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The Geography of Jacob and Esau

Jacob and Esau’s birthplace is not obvious in the story. Context suggests Beersheba or its vicinity. Following Jacob’s ruse that fooled Isaac into giving the younger Jacob the firstborn blessing, which moved Esau to threaten to kill Jacob, his mother Rebekah advises him to flee to Haran, the city where her brother Laban lives. His father Isaac tells him to flee to the region of Paddan Aram. A city named Harran exists there today, presumably in roughly the same location. 

Jacob leaves Beersheba for Haran and rests in a place called Luz. While traveling toward the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, he sees in Canaan a dream vision reminiscent of the story of Babel, another city between the Euphrates and Tigris, where the people attempted to build to heaven. After seeing God at the top of a stairway to heaven, he renames the place Bethel. 

Jacob arrives in the “land of the eastern people” and finds men from Haran, who tell him of his relatives. Soon his cousin Rachel and then her father Laban arrive. Laban deceives Jacob the deceiver into marrying his two daughters. Although not exactly geography, it is worth nothing the role the dark tent plays in Jacob’s story. Jacob deceives his blind father there, Laban and his daughters later deceive Jacob in one, and Rebekah deceives Laban regarding his idols in her tent. Like Abraham and Isaac before him, God blesses Jacob in another’s land despite his deception. 

Jacob apparently lives in the vicinity of Haran, though we find he moves his herds and flocks to keep them separate from Laban’s and, presumably, as needed to find food, water, and shelter. After working seven years each for his wives and agreeing to manage Laban’s flocks for a time for a cut of their offspring, Jacob learns from God that he should “Return to the land of [his] fathers and to [his] relatives.” Realizing that Laban does not want him to leave, Jacob resorts to deception and flees toward Canaan. “He left with all he owned. He quickly crossed the Euphrates River and headed for the hill country of Gilead.” 

“Three days later Laban discovered Jacob had left. So he took his relatives with him and pursued Jacob for seven days. He caught up with him in the hill country of Gilead.” (Genesis 31:21-22, NET)

Jacob and Laban negotiate an agreement and build stone pillars to memorialize it at a place Jacob calls Galeed, meaning something like “witness pile” and Mizpah, meaning “watchtower.” Laban names it Jegar Sahadutha, “witness stones” in Aramaic. The pile of stones is apparently on the top of a mountain, where it can be seen and function as a watchtower. 

“So Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he exclaimed, “This is the camp of God!” So he named that place Mahanaim.” (Genesis 32:1-2, NET) Jacob is on his way to Bethel where God met him at the top of a stairway to heaven, with angels traveling up and down. Here, he discovers angels encamped on the ground. This is quite a statement to let pass without further comment, yet the author does, creating narrative tension – What is the significance of angels living in a particular place here on earth? What is their intent? What event will they participate in? 

Yet the story moves on – Jacob sends messengers to contact his brother about meeting for the first time in decades in the hope of reconciliation. Fearing Esau’s response, Jacob divides his family and sends them ahead of him across the Jabbok River, a tributary of the Jordan. He is alone on the far side of the river from Esau’s approaching men when he encounters a “man.” They wrestle, the man wounds his hip, but Jacob prevails and demands a blessing. The man’s response suggests his divinity. Jacob apparently has wrestled with God. Jacob names the place Peniel, meaning “face of God,” then crosses the Jabbok at Penuel. The slight difference in the names has unknown significance, though at least one commentator assesses the latter to mean “He turns to God” as a resolution to the conflict between Jacob and the God-man.

John Sailhamer, in his book Genesis Unbound, proposes the land between four rivers as a geographic approximation of future Israel and uses this incident along with Joshua’s encounter with an angel as he enters the Promised Land in Joshua 5 as support for his theory: when the people of God approach the land of promise from the east, they are met by an angel, just as angels were posted east of Eden to keep Adam and Eve from returning. Archaeologist Adam Zertal in his book A Nation Born proposes that structures he found in the vicinity of Jacob’s crossing of the Jabbok and Jordan into the land correlated with locations and purpose of the conquest-era Israelite Gigals, meaning that both Jacob and Joshua would have met an angel and crossed into the land at roughly the same location.

