CUSH
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upon which we can lay bnt little stiess ; and the pas- sage in 2 Chron. xxi, 16, is the only direct evidence we poesess of the name ** Cnah" being applied in Scrip- ture to any part of Arabia, and even that does not amount to absolute demonstration. See Abasia.
8. Cush, as a countiy, therefore appears to be Afii- can or Arabian in all passages except Gen. ii, 18. We may thus distinguish a prhneval and a post-diluvian Cush. The former was encompassed by Gihon, the second river of Paradise : it would seem, therefore, to have been somewhere to the northward of Assyria. See GiHON . From et3rmological considerations, Huet was induced to place Cush in Chusbtan (called Cutha, 2 Kings xvii, 24), Leclerc in Cassiotis in Syria, and Reland in the * ' regio CosssBorum." Bochart identified it with Susiana, Link with the country about the Cau- casus, and Hartmann with Bactria or B&lkh, the site of Paradise being, in this case, in the celebrated vale of ELashmir. It is possible that Cush is in this case a name of a period later than that to which the history relates, bnt it seems more probable that it was of the earliest age, and that the African Cush was named from this older country. Most ancient nations thus connected their own lands with Paradise, or with pri- meval seats. In this manner the future Paradise of the Egyptians was a sacred Egypt watered by a sa- cred Nile ; the Arabs have told of the terrestrial par- adise of Sheddad the son of Ad (q. v.) as sometimes seen in their deserts ; the Greeks located the all-de- stroying floods of Ogyges and Deucalion in Greece ; and the Mexicans seem to have placed a similar deluge in America — all carrying with them their traditions, and fixing them in the territories where they estab- lished themselves. We are told that, in the Hindoo m3rthology, the gardens and metropolis of Indra are placed around the mountain M6ru, the celestial north pole; that, among the Babylonians and Medo-Per- sians, the gods' mountain, Alboij, ''the mount of the congregation," was believed to be *' in the sides of the north" (Isa. xiv, 13) ; that the oldest Greek traditions point northwards to the birthplace of gods and men ; and that, for all these reasons, the Paradise of the He- brews must be sought for in some far-distant hyper- borean region. Guided by such unerring indications, Basse (Entdechmgm, p. 49, 50, n.) scrupled not to gratify his national feeling by placing the Garden of Eden on the coast of the Baltic ; Rudbeck, a Swede, found it in Scandinavia ; and the inhospitable Siberia has not been without its advocates (Morren, Rosen- mailer's Oeo^. i, 96). But, with all this predilection in favor of the north, the Greeks placed the gardens of the Hesperides in the extreme west, and there are strong indications in the Pur&nas *'of a terrestrial paradise, different fhmi that of the general Hindu sys- tem, in the southern parts of Africa" {As. Ret. iii, 800). Even M6ru was no frurther north than the Himalayan range, which the Aryan race crossed in their mignu tions.— Kitto, s. v. ; Smith, s. v. See Eden.
2. (Sept. Xowt, Vulg. Chtui.) A Benjamite, ap- parently at the court of Saul, by the name of Cush is mentioned in the title of Psalm vii, respecting whom nothing more is known than that the psalm is there said to have been composed *' concerning his words" (or affairs). B.C. 1061. "There is every reason to believe this title to be of great antiquity (Ewald, Pso/men, p. 9). Cush was probably a follower of Saul, the head of Ids tribe, and had sought the friendship of David for the purpose of ' rewarding evil to him who was at peace with him' — an act in which no Oriental of ancient or modem times would see any shame, but, if sucoessftil, the reverse. Happily, however, we may gather from ver. 15 that he had not succeeded." By some (see Poole's 8ynopti»^ in loc.) he is believed to have been Saul himself (see Hengstenberg, in loc.) ; by others he is identified with Shimei (see Pfeiffer, Diet. Vexaia, in 0pp. i, 297), who treated David so scur- "lously on his retreat from Absalom (2 Sam. xvi, 5-8).
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A recent view (Kitto's Daify IJkutratiom^ ia lee.)j that this was the name of some treacberons ii in David's corps, through fear of whose intrigiM) fled the second time to Achish (1 Sam. zxrn. I); (see Calmet's C<»nmetU, in loc.), most pcobahfy, ■ of Saul's malicious courtiers, as no good reaocnai given for calling so well-known characten as A Saul or Shimei by so fanciful a title as CuIl— Scsi See David.
Cu'fihan (Heb Kuthcmf, yo^'S ; Sept. Xtk Vulg. j£thiopia\ usually regarded as a poetic form (Hab. iii, 7) of the name of the 1 Cush (q. v.), but perhaps rather the same aa ( rithathaim (A.y. "Chushan-"), king of Mc (Judg. iii, 8, 10). The order of events alluded b the prophet seems to fiivor this supposition, appears to refer to former acts of divine fiavor (vtr. 1 he then speaks of the wonders at the giving cf i Law, *^ God came from Teman, and the Holy i from Mount Paran ;" and he adds, ** I saw the i of Cushan in afiiiction .* [and] the tent-curtains ( land of Midian did tremble," as thoogh the fear of the enemies of Israel at the : of God's favor for his people. Chuahan-i the first recorded oppressor of the days of the Ja may have been already reigning at the time < trance into Palestine. The Midianites, certainly s with the Moabites at that time, feared the la and plotted against them (Num. xxii, xxiii, ; xxv) ; and it is noticeable that "Rala^w* was i from Aram (xxili, 7), perhaps the Aimm-naharun i the oppressor. Habakkuk afterwards allndes to tb crossing of Jordan or the Bed Sea, or both (ver. 9-1*, 15), to the standing still of the son and mooa (11; { and apparently to the destruction of the r'^M*«i** i (12, 18, 14).— Smith, s. v. There is, however, foed ! reason for the supposition that Cnshan here stands fo an Asiatic Cush (see Meih. Quar. Rev. Jan. 1661, p. ^\ as it is named in connection with Midian (q. v.X 1^ litzsch {Der Prophet ffabakut, Leip8.1848, p.l&9), vte admits only the African Cush, holds that its watiBt along with Midian is intended to show how plsc» k far removed from each other were equally affected bf the theophany ; but this is exceedingly strained, n^ at variance with the parallelism of the passage. Set Chdsuan-Bibhathaim.