When it is said that Asa smote the Cushites or Ethiopians, in number a million of soldiers, as far as Gerar, and despoiled all the cities round about, it is absurd to suppose that the Gerar in the lot of the tribe of Simeon is meant. The expression all the cities and the million of men cannot apply to the little town of that tribe. Probably the city in Wilkinson’s Atlas, in the Tabula Orientalis, at the side of the Persian gulf, which is called Gerra, is the city meant by the word Gerar; and, that Saba was near where it is placed by Dr. Stukeley, or somewhere in the Peninsula, now called Arabia.
In 2 Chron. xxi. 16, it is said, And of the Arabians that were near the Ethiopians. This again shews that the Ethiopians were in the Peninsula, or bordered on it to the eastwards. They could not have lived to the west, because the whole land of Egypt lay between them, if they went by land; and the Red Sea lay between the two nations westwards.
In Habakkuk iii. 7, the words Midian and Cushan are used as synonymes: I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble.
It is said in Numbers xii. 1, “And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses, because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman.” כושית cusit. It appears that this Ethiopian woman was the daughter of Jethro, priest of Midian, near Horeb, in Arabia.[1]
5. Dr. Wells has justly observed, that the Cush spoken of in scripture is evidently Arabia, from Numbers xii. 1, just cited; and that it is also certain, from Exod. ii. 15—21, that the wife of Moses was a Midianitish woman; and it is proved that Midian or Madian was in Arabia, from Exod. iii, 1, &c.: consequently the Cush here spoken of, and called Ethiopia, must necessarily mean Arabia. He also proves, from Ezek. xxix. 10, that when God says he “will make the land desolate from the tower of Syene to the borders of Ethiopia,” Cush, he cannot mean an African Cush, because he evidently means from one boundary of Egypt to the other: and as Syene is the southern boundary between the African Ethiopia and Egypt, it cannot possibly be that he speaks of the former, but of the other end of Egypt, which is Arabia.
The circumstance of the translators of the Septuagint version of the Pentateuch having rendered the word Cush by the word Ethiopia, is a very decisive proof that the theory of two Ethiopias is well founded. Let the translators have been who they may, it is totally impossible to believe that they could be so ignorant as to suppose that the African Ethiopia could border on the Euphrates, or that the Cushites could be African Ethiopians.
From all the accounts which modern travellers give of the country above Syene, there does not appear, either from ruins or any other circumstance, reason to believe that it was ever occupied by a nation strong enough to fight the battles and make the great figure in the world which we know the people called Cushites or Ethiopians did at different times. The valley of the Nile is very narrow, not capable of containing a great and powerful people. Sheba and Saba were either one or two cities of the Cushites or Ethiopians, and Pliny says, that the Sabæans extended from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, thus giving them the whole of Arabia; one part of which, it is well known, is called from its fertility of soil and salubrity of climate, Felix, or The Happy.
- ↑ Vide Exod. ch. ii. and iii. It is not to be supposed that this great tribe of Israelites had not laws before those given on Sinai. It is perfectly clear that great numbers of those in Leviticus were only re-enactments of old laws or customs. The marriage of Moses with an Ethiopian woman, against which Miriam and Aaron spoke, was a breach of the law, and the children were illegitimate. This was the reason why Aaron succeeded to the priestly office, instead of the sons of Moses. This also furnishes an answer to what a learned author has written about the disinterested conduct of Moses proving his divine mission. The conduct of Moses, in this instance, proves nothing, and all the labour of the learned gentleman has been thrown away. But Moses had two wives, both Ethiopians—one of Meroe, called Tharbis, and the other of Midian, in Arabia. Josephus’ Antiq. L. ii. ch. x.
