SABBATION or SAMBATYON, a river (I) natural and (2) supernatural. (I) The Targum pseudo-Jonathan to Exod. xxxiv., 10 states that the Ten Tribes were exiled beyond the Sambatyon: this is repeated in Gen. Rabba lxxiii.: Num. Rab. xvi. and Yalqiit Genesis 984. This is therefore a river in Media, identified by Ramban (Deut. xxxii., 26) with the Gozan (II Kings xvii., 6) and a natural stream. Fuenn (Pirhe caf5n ii., 133) identifies this with the Zab in Adiabene which Xenophon calls Sabatos and which became corrupted to Sabbation. This river must be sharply dis tinguished from that mentioned by Josephus (War, vii., v., I) who makes Titus on his return from the destruction of Jerusalem pass, near Beirut, a river which, flowing only on one day in seven, is called after the Sabbath. It will be noted that this river is in Palestine, not in Media and that it is periodic.
(2) With Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxi., 2) two supernatural elements enter the story. First the river rests one day in seven instead of flowing on that day and secondly that day is the Sabbath. A var iant of the miracle occurs in Gen. Rabba xi. In the gth cen tury the mysterious Eldad the Danite carried the wonder still further. In his chronicle the river is waterless but full of sand
and stones which roll with a great noise during the week-days but rest on the Sabbath. Th. Noeldeke (Beitrage zur Gesch. d. Alex anderromans, 48) traces the Sambatyon in the Alexander legend. The river of sand (Wadi ar-Raml) is mentioned by Kazwini (Cosmography ed. Wiistenfeld, ii., 17) and by Mas`udi. Benjamin of Tudela mentions the ten tribes and the Gozan river but he ascribes no miraculous properties to it, save that David Alroy crossed it on his mantle. In the 17th century the miracles have increased. Travellers from India relate that the sand or water is curative of leprosy. Menasseh ben Israel states that the sand, if kept in a bottle moves about during the week but rests on Sab bath. It has been suggested that the sand element in the story is to be explained by a confusion of a Hebrew name err liar goo which could mean either "weekday river" or "river of sand." See Jew. Enc. s.v. and A. Neubauer, Jew. Quart. Rev. I., "Where are the Ten Tribes ?"