Ahava is a river where Ezra gathered the people who would travel with him to Jerusalem. They camped in tents there for three days, and Ezra found that no sons of Levi had joined them. Beside the river he proclaimed a fast, so that they might humble themselves and seek “a right way” for themselves and their little ones. Then they set out on the twelfth day of the first month, and the hand of their God was upon them. All three mentions are in Ezra 8, where the preparations for the journey are told in order.
3 verses
And I gathered them together to the river that runneth to Ahava; and there abode we in tents three days: and I viewed the people, and the priests, and found there none of the sons of Levi.
Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river of Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God, to seek of him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance.
Then we departed from the river of Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month, to go unto Jerusalem: and the hand of our God was upon us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy, and of such as lay in wait by the way.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
Water, the river (Ezra 8:21) by the banks of which the Jewish exiles assembled under Ezra when about to return to Jerusalem from Babylon. In all probability this was one of the streams of Mesopotamia which flowed into the Euphrates somewhere in the north-west of Babylonia. It has, however, been supposed to be the name of a place (Ezra 8:15) now called Hit, on the Euphrates, east of Damascus.
William Smith, 1884
(water), a place, (Ezra 8:15) or a river, Ezra 8:21 On the banks of which Ezra collected the second expedition which returned with him from Babylon to Jerusalem. Perhaps it is the modern Hit, on the Euphrates due east of Damascus.