Reference: River
American
This word answers in our Bible to various Hebrew terms, of which the principal are the following:
1. Yeor, an Egyptian word signifying river. It is always applied to the Nile and its various canals, except in Job 28:10; Da 12:5-6,7.
2. Nahar, applied, like our word river, to constantly flowing streams, such as the Euphrates. In our version this word is sometimes rendered "flood," Jos 24:2-3, etc.
3. Nahal, a torrent-bed, or valley through which water flows in the rainy season only, Nu 34:5, etc; frequently rendered "brook," Nu 13:28; Job 6:15, etc. Such streams are to the orientals striking emblems of inconstancy and faithlessness. Flowing only in the rainy season, and drying up when the summer heat sets in-and some of them in desert places failing prematurely-they sadly disappoint the thirsty and perhaps perishing traveller who has looked forward to them with longing and with hope, Job 6:15-20; Jer 15:18.
In some passages in our Bible the word "rivers" seems to denote rivulets or canals, to conduct hither and thither small streams of water from a tank or fountain, Eze 31:4. Such conduits were easily turned by moulding the soil with the foot; and some think this is the idea in De 11:10; "where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs." See also Pr 21:1.
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However, the people living in the land are strong, and the cities are large and fortified. We also saw the descendants of Anak there.
The border will turn from Azmon to the Brook of Egypt, where it will end at the Mediterranean Sea.
For the land you are entering to possess is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated by hand as in a vegetable garden.
Joshua said to all the people, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: 'Long ago your ancestors, including Terah, the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods. But I took your father Abraham from the region beyond the Euphrates River, led him throughout the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants. I gave him Isaac,
My brothers are as treacherous as a wadi, as seasonal streams that overflow and become darkened because of ice, and the snow melts into them. read more. The wadis evaporate in warm weather; they disappear from their channels in hot weather. Caravans turn away from their routes, go up into the desert, and perish. The caravans of Tema look [for these streams]. The traveling merchants of Sheba hope for them. They are ashamed because they had been confident [of finding water]. When they arrive there, they are frustrated.
He cuts out channels in the rocks, and his eyes spot every treasure.
A king's heart is a water channel in the Lord's hand: He directs it wherever He chooses.
Why has my pain become unending, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? You truly have become like a mirage to me- water that is not reliable.
The waters caused it to grow; the underground springs made it tall, directing their rivers all around the place where the tree was planted and sending their channels to all the trees of the field.
Then I, Daniel, looked, and two others were standing there, one on this bank of the river and one on the other. One said to the man dressed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, "How long until the end of these extraordinary things?"
Easton
(1.) Heb 'aphik, properly the channel or ravine that holds water (2Sa 22:16), translated "brook," "river," "stream," but not necessarily a perennial stream (Eze 6:3; 31:12; 32:6; 34:13).
(2.) Heb nahal, in winter a "torrent," in summer a "wady" or valley (Ge 32:23; De 2:24; 3:16; Isa 30:28; La 2:18; Eze 47:9).
These winter torrents sometimes come down with great suddenness and with desolating force. A distinguished traveller thus describes his experience in this matter:, "I was encamped in Wady Feiran, near the base of Jebel Serbal, when a tremendous thunderstorm burst upon us. After little more than an hour's rain, the water rose so rapidly in the previously dry wady that I had to run for my life, and with great difficulty succeeded in saving my tent and goods; my boots, which I had not time to pick up, were washed away. In less than two hours a dry desert wady upwards of 300 yards broad was turned into a foaming torrent from 8 to 10 feet deep, roaring and tearing down and bearing everything upon it, tangled masses of tamarisks, hundreds of beautiful palmtrees, scores of sheep and goats, camels and donkeys, and even men, women, and children, for a whole encampment of Arabs was washed away a few miles above me. The storm commenced at five in the evening; at half-past nine the waters were rapidly subsiding, and it was evident that the flood had spent its force." (Comp. Mt 7:27; Lu 6:49.)
