RIVER OF EGYPT (riv'Er ov e'4pt), (Heb. tr.n.:>? neh-har mils-rah'yim).
(1) The Nile (Gen. xv A), and specifically the most eastcrn channel, the Pelusiac branch (Gen. xv :18). (See Sifina.) In this passage the two great rivers, the NILE and the EUPHRATES, are named broadly as the boundaries of the promised land. The brook of Egypt, or Wady el-'Arish, was commonly regarded as the southwestern limit of Palestine; but the country between this wady and the eastern branch of the Nile was mainly desert, and the Nile was virtually on the boundary of Egypt. The passage means that the descendants of Abraham should possess the land as far as Egypt. The distinction between the Nile and the Wady el-'Arish is well established; for the former is a nahar and the latter a nahal. (Davis, Bib Diet.) (2) Nahal Mizraim. Nakh'al (Heb. val ley, Num. xxxiv :5; Josh. xv:3, 4, 47; t Kings viii :65; 2 Kings xxiv :7). This phrase does not
denote a perennial stream, but usually a torrent bed, either partially or totally dry in summer, and having a running stream only in the rainy season. Nahal, therefore, exactly corresponds with the Arabic word wady, for which we have no En glish equivalent. Hence, "Nahal Mizraim," or "torrent of Egypt," is generally used in Scripture to designate the old boundary between Palestine and Egypt, and is identified with the modern Wady el-Arish, which drains the great central basin of the desert, between the passes of Jebel et-Tih and Sinai. The various w,ldies of this region unite in one, but without forming a peren nial stream, and the torrent-bed reaches the Medi terranean about forty miles southwest of Gaza, and nearly midway between the Red Sea and the eastern branch of the Nile. (See NILE.)