Jamieson-Fausset-Brown on Numbers 34:5
river of Egypt--the ancient brook Sihor, the Rhinocolura of the Greeks, a little to the south of El-Arish, where this wady gently descends towards the Mediterranean (Jos 13:3).
And the border shall fetch a compass from Azmon unto the river of Egypt, and the goings out of it shall be at the sea.
| Word | Hebrew | Strong’s | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| border | הַגְּב֛וּל ha.ge.Vul | H1366 | properly · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute |
| compass | וְנָסַ֧ב ve.na.Sav | H5437 | to revolve · conjunction + verb, niphal sequential perfect, 3rd person masculine singular |
| Azmon | מֵעַצְמ֖וֹן me.'atz.Mon | H6111 | Atsmon · preposition + proper noun, a place name |
| river | נַ֣חְלָה Nach.lah | H5158 | a stream · noun, common masculine singular construct + directional suffix |
| Egypt | מִצְרָ֑יִם mitz.Ra.yim | H4714 | Mitsrajim · proper noun, a place name |
| out | תוֹצְאֹתָ֖יו totz.'o.Tav | H8444 | (only in plural collective) exit · noun, common feminine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular |
| sea | הַיָּֽמָּה hai.Ya.mah | H3220 | a sea (as breaking in noisy surf) or large body of water · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute + directional suffix |
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
river of Egypt--the ancient brook Sihor, the Rhinocolura of the Greeks, a little to the south of El-Arish, where this wady gently descends towards the Mediterranean (Jos 13:3).
And the border shall fetch a compass,.... Not go on in a straight line, but turn about: from Azmon unto the river of Egypt; the river Nile, as both the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem; but Aben Ezra seems to deny that that river is meant: and some think that Rhinocolura, which flows into the Mediterranean sea, is meant; or the "valley of Egypt", Casiotis, which divided Judea from Egypt, as follows: and the goings out of it; not of the river, but of the border: shall be at the sea; the above sea, called in the next verse the great sea; all the Targums render it to the west.
And the Lord spake unto Moses. God here undertakes the office of a prudent and careful father of a family, in fixing the boundaries of the land on every side, lest their right to posses it should ever be called in question. He begins on the southern side, where it must be observed that the district of Bashan is included in it, and all that the Israelites had acquired before their passage of the Jordan, so that this addition was approved of by God. He extends this part as far as the wilderness of Sin, and the borders of Edom, and brings it round from Kadesh-barnea to Addar, and the passage of Azmon, and, finally, to the stream which washes [228] the city of Rhinocorura, in the immediate vicin…
Read the whole note in the consoleThe southern boundary is the same as that given in Jos 15:2-4 as the boundary of the territory of the tribe of Judah. We have first the general description, "The south side shall be to you from the desert of Zin on the sides of Edom onwards," i.e., the land was to extend towards the south as far as the desert of Zin on the sides of Edom. על־ידי, "on the sides," differs in this respect from על־יד, "on the side" (Exo 2:5; Jos 15:46; Sa2 15:2), that the latter is used to designate contact at a single point or along a short line; the former, contact for a long distance or throughout the whole extent (= כּל־יד, Deu 2:37). "On the sides of Edom" signifies, therefore, that the desert of Zin stretch…
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The Brook of Egypt (not to be confused with the Nile) designates the wadi that separates the land of Canaan from Egypt; it drains toward the Mediterranean Sea (cp. 1 Kgs 8:65). In Old Testament times, Israel exercised little control over this southern coastal region.
והיו תוצאותיו הימה AND ITS GOINGS OUT SHALL BE AT THE SEA i.e. at the western boundary, because the southern border does not extend any more west of there and further on.
Henry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Clarke, Gill, Calvin and Keil & Delitzsch are in the public domain; Tyndale Open Study Notes © Tyndale House Publishers, CC BY-SA 4.0 — all from the Free Use Bible API (bible.helloao.org). Rashi: the Rosenbaum & Silbermann Pentateuch (public domain) and the Judaica Press and Metsudah Tanakh (CC BY), via Sefaria. Spurgeon's Treasury of David: public domain (lyteword's markdown edition, CC0).