The Genesis description and the limits placed on a traveler by the geography help us to make a well-informed guess about the hills on which Jacob and his family’s actions took place. In the below images, we can see a narrow route through the mountains carved by the Jabbok River. Jacob apparently stayed on the north side of the river until he neared the Jordan, split his family into two camps, possibly on two hills across the river from each other in defensible positions with good visibility.

Jacob finally meets Esau, who is coming up from Edom in the south. Esau’s territory, Edom, will return to prominence in the biblical narrative during the Conquest and later in the Prophets. Once reconciled, Esau invites (pressures?) Jacob to travel with him to Edom. Jacob defers, dishonestly telling Esau he will meet him there in time, then travels northwest toward Shechem rather than south toward Edom.  

While there are later references to a Sukkoth in this area in Gideon’s story and some scholars have engaged in informed speculation about its location – on a hill north of the Jabbok, east of the Jordan – a precise location for Jacob’s Sukkoth is unlikely to be found because the temporary shelters its name refers to would likely leave no trace distinguishable from uncountable nomadic herders over the intervening millennia.  

“After he left Paddan Aram, Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem in the land of Canaan, and he camped near the city. Then he purchased the portion of the field where he had pitched his tent; he bought it from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for 100 pieces of money. There he set up an altar and called it ‘The God of Israel is God.’” (Genesis 33:18-20, NET)

This short passage contains significant hooks connecting it to stories past and future. 

A careful reader will notice the city is named Shechem and so is the son of its ruler. We have seen this before in the narrative, first with Cain in Genesis 4:17. It’s an indicator of a worldly ruler attempting to make a name for himself and his family, a thread that runs from Cain through Lamech, Nimrod, and Babel. This is a place in rebellion against God. 

Jacob purchases land near Shechem for 100 pieces of money, an event recalled in Joshua 24:32, when Joseph’s bones, having been disinterred from Egypt during the Exodus, are finally laid to rest on his father’s land during the Conquest. Jacob will send Joseph to find his brothers near Shechem, presumably on this land he owns. The young Joseph will be forcibly removed from this land, then returned here long after his death. In contrast to the pagan ruler, Jacob builds an altar and names it “The God of Israel is God.” Although he includes himself in the name (he too is apparently at least a little vain) his focus is on God; he is claiming pagan territory in God’s name. The one previous story of land purchase in Canaan was Abraham’s purchase of land near Hebron on which he would bury Sarah and later be buried himself.  

The textual hints about the nature of Shechem pan out, and we find that Shechem, like Lamech and the sons of God before him, is a sexual abuser. Abraham rescued Lot when he was kidnapped, so also do Jacob’s sons rescue their sister Dinah. Unlike Abraham who refused to benefit materially from the rescue and was blessed by Melchizedek as approved by God, Jacob’s sons pillage and destroy Shechem and were cursed by Jacob and apparently the surrounding peoples so that Jacob’s family must flee in fear of retribution. God supernaturally protects them as they travel toward Bethel, where Jacob first saw God as he fled his own consequences of theft as a young man. At Bethel, Jacob builds an altar and names it El Bethel, reaffirming his commitment to God and claim of the land for God.  

Rachel, the favored wife whose life is marked by weeping and the threat of death, goes into labor and, after bearing a son Benjamin, dies near Ephrath, later known as Bethlehem. After burying her, Jacob moves on to a place called Migdal Eder, likely a high place in the vicinity of Bethlehem with a watchtower for guarding flocks of sheep. Its location is not known. Here, his son Reuben betrays him by sleeping with his concubine/wife Bilhah.  

Jacob then moves on to Mamre near Kiriath Arba, also known as Hebron, where his father Isaac dies. Jacob and Esau bury him in the cave containing Abraham, Sarah, and his wife Rebekah’s remains.

