Cush in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE

kush (kush): 1. The Ancestor of Many Nations: (1) The first of the sons of Ham, from whom sprang Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah and Sabtecah. He was also the father of Nimrod, who rounded Babel (Babylon) and the other great states of Shinar or Babylonia (Gen 10:6-8). The meaning of the name is uncertain. (2) The name of the country around which the Gihon flowed (Gen 2:13), rendered "Ethiopia" in the King James Version, but in view of the distance of that country from the other rivers mentioned, this seems to be an unlikely identification. 2. A District of the Garden of Eden: Fried. Delitzsch has suggested (Wo lag das Paradies? 74 ff) that the watercourse in question is the canal Gu-hande or Arahtu, which, coming from the South, entered Babylon a little to the East of the Euphrates, and, flowing alongside the Festival-Street, entered the Euphrates to the North of Nebuchadrezzar's palace. Koldewey (Tempel von Babylon und Borsippa, 38) regards the Gu-hande as the section of the Euphrates itself at this point. There is no indication, however, that the district which it enclosed was ever called Kusu or Cush, and the suppression of the final syllable of Gu-hande would remain unexplained. Moreover, the identification of Cush with a possible Cas, for Kasdu, "Chaldea," seems likewise improbable, especially as that name could only have been applied, in early times, to the district bordering on the Persian Gulf (see CHALDEA)...