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BIBLE GEOGRAPHY

The Fertile Crescent (3)

Victor M. Eskew

 

            We have been engaged in a study of a large expanse of land known as “the Fertile Crescent.”  This land arcs over the Arabian Desert, continues south through Palestine and comes to an end in the rich soils on either side of the Nile River in Egypt.  The Fertile Crescent is well-watered and is a place of abundance with regard to agricultural products.  After God created man, He placed him in the Garden of Eden in the eastern part of Fertile Crescent near the Persian Gulf.  This portion of the Fertile Crescent, therefore, has the honor of being “the cradle of civilization.

            In the pages of the Bible, a place known as “between the rivers” is mentioned by three different names that carry this meaning.  The two rivers refer to the Tigris River and the Euphrates River.  The Tigris River is north of the Euphrates.  It flows 1087 miles from the Armenian Highlands to the Persian Gulf.  The Euphrates River is 1740 miles long, the longest river in southwest Asia.  It also originates in the Armenian Highlands and flows into the Persian Gulf.

 

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The first name is Shinar.  Genesis 10:10 is the first verse to mention this place.  “And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.”  Shinar is not a translation.  It is a transliteration.  The lexicon of Brown-Driver-Briggs defines the word as the “country of two rivers.”  This name is mentioned in six other places in the Old Testament (Gen. 11:2; 14:1, 9; Isa. 11:11; Dan 1:2; Zech. 5:11). 

The second name for the land “between the rivers” is Mesopotamia.  When Abraham desired a wife for his son, he sent his servant unto his country, and to his kindred to take a wife for Isaac (Gen. 24:4).  “And the servant took ten camels of his master, and departed; for all the goods of his master were in his hand; and he arose, and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor” (Gen. 24:10).  The Hebrew word translated Mesopotamia is “Aram-naharaim.”  The word could be translated as “Aram between the two rivers.”  The word “Mesopotamia” is found in six other verses in the Bible (Deut. 23:4; Judg. 3:8, 10; I Chron. 19:6; Acts 2:9; 7:2). 

The third name is Padanaram.  In Genesis 25:20, Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, is describes as “the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister to Laban the Syrian.”  This word is also a transliteration.  It can be translated as the “tableland of Aram.”  It is found nine other times in the Bible.  Every reference is in the book of Genesis (Gen. 28:2, 5, 6, 7; 31:18; 33:18; 35:9, 26; 46:15).  One time it is simply called “Padan” (Gen. 48:7). 

Another name that fits into this discussion is the name “Hebrew.”  In Genesis 14:13, Abram is referred to by the Holy Spirit as “the Hebrew.”  “And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew…”  The word “Hebrew” means “one from beyond” or “from beyond the river.”  The river being referenced is the Euphrates.  We know that Abram lived in two cities in the region of Mesopotamia:  Ur of the Chaldees (Gen. 11:27) and Haran (Gen. 11:31).  When he arrived in the land of Canaan, the tribes of that land would refer to him as a Hebrew, that is, one from beyond the Euphrates River.

When God called Abraham to leave Ur, he and his family worshipped idols.  We learn this from Joshua 24:2.  “And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor:  and they served other gods.”  This makes the faith of Abraham even more remarkable.  He gave up his gods to serve the true and living God.  When it came time for both Isaac and Jacob to obtain wives, their parents wanted them to secure a wife from among those living in his home country of Padanaram (See Gen. 27:46; 28:8).  Perhaps this was because they had not become as immoral as the people in the land of Canaan even though they worshipped idols.  Too, their parents may have wanted to keep the bloodline of their ancestors rather than intermingling with the Canaanites.  Whatever the reason, Isaac and Jacob both secured their wives from among the Hebrews, that is, those who lived beyond the river.  The name “Hebrews” stuck with Abraham and his descendants.  It became synonymous for all of the Jews.