And the name of the second river [is] Gihon
There was one of this name in the land of Israel, which, or a
branch of it, flowed near Jerusalem, ( 1 Kings 1:33
) ( 2
Chronicles 32:30 ) this Aben Ezra suggests is here meant, and
which favours the notion of the above learned man, that the
garden of Eden was in the land of Israel. Josephus F8 takes
it to be the river Nile, as do many others; it seems to have been
a branch of the river Euphrates or Tigris, on the eastern side,
as Phison was on the west; and so Aben Ezra says it came from the
south east. The learned Reland F9 will have it to be the river
Araxes: it has its name, according to Jarchi, from the force it
goes with, and the noise it makes. And it seems to have its name
from (xwg) , which
signifies to come forth with great force, as this river is said
to do, when it pours itself into the Baltic sea.
The same [is] it that compasseth the whole land of
Ethiopia;
either Ethiopia above Egypt; and this favours the notion of those
who take Gihon to be the Nile: for Pausanias F11 says,
that it was commonly reported that the Nile was Euphrates, which
disappearing in a marsh, rose up above Ethiopia, and became the
Nile, and so washed that country, and is thought to agree very
well with the Mosaic account: or else that Cush or Ethiopia,
which bordered on Midian, and was a part of Arabia, and may be
called Arabia Chusea, often meant by Cush in Scripture. Reland
F12 thinks the country of the Cossaeans
or Cussaeans, a people bordering on Media, the country of
Kuhestan, a province of Persia, is intended.
(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.)