% That some of the posterity of Cush settled in the south of Arxibia may readfly be granted ; but that he gave a permanent name to any portion either of the country or people is by no means so evident : it is, at least, more a matter of inferential conjecture than of historical certafaity. Almost all the passages usually dted in support of the averment are susceptible of a different interpretation. (1.) For example, in Num. i, 21, Miriam and Aaron are said to have taken offence at Moses for having married ** a Cushitess ;" and upon the presumption that this was the same person as Zip- porah, daughter of the priest of Midian (Exod. ii, 16, 21), it is inferred that Midian was hi Cush. But, to say nothing of Zipporah's high rank, or of the services of her fitmily to Israel, there would have been some- thing so grossly incongruous and absurd in Moses's brother and sister complaining fbr the first time of his selection of a wife, after the marriage had subsisted for more than forty years, that it is evident Zipporah was now dead, and this second wife, though doubtless a proselyte to Judaism, was (whether bom in Asia or Africa) a descendant of Cush, and therefore a ffamite, and not one of the Midianites, who were of Shemkic orighi, behig the children of Abraham by Keturah. Bat, admitting that it is a second marriage which is thus referred to, the case is not materially altered, for still Cush must be sought near the place of Israel's encampment, as it cannot be supposed that Moses woQld go to Ethiopia to fetch a wife. See Zipporah. (2.) Others discover a connectbn between Cush and alidian, because in Hab. iii, 7, the clause, " I saw the tents of Cnshan in affliction," finds a parallelism in '•the curtains of the Und of Midian did tremble"— Cmi^ bemg held to be the poetical and high-eound- >og form of Ctuh, But this idea is met by another
identification ; fbr while it is acknowledged that part of the sublime description in that chapter refers to the Exodus and the transactions at Sinai, other portions (such as the passage of the Jordan^ verse 8, and the standing still of the sun, verse 11) have plainly a ref- erence to incidents in the books of Joshua and Judges. Now in the latter book (iii, 10 ; viii, 12) we find a rec- ord of signal victories successively obtained by Othniel over Cuthan Rishathaun, king of Mesopotamia, and by Gideon over the princes of Midian. See Cushan. (8.) But perhaps a stronger argument is the mention of Arabisms as contiguous to the Cushites. Thus, in 2 Chron. xxi, 16, among those who were stirred up against the Hebrews are mentioned the Philistines, and "Arabs that were near the Cushites," and the expression ''near" (^ ^?) in this connection can scarcely apply to any but dwellers in the Arabian pe- ninsula. Other arguments adduced by Michaelis (SpicUeff. Geograph, Hdnr. i, 149) in favor of the Ara- bian Cush are not decisive, and the passages on which he relies apply with greater probability to the AiHcan Cush. Thus the retreat of Sennacherib from Judaea in order to meet Tirhakah (2 Kings xix, 9 ; Isa. xxxvii, 9) does not necessarily imply that the latter passed through Palestine, since the Egyptians had reached Carchemish on the Euphrates without doing so (2 Chron. xxxv, 20), and Tirhakah was undoubtedly an African prince. See Tirhakah. Again, it has been rashly concluded that Zerah the Cushite, who attacked Asa, king of Judah, with so immense a host (2 Chron. xiv, 9), could not have been an Ethiopian of Africa, and yet the fact of his army having included Libyans (xvi, 8) as well as Ethiopians, seems decisive of the &ct that the latter were of African origin. Their an- cestors may have belonged to the "people without number" whom Shishak had led forth against Asa's grandfather, Rehoboam (xii, 8), and these their de- scendants may have retdned possession of the north of Arabia PetrsBa, between Palestine and Egj-pt (see Bmce's Travelt^ i, 80). See Zerah.
Yet, though there is a great lack of evidence to show that the name of Cush was ever applied to any part of Arabia, there seems no reason to doubt that a portion of the Cushite race did early settle there. Ac- cording to the ethnographic table in the 10th chapter of Genesis, Cush was the father of Seba, Havilah, Sab- ta, Raamah (whose sons were Sheba and Dedan), Sab- techah, and also of Nimrod (Gen. x, 7, 8 ; 1 Chron. i, 9, 10). The last mentioned appears to have moved northward, first into Babylonia and then into Ass3rria, but the otiiers seem to have migrated to the south, though it is impossible accurately to trace out their settlements. Yet, even if we give Seba to Africa, and pass over as donbtfnl the names of Havilah, She- ba, and Dedan (for these were also the names of She- mitic tribes, Gen. x, 28, 29 ; xxv, 8), still, in Ezek. xxvii, 22, Raamah is plainly classed with the tribes of Arabia, and nowhere are any traces of Sabtah and Sabtechah to be found but in the same country. By referring, however, to the relative geographical posi- tions of the south-west coast of Arabia and the east coast of AfHca, it will be seen that nothing separates them but the Red Sea, and it is not unlikely that while a part of the Cushite population immigrated to AfHca, others remained behind, and were occasionally called by the same name. In the fifth century of our era, the Himaryites, in the south of Arabia, were styled by Syrian writers Cushssans and Ethiopians (Assemanni, BibL Orient, i, 360 ; iii, 668). The Chaldee paraphrast Jonathan, at Gen. 6, and another paraphrast at 1 Chron. i, 8, explain "Cush" by Arabia. Niebuhr (Betchr. p. 289) found in Yemen a tribe called Bern Chun. The book of Job (xxviii, 19) speaks of the to- paz of Cush, and there was a Topaz Island in the Red Sea (Died. Sic. iii, 89; Pliny, Hut. Hat. xxxvii, 8; Strabo,xvi,4,6). Yet most of these are circumstances