Here, the text makes a departure from Jacob’s narrative as it did with Isaac’s to focus on the other son not in the line of promise. By giving us the geography of Esau and his descendants, it prepares us to receive future narratives throughout the Hebrew Bible. Esau and his descendants marry into the surrounding cultures – Hittites, Hivites, Ishmaelites, and apparently Horites. They live in Seir, a mountainous region southeast of the modern Dead Sea, which became known as Edom, another name for Esau. Esau’s apparent descendants the Amalekites later live to the west near the border of Egypt, perhaps ranging across Sinai and Seir as raiders. 

Jacob’s further movements correlate well with those of some of his sons, so we will consider the end of his life in the next post, The Geography of Jacob’s Sons.

The Geography of Isaac and Ishmael

The account of Isaac’s birth does not mention a location. Context suggests somewhere in the vicinity of Gerar and Beersheba. 

When Ishmael laughs at Isaac, the child named “laughter,” Abraham exiles Hagar and Ishmael to wander in the wilderness of Beersheba. Ishmael later lives in the wilderness of Paran (which we will again see during the Israelites’ wilderness wandering following the Exodus) and marries a wife from Egypt.

Abraham negotiates with Abimelech of Gerar for wells in Beersheba. It is apparently from there that God calls Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on a mountain in Moriah. Assuming this is the same Mount Moriah Solomon builds his temple on (2 Chronicles 3:1), it is in the vicinity of Melchizedek’s Salem.  

The following accounts are sparse and focus on Abraham, so we do not have certainty about Isaac’s whereabouts. Interestingly, after the sacrifice of the ram rather than Isaac on Mount Moriah, we learn that Abraham returned with his servants to Beersheba but nothing about where Isaac went. When Abraham buys the field and cave of Machpelah and buries Isaac’s mother Sarah, the account is silent about Isaac.

We next hear of Isaac and his location when Abraham sends a servant to find a wife for him. He is mourning his mother in the wilderness near Beer Lahai Roi, where Hagar realized God saw her. Though unclear on their meeting place, it seems most reasonable to receive Genesis 24:62 to mean that Isaac came to Hebron (though Beersheba is also a strong candidate) from Beer Lahai Roi to meet Rebekah, while Rebekah came from Aram Naharaim. It appears that Isaac travels from just inside the Genesis 15:18 southwestern border of the land - “the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates…’” (ESV) – while Rebekah travels from just outside its northern border. They approach one another, traversing the whole length of the land to meet and become one. 

Rebekah and her son Jacob’s stories spend significant time north of the Euphrates River with Abraham’s extended family. Rebekah lives in a region called Aram Naharaim and the city of Nahor, Abraham’s brother. Isaac later tells Jacob to flee to Paddan Aram, where Rebekah’s family lives. The distinction between the regions of Aram Naharaim and Paddan Aram is unclear if there is one at all. The fact that Abraham left from Haran and his grandson Jacob flees there suggests that the extended family remained in the same region and that the use of different names may emphasize their different meanings or the region’s name in two languages rather than two distinct locations. Paddan Aram means “Plain of Aram” in Aramaic and Aram Naharaim means “Aram between Two Rivers.” Rebekah’s brother is called “Laban the Aramean,” so the repeated use of Aram and Aramean likely gives intentional weight to Abraham’s family’s background as Arameans.

God tells Rebekah that her twin sons Jacob and Esau are two nations, but we do not learn the location of their birth.  

During a famine, Isaac travels to Gerar where God forbids him from going to Egypt for help and tells him instead to rely on God’s provision. After an episode recalling Abraham’s in which he lies about and uses his wife in attempt to gain favor with Abimelech, like Abraham, God blesses Isaac despite his bad behavior. He becomes an annoyance to the people in the land because of his success and the resources all his cattle are consuming, so he moves progressively farther from Gerar until he and Abimelech can resolve the conflict, allowing him to settle peacefully at Beersheba.

The account of Isaac’s sons’ birth does not mention a location. Jacob’s ruse to steal the blessing Isaac intended for Esau likely took place at Beersheba because Jacob flees from there to meet Rebekah’s family. At this point, the focus shifts to Jacob’s story. Isaac and Rebekah’s experience is a mystery. Jacob returns to Isaac in Mamre outside the city of Kiriath Arba also known as Hebron. Jacob and Esau bury him there with Rebekah in the cave where his father and mother are buried. 

