This page was originally written in December 2016. To navigate back to the Genesis index, see index-genesis.
Genesis 2:4 begins a story which moves along smoothly throughout the rest of the chapter, with one major interruption. In the middle of a story about humans and fruit trees, an apparently unconnected geographical note is inserted: verses 10-2:14. Note how smoothly* the rest of the text works without this interruption.
. . . 7 And Yahweh God formed the human of dust from the ground, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living being. 8 And Yahweh God planted an orchard in Eden, in the East, and there he placed the human he had formed. 9 And Yahweh God made to grow from the ground every tree delightful to look at and good to eat. The tree of life was in the middle of the orchard, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. . . . 15 And Yahweh God took the human and set him in the orchard of Eden to work and watch over it. 16 And Yahweh God commanded the human, Of all the trees of the garden you are free to eat . . .
Right in the middle of our story is sandwiched this oddity:
10 And a river went out from Eden to water the orchard, and from there it separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the one was Pishon, meandering through the land of the Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good. In that place are hbdlḥ and hšhm stone. 13 And the name of the second river was Gihon, meandering through all the land of Kush. 14 And the name of the third was Hiddekel [the Tigris], going out east of Asshur. The fourth river was Perath [the Euphrates].
Geographically, it is impossible to make sense of this information. First, the river described here divides itself into four major rivers, in the reverse of the way rivers in nature function. While the second two rivers are in Mesopotamia (though they do not, in fact, meet in the way described here), the first two rivers are never mentioned, at least by these names, in the Bible. There is a Gihon spring in the Bible, but not a Gihon river in the land of Kush (south of Egypt, inhabited by black people). And Pishon is of unknown location, though Havilah would seem to associated either with the Kushites to the south of Egypt or with Arabia.
Where I translated sbb as meandering, some others read going around in a circle. I chose meandering because that seemed more plausible for these rivers, but nothing about this geographical aside is very plausible. So who knows?
Along with gold, the text mentions that Havilah contains bedolah and shoham-stone. I had to leave these untranslated because it is not clear what exactly they are, though their use in other passages points to them being some kinds of precious stone.
Dillmann sums this up as follows:
[Verses 10 through 15], which are easily taken away without making one feel that anything essential is lost, and by their jejeune geographical description rather interrupt than help the narrative, were perhaps first inserted by R [hypothetical redactor] or by another hand, or following another source.
Not perfectly smooth, mind you. Biblical narrative often has various degrees of jaggedness. In this case, notice how verse 15 repeats what had already happened in verse 8. Possibly 15 is added to bring the reader back to the main story after the addition of the odd geographical information of 10-14. Dillmann, in his commentary on Genesis 1-11, mentions on page 123 a theory that perhaps the second part of verse 8 is in fact the addition, and that verse 15 is original. I am referring to this commentary by Dillmann.