Cush was both the name of two places and of two persons in the OT.
Place:
Cush is the ancient name for the lands byond the southern limits of Egypt, and would include what is Ethiopia and Sudan today, though most English versions translate it as Ethiopia. Job 28:19 suggests it was famous for its topaz. The dark complexion of its people lend Jeremiah with his famous rebuke of his fellow men: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil" (Jer 13:23). One might think it strange that such a people, living so far south of Judah, should enter into Israel's everyday life. Until just a few decades ago Western scholars, with their racist attitudes towards black peoples, could never entertain the idea that they could have developed a glorious civilizations. It is now abundantly clear that they did. Controlling the trade along the River Nile south of Egypt and east towards the Red Sea and the east, Cush often suffered at the end of Egypt's stick. in 730 BC, however, a Nubian by the name Piye managed to sieze control of Egypt and established the 25th Dynasty that became, in the reign of Tirhakah, powerful enough to make life difficult for the Neo-Assyrian Empire as it sought to subjugate their vassals in Palestine and Syria, enough for Sennacherib to write Hezekiah a letter of warning against getting help from the Nubian king.
Cush is also mentioned as the land through which Gihon, the second river that issued from the garden of Eden, flowed in Gen 2:13. E. A. Speiser (Genesis, 20) suggests that the land of Cush mentioned in here, and so closely juxtaposed with the Tigris and Euphrates, should be rather be understood as the country of the Kassites in the mountains east of Mesopotamia, instead of Ethiopia.
Cush is mentioned 29x in the OT, Cushite/s another 24x.
Persons:
1) Cush was the eldest son of Ham (Gen 10:6-8//1 Chron 1:8-10), the father of Nimrod, the attributed founder of an empire with centers in "Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh in Shinar."
2) A member of the tribe of Benjamin whose name appears only in the heading of Psm 7, in a prayer David, about whom we also know nothing.
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