1st Chronicles Chapter 13 verse 5 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 5. - All Israel. The parallel gives the number as thirty thousand men (2 Samuel 6:1, 2). Shihor of Egypt. According to Gesenius, this Shihor is from root שָׁחֲר meaning "to be turbid" or "black" (so Latin melo, from the Greek; Virgil, 'Georg.,' 4:278, 291; Catullus, 67:33). There can surely be little doubt that it is the river Nile which is here spoken of, after comparison of the following passages: - Joshua 13:3; Isaiah 23:3; Jeremiah 2:18. Though others, quoting Joshua 13:3 and Joshua 19:26, and interpreting Shihor generically as applicable to any dark, turbid stream, make it the modern Wady el-Arish, However, the parallel, 1 Kings 8:65, does not necessarily dissever the נַחַל from נָהַר of Egypt (Genesis 15:18), but rather tends to identify them. The entering of Hemath; i.e. the way to Hamath (Hebrew, חְמָת; Numbers 34:7, 8). Hamath was one of the great cities of the Orontes valley, in Upper Syria, which formed the boundary in especial of the empire of Solomon. This valley is watered by the Orontes, the river of Antioch, a river remarkable for its abundant spring (situate immediately north of the source of the Leontes), which won for it the name, among all the other springs of Syria, of "The Spring," and remarkable for "the length of its course, the volume of its waters, and the rich vegetation of its banks." It is the one of the four rivers which take their rise beneath the heights of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon which becomes really worthy of the name of river, the other three, viz. the Jordan, the Leontes or modern Litany of Phoeicia, and the Abana or modern Barada of Damascus, more resembling the nature of the mountain stream. This river was to the ancient Romans "the representative of Syria, as the Timings might be said to be of England, and in later times the region formed the chief point of contact between this part of Asia and the West" (Stanley's 'Sinai and Palestine,' pp. 414, e,f, edit. 1866). The kingdom of Hamath comprised the tract of this valley of the Orontes, skirted by the hills separating the Leontes from the Orontes, and extending to the Pass of Daphne below Antioch. Riblah (Numbers 34:11; 2 Kings 23:33) lies on the east bank of the Orontes, thirty-five miles north-east of Baal-bek, or Baal-gad. The people of Hamath were of the race of Ham, of the descendants of Canaan (Genesis 10:18), and are not to be reckoned as of Phoenician origin.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(5) So David gathered all Israel.-- Assembled; a different word in 1Chronicles 13:2.Shihor of Egypt.--The boundary between Egypt and Canaan is elsewhere called Nahal Micrayim (Author?sed Version, River of Egypt; Isaiah 27:12; 2Chronicles 7:8). It is the modern Wady el Arish. Joshua 13:3 also calls this winter torrent the Shihor (Blackwater); but, in Isaiah 23:3, Shihor means the Nile. . . .