SEBA (sē'ba, Heb. sevā’). A people descended from Cush (Gen.10.7) who lived in southern Arabia. Seba is a dialectical variation of Sheba. The people of Seba were called Sabeans. See Sheba, nos. 4-6.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915)

(cebha’; Saba (Ge 10:7; 1Ch 1:9); Greek ibid., but Codex Vaticanus has (Saban):

1. Forms of Name, and Parentage of Seba:

The first son of Cush, his brothers being Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabtecha. In Ps 72:10 and Isa 43:3 (where the Greek has Soene), Seba is mentioned with Egypt and Ethiopia, and must therefore have been a southern people. In Isa 45:14 we meet with the gentilic form, (csebha’im) (Sabaeim), rendered "Sabaeans," who are described as "men of stature" (i.e. tall), and were to come over to Cyrus in chains, and acknowledge that God was in him--their merchandise, and that of the Ethiopians, and the labor of Egypt, were to be his.

2. Position of the Nation:

Their country is regarded as being, most likely, the district of Saba, North of Adulis, on the west coast of the Red Sea. There is just a possibility that the Sabi River, stretching from the coast to the Zambesi and the Limpopo, which was utilized as a waterway by the states in that region, though, through silting, not suitable now, may contain a trace of the name, and perhaps testifies to still more southern extensions of the power and influence of the Sebaim. (See Th. Bent, The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, 1892.) The ruins of this tract are regarded as being the work of others than the black natives of the country. Dillmann, however, suggests (on Ge 10:7) that the people of Seba were another branch of the Cushites East of Napatha by the Arabian Sea, of which Strabo (xvi. 4, 8, 10) and Ptolemy (iv.7, 7 f) give information.

See Sheba and HDB, under the word

See also

Sabeans