Regarding Ishmael’s family, Genesis 25 tells us “His descendants settled from Havilah to Shur, which runs next to Egypt all the way to Asshur.” Interestingly, these boundaries are similar to those given to Abraham for Canaan. They reach from the northern Sinai peninsula to the vicinity of Nineveh in the northeast, between the Tigris and Euphrates. The location of Havilah is not known. Ishmael’s descendants’ territory stretches from a little west of Abraham’s promised land toward Egypt in Shur to the vicinity of the Tigris River, northeast of the apparent north border of the promised land - from Shur to Asshur. In Genesis 16 and 17, God says to Abraham that Ishmael will live away from his brothers and “I will indeed bless him, make him fruitful, and give him a multitude of descendants. He will become the father of twelve princes; I will make him into a great nation.” (Genesis 17:20, NET) The scope of his descendants’ territory is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Ishmael’s father.

The locations in Isaac’s story tell a subtle story of their own. Early in his life, he lives with Abraham, but following his near-sacrifice on Mount Moriah, he disappears from Abraham’s story until after his mother Sarah’s death. We next find him near Beer Lahai Roi, where Hagar fled with Ishmael after Sarah ordered them away from her family. Was he seeking God in the wilderness after nearly being sacrificed? Was he running away from his family as Hagar did? Was he in a kind of exile that prefigures future events? It’s difficult to know. Much of Isaac’s story is an enigma. We know with specificity where he was nearly sacrificed and later that he re-opened his father’s wells after the Philistines filled them in, finally settling at Beersheba. When his son Jacob returns, years after fleeing his Esau’s wrath, Isaac is in Kiriath Arba, and his wife is not mentioned. Finally, Jacob and Esau bury him in the cave of Machpelah with his mother and father.

The Geography of Abraham

After God scatters and disinherits the rebellious people of Babel in Shinar (between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), he purposes to start a new nation with one who will remain faithful to him, Abram. God calls Abram’s family out of Ur to live in and inherit the land of Canaan. (Genesis 10-11)

There is more than one ancient city in the vicinity of the Tigris and Euphrates named Ur, so scholars debate about which one Genesis refers to. One candidate lies along the Euphrates in the southeast as it approaches the Persian Gulf. Extensive archaeological excavations have revealed a large city with canals, residential and government buildings, and a well-preserved ziggurat. Another, more recently identified candidate lies close to modern Harran, which may make it the most likely of the possibilities.

Any time we put an ancient name on a map, we invite controversy. These are drawn from multiple sources, many of which can be found in our Resources page. All Bible quotations taken and edited for size from NET.

Genesis 11 - Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. Haran died in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans…

Terah took his son Abram…and…set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. When they came to Haran, they settled there.

Although the route Abram takes into the land is not specified, the locations he first visits suggest his grandson Jacob later follows in Abram’s footsteps, so we borrow from Jacob’s story and the locations of ancient roads to fill in Abram’s detail.

Genesis 12 - Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot… entered the land of Canaan.

Abram traveled through the land as far as the oak tree of Moreh at Shechem.

Abram moves south through the land, stopping at locations that will reappear throughout Israel’s national history. In each place he builds an altar to the Lord near trees, water, or a view of lush vegetation, recalling Eden, where God met with man.

Genesis 12 - Then he moved from there to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.

Abram continually journeyed by stages down to the Negev.

There was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt

Pharaoh gave his men orders about Abram, and so they expelled him

Abram’s journey to Egypt in a famine prefigures his descendants leaving the land God promised as their inheritance for a foreign land. He meets a foreign woman (the Egyptian Hagar’s name literally means “the foreigner”) who he eventually has a relationship with. Disaster follows. All of these elements return in future stories.

Genesis 13 - Abram went up from Egypt into the Negev

…he journeyed from place to place from the Negev as far as Bethel. He returned to the place where he had pitched his tent at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai.

After his expulsion from Egypt by its ruler, who here fits the pattern of the seed of the serpent, an enemy of God, Abram returns to Bethel, the “house of God".

