah’s nudity. Rabbinical tradition indicates that this is a euphemism for a more nefarious sexual act than simply seeing one’s father naked, thus deserving the curse Noah pronounces on Ham.
Genesis 10 takes up the story in the form of a genealogy of Noah’s three sons. All of Noah’s descendants mentioned in the so-called “Table of Nations” go on to found people groups that are associated with geographical regions. It is interesting to note, however, that Israel’s most potent enemies and the evil empires of the Old Testament - Egypt, Canaan, Babylon, and Assyria - all descend from Ham.
Ham’s sons included Egypt, Canaan, and a man whose name is familiar from Genesis 2, Cush. Cush fathers several sons, including Havilah, the other name associated with one of our Genesis 2 rivers.
So here in Genesis 10 we have two names of Ham’s children that correspond to lands associated with the rivers in Genesis 2. The Gihon is connected to Cush. The Pishon is connected to Havilah. But what about the Tigris and the Euphrates and the two empires they are connected to, Assyria and Babylon? How are they connected to the descendants of Ham?
Enter Nimrod.
Next, Genesis 10 introduces a son of Cush who is so important he gets several verses dedicated to his exploits in this hyper-condensed genealogy, Nimrod.
Nimrod is called “the first to be called a mighty man” and a “mighty hunter.” This epithet doesn’t just mean that Nimrod was good at bagging game for his family’s dinner table. We should understand it to mean something more like “Nimrod the Destroyer” or “Nimrod the Terrible.” Nimrod was a killer, a warlord, a man of power. It isn’t a good thing to be called a “mighty hunter” in the context of Genesis. The Hebrew word that is translated as “mighty” is gibbor, a word that was first applied to the Nephilim in Genesis 6, the dark scions of renegade angels and human women.
Nimrod’s first project was a city called Babel (later Babylon) where they began to make a certain tower (Genesis 11) that represented the continued project to become like gods and reverse the exile by drawing people together and regaining access to the heavens on their own terms. God puts paid to this project, but the kingdom of Babylon endures and continues on the same trajectory.
Next, Nimrod founded the towns of Assyria, including Nineveh, the future capital of Assyria.
Assyria and Babylon became two of the most vicious empires the world has seen and are the adjacent superpowers during much of Israel’s history after the exodus from Egypt (one of Cush’s sons) and the taking of the promised land from the descendants of Canaan (another of Cush’s sons).
So we have connected each river flowing out of Eden with Ham’s descendants and with one of the evil empires that oppose God’s people throughout the Old Testament.
But what does it all mean?
What Does All This Have to Do With Rivers?
Symbolically, Genesis is located in Eden at the top a high place at the center of the earth. The river of Eden breaks into other rivers that go to, as it were, the farthest corners of the earth, the “Other Lands” east of Eden.
Some scholars have said that the flourishing of the Garden was originally to have followed the path of the rivers into all the earth. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, these lands instead became gathering places for the forces of that continued human rebellion. Instead of flourishing and peace flowing down from God’s high place, the cascading effects of the rebellion of Genesis 3 flowed down and gather to a greatness in the Other Lands. As rivers join the sea, humanity as a river joins the metaphorical sea, the forces of evil and chaos gathered against God.
The idea that the peace of the garden was supposed to follow the paths of the rivers is supported by Ezekiel 47 (which we will look at in great detail in the future). In Ezekiel 47, the prophet has a vision in which the river of life begins to flow eastward out of the temple, flowing down the temple mount and into the eastern lands. This river has such potent life-giving properties that even the Dead Sea is changed into fresh water and “everything the river touches lives.”
[If you want to jump ahead in our study and hear more about the river of life, listen to the lecture below.]
The image of “humanity as a river” is picked up again in many places, notably in Isaiah 2, only there it is reversed. Instead of humanity pouring out of the garden and gathering into concentrated pools of rebellion against God, the nations flow upstream back into God’s new “high mountain,” Jerusalem, where peace and flourishing reign once more.
Here is Isaiah 2:1-3:
1 This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:
2 In the last days
the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
and all nations will stream (nahar: “river”) to it.
3 Many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
Isaiah is not literally saying that water will flow uphill to Jerusalem; this is symbol-laden language to speak of spiritual things. Rather, he is tracking with the metaphors and imagery of Genesis 1 and 2. The prophet envisions a time when the Lord’s temple is established as the highest of all mountains, just as Eden was God’s high place. Rather than humanity flowing away from Eden in exile, they return to the Lord so that he can “teach them his ways.”
The violent, chaotic, and evil ways of life symbolized in the image of chaotic waters are ended and humanity once again will dwell with God in peace and flourishing.
All of this is present in seed-form in the “meaning map” of the geographical aside about the rivers in Genesis 2.
Catch up with previous posts on the theme of water:
Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash
Interesting article. You mentioned that the curse was pronounced on Ham. Yet, 2:25 reads, " he said,Cursed be Canaan;..."
Also mentioned later, "and the taking of the promised land from the descendants of Canaan (another of Cush’s sons)." But 10:6 states, "The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. 7 The sons of Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca.
Would someone please edit or clarify this? Thanks.
Where was US in the beginning of the world?