Red Sea-Rezon
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THE AGES DIGITAL LIBRARY REFERENCE CYCLOPEDIA of BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL and ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE Red Sea - Rezon by James Strong & John McClintock To the Students of the Words, Works and Ways of God: Welcome to the AGES Digital Library. We trust your experience with this and other volumes in the Library fulfills our motto and vision which is our commitment to you: MAKING THE WORDS OF THE WISE AVAILABLE TO ALL — INEXPENSIVELY. AGES Software Rio, WI USA Version 1.0 © 2000 2 Red Sea the usual designation of the large body of water separating Egypt from Arabia. The following account of it is based upon the Scriptures and other ancient and modern authorities. SEE SEA. I. Names. — The sea known to us as the Red Sea was by the Israelites called the sea (µY;hi, <021402>Exodus 14:2, 9, 16, 21, 28; 15:1, 4, 8, 10, 19; <062406>Joshua 24:6, 7; and many other passages); and specially “the sea of Siph” (ãWsAµyi, <021019>Exodus 10:19; 13:18; 15:4, 22; 23:31; <041425>Numbers 14:25; 21:4; 33:10, 11; <050140>Deuteronomy 1:40; 11:4; <060210>Joshua 2:10; 4:23; 24:6; <071116>Judges 11:16; <110926>1 Kings 9:26; <160909>Nehemiah 9:9; <19A607>Psalm 106:7, 9, 22; 136:13, 15; <244921>Jeremiah 49:21). It is also perhaps written Suphcah’, hp;Ws (Sept. Zwo>b), in <042114>Numbers 21:14, rendered “Red Sea” in the A.V.; and in like manner, in <050101>Deuteronomy 1:1, ãWs, without µyi. The Sept. always renders it ) hJ ejruqra< qa>lassa (except in <071116>Judges 11:16, where ãWs, Si>f, is preserved). So, too, in the New Test. (<440736>Acts 7:36; <581129>Hebrews 11:29); and this name is found in the Apocrypha (1 Maccabees 4:9; Wisdom of Solomon 10:18; 19:7) and Josephus (Ant. 8:6, 4). By the classical geographers this appellation, like its Latin equivalent Mare Rubrum or M. Erythroeum, was extended to all the seas washing the shores of the Arabian peninsula, and even the Indian Ocean: the Red Sea itself, or Arabian Gulf, was oAJjra>biov ko>lpov, or Ajrabiko<v k.,, or Sinus Arabicus, and its eastern branch, or the Gulf of ‘Akabah, Aijlani>thv, Ejlani>thv, Ejlanitiko<v ko>lpov, Sinus Elanites, or S. Elaniticius. The Gulf of Suez was specially the Heroopolitic Gulf, JHrwopoli>thv ko>lpov, Sinus Heroopolites, or S. Heroopoliticus. Dr. Beke (Sinai in Arabia [Lond. 1878], p. 361 sq.) contends (in keeping with his wild notion that the Mizraim of the Bible was not Egypt, but the peninsula of Arabia) that the Gulf of ‘Akabah, and not that of Suez, was the Yam-Suph of the Hebrews, chiefly on the rash assumption that the former only was known to the Israelites, whereas the itinerary of Moses clearly distinguishes Eziongeber on the one from the crossing at the other (<043308>Numbers 33:8. 10, 35, 36). Among the peoples of the East, the Red Sea has for many centuries lost its old names: it is now called generally by the Arabs, as it was in mediaeval times, Bahr-el-Kulzum, “the Sea of El-Kulzum,” after the ancient Clysma, “the sea-beach,” the site of which is near, or at, the modern Suez. In the Koran, part of its old name is preserved, the rare Arabic word ya1manm 3 being used in the account of the passage of the Red Sea (see also El- Beydawi, Comment. on the Kuran, 7:132, p. 341; 20:81, p. 602). These Biblical names require a more detailed consideration. 1. Yam, µy; (Coptic, iom; Arabic, yamm), signifies “the sea,” or any sea. It is also applied to the Nile (exactly as the Arabic bahr is so applied) in <160308>Nehemiah 3:8, “Art thou better than populous No, that was situate among the rivers (yeoraim), [that had] the waters round about it, whose rampart [was] the sea (yam), and her wall was from the sea (yam)?” See also <231905>Isaiah 19:5. 