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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

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HAVILAH (Place)

Land in the neighborhood of Eden, now unknown but said to be watered by the river Pishon and containing supplies of gold, bdellium, and onyx stone (Gn 2:11-12). The location of Havilah has been a matter of much dispute. It cannot have any connection with the Havilah of 1 Samuel 15:7, where Saul fought against certain Amalekites, because the locale of the Eden narratives is Mesopotamian and not Palestinian. On the same basis, any attempt to locate Havilah in southern Arabia, Somaliland, or India would be mistaken. The “river” Pishon may have been an irrigation canal, since Akkadian does not have a separate word for these two different bodies of water, and the Mesopotamian custom was to name large irrigation canals as if they were rivers. This would help to account for the survival of the name “Pishon” long after the canal had disappeared. The Pishon was one of four branches that the river formed once it left Eden; hence, Havilah must have been to the north, since the narrative assumes an upstream perspective. Probably Havilah was in the general area of the Shinar plain and was watered by a major irrigation canal. Both Havilah and the canal have long disappeared.