Euphrates

(in Hebrew and Aramaic: Frat) (great, mighty river) (Gen. 2:14) — a well-known river of Asia, which rises in Armenia on the northern slope of Mount Taurus, receives many tributary rivers in its winding course along the borders of Syria, skirts the Syro-Arabian desert, and flows through the region of Babylon, emptying by six or seven mouths into the Persian Gulf. Joining with the river Tigris 22 miles from the Persian Gulf, it is there called the Shatt al-Arab. The entire length of the Euphrates is 1,780 miles, 650 miles longer than the Tigris and 200 miles shorter than the river Indus.

From Samosata the Euphrates is navigable for nearly two-thirds of its course (1,200 miles) for boats and even flat-bottomed steamers. The Euphrates overflows its banks every spring owing to the melting of the snows on the Armenian mountains, sometimes rising as much as 12 feet. It begins to rise in March, and the flood sometimes lasts until the end of May. Dams and canals were built at enormous expense, and great reservoirs dug, in order to preserve the waters of the Euphrates for irrigating the soil during times of drought.

The Euphrates is called in the Bible “the great river,” and formed the eastern boundary of the Promised Land (Deut. 1:7; Josh. 1:4). In some places in Holy Scripture the Euphrates is called simply “the river” (Ps. 72:8 [71:8]). Like the Nile, the river Euphrates carries with it a great many remarkable associations, beginning with its first mention in the second chapter of Genesis, as one of the four rivers of Eden (v. 14). Further on, we meet the Euphrates in the account of the covenant made by God with Abraham (Gen. 15:18).

In this passage the whole land, from the great river, the river Euphrates, to the river of Egypt (the Nile), is promised to the chosen people. In the prophets, as the river of the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Euphrates appears on the one hand as a symbol of the overwhelming fullness of the power and might of the king of Assyria (Isa. 8:7), and on the other as an instrument in the hand of God for the crushing of the pride of Judah and Jerusalem (Jer. 13:4–9). The waters of the Euphrates, of course, are meant by the Psalmist when he depicts the Jewish captives sitting and weeping by the rivers of Babylon (Ps. 137:1–2 [136:1–2]), and with the fullness of the Euphrates, Jesus the son of Sirach (24:28) compares the abundant fruits of true wisdom and knowledge: “He,” that is, the Lord, says the Wise Man, “maketh understanding to abound like the Euphrates, and like the Jordan in the time of harvest.” “And the passages are stopped,” prophesies Jeremiah of the fall of Babylon (51:32), “and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted.” The Euphrates mentioned in Revelation is represented as the place from which, by God’s command, the bound destroying angels are to be released, prepared to strike mankind with various plagues.

In the Apocalypse, without doubt, this points very closely to the manner in which the Persians entered Babylon and took the city, and corresponds closely with Herodotus’s account of the fall of Babylon. The Euphrates still carries to the sea the same volume of water as in the days of the prophets, but a great part of it is lost through human neglect and indolence. The numerous watercourses that once irrigated the fields have dried up; the main channel has become shallow, and the stagnating water forms fetid marshes, harmful to health.