The name of the first [is] Pison: that [is] it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where [there is] gold;
11. Pishon ] The name of this river does not occur elsewhere in the Bible except in Sir 24:25 . What river was intended, we can only conjecture, ( a) from the description of its course, and ( b) from the names of the rivers with which it is classed, two being the Tigris and the Euphrates. It is described as “compassing,” that is, encircling, “the whole land of Havilah.” The identification of Havilah is much controverted. In the present day scholars are of opinion that the name probably denotes a region either in N.E., or in S., Arabia. It is mentioned again in Gen 10:7; Gen 10:29; Gen 25:18, passages in which Arabia seems to be indicated. Havilah is further called a land “where there is gold.” Arabia, in ancient times, was famous for its gold.
The river which would encircle Havilah is, therefore, quite probably rightly identified by P. Haupt, the Assyriologist, with the Persian Gulf and the sea that surrounded Arabia, on the east.
Josephus identifies it with the “Indus.”
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
NOTE ON THE RIVERS OF PARADISE
Gen 2:11-14
The mention of the four rivers of Paradise has given rise to many endeavours to localize the site. A famous pamphlet by Prof. F. Delitzsch, entitled Wo lag das Paradise? (= What was the site of Paradise?), 1881, gave an immense impulse to the enquiry.
1. Delitzsch himself ingeniously identifies Pishon with the Pallakopas, a canal on the W. bank of the Euphrates, flowing into the Persian Gulf, and Gihon with the modern Sha-en-Nil, a canal from the E. bank of the Euphrates, near Babylon, and returning to the Euphrates over against Ur. Hiddekel and Euphrates will then be the lower portions of the Tigris and the Euphrates; Havilah part of the desert W. of the Euphrates; Cush the name for that region in Babylonia, which gave its name to the Kassite dynasty. According to this theory, Eden is the plain ( edinu) between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and the river in Gen 2:10 is the Euphrates. It seems, however, fatal to this ingenious view that
( a) it identifies the river of Gen 2:11 with one of the four heads into which it divides itself:
( b) “the whole land of Havilah” must be intended to denote something much more extensive than the small district enclosed by the Pallakopas canal: while the canal Sha-en-Nil could never be described as encircling the land of Cush:
( c) “in front of Assyria” is a description of the Tigris to the N. of Babylonia, and is unsuitable to the region near Babylon where the two rivers approach most closely to each other.
2. Sayce, in H. C. M. 95 ff., proposes that the garden of Eden is to be identified with the sacred garden of Ea at Eridu, once the seaport of Chaldaea on the Persian Gulf; and the river which waters it ( Gen 2:11), with the Persian Gulf, while the four rivers are the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Pallakopas (= Pison), the Choaspes (modern Kerkha) = Gihon, their waters entering the Persian Gulf by separate mouths. The Persian Gulf was sometimes designated in the Babylonian language Nr Marratum (“Bitter River”). It is an objection that the Biblical account makes the one river divide up into four, while this theory makes four rivers flow into one.
3. With this view should be associated that of Hommel ( A.H.T. 314 ff.), who identifies Eden with the “garden” at Eridu, the river of Gen 2:11 with the Persian Gulf, and the three rivers Pishon, Gihon and Hiddekel with three wdis in N. Arabia.
4. Haupt, quoted in Driver, supposes the common source of the four rivers to have been an imaginary lake in N. Mesopotamia. The Pishon is the Persian Gulf encircling Havilah, or Arabia; the Gihon is the Karun, supposed to flow eventually through Cush and become the Nile; while the Tigris and the Euphrates entered, by separate mouths, the marshes, beyond which was the Persian Gulf.
5. Skinner suggests (p. 64) that the Hebrew geographer, who was himself only acquainted with the two great Mesopotamian rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, added to them the names of two others, the Pishon and the Gihon, by which he intended the two mysterious rivers of the Indian world, the Indus and the Ganges.
Delitzsch and Dillmann identify the Pishon with the Indus, and the Gihon with the Nile. “But if the biblical narrator believed the Nile to rise with Euphrates and Tigris, it is extremely likely that he regarded its upper waters as the Indus, as Alexander the Great did in his time; and we might then fall back on the old identification of Pishon with the Ganges” (Skinner).
