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Bible Dictionaries
Euphrates
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or Εu , Sanskrit su , denotes "good"; the second syllable denotes "abundant." Hebrew Ρrath , now Frat. Eden, wherein it is mentioned as one of the four, rivers. (See EDEN.) The bound to which God promised the land given to Abraham's seed should extend. Called "the river," "the great river," as being the largest with which Israel was acquainted, in contrast to the soon drying up torrents of Palestine (Isaiah 8:7; Genesis 15:18; Deuteronomy 1:7). The largest and longest of the rivers of western Asia. It has two sources in the Armenian mountains, one at Domli, 25 miles N.E. of Erzeroum, the other N. of the mountain range Ala Tagh, not far from Ararat; the two branches meet at Kebban Maden, the one having run 400 the other 270 miles. The united river runs S.W. and S. through the Taurus and Antitaurus ranges toward the Mediterranean; but the ranges N. of Lebanon preventing its reaching that sea, it turns S.E. 1,000 miles to the Persian gulf. N. of Sumeisat (Samosata) the stream runs in a narrow valley between mountains.
From Sumeisat to Hit it runs amidst a more open but hilly country. From Hit downwards it runs through a low, flat, alluvial plain. The whole course is 1,750 miles, 650 more than the Tigris and only 200 short of the Indus; for 1,200 it is navigable for boats and small steamers. Its greatest width is 700 or 800 miles from the mouth, namely, 400 yards across, from its junction with the Khabour (Chebar) at Carchemish, to Werai, a village. Below the Khabour it has no tributaries, and so its depth and width decrease. At Babylon its width has decreased to 200 yards, with a depth of 15 ft. Farther down 120 wide, 12 deep. Moreover, its water here and lower down is much employed in irrigation; and it has a tendency to expend itself in vast marshes. But 40 miles below Lamlum it increases to 200 yards wide, and when joined by the Tigris it is half a mile wide The yearly inundation in May is clue to the melting of the snows in the Armenian mountains.
Nebuchadnezzar (Abyden., Fr. 8) controlled the inundation by turning the water through sluices into channels for distribution over the whole country. Boats of wicker work, coated with bitumen and covered with skins, are still to be seen on the river, as more than two thousand years ago in Herodotus' time. By this river the East and West carried on mutual commerce during the successive periods of Babylonian and Persian rule. As Babylon represents mystically the apostate church, so the waters of Euphrates, "where the whore sitteth" (in impious parody of Jehovah who "sitteth upon the flood"), represent the "peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues," which were her main support (Revelation 17:15-16). The drying up of Babylon's waters answers to the ten kings' stripping, eating, and burning the whore, which is now being enacted in many European countries (Revelation 16:12).
"The kings of the Euphrates" (compare Revelation 1:6) are the saints of Israel and the Gentiles accompanying the king of Israel in "glory returning from the way of the East" (Ezekiel 43:2; Matthew 24:27). The obstacles which stood in the way of Israel and her king returning, namely, the apostate church (both Rome and the Greek apostasy) and her multitudinous peoples, shall be dried up, her resources being drained off, just as Cyrus marched into Babylon through the dry channel of the Euphrates.
The promise to Abraham that his seed's inheritance should reach the Euphrates (Genesis 15:18; Deuteronomy 1:7; Joshua 1:4) received a very partial fulfillment in Reuben's pastoral possessions (1 Chronicles 5:9-10) (the Hagarites here encountered them, the inscriptions confirming scripture as to their appearance upon the middle Euphrates in the later empire); a fuller accomplishment under David and Solomon, when an annual tribute was paid from subject petty kingdoms in that quarter, as Hadadezer king of Zobah, etc. (1 Chronicles 18:3; 2 Samuel 8:3-8; 1 Kings 4:21; 2 Chronicles 9:26.) The full accomplishment awaits Messiah's coming again. (See CANAAN.) The Euphrates was the boundary between Assyria and the Hittite country, after Solomon's times, according to inscriptions. But Assyria at last drove back the Hittites from the right bank. (See CARCHEMISH.)
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Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Euphrates'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/e/euphrates.html. 1949.
