Lectionary Calendar
Thursday, March 28th, 2024
Maundy Thursday
There are 3 days til Easter!
Attention!
Take your personal ministry to the Next Level by helping StudyLight build churches and supporting pastors in Uganda.
Click here to join the effort!

Bible Dictionaries
River

Smith's Bible Dictionary

Search for…
or
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
Prev Entry
Riusah
Next Entry
River of Egypt The
Resource Toolbox
Additional Links

River. In the sense in which we employ the word, namely, for a perennial stream of considerable size, a river is a much rarer object in the East than in the West. With the exception of the Jordan and the Litany, the streams of the Holy Land are either entirely dried up in the summer months, converted into hot lanes of glaring stones, or else, reduced to very small streamlets, deeply sunk in a narrow bed, and concealed from view by a dense growth of shrubs. The perennial river is called nahar by the Hebrews. With the definite article, "the river", it signifies, invariably, the Euphrates. Genesis 31:21; Exodus 23:31; Numbers 24:6; 2 Samuel 10:16; etc.

It is never applied to the fleeting fugitive torrents of Palestine. The term for these is nachal, for which our translators have used promiscuously, and sometimes almost alternately, "valley" "brook" and "river". No one of these words expresses the thing intended; but the term "brook" is peculiarly unhappy. Many of the wadys of Palestine are deep, abrupt chasms, or rents in the solid rock of-the hills, and have a savage, gloomy aspect, far removed from that of an English brook. Unfortunately, our language does not contain any single word which has both the meanings of the Hebrew, nachal, and its Arabic equivalent, wady, which can be used, at once, for a dry valley, and for the stream which occasionally flows through it.

Bibliography Information
Smith, William, Dr. Entry for 'River'. Smith's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/​dictionaries/​eng/​sbd/​r/river.html. 1901.
adsFree icon
Ads FreeProfile