He and Lot agree to part ways because their flocks are in competition with each other for scarce resources. They view the Jordan River valley from a high place near Bethel. Lot moves down into the valley in the vicinity of the city of Sodom. There are five named cities near Sodom, sometimes called the cities of the plain. Scholars differ on the location of Sodom, some arguing it is to the south of the Dead Sea, others to the north. The northern location makes the most sense with this story, though later ones may cause you to reconsider.

Genesis 13 - Lot looked up and saw the whole region of the Jordan. He noticed that all of it was well watered…like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, all the way to Zoar. Lot chose for himself the whole region of the Jordan and traveled toward the east.

After they part, God tells Abram to walk through the land, for he will give it to Abram. Abram travels down to stay near the city of Hebron. As he is living there, a coalition of kings from the vicinity of the Euphrates River sets out on a military campaign to punish treaty violators among peoples to Abram’s east including Sodom, where Lot lives.

Many of the names of the clans the coalition seeks to punish occur only two places in the Bible: here in Genesis 14 and in Deuteronomy 2, where Moses associates them with the powerful, tall Anakites who, in that time, live in Hebron. Deuteronomy appears to group all these peoples under the name Rephaites or Rephaim. As with many of the seed of the serpent figures in the biblical narrative, we do not have a lot of specific detail about them. We are left with the sense though that they are powerful, evil enemies of God’s people. Abram’s and Lot’s descendants drive them out of their lands and settle there.

Interestingly, the path the coalition of kings takes is roughly the same though in the opposite direction of the path the Israelites, Abram’s descendants, will take in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua as they approach the land of Canaan to occupy it as their inheritance promised through Abram. In Numbers 21, the Israelites encounter Og of Bashan, who Joshua 13 tells us was among the last of the Rephaim, in the same area that the five kings fight the Rephaim in Abram’s day. They also fight the Amorites, the people Abram lives with in Hebron. In Deuteronomy, the Rephaim are enemies, yet here in Genesis, Abram is loosely allied with them.

Genesis 14 - At that time Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Kedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations went to war against Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). These last five kings joined forces in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea)…Kedorlaomer and the kings who were his allies came and defeated the Rephaites in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzites in Ham, the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in their hill country of Seir, as far as El Paran, which is near the desert. Then they attacked En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh) again, and they conquered all the territory of the Amalekites, as well as the Amorites who were living in Hazezon Tamar.

Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) went out and prepared for battle. In the Valley of Siddim they met Kedorlaomer king of Elam, Tidal king of nations, Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar. Four kings fought against five. Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits. When the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, they fell into them, but some survivors fled to the hills.

Lot’s city Sodom loses the battle, and the coalition of kings takes him captive. We suddenly learn that Abram has a small army of trained men. They chase down the coalition and rescue the captives.

Genesis 14 - …Now Abram was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, the brother of Eshcol and Aner…When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken captive, he mobilized his 318 trained men who had been born in his household, and he pursued the invaders as far as Dan. …He chased them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus.

After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer…the king of Sodom went out to meet Abram in the Valley of Shaveh (known as the King’s Valley). Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine.

At the city of Salem, there is a priest-king who serves God, Melchizedek. He comes out to meet Abram, to bless him, and to assure him that God was with him in his rescue of the captives. Abram is now a regional power, recognized by the kings of surrounding cities.

Genesis 15 - the Lord made a covenant with Abram: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River— the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”

The “river of Egypt” makes several appearances in the Bible as a border of Israel. There is a long seasonal stream, today called Wadi al-Arish, in the northeast Sinai peninsula, which may be the best candidate. At times, it is not clear whether this stream or the Nile River is the more accurate interpretation, and it may be that the biblical authors sometimes intentionally leave the issue ambiguous in prophetic language to suggest more than one idea at once. In an earlier post on the geography of Genesis 1-11, we saw that Genesis 2 associates the river that flows through Cush (which could be received as the Nile River) and the Euphrates River with Eden. Here, the river of Egypt and the Euphrates are borders of the land God is promising Abram as an inheritance.

