"The river" is the Euphrates. Tiphsah means "a ford", and was on the west bank of

the Euphrates, some 300 miles above Damascus. Azzah or Gaza is on the coast where

the land of Palestine begins to turn west towards the delta of the Nile. The two seas

mentioned would be the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. One can sense something of the

different outlook of the ancient world from that of modern times, in the expression "The

Seven Seas". The Talmudists speak of the land of Israel being compassed by seven seas,

these include the Mediterranean, the sea of Tiberius and the sea of Sodom, and the

Midras Tillim says: "I have created seven seas, saith the Lord, but out of them all I have

chosen none but the sea of Gennesaret." The Atlantic and the Pacific might well have

never existed so far as these writers were concerned. When David spoke of the dominion

of his son reaching "from sea to sea" therefore, we must beware of the temptation to

interpret the words with a modern breadth, and read into them a meaning that would have

been quite foreign to the reader of the day. Further, the dominion which was to extend

from "sea to sea" is given another dimension, it was "from the river unto the end of the

earth". After Israel's contact with Egypt is recorded, the Hebrew word yeor is employed

when the Nile is intended, but when the Euphrates is meant the Hebrew word nahar is

used (Gen. 41: 1 and 15: 18). It will be observed that when the extent of the promised

land was given to Abraham in Gen. 15:, its boundaries were given as from the river of

Egypt, unto the great river, the river Euphrates, and in Gen. 13: 14, Abraham was told

to look "from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and

westward". From the river Euphrates, this dominion spoken of in Psalm 72: extended

"unto the end of the earth". If the extreme interpretation of these words is adopted, it will

appear somewhat strange to attempt to measure the whole earth from such a datum line,

and an examination of the term is therefore called for. The word translated "end" is the

Hebrew ephes, primarily means "to cease" and so comes to mean "an extremity".

In Psalm 72: 8 the LXX translates the Hebrew word erets "earth" by the limited

Greek word oikoumene. Apart from this one passage in the Psalms, the remaining

references where erets is rendered oikoumene are all found in Isaiah. These references

are: "In the midst of all the land" (10: 23); "the whole land" (13: 5); "to lay the land

desolate" (13: 9); "the whole earth" (14: 26); "upon the face of the earth" (23: 17);

"the Lord maketh the earth empty" (24: 1); "all the kingdoms of the earth" (37: 16);

"the Assyrians have laid waste all the nations", margin "lands" (37: 18).

If these passages be considered with their contexts, it will be seen that where a modern

reader is likely to invest these predictions and threats with a word wide significance, the

Septuagint translators limited them to the narrow sphere of the oikoumene. In like

manner, the command of the Lord, recorded in Acts 1: 8 has been looked upon as being

of world wide scope, whereas it is most probable that it should read Jerusalem, Judæa,

and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the land. The Hebrew word tebel is

translated oikoumene in the LXX more times than any other, it occurs twenty-six times or

more than twice the number of all the other Hebrew words so translated put together.

Gesenius derives the word tebel from the verb yabal "to bring forth", and so it

indicates the fertile or habitable earth. We are distinctly told that the Lord formed the

earth to be inhabited (Isa. 45: 18), and the book of Proverbs takes us back to the day of