The “Land of Cush.” The “land of Cush” referred to at Genesis 2:13 as the land originally encircled by the river Gihon, one of the four heads of the “river issuing out of Eden,” is of uncertain location. (Ge 2:10) The translators of the Septuagint rendered the Hebrew word for “Cush” by the Greek name Ethiopia in this text. The name Cush did become more or less synonymous with ancient Ethiopia at an early time, yet it cannot arbitrarily be said that such is necessarily the case at Genesis 2:13. Josephus, following the rendering of the Septuagint, associated the Gihon River with the Nile. (Jewish Antiquities, I, 39 [i, 3]) However, the Gihon’s having had a common source with the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers certainly does not seem to allow for such identification, unless the global Deluge is assumed to have brought about extreme changes in the topography of the area.

Still others suggest that the “land of Cush” encircled by the Gihon was on the Arabian Peninsula, since the name “Cushan” is used to parallel “the land of Midian” at Habakkuk 3:7, Midian being located generally in the vicinity of the Gulf of ʽAqaba.