BESOR, THE BROOK

be'-sor, (nachal besor; Codex Alexandrinus, Bechor, Codex Vaticanus, Beana; 1 Samuel 30:9, 20, 21; Josephus, Ant, VI, xiv, 6): A torrent-bed (nachal) mentioned in the account of David's pursuit of the Amalekites. Thought to be Wady Ghazza, which enters the sea Southwest of Gaza.

BROOK

brook (nachal, 'aphiq, ye'or, mikhal; cheimarrhos): In Palestine there are few large streams. Of the smaller ones many flow only during the winter, or after a heavy rain. The commonest Hebrew word for brook is nachal, which is also used for river and for valley, and it is not always clear whether the valley or the stream in the valley is meant (Numbers 13:23 Deuteronomy 2:13 2 Samuel 15:23). The Arabic wady, which is sometimes referred to in this connection, is not an exact parallel, for while it may be used of a dry valley or of a valley containing a stream, it means the valley and not the stream. 'Aphiq and ye'or are translated both "brook" and "river," ye'or being generally used of the Nile (Exodus 1:22, etc.), though in Daniel 12:5-7, of the Tigris. Cheirnarrhos, "winter-flowing," is applied in John 18:1 to the Kidron. Many of the streams of Palestine which are commonly called rivers would in other countries be called brooks, but in such a dry country any perennial stream assumes a peculiar importance.

Alfred Ely Day

BROOK OF EGYPT, THE

(nachal = "a flowing stream," "a valley"; best translated by the oriental word wady, which means, as the Hebrew word does, both a stream and its valley).

1. Name:

The Brook of Egypt is mentioned six times in the Old Testament (Numbers 34:5 Joshua 15:4, 47 1 Kings 8:65 Isaiah 27:12); once, Genesis 15:18, by another word, nahar. The Brook of Egypt was not an Egyptian stream at all, but a little desert stream near the borderland of Egypt a wady of the desert, and, perhaps, the dividing line between Canaan and Egypt. It is usually identified with the Wady el 'Arish of modern geography.

2. Description:

The Brook of Egypt comes down from the plateau et Tih in the Sinai peninsula and falls into the Mediterranean Sea at latitude 31 5 North, longitude 33 42 East. Its source is at the foot of the central mountain group of the peninsula. The upper portion of the wady is some 400 ft. above the sea. Its course, with one sharp bend to the West in the upper part, runs nearly due North along the western slope of the plateau. Its whole course of 140 miles lies through the desert. These streams in the Sinai peninsula are usually dry water-courses, which at times become raging rivers, but are very seldom babbling "brooks." The floods are apt to come with little or no warning when cloudbursts occur in the mountain region drained.

3. Archaeology:

The use of the Hebrew word nachal for this wady points to a curious and most interesting and important piece of archaeological evidence on the critical question of the origin of the Pentateuch. In the Pentateuch, the streams of Egypt are designated by an Egyptian word (ye'or) which belongs to Egypt, as the word bayou does to the lower Mississippi valley, while every other stream mentioned, not except this desert stream, "the Brook of Egypt," is designated by one or other of two Hebrew words, na chal and nahar. Each of these words occurs 13 times in the Pentateuch, but never of the streams of Egypt. The use of nahar in Exodus 7:19 in the account of the plagues is not really an exception for the word is then used generically in contrast with ye'or to distinguish between the "flowing streams," neharoth, and the sluggish irrigation branches of the Nile, ye'orim, "canals" (compare CANALS) (Isaiah 19:6; Isaiah 33:21), while ye'or occurs 30 times but never of any other than the streams of Egypt. There is thus a most exa ct discrimination in the use of these various words, a discrimination which is found alike in the Priestly Code (P), Jahwist (Jahwist), and Elohim (E) of the documentary theory, and also where the editor is supposed to have altered the documents. Such discrimination is scarcely credible on the hypothesis that the Pentateuch is by more than one author, in later than Mosaic times, or that it is by any author without Egyptian training. The documentary theory which requires these instances of the use of these various words for "river" to have been recorded by several different authors or redactors, in different ages and all several centuries after the Exodus, far away from Egypt and opportunities for accurate knowledge of its language, seems utterly incompatible with such discriminating use of these words. And even if the elimination of all mistakes be attributed to one person, a final editor, the difficulty is scarcely lessened. For as no purpose is served by this discriminating use of words, it is evidently a natural phenomenon. In every instance of the use of ye'or, one or other of the usual Hebrew words, nachal or nahar would have served the purpose of the author, just as any foreign religious writer might with propriety speak of the "streams of Louisiana," though a Louisianian would certainly call them "bayous." How does the author come to use ye'or even where his native Hebrew words might have been used appropriately? Why never, where its appropriateness is even doubtful, not even saying ye'or for nachal of the "Brook of Egypt"? It is not art, but experience, in the use of a language which gives such skill as to attend to so small a thing in so extensive use without a single mistake. The only time and place at which such experience in the use of Egyptian words is to be expected in Israel is among the people of the Exodus not long subsequent to that event.

M. G. Kyle

CHERITH, THE BROOK

ke'-rith (nachal kerith; Cheimarrhous Chorrhath): The place where Elijah hid and was miraculously fed, after announcing the drought to Ahab (1 Kings 17:3). It is described as being "before," that is "east," of Jordan. It cannot therefore be identified with Wady el-Kelt, to the West of Jericho. The retreat must be sought in some recess of the Gilead uplands with which doubtless Elijah had been familiar in his earlier days.