6. Two of the rivers are the Tigris and the Euphrates, which were known to flow from a remote Northern region into Mesopotamia. The tradition supposed this Northern region to contain also the sources of two other rivers which rivalled the Tigris and the Euphrates. One of them, according to the vague notions of ancient geography, somehow encircled Havilah (= Arabia), while the other watered the region of Cush (= Soudan).
7. The well-known names embodied in this strange piece of ancient geography make it very improbable that any mythological or astrological explanation can meet the requirements of the problem.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Pison, an eminent branch of the river Tigris, probably that called by others Pasi-tigris, or Piso-tigris.
That is it which compasseth, i.e. with many windings and turnings passed through; as this word is used, Jos 15:3; Mat 23:15.
This whole land of Havilah; either that which is in those parts of Arabia which is towards Mesopotamia, so called from Havilah the issue of Cham, Gen 10:7; or that which is nigh Persia, and in the borders of India, so called from another Havilah of the posterity of Shem, Gen 10:29. To either of these following the description agrees well.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
The name of the first is Pison,…. Not the river Nile in Egypt, as Jarchi, who thinks it is derived from “Pashah”, which signifies to increase, expand, and diffuse, as that does at certain times, and spreads itself over the land of Egypt, or from “Pishten”, linen, which grows there, Isa 19:9 nor the river Ganges in India, as Josephus m, and others; for the country where it is afterwards said to run agrees with neither Egypt nor India: rather it seems to be the same river, which is the Phasis of Pliny n, and Strabo o, and the Physcus of Xenophon p, and the Hyphasis of Philostorgius q, a river in Armenia, and about Colchis; and which is sometimes called Pasitigris, being a branch of that river, and mixed with, or arising from channels, drawn from Tigris, Euphrates, and other waters r
that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; this country had its name from Havilah, one of the sons of Cush, Ge 10:7 who very probably seated himself near his brother Seba, from whom came the Sabeans, who inhabited one part of Arabia; and Havilah, it is plain, was before Egypt, in the way to Assyria, and bordered upon the Ishmaelites, who inhabited Arabia Deserta, Ge 25:16. So that it seems to be a country in Arabia, near unto, or a part of Cush or Arabia Cusea, and near to Seba or Arabia Felix: and so Strabo, among the nations of the Arabians, and along with the Nabatheans, places the Chaulotaeans s, who seem to be no other than the posterity of Havilah: according to the learned Reland t, it is the same with Colchis, a part of Scythia, and Phasis is well known to be a river of Colchis; and which runs into Pontus, as appears from Pliny u and includes Scythia, as Justin w says; and then it must have its name from Havilah, the son of Joktan, Ge 10:29 and in either of these countries there was gold, and an abundance of it, and of the best, as follows:
(After the global destruction of Noah’s flood, it is doubtful that the location of these rivers could be determined with any degree of certainty today. Ed.)
m Antiqu. l. 1. c. 1. sect. 3. n Nat. Hist. l. 6. c. 4. 17. o Geograph. l. 11. p. 343, 345, 364. p Cyr. Minor. l. 2. q Hist. Ecclesiast. l. 3. c. 10. r Curtius, l. 5. c. 3. Strabo. Geograph. l. 15. p. 501. s Ib. p. 528. t De Paradiso, p. 16, &c. u Ut supra. (Nat. Hist. l. 6. c. 4. 17.) w E Trogo, l. 2. c. 2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(11, 12) The name of the first is Pison.The full-flowing (Gesenius), or free-streaming (Frst). Neither derivation has much authority for it in the Hebrew language, and we must wait for the true explanation till the cuneiform inscriptions have been more thoroughly examined. As two of the four rivers of Paradise rise in Armenia, so we must probably seek the other two there; but the conjectures of commentators have thus far suggested no probable identification of this stream.
Compasseth.This word, without strictly meaning to go round, gives the idea of a devious course (comp. 1Sa. 7:16; Son. 3:3), as if the river had now reached a level plain.
