Moses’ Cushite wife aroused the bitter jealousy of his sister Miriam.
Like Abraham, she meets God in the form of an angel and is given a promise that her progeny shall become a great nation (Gen 21:18). Hagar, the Egyptian concubine of Abraham, may well have derived her ancestry from south of Egypt, and she alone of all the Bible characters gives God a name (Gen 16:13). We are now told that the oldest human remains may also be traced to Africa.
If the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are located in Babylonia, then there is good reason to believe some of Eden lay in Africa. These products were found in antiquity principally in the area now known as the Sudan. We read in Genesis that one of the rivers of Eden ran around the whole land of Cush, and another encircled the land of Havilah that yielded gold and onyx and bdellium (2:10-13). People of African descent may claim the deep roots of their ancestors in the Bible. David Adamo has suggested that the best translation is simply “Africa.”Īll of us have a right to know and applaud the important biblical role played by Africans. But how is the general reader to understand that Cush and Cushite (used 57 times in the Hebrew Bible) are in fact a designation for an African nation and people? Some versions of the Bible translate “Cush” as “Ethiopia,” but this does not ordinarily designate the modern country of that name. Today most of this area lies in the Sudan. Amos expresses God’s concern for Cush: “‘Are you not like the Cushites to me, O people of Israel?’ says the Lord” (9:7).īiblical scholars are aware that “Cush” sometimes refers to all of Africa, sometimes to all of Africa except Egypt, and sometimes to ancient Nubia, stretching from modern Aswan in the north to Khartoum in the south. Zephaniah proclaimed that from beyond the rivers of Cush, God’s people should bring offerings (3:10). Isaiah foretold that God would bring forth a remnant from Cush (11:11), and a redeemed people bearing gifts to Zion (18:1-8). How seldom are we made aware of the special promises that God has given to African people! Psalm 68:31 declares that “Cush shall reach out its arms to God!” (The early Church loved this promise, for they considered Cush to be a metaphor for the gentile Bride of Christ.) The Psalms predicted that one day people would recognize the spirituality of the Cushites, and declare that they had been born anew in Zion (87:3-6).
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