2. Yam-Suph, ãWsAµyi; in the Coptic version, phiom nshapi; A.V. “Red Sea.” The meaning of suph, and the reason of its being applied to this sea, have given rise to much learned controversy. Gesenius renders it rush, reed, sea-weed. It is mentioned in the Old Test. almost always in connection with the sea of the Exodus. It also occurs in the narrative of the exposure of Moses in the raoy] (yet (yeah); for he was laid in supinh, on the brink of the yen;r (<020203>Exodus 2:3), where (in the suph) he was found by Pharaoh’s daughter (ver. 5); and in the “burden of IEgypt” (Isaiah 19), with the drying-up of the waters of Egypt, “And the waters shall fail from the sea (yam), and the river (nahloir) shall be wasted and dried up. And they shall turn the rivers (nahar’, constr. pl.) far away; [and] the brooks (yeor) of defence (or of Egypt?) shall be emptied and dried up: the reeds and flags (suph) shall wither. The paper reeds by the brooks (yeor), by the mouth of the brooks (yeor), and everything sown by the brooks (yeor) shall wither, be driven away, and be no [more]. The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks (yeor) shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish. Moreover, they that work in fine flax, and they that weave net works (white linen?) shall be confounded. And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices [and] ponds for fish” (ver. 5-10). Suph only occurs in one place besides those already referred to. In <320205>Jonah 2:5 it is written, “The waters compassed me about, [even] to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds (suph) were wrapped about my head.” With this single exception, which shows that this product was also found in the Mediterranean, suph is Egyptian, either in the Red Sea or in the yeor, and this yeor in Exodus 2 was in the land of Goshen. The signification of ãWs, suph, must be gathered from the foregoing passages. In Arabic, the word with this signification (which commonly is 4 “wool”) is found only in one passage in a rare lexicon (the Mohkam MS.). The author says, “Suf-el-bahr (the suf of the sea) is like the wool of sheep. And the Arabs have a proverb, ‘I will come to thee when the sea ceases to wet the suf,” i.e. never. The ãWs of the µy;, it seems quite certain, is a sea- weed resembling wool. Such sea-weed is thrown up abundantly on the shores of the Red Sea. Furst says, s.v. ãWs, “Ab AEthiopibus herba qumdam supho appellabatur, quae in profundo Maris Rubri crescit, quae rubra est, rubrumque colorem continet, pannis tingendis inservientem, teste Hieronymo de qualitate Maris Rubri” (p. 47, etc.). Diodorus (3 c. 19), Artemidorus (ap. Strabo, p. 770), and Agatharchides (ed. Muller, p. 136, 137) speak of the weed of the Arabian Gulf. Ehrenberg enumerates Fucus latifolius on the shores of this sea, and at Suez Fucmus crispus, F. trinodis, F. turbinatuts, F. papillosus, F. caiaphamnus, etc., and the specially red weed Trichodesmium erythnrceum. The Coptic version renders siuph by shari (see above), supposed to be the hieroglyphic sher (sea?). If this be the same as the sari of Pliny (see next paragraph), we must conclude that shari, like suph, was both marine and fluvial. The passage in Jonah proves it to be a marine product, and that it was found in the Red Sea the nummerous passages in which that sea is called the sea of suph leave no doubt. 3. The “Red Sea,” hJ ejruqra< qa>lassa. The origin of this appellation has been the source of more speculation even than the obscure suph, for it lies more within the range of general scholarship. The theories advanced to account for it have been often puerile and generally unworthy of acceptance. Their authors may be divided into two schools. The first have ascribed it to some natural phenomenon, such as the singularly red appearance of the mountains of the western coast, looking as if they were sprinkled with Havana or Brazil snuff, or brick-dust (Bruce), or of which the redness was reflected in the waters of the sea (Gosselin, ii, 78-84); the red color of the water sometimes caused by the presence of zoophytes (Salt; Ehrenberg); the red coral of the sea; the red sea-weed; and the red storks that have been seen in great numbers, etc. Reland (De Mare Rubro, Diss. Miscell. i, 59-117) argues that the epithet red was applied to this and the neighboring seas on account of their tropical heat; as, indeed, was said by Artemidorus (ap. Strabo, 16:4, 20), that the sea was called red because of the reflection of the sun. The second have endeavored to find an etymological derivation. Of these the earliest (European) writers proposed a derivation from Edom, “red,” by the Greeks translated literally. Among 5 them were Fuller (Miscell. Sacr. 4 c. 20); before him Scaliger, in his notes to Festues, s.v. “AEgyptinos” (ed. 1574); and still earlier Genebrard (Comment. ad Ps. 106). Bochart (Phaleg, 4:c. 34) adopted this theory (see Reland, Diss. Miscell. [ed. 1706] i, 85). The Greeks and Romans tell us that the sea received its name from a great king, Erythras, who reigned in the adjacent country (Strabo, 16:4, § 20; Pliny, H.