Gozan is a river, and it appears wherever Scripture speaks of exile. When Assyria took Samaria, the king “carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.” First Chronicles 5:26 says the same of the Reubenites, the Gadites and half the tribe of Manasseh, and adds that God stirred up the Assyrian kings. Later, the Assyrians boast that the gods of Gozan and other conquered places could not save them. The river marks where a people ended up far from home. Read 2 Kings 17 for the reasons given.
4 verses
In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel unto Assyria, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes:
Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed; as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of Eden which were in Thelasar?
And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgathpilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan, unto this day.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
A region in Central Asia to which the Israelites were carried away captive (2 Kings 17:6; 1 Chr. 5:26; 2 Kings 19:12; Isa. 37:12). It was situated in Mesopotamia, on the river Habor (2 Kings 17:6; 18:11), the Khabur, a tributary of the Euphrates. The “river of Gozan” (1 Chr. 5:26) is probably the upper part of the river flowing through the province of Gozan, now Kizzel-Ozan.
William Smith, 1884
seems in the Authorized Version of (1 Chronicles 5:26) to be the name of a river, but in (2 Kings 17:6) and 2Kin 18:11 It is evidently applied not to a river but a country. Gozan was the tract to which the Israelites were carried away captive by Pul, Tiglathpileser and Shalmaneser, or possibly Sargon. It is probably identical with the Gauzanitis of Ptolemy, and I may be regarded as represented by the Mygdonia of other writers. It was the tract watered by the Habor, the modern Khabour , the great Mesopotamian affluent of the Euphrates.