(3.) Nahar, a "river" continuous and full, a perennial stream, as the Jordan, the Euphrates (Ge 2:10; 15:18; De 1:7; Ps 66:6; Eze 10:15).
(4.) Tel'alah, a conduit, or water-course (1Ki 18:32; 2Ki 18:17; 20:20; Job 38:25; Eze 31:4).
(5.) Peleg, properly "waters divided", i.e., streams divided, throughout the land (Ps 1:3); "the rivers [i.e., 'divisions'] of waters" (Job 20:17; 29:6; Pr 5:16).
(6.) Ye'or, i.e., "great river", probably from an Egyptian word (Aur), commonly applied to the Nile (Ge 41:1-3), but also to other rivers (Job 28:10; Isa 33:21).
(7.) Yubhal, "a river" (Jer 17:8), a full flowing stream.
(8.) 'Ubhal, "a river" (Da 8:2).
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A river went out from Eden to water the garden. From there it divided and became the source of four rivers.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, "I give this land to your offspring, from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates River:
Two years later Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing beside the Nile, when seven healthy-looking, well-fed cows came up from the Nile and began to graze among the reeds. read more. After them, seven other cows, sickly and thin, came up from the Nile and stood beside those cows along the bank of the Nile.
Resume your journey and go to the hill country of the Amorites and their neighbors in the Arabah, the hill country, the lowlands, the Negev and the sea coast-to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon as far as the Euphrates River.
"[The Lord also said,] 'Get up, move out, and cross the Arnon Valley. See, I have handed Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land over to you. Begin to take possession [of it]; engage him in battle.
and I gave to the Reubenites and Gadites [the area extending] from Gilead to the Arnon Valley (the middle of the valley was the border) and up to the Jabbok River, the border of the Ammonites.
The depths of the sea became visible, the foundations of the world were exposed at the rebuke of the Lord, at the blast of the breath of His nostrils.
and he built an altar with the stones in the name of Yahweh. Then he made a trench around the altar large enough to hold about four gallons.
He will not enjoy the streams, the rivers flowing with honey and cream.
He cuts out channels in the rocks, and his eyes spot every treasure.
when my feet were bathed in cream and the rock poured out streams of oil for me!
Who cuts a channel for the flooding rain or clears the way for lightning,
He is like a tree planted beside streams of water that bears its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
He turned the sea into dry land, and they crossed the river on foot. There we rejoiced in Him.
Should your springs flow in the streets, streams of water in the public squares?
His breath is like an overflowing torrent that rises to the neck. [He comes] to sift the nations in a sieve of destruction and to put a bridle on the jaws of the peoples to lead [them] astray.
For there the majestic One, the Lord, will be for us, a place of rivers and broad streams, where ships that are rowed will not go, and majestic vessels will not pass.
He will be like a tree planted by water: it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn't fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.
The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. Wall of Daughter Zion, let [your] tears run down like a river day and night. Give yourself no relief and your eyes no rest.
You are to say: Mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God ! This is what the Lord God says to the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys: I am about to bring a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places.
The cherubim ascended; these were the living creatures I had seen by the Chebar Canal.
The waters caused it to grow; the underground springs made it tall, directing their rivers all around the place where the tree was planted and sending their channels to all the trees of the field.
Foreigners, ruthless men from the nations, cut it down and left it lying. Its limbs fell on the mountains and in every valley; its boughs lay broken in all the earth's ravines. All the peoples of the earth left its shade and abandoned it.
I will drench the land with the flow of your blood, [even] to the mountains; the ravines will be filled with your [gore].
I will bring them out from the peoples, gather them from the countries, and bring them into their own land. I will shepherd them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the land.
Every [kind of] living creature that swarms will live wherever the river flows, and there will be a huge number of fish because this water goes there. Since the water will become fresh, there will be life everywhere the river goes.
I saw the vision, and as I watched, I was in the fortress city of Susa, in the province of Elam. I saw in the vision that I was beside the Ulai Canal.
The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. And its collapse was great!"
