Genesis 2:13

Summary

The verse names the second of the four rivers flowing out of Eden as Gichon ("Gihon", H1521), and describes it as the river that encircles the entire land of Kush ("Cush", H3568A). The sentence structure mirrors the naming pattern used for the first river in the preceding verses.

Key words

• shem- ("[the] name of", H8034) — construct noun opening the naming formula, linking directly to "the river" that follows.
• ha.Nahar ("the river", H5104H) — definite noun marking this as a specific, already-introduced entity among the four rivers.
• ha.sheNi ("the second", H8145) — masculine singular ordinal, specifying sequence among the rivers listed.
• ha.soVev ("the one going around", H5437G) — qal participle with definite article, functioning as a substantive ("the encircler"); the participle form presents the action as an ongoing characteristic rather than a single completed event.
• kol- ("all of", H3605) — construct form governing "land of Cush," emphasizing totality of the territory circled.

What the text says

The verse opens with the construct chain shem-ha.Nahar ha.sheNi ("the name of the second river"), a formula parallel to the naming of the first river earlier in the chapter. The predicate Gichon stands as the name itself, introduced without a verb "to be" — a common feature of Hebrew nominal sentences.

The second half of the verse begins with hu' ("it/he", H1931), a resumptive pronoun that shifts focus back to the river just named, followed by the definite participle ha.soVev. Using a participle with the article (literally "the one circling") rather than a finite verb frames the river's encircling action as a durative, characteristic trait rather than a single past event — a nuance that finite past-tense translations like "it winds" or "it circles" in English do not fully preserve, since English requires a tensed verb where Hebrew uses a nominalized verbal form.

The object of this encircling is marked by 'et (H0853), the untranslated direct object marker, followed by the construct phrase kol-'Eretz Kush ("all the land of Cush"), where kol signals totality — the river surrounds the whole territory, not merely part of it.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Kush (H3568A) as Αἰθιοπίας ("Ethiopia"), and the Vulgate follows with Æthiopiæ, both departing from the Hebrew proper name Kush by substituting a Greek/Latin geographic term. The Hebrew participle ha.soVev ("the one going around") is rendered by the LXX with the participle κυκλῶν ("circling"), closely matching the Hebrew grammatical form, while the Vulgate uses a relative clause qui circumit ("who goes around"), shifting the participial construction into a finite relative verb.