KIDRON, THE BROOK

(nachal qidhron; in John 18:1 (the King James Version Cedron), ho cheimarrhous ton Kedron, according to the Revised Version margin, the last two words are to be considered as meaning "of the cedars." The Hebrew word has been very generally accepted as from qadhar, "to become black," but it is an attractive suggestion (Cheyne) that it may be a phonetic variation of gidderon, "a spot for enclosures for cattle," of which latter there must have been many around the now buried caves which lay at the base of the cliffs around the spring Gihon):

1. Wady Sitti Miriam:

The Nachal Qidhron is the valley known today as the Wady Sitti Miriam, which lies between the eastern walls of Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. It commences in the plateau to the North of the city, and after making a wide sweep Southeast, under the name Wady el Joz ("Valley of the Walnuts"), passes South until level with the southeastern corner of the temple-area where its bed is spanned by an old bridge; here the bottom of the valley, 40 ft. beneath the present surface level, is 400 ft. below the temple-platform. From this point it narrows and deepens gradually, bending slightly West of South, and, after receiving the Tyropoeon valley, joins a little farther Southwest with the Valley of Hinnom to form the Wady en Nar which winds on through the "wilderness of Judea" to the Dead Sea. Where the three valleys run together is a large open space filled with gardens (the KING'S GARDEN, which see), which are kept irrigated all the year round by means of the overflow waters from the `Ain Silwan (see SILOAM). It is where the Hinnom valley runs into the Kidron that some would locate TOPHETH (which see). Except at the irrigated gardens, the ravine is a dry valley containing water only during and immediately after heavy rain, but in ancient times the rocky bottom-now buried beneath many feet of rich soil-must have contained a little stream from Gihon for at least some hundreds of yards. This was the "brook that flowed through the midst of the land" (2 Chronicles 32:4). The length of the valley from its head to Bir Eyyub is 2 3/4 miles.

2. Traditions:

Since the 4th century A.D., this valley has been known as the Valley of Jehoshaphat (see JEHOSHAPHAT, VALLEY OF), and from quite early times it was a favorite situation for interments (2 Kings 23:4, 6, 12 2 Chronicles 34:4, 5); it is by Moslem and Jewish tradition the scene of the last judgment, and was known to the Moslems in the Middle Ages as Wady Jehannum; see GEHENNA. It is probable that the "graves of the common people," where King Jehoiakim cast the body of the prophet Uriah, were here (Jeremiah 26:23), and it has been suggested, with less probability, that here too may have been the scene of Ezekiel's vision of the "valley of dry bones" (Ezekiel 37; compare Jeremiah 31:40).

3. The Fields of Kidron:

The Fields of Kidron (2 Kings 23:4), though generally identified with the open, lower part of this valley, where it is joined by the Tyropoeon valley, may more probably have been in the upper part where the wide expanded valley receives the name Wady el Joz; this part is actually on the road to Bethel.

4. Historical Associations:

The most dramatic scene associated with the Kidron is that recorded in connection with its earliest Scriptural mention (2 Samuel 15:23), when David, flying before his rebellious son Absalom, here stood on the Jerusalem side of the valley while all his adherents passed over. "And all the country wept with a loud voice, and all the people passed over: the king also himself passed over the brook Kidron.... toward the way of the wilderness." The passing over this brook appears to have been viewed as the solemn abandonment of the Jerusalem territory (compare 1 Kings 2:37). In 1 Kings 15:13 2 Chronicles 15:16, we read that Asa burnt at the brook Kidron "an abominable image for an Asherab" which Maacah, his mother, had set up. In the reforms of Hezekiah, "all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of Yahweh" was carried by the Levites to the brook Kidron (2 Chronicles 29:16); "All the altars for incense took they away, and cast them into the brook Kidron" (2 Chronicles 30:14). This locality was again used in the reforms of Josiah when the king "brought out the Asherah from the house of Yahweh, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and beat it to dust, and cast the dust thereof upon the graves of the common people" (2 Kings 23:6). The same treatment was given to the vessels made for Baal, the Asherah and the host of heaven (2 Kings 23:4), and the two idolatrous altars of Manasseh (2 Kings 23:12). Josephus (Ant., IX, vii, 3) states that Athaliah was slain in the valley of Kidron, but this does not quite tally with the account (2 Kings 11:16). It was a valley associated with graves and the ashes of abominations, but it was prophesied that it should be "holy unto Yahweh" (Jeremiah 31:40). Twice it is mentioned simply as "the valley," nachal (2 Chronicles 33:14 Nehemiah 2:15). Very different from these earlier scenes is the last Scriptural reference (John 18:1), when Jesus "went forth with his disciples over the brook Kidron" for His last hours of spiritual struggle and prayer before the turmoil of the end.

E. W. G. Masterman

MOCHMUR, THE BROOK

mok'-mur, ho cheimarrhos Mochmour): The torrent bed in a valley on which stood Chusi, not far from Ekrebel (Judith 7:18). The latter may be identified with `Aqrabeh, East of Nablus. Wady Makhfuriyeh runs to the South of `Aqrabeh, and probably represents the ancient Mochmur.

WILLOWS, THE BROOK OF THE

Evidently mentioned as the boundary of Moab (Isaiah 15:7) and generally identified with the brook Zered.

See BROOK; ZERED.

EGYPT, BROOK (RIVER, STREAM) OF

See BROOK OF EGYPT.