Havilah: a gold country somewhere on the Arabian side of the ancient world, the people who lived there, and the ancestor the family lists trace them to
The name turns up seven times doing three quite different jobs. It labels a gold country at the far edge of the rivers that flowed out of Eden. It stands twice in the family lists of Genesis 10, once among the sons of Cush and once among the sons of Joktan, and Chronicles copies both entries. And it marks the eastern end of a set phrase that runs from Havilah across to Shur (שׁוּר), the desert on Egypt's frontier, covering the whole southern wilderness in one expression.
Behind all three jobs lies the same working answer: somewhere in Arabia. The goods Genesis credits to the place, good gold, a fragrant resin, and a prized stone, are exactly the luxury trade that moved up the Arabian caravan routes, and the name matches a tribal name, Khawlan, that appears in old South Arabian inscriptions and still names a district in Yemen. That is as close as anyone has come. No verse fixes the spot, and the two family lists file it on two different branches of the human family, which is why many read the name less as a pin on a map than as Israel's way of naming a far country it knew mainly through what came out of it.
Where the name came from is a further puzzle. The common suggestion is that Hebrew speakers heard it as sandy country, from the ordinary word for sand (חוֹל), but the standard critical lexicon calls the root doubtful, and the name may simply be an Arabian word that Hebrew borrowed and never translated.
Nuances
Whether the land named beside the rivers of Eden is real geography or an idealized picture of the world at its beginning.
- contestedReal geography of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian shield: the rivers are traceable watercourses, one of them now dry, and the gold is the ore of the Arabian mining country.; E. A. Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible 1 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1964); James A. Sauer, "The River Runs Dry: Creation Story Preserves Historical Memory," Biblical Archaeology Review 22:4 (1996), 52-54, 57, 64; Carol A. Hill, "The Garden of Eden: A Modern Landscape," Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 52 (2000)
- contestedReal but Arabian and unlocated: the gold, resin, and stone are Arabian trade goods, so the region is Arabian, yet no river in the passage can be pinned down.; Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary 1 (Waco: Word, 1987)
- contestedPrimeval or idealized geography never meant to be located: the passage deliberately blends known rivers with unlocatable ones to picture a world outside ordinary space.; Terje Stordalen, Echoes of Eden: Genesis 2-3 and Symbolism of the Eden Garden in Biblical Hebrew Literature (Leuven: Peeters, 2000); Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988)
Whether the name stands in this verse by mistake, since the books of Samuel are poorly preserved and the surrounding chapter names a similar-sounding town.
- contestedThe text should be corrected, most often to Telam, the mustering place named a few verses earlier in the same chapter, since the books of Samuel are widely recognized to have suffered in transmission.; Julius Wellhausen, Der Text der Bucher Samuelis untersucht (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1871); S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913); P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel, Anchor Bible 8 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1980)
- contestedThe text should stand: the phrase is simply the traditional way of naming the whole southern desert where Amalek ranged, and needs no correction.; David Toshio Tsumura, The First Book of Samuel, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007)
Disputed
Where the name comes from and whether it carried any sense in Hebrew.
- contestedIt was heard as sandy country, formed from the ordinary Hebrew word for sand, though this may be only a later Hebrew guess at a foreign name.; Friedrich Delitzsch, Wo lag das Paradies? (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1881), 12; W. Gesenius, F. Muhlau and W. Volck, Hebraisches und chaldaisches Handworterbuch uber das Alte Testament, s.v.
- contestedNo derivation can be established: the root is doubtful, and the name is most likely an Arabian tribal or place name that Hebrew borrowed unchanged.; BDB, s.v. חֲוִילָה; W. W. Muller, "Havilah," in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992)