The first mention of the Euphrates River in the Bible is found in the book of Genesis: "The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. . . Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. . . The fourth river is the EUPHRATES." (Genesis 2:8, 10, 14, NKJV throughout)
The river is also mentioned in regard to the covenant God made with Abram (Abraham). This covenant, which promised an inheritance in the land of Canaan, was made after Abraham had left his home in Ur of the Chaldees: "Then He said to him, 'I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it . . .' On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: 'To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River EUPHRATES — the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.' " (Genesis 15:7, 18-21)
The Euphrates, which begins at the place where the Karasu and Murat rivers join in northeastern Turkey, is the longest river in Southwest Asia. The distance from the source of the Murat to the place where the river joins with the Tigris (near Basra, Iraq) is 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles). The Euphrates provided the water that led to the first flowering of civilization in Sumer dating from about the 4th millennium B.C. Many important ancient cities were located on or near its riverside, including Nippur, Shuruppak, Uruk, Eridu and Ur (where Abraham was born). For several centuries this area was the eastern limit of effective Egyptian and Roman empire control. The region between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers is called Mesopotamia. This area has been labeled "the cradle of civilization" in part because it was the place where writing and the wheel were invented. Mesopotamia eventually became the heartland of the Babylonian and Assyrian world empires. The Bible says the Euphrates river will be the initial division between the North and the South when the nations of the world begin to align in preparation for the battle of Armageddon. In the end time God will cause the river to DRY UP so that the armies of the world can gather together, along with the beast and false prophet, to FIGHT Jesus Christ as he returns to earth: "Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared . . . For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty . . . And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, ARMAGEDDON." (Revelation 16:12, 14,16)
Sources: Wikipedia |