But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The river crashed against it, and immediately it collapsed. And the destruction of that house was great!"
Fausets
A river in our sense is seen by few in Palestine.
(1) Nahar, "a continuous and full river", as Jordan, and especially "the river" Euphrates. The streams are dried up wholly in summer, or hid by dense shrubs covering a deeply sunk streamlet. When the country was wooded the evaporation was less.
(2) Nahal, "a winter torrent," flowing with force during the rainy season, but leaving only a dry channel or bed in the wady in summer. "Brook" in the KJV has too much the idea of placidity. "Valley" or wady (Nu 32:9), e.g. "the bed" (or, in winter, "the torrent") of Arnon, Jabbok, Kishon. Some of these are abrupt chasms in the rocky hills, rugged and gloomy, unlike our English "brook." Translated Job 6:15, "deceitfully as a winter torrent and as the stream in ravines which passes away," namely, in the summer drought, and which disappoint the caravan hoping to find water there. The Arab proverb for a treacherous friend is "I trust not in thy torrent." The fullness and noise of those temporary streams answer to the past large and loud professions; their dryness when wanted answers to the failure of friends to make good their professions in time of need (compare Isa 58:11; margin Jer 15:18).
(3) 'Aphik, from a root "to contain"; so "the channels" or "deep rock-walled ravines that hold the waters" (2Sa 22:16); so for "rivers" (Eze 32:6) translated "channels."
(4) Yeor, "the river Nile" (Ge 41:1-2; Ex 1:22; 2:3,5). In Jer 46:7-8; Am 8:8; 9:5, translated "the river of Egypt" for "flood." The word is Egyptian, "great river" or "canal." The Nile's sacred name was Hapi, i.e. Apis. The profane name was Aur with the epithet act "great." Zec 10:11, "all the deeps of the river shall dry up," namely, the Nile or else the Euphrates. Thus the Red "sea" and the Euphrates "river" in the former part of the verse answer to "Assyria." and "Egypt" in the latter.
(5) Peleg (compare Greek pelagos), from a root "divide," "waters divided", i.e. streams distributed through a land. Ps 1:3, "a tree planted by the divisions of water," namely, the water from the well or cistern divided into rivulets running along the rows of trees (See REUBEN on Jg 5:15-16, where "divisions" mean "waters divided for irrigation"); but Gesenius from the root to flow out or bubble up.
(6) Yubal, "a full flowing stream" (Jer 17:8).
(7) "A conduit" or "watercourse" (2Ki 18:17); tealah.
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Two years later Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing beside the Nile, when seven healthy-looking, well-fed cows came up from the Nile and began to graze among the reeds.
Pharaoh then commanded all his people: "You must throw every son born to the Hebrews into the Nile, but let every daughter live."
But when she could no longer hide him, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with asphalt and pitch. She placed the child in it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile.
Pharaoh's daughter went down to bathe at the Nile while her servant girls walked along the riverbank. Seeing the basket among the reeds, she sent her slave girl to get it.
After they went up as far as Eshcol Valley and saw the land, they discouraged the Israelites from entering the land the Lord had given them.
The princes of Issachar were with Deborah; Issachar was with Barak. They set out at his heels in the valley. There was great searching of heart among the clans of Reuben. Why did you sit among the sheepfolds listening to the playing of pipes for the flocks? There was great searching of heart among the clans of Reuben.
The depths of the sea became visible, the foundations of the world were exposed at the rebuke of the Lord, at the blast of the breath of His nostrils.
Then the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rab-saris, and the Rabshakeh, along with a massive army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They advanced and came to Jerusalem, and they took their position by the aqueduct of the upper pool, which is by the highway to the Fuller's Field.
He is like a tree planted beside streams of water that bears its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
The Lord will always lead you, satisfy you in a parched land, and strengthen your bones. You will be like a watered garden and like a spring whose waters never run dry.
Why has my pain become unending, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? You truly have become like a mirage to me- water that is not reliable.
He will be like a tree planted by water: it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn't fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.