In the image below, the white area in the lower left/southwest that leads from the mountains to the sea is the Wadi al-Arish, thought by some scholars to be the river of Egypt.

Genesis 16 - The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring of water in the wilderness—the spring that is along the road to Shur….the well was called Beer Lahai Roi. (It is located between Kadesh and Bered.)

When Abram’s wife Sarai decided she no longer wanted to wait for God to give them the son he had promised them, she told Abram to try to have one with her servant Hagar, an Egyptian. When Sarai mistreats her, there are cultural and geographical ideas in play. Hagar appears to flee with her son (and Abram’s) to the edge of the territory God is promising Abram’s descendants back toward Egypt where she is from. God sees and talks with her, and she returns for now to Hebron and Abram’s family.

At Hebron, God meets with Abram, gives him the name Abraham, promises him a son with Sarai-now named Sarah, and tells Abraham that he is going down to judge Sodom, one of the cities of the plain we have seen above. Though there are several proposed sites, the location of Sodom is not known, so I have not attempted to show the locations in the destruction of Sodom and Lot’s escape.

After Isaac is born, Sarah orders Abraham to exile Hagar and their son Ishmael. Abraham complies, and she once again travels to the wilderness on the edge of the border of the promise to Abraham and Egypt. Ishmael eventually settles in Paran to the southeast.

Genesis 20 - Abraham journeyed from there to the Negev region and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While he lived as a temporary resident in Gerar

…Abimelech said, “Look, my land is before you; live wherever you please.”

Genesis 21 - Hagar…went wandering aimlessly through the wilderness of Beer Sheba.

…Ishmael…lived in the wilderness of Paran. His mother found a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

[Abraham and Abimelech] made a treaty at Beer Sheba; then Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer Sheba…So Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for quite some time.

Abraham deals with the king of Gerar as he had with the pharaoh of Egypt, however Abimelech responds righteously, putting Abraham to shame. He lets Abraham stay in his territory because he sees that God blesses Abraham.

Abraham receives a shocking command from God and travels to Mount Moriah with Isaac to fulfill it. Mount Moriah is apparently in the immediate vicinity of Melchizedek’s Salem, where God blessed Abraham after a successful hostage rescue of Lot and the people of Sodom. Now God asks Abraham to sacrifice his own son there. Abraham complies, apparently understanding that it is a test and that God will provide.

Genesis 22 - …after these things God tested Abraham...“Take your son—your only son, whom you love, Isaac—and go to the land of Moriah!”

On the third day Abraham caught sight of the place in the distance.

Abraham returned to his servants, and they set out together for Beer Sheba where Abraham

stayed.

After the averted sacrifice episode, we learn that Abraham and his servants return to Beersheba, but Isaac is not mentioned.

Sarah dies, and Abraham negotiates the purchase of a cave and field in the vicinity of Hebron, so he can own the land where he buries her.

When Abraham dies, Ishmael and Isaac also bury him there.

The Geography of Genesis 1 - 11

In Genesis, geography links stories that are distant from each other in the text and can aid in understanding characters’ difficulties, motives, state of mind, and relationships with God and other people. Even topographical details like deserts, mountains, and rivers make significant contributions to the Genesis narratives.

In his book Genesis Unbound, John Sailhamer proposes an unusual but surprisingly compelling view of the four rivers in Genesis 2 – they define the territory in which the events of Genesis take place, perhaps even the approximate boundaries of a future Israel. 

Genesis names the Tigris and Euphrates. Sailhamer proposes that the river that flows through Cush is the Nile (whose headwaters are in the ancient land of Cush, modern Ethiopia and Sudan) and points out that the only other major river in view in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) is the Jordan. 

With the exception of Noah’s post-flood experience, all the action in named places in the Torah happens in territory bounded by these rivers.

Following the flood, the ark lands on “one of the mountains of Ararat,” presumably in the modern region of the same name. Noah's descendants build cities along the Tigris and Euphrates.

Genesis 10 defines Canaan as parts of modern day Lebanon and Israel, preparing us for God's call of Abram in the coming chapters.