Havilah may mean sandy land (Deutsch), or circuit region. There seems to have been more than one country of this name; but the most probable is that in South-Western Arabia, afterwards colonised by the Joktanites (Gen. 10:29), which this river skirted rather than traversed. But we know of no such river, rising in Armenia or elsewhere, which answers to this description now. Besides gold of great purity, pronounced emphatically good, this land produced bdellium, a scented gum, to which manna is compared (Num. 11:7), though the meaning even there is uncertain.
Instead of bedolach, bdellium, the Syriac reads berulch, that is, the same word in the plural, but with d instead of r. These two letters being very similar, not merely in the square Hebrew alphabet now in use, but in the original Samaritan characters, are constantly interchanged in manuscripts; and as berulch means pearls, the sense agrees better with the other productions of Havilah, gold and onyx stones. As bedolach is a quadriliteral, while Hebrew words have only three root letters, we must look to the Accadi an language for its true signification, if this be really the right reading.
The onyx stone.Though there is considerable authority for this translation, yet probably the LXX., supported by most ancient authorities, are right in regarding this gem as the beryl of a light green colour (leek-stone, LXX.). The root signifies something pale, while the onyx has its name from its markings resembling those of the human nail.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
11. Pison Havilah After the views above given as to the site of paradise and the land of Eden, it would be idle to enumerate the diverse speculations and conjectures touching the rivers and lands designated in this and the following verses . The name Pison occurs nowhere else; but Havilah appears in Gen 10:7, as the name of a son of Ham, and in Gen 2:29 as that of a son of Shem . Nothing would have been more natural than for the sons of Noah to transfer antediluvian names to their children . In Gen 25:18, and 1Sa 15:7, the name appears as that of a country south-east of Palestine probably because settled by the descendants of a patriarch of this name .
Where there is gold The land of Eden was rich in precious metals and other costly substances .
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Gen 2:11 The name of the first [is] Pison: that [is] it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where [there is] gold;
Ver. 11. Where there is gold. ] Which, though never so much admired and studiously acquired, is but the guts and garbage of the earth. Gold is that which the basest element yields, the most savage Indians get, servile apprentices work, Midianitish camels carry, miserable muckworms adore, unthrifty ruffians spend. It is to be wondered that, treading upon these minerals, we cannot contemn them. They lie farthest from heaven, and the best of them in Havilah, farthest of all from the Church. Adam had them in the first paradise. In the second we shall not need them. Money is the monarch of this world, and answers all things; but in the matters of God, money bears no mastery, will fetch in no commodity Job 28:15 Wise men esteemed it as the stones of the street. 2Ch 1:15 Children of wisdom might not possess it in their girdles. Mat 10:9 Medes cared not for it; Isa 13:17 and devils were sent to keep rich and pleasant palaces. Isa 13:22 So subject these metals are to ensnare and defile us, that God made a law to have them purified, ere he would have them used, Num 31:22-23 and appointed the snuffers and snuff-dishes Exo 25:38 of the sanctuary to be made of pure gold, to teach us to make no account of what he put to so base offices, and is frequently given to so bad men. The Spaniard a found in the mines of America more gold than earth. Hasten we to that country where “God shall be our gold, and we shall have plenty of silver” Job 22:25 , margin
a Heyl. Geog ., p. 714.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
verses 8-14 Figure of speech Parecbasis. App-6.
Pison = the river W. of the Euphrates, called Pallukat in reign of Nabonidos, last king of Babylonia, or the Pallakopas Canal.
compasseth. The Pallukat or Pison encircled the N. borders of the great sandy desert which stretched westward to the mountain chains of Midian and Sinai.
Havilah = the region of Sand. Indicated in Gen 25:18. 1Sa 15:7. Shur would be the E. end of Havilah, the W, of this region. Connected with Ophir in Gen 10:29.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Havilah: Gen 10:7, Gen 10:29, Gen 25:18, 1Sa 15:7
Reciprocal: 1Ch 1:23 – Havilah Job 28:1 – the silver Eze 28:13 – every
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
2:11 The name of the first [is] Pison: that [is] it which compasseth the whole land {i} of Havilah, where [there is] gold;
(i) Havilah is a country adjoining Persia to the east, and inclining towards the west.