Who is this, rising like the Nile, like rivers whose waters churn? Egypt rises like the Nile, and its waters churn like rivers. He boasts: I will go up, I will cover the earth; I will destroy cities with their residents.
I will drench the land with the flow of your blood, [even] to the mountains; the ravines will be filled with your [gore].
Because of this, won't the land quake and all who dwell in it mourn? All of it will rise like the Nile; it will surge and then subside like the Nile in Egypt.
The Lord, the God of Hosts- He touches the earth; it melts, and all who dwell on it mourn; all of it rises like the Nile and subsides like the Nile of Egypt.
He will pass through the sea of distress and strike the waves of the sea; all the depths of the Nile will dry up. The pride of Assyria will be brought down, and the scepter of Egypt will come to an end.
Hastings
For the meaning and use of '
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A river went out from Eden to water the garden. From there it divided and became the source of four rivers.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, "I give this land to your offspring, from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates River:
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, "I give this land to your offspring, from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates River:
The servant took 10 of his master's camels and departed with all kinds of his master's goods in hand. Then he set out for the town of Nahor, Aram-naharaim.
He fled with all his possessions, crossed the Euphrates, and headed for the hill country of Gilead.
So the Lord said to Moses, "Tell Aaron: Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt-over their rivers, canals, ponds, and all their water reservoirs-and they will become blood. There will be blood throughout the land of Egypt, even in wooden and stone [containers]."
The Lord then said to Moses, "Tell Aaron: Stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers, canals, and ponds, and cause the frogs to come up onto the land of Egypt."
Resume your journey and go to the hill country of the Amorites and their neighbors in the Arabah, the hill country, the lowlands, the Negev and the sea coast-to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon as far as the Euphrates River.
This is because they did not meet you with food and water on the journey after you came out of Egypt, and because Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram-naharaim was hired to curse you.#fn
Aren't Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?" So he turned and left in a rage.
Then the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rab-saris, and the Rabshakeh, along with a massive army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They advanced and came to Jerusalem, and they took their position by the aqueduct of the upper pool, which is by the highway to the Fuller's Field.
The rest of the events of Hezekiah's [reign], along with all his might and how he made the pool and the tunnel and brought water into the city, are written about in the Historical Record of Judah's Kings.
I proclaimed a fast by the Ahava River, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask Him for a safe journey for us, our children, and all our possessions.
when my feet were bathed in cream and the rock poured out streams of oil for me!
Who cuts a channel for the flooding rain or clears the way for lightning,
Though the river rages, Behemoth is unafraid; he remains confident, even if the Jordan surges up to his mouth.
He is like a tree planted beside streams of water that bears its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
[There is] a river- its streams delight the city of God, the holy dwelling place of the Most High.
[There is] a river- its streams delight the city of God, the holy dwelling place of the Most High.
You visit the earth and water it abundantly, enriching it greatly. God's stream is filled with water, for You prepare the earth in this way, providing [people] with grain.
By the rivers of Babylon- there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.
Then the Lord said to Isaiah, "Go out with your son Shear-jashub to meet Ahaz at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, by the road to the Fuller's Field.
the Lord will certainly bring against them the mighty rushing waters of the Euphrates River- the king of Assyria and all his glory. It will overflow its channels and spill over all its banks.
His breath is like an overflowing torrent that rises to the neck. [He comes] to sift the nations in a sieve of destruction and to put a bridle on the jaws of the peoples to lead [them] astray.
Then the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh, along with a massive army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. The Assyrian stood near the conduit of the upper pool, by the road to the Fuller's Field.
I will be with you when you pass through the waters, and [when you pass] through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. You will not be scorched when you walk through the fire, and the flame will not burn you.
If only you had paid attention to My commands. Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
He will be like a tree planted by water: it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn't fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.
Who is this, rising like the Nile, like rivers whose waters churn?
This is what the Lord says: Look, waters are rising from the north and becoming an overflowing wadi. They will overflow the land and everything in it, the cities and their inhabitants. The people will cry out, and every inhabitant of the land will wail.
