Dear Rabbi,

I was talking to a friend about the creation story in the Torah, and he made mention of four rivers that extend out of the Garden of Eden. Do these rivers really exist, and if they do, do we know their exact location? If so, can we use the location of these four rivers to determine the whereabouts of the Garden of Eden?

Response:

As is the case with many other aspects of the creation account in the Torah, the discussion regarding the four rivers is shrouded in mystery.1 The descriptions given in the Torah are rather vague, and there has been much debate throughout the ages regarding their exact identity.

The text that discusses these rivers can be found in Genesis 2:10–14, and reads as follows:

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it separated and became four heads. The name of one is Pishon; that is the one that encompasses all the land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good; there is the crystal and the onyx stone. The name of the second river is Gichon; that is the one that encompasses all the land of Cush. The name of the third river is Chidekel; that is the one that flows to the east of Ashur. And the fourth river, that is Perat.

What can be clearly deduced from a cursory reading of these verses is that there exist four rivers, Pishon, Gichon, Chidekel and Perat, which all seemingly flow from the same source, the Garden of Eden.

Let’s begin with the second two, since their identification is agreed upon almost unanimously.

The name of the third river is Chidekel; that is the one that flows to the east of Ashur.

The Chidekel is widely accepted as being the Tigris River, which flows from southeastern Turkey through Iraq, and eventually spills into the Persian Gulf. Daniel describes standing on the banks of the Chidekel River while receiving one of his visions during the time when he was in exile in Babylonia.2 Clearly, the Chidekel River is in the region of ancient Babylonia, which is present-day Iraq.

Yonatan ben Uziel, a sage who lived in the Second Temple era, translates the word Chidekel into the Aramaic word Diglas.3 Even today, the Tigris is called Dicle in Turkish and Dijla in Arabic.

According to this identification, the location described in the verse, Ashur, refers to ancient Assyria, which was centered around the upper Tigris River.

And the fourth river, that is Perat.

The Perat is identified as the Euphrates River, which runs almost parallel to the Tigris. Together, these two rivers defined a large part of the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of civilization in ancient times. The name “Euphrates” is the Greek version of the Old Persian Ufrātu and the Akkadian Purattu, and even today the river is called al-Furāt in Arabic.

The Euphrates River is later mentioned in G‑d’s promise to Abraham regarding the Land of Israel, and is used as one of the defining borders of the Promised Land.4 We are also told that there was a time when Jewish civilization had spread so far that members of the tribe of Reuben were living all the way to the banks of the Euphrates!5

While these two rivers are easily identifiable and their location is readily agreed upon, the identification of the other two proves more difficult and is the subject of much debate.

The verse gives us more details regarding the Pishon River than any of the others, yet the information itself is extremely unclear:

The name of one is Pishon; that is the one that encompasses all the land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; there is the crystal and the onyx stone.

Rashi, the foremost biblical commentator, identifies the Pishon as the Nile River. The word Pishon, he explains, has the connotation of gushing forth and overflowing, and symbolizes the Nile River, which would overflow and irrigate the land of Egypt. Alternatively, the word Pishon is associated with the Hebrew word pishtan, flax, a reference to the ancient Egyptian flax industry, which was watered by the Nile River.

According to this view, the area called Havilah refers to somewhere along the Nile region, perhaps Egypt or Sudan. Egyptians were known to have mined gold and precious stones back in pre-dynastic times, especially in the region known in ancient times as Nubia, modern-day southern Egypt and Sudan.

Other commentators identify the Pishon as the Ganges River, which flows through India and Bangladesh, emptying into the Bay of Bengal.6 This view would fit well with the translation of Yonatan ben Uziel, who translates the area of Havilah as Hindki, an Aramaic translation for India. Interestingly, Josephus believed that it referred to the Indus River, which flows through India as well,7 which some connect to the present-day city of Havelian that lies on the upper Indus River, between Kashmir and Pakistan.8

The name of the second river is Gichon; that is the one that encompasses all the land of Cush.

The land of Cush is typically associated with Ethiopia, and the Gichon is therefore understood to refer to the Blue Nile. The Blue Nile begins in Lake Tana in Ethiopia and meets the White Nile in Khartoum, Sudan, where together they form one river that flows all the way to Egypt. R. David Kimchi, a 12th-century biblical commentator, explains9 that the name Gichon means “to diverge,” which symbolizes the numerous tributaries that diverge off the Blue Nile in Ethiopia.10

Where Is the Garden of Eden?

If these four rivers all flow forth from the Garden of Eden, their identification should give us some clue as to the whereabouts of the Garden. The problem is, however, that there is no central location from which all of these four rivers flow. The Euphrates and the Tigris are in the northeast region, whereas the two Nile rivers are in the southwest.

While the exact location of the Garden of Eden cannot be identified, we can infer that it is somewhere within this region, between the Nile River and the Euphrates.11 Some sources go so far as to identify the location of the Garden as being exactly 32 degrees south of Jerusalem.12 The fact that the Garden itself cannot be detected in our world does not mean that it does not take up physical space; it exists on a higher plane of reality and is therefore not detectable by our regular senses.

While the verses seemingly indicate that the rivers all flow from the same source, this is clearly not the case. It has been suggested that the Hebrew word for “separated,” יפרד, can also be understood as “lost or missing.”13 According to this approach, the river sunk into the ground at the exit of the Garden of Eden, and later reappeared at four distinct locations. The verse now reads, “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it was lost (sunk into the ground) and (later reemerged and) became four heads.”14

It has further been pointed out that the four rivers are referred to as four heads and not four branches, which may imply that they are not four branches of the same river, but rather four distinct riverheads.15

On a concluding note, I thought I’d share with you a spiritual interpretation regarding the four rivers, which has profound meaning and significance in our daily lives.

The Hebrew word eden means “delight and pleasure,” and is symbolic of the ultimate source of all delight and pleasure: G‑d. This G‑dly delight is then channeled into our world by way of the “river that flows from Eden,” and becomes the source for all worldly pleasures. The river splits into four heads, symbolizing the four spiritual worlds through which the river must travel before reaching this physical world.16

The responsibility of the Jew is to seek out the truth behind all of the pleasure that this world has to offer. This is done by utilizing another “garden,” the garden of the Torah. The Torah contains 53 portions,17 which is the numerical value of the Hebrew word gan, garden. By following the directives of the Torah, we can channel the pleasures of this world in service of G‑d, and reveal how they are all in truth a manifestation of the ultimate source of pleasure, G‑d Himself.18