GEHON (Hebr. Gibón). — The second of the four rivers into which the stream divides upon emerging from Eden; it traverses the entire land of Köš (Gen. 2:10, 13).
Given the mention of the Tigris and the Euphrates (v. 14; V. PARADISO TERRESTRE), G. was probably the ancient Araxes, today the Aras, called by the Arabs Gajhôn er-Râs, whose sources are near those of the Tigris and the Euphrates and which flows into the Caspian Sea; and Kûš the region (Kûšâ) east of Mesopotamia (Gen. 10:8), whose name would have been preserved in the first dynasty after the Flood, in the city of Kûš, and perhaps also in the name of the Kossaeans, who ruled in Babel in the second millennium.
BIBL.: P. Heimisch, Das Buch Genesis, Bonn 1030, p. 113 ff.; A. Bos, De Pentateuches, 2nd ed., Rome 1033, p. 150 74.; F. Ceuppens, De historia primum, ibid. 1034, p. 115; H. Simon-J. Prado, Vetus Testamentum, I, 4th ed., Turin 1041, p. 40 ff. Francesco Spadafora