Euphrates in The Bible

There is possibly no type of thing that shares its name with others of the same type of thing more commonly than rivers.  People who study the geography of Britain love to make fun of how most of its many rivers have one of only three different names.  This is partly caused by a lot of communities just calling whatever river is important to their way of life simply what their word for river is.

Biblically that’s why the Nile is never mentioned by name, The Israelites spent so much time in Egypt that an Egyptian word from River simply became a loan word in Hebrew that gets translated River because it’s used synonymously with Nahar.

However there is one River name in The Bible people continue to insist can only ever refer to one very specific river, The Euphrates.

In Speculation on where Eden and it’s Garden was, the most respectable theories are considered the ones built on assuming there is only one Euphrates, but assuming that Euphrates is the River that runs through Iraq, Syria and Turkey forces so many other place names in this passage to be somewhere other then what they usually mean in Scripture. Frankly I think after The Flood (and I think this even when entertaining a local Flood view) the naming of all places were essentially rebooted, there is no real point in trying to identify them.

However, the appearances of the name Eurphates in The Bible that really bug me are when it’s used to define the boundaries of The Promised Land, Genesis 15:18, Deuteronomy 1:7, Deuteronomy 11:24 and Joshua 1:4. 

Because the most truly detailed descriptions of the boundary of what is promised to The Twelve Tribes of Israel in Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47-48 clearly make The Jordan the eastern border.  The three Trans-Jordan Tribes are depicted as departing from God’s intention when they ask to settle in those Trans-Jordan regions, God allows it but it’s still not his ideal. In Deuteronomy 1-2 God even talks about Edom, Moab and Ammon also having their lands because God gave it to them.

If it was just the Promise to Abraham we could argue the other side of Jordan is what's for the other Abrahamic Peoples.  The other three verses are the real concern.

Maybe the Euphrates is somehow a Northern Border rather than Eastern, especially given its pairing with the Al-Arish (River in Egypt) in the South.  Well the Northern border of Israel is more complicated to explain but the mounting evidence is that it too doesn't extend further north then Sidon at the absolute most but probably no further north than the northern extent of modern Israel pre taking the Golan Heights.

The Tribe of Dan in Judges 18 leaves their intended allotment and I suspect the intended allotment of Israel altogether just like the Trans-Jordan tribes did except without even asking permission first.  So even if Laish is much further North then Tel-Dan the use of Dan as an idiom for Israel’s northern extent is still in my view a matter of the Southern Border of Dan being the Northern Border of Israel.

Hamath as the name of a specific City is not even in Lebanon but Syria north of Lebanon.  But I think many Biblical uses of it are of a wider territory and that specifically the “Entering in of Hamath” is that space between the southern Litani River and the northern Jordan. 

Obadiah 1:20 is difficult to Translate it seems, but many versions make Zarephath the northern extent of Israel and that is most likely a reference to Sarepta, a city located south of Sidon.  When defining  Asher’s northern extent Joshua 19:28 identifies it with places approaching Sidon. 

Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 27-28 use names for the Northern Borders not found anywhere else and thus seemingly impossible to identify on their own now.  But I'm compelled by Joseph Schwars’s argument that this northern Mount Hor is the southern tip of the Lebanon Mountain Range. 

The name Lebanon in The Bible refers to a Mountain Range not a nation state, but it is pretty much all in modern Lebanon. And that’s the thing about the Deuteronomy and Joshua Euphrates references, if you read them carefully they are clearly placing their Euphrates in or right next to  the Lebanon Mountains. Which makes the most viable river to match that description the Litani River.

When you google “Is the Litani River mentioned in The Bible” you’ll find that it’s not by that name but people see in the references to Misrephothmain in Joshua 11:8 and 13:6 which clearly associates it with being unto Sidon like the northern border of Asher, but that name I think refers specifically to where it meets the Mediterranean.

I think the Euphrates in early Israelite History was always the Litani and in The Bible doesn’t refer to the river in Mesopotamia till the Babylonian Captivity or maybe at the soonest the references to Necho King of Egypt fighting Assyria there.

So that’s my take, the northern border of Israel is the East-West flowing part of the Litani River. 

David and Solomon and other Kings wound up ruler a larger territory, that's as Tributaries, they never tried to annex anything beyond what the Twelve Tribes were allotted.

As far as the small piece of Lebanon that is Biblical Israel in the argument I just made.   God tolerated Tyre being Sidonian in Antiquity. I'm sure he’s fine with it now too.