11 That is the one that flows all around the Havilah
ה֣וּא הַסֹּבֵ֗ב אֵ֚ת כָּל־אֶ֣רֶץ הַֽחֲוִילָ֔ה
Most translations make the end of this phrase “the whole land of Havilah.” I have used כָּל more as an adverb here in order to point out that Havilah is not quite a proper noun, but halfway in between a noun and a name. It is ha-Ḥavilah, the Havilah — like the Netherlands or (as they used to be called) the Lebanon and the Ukraine. As with those three countries, however, using the is not a reason to argue that this isn’t really a country. At least, it was most certainly intended to sound like one.
I suggested in Sunday’s post that the first step in moving the reader (literarily) from Eden to Earth was to start with a mysterious river in a mysterious land. I do think that’s correct, but it’s possible that Havilah was not so mysterious — at least as a name — to the ancient readers. James Montgomery writes in Arabia and the Bible (1934):
Its location is disputed. Hommel, Glaser, and others would find it in northeastern Arabia in connection with the rivers of Eden 3 others identify it with Haulan on the west side of Arabia, known in a South-Arabic inscription, which reports an attack made by Sheba and Haulan upon a Minasan caravan.
Moreover, the name Havilah appears six times elsewhere in the Bible:
in Gen 25:18 and 1 Sam 15:7 as a place near Shur, “which is close to Egypt”
in Gen 10:7 and 1 Chr 1:9 as a person descended from Cush (whom we’ll also see as a land in v. 13)
in Gen 10:29 and 1 Chr 1:23 as a person descended from Joktan
W. W. Müller in the Anchor Bible Dictionary (some 30 years old now, and begging for a new edition) says this about the two people named Havilah:
Two tribal groups of Ḫaulān continue to exist today.
As we’ll see when we get to Genesis 5, the names in that genealogy are indeed taken to represent not individuals on their own but as the ancestors of ethnic groups associated with particular places. That’s why it is called “The Table of Nations.”
So it’s a plausible name for a country even though it is not a name we recognize. It expands the geography of our story, since if this land exists anywhere, it is further from Mesopotamia than we will be in v. 14. Some scholars think the Israelites would have understood the name to mean Sandy Land, since the Hebrew word for “sand” is חוֹל — perhaps another sign that we are in Arabia. The important point, I believe, is that Havilah sounded like a plausible name for a country.
11 … where the gold is. אֲשֶׁר־שָׁ֖ם הַזָּהָֽב׃
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