In the thirtieth year, in the fourth [month], on the fifth [day] of the month, while I was among the exiles by the Chebar Canal, the heavens opened and I saw visions of God.
The waters caused it to grow; the underground springs made it tall, directing their rivers all around the place where the tree was planted and sending their channels to all the trees of the field.
I saw the vision, and as I watched, I was in the fortress city of Susa, in the province of Elam. I saw in the vision that I was beside the Ulai Canal. I looked up, and there was a ram standing beside the canal. He had two horns. The two horns were long, but one was longer than the other, and the longer one came up last.
He came toward the two-horned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and rushed at him with savage fury.
On the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank of the great river, the Tigris,
But let justice flow like water, and righteousness, like an unfailing stream.
Beauty is stripped, she is carried away; her ladies-in-waiting moan like the sound of doves, and beat their breasts.
The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were flocking to him, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins.
Morish
The three principal rivers referred to in scripture are the Nile, the Jordan, and the Euphrates. The word employed for the Nile is yeor, 'a fosse or channel'; for the Jordan and the Euphrates the word used is nahar, 'a river' always supplied with water. The other streams in Palestine, though called 'rivers,' as the Arnon, are torrents running in valleys; for the most part they have water only in the winter, and are then often impassable: these are described by the word nachal. For the symbolical river that Ezekiel saw issuing from the house this latter word is used. Eze 47:5-12.
God will make His people drink of the river of His pleasures, Ps 36:8; here the word is nachal. In Ps 46:4 it is nahar. "There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God." It will never run dry.
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They are filled from the abundance of Your house; You let them drink from Your refreshing stream,
[There is] a river- its streams delight the city of God, the holy dwelling place of the Most High.
Again he measured off a third of a [mile], and it was a river that I could not cross [on foot]. For the water had risen; it was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be crossed [on foot]. He asked me, "Do you see [this], son of man?" Then he led me back to the bank of the river. read more. When I had returned, I saw a very large number of trees along both sides of the riverbank. He said to me, "This water flows out to the eastern region and goes down to the Arabah. When it enters the sea, the sea of foul water, the water [of the sea] becomes fresh. Every [kind of] living creature that swarms will live wherever the river flows, and there will be a huge number of fish because this water goes there. Since the water will become fresh, there will be life everywhere the river goes. Fishermen will stand beside it from En-gedi to En-eglaim. These will become places where nets are spread out to dry. Their fish will consist of many different kinds, like the fish of the Mediterranean Sea. Yet its swamps and marshes will not be healed; they will be left for salt. All [kinds of] trees providing food will grow along both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. Each month they will bear fresh fruit because the water [comes] from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be used for food and their leaves for medicine."
Smith
River.
In the sense in which we employ the word viz. 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.
Ge 31:21; Ex 23:31; Nu 24:6; 2Sa 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.
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He fled with all his possessions, crossed the Euphrates, and headed for the hill country of Gilead.
I will set your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates River. For I will place the inhabitants of the land under your control, and you will drive them out ahead of you.
they stretch out like river valleys, like gardens beside a stream, like aloes the Lord has planted, like cedars beside the water.
Watsons
RIVER. The Hebrews give the name of "the river," without any addition, sometimes to the Nile, sometimes to the Euphrates, and sometimes to Jordan. It is the tenor of the discourse that must determine the sense of this vague and uncertain way of speaking. They give also the name of river to brooks and rivulets that are not considerable. The name of river is sometimes given to the sea, Hab 3:8; Ps 78:16. It is also used as a symbol for plenty, Job 29:6; Ps 36:8.
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when my feet were bathed in cream and the rock poured out streams of oil for me!
They are filled from the abundance of Your house; You let them drink from Your refreshing stream,
He brought streams out of the stone and made water flow down like rivers.
Are You angry at the rivers, Lord? Is Your wrath against the rivers? Or is Your rage against the sea when You ride on Your horses, Your victorious chariot?