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`beyond Jordan', `on this side Jordan' or `on the other side Jordan' (Gen. 50: 10;
Numb. 22: 1; Josh. 2: 10). The verb abar means `to pass' or `to pass over' and is
often used in connection with the passing over of the Israelites into the land of Canaan
(Deut. 12: 10; Josh. 3: 16). In Gen. 14: 13 Abraham is called `The Hebrew'. This is
partly explained in Josh. 24: 2 and 3:
"Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood . . . . . I took your father Abraham
from the other side of the flood."
This `flood' is the River Euphrates, the word translated `flood' being the same as that
which is rendered `river' meaning the River Euphrates (Josh. 1: 4). The LXX translates
Abraham `the Hebrew', by the words ho perates "The one who crossed over", the word
peran being employed in Gen. 50: 10 and Josh. 2: 10 cited above. While therefore Eber
had many descendants, Abraham stands out pre-eminently not only as one descendant out
of many, but as the one who fulfilled the meaning of the name.
Peleg, too, is associated with rivers, and is so translated nine times, and once `stream'
in the O.T. (e.g. Psa. 1: 3). Job uses the word palag when he speaks of God "Who hath
divided a watercourse" (Job 38: 25). The same form of the word, pelaggah is twice
translated `divisions' (Judg. 5: 15, 16) and once `rivers' (Job 20: 17). Rivers formed
natural boundaries in ancient days, so much so that in English the word `rival' comes
from the idea that men living on opposite banks of a river would be `divided' in their
loyalties.
It is not true to say that the words of Gen. 11: 25 `the earth was divided' cannot refer
to the division of the earth as an inheritance, but only to some geological division as
that which has formed the continents, for the feminine form of both the Hebrew and
the Chaldee is employed to speak of the division of both `families' and of `the priests'
(II Chron. 35: 5; Ezra 6: 18).
In Peleg's day the earth was divided among the Nations, `according to the number of
the children of Israel' (Deut. 32: 8). The reader will discover that there are seventy
nations mentioned by name in Gen. 10:, and the words "When the Most High divided to
the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of
the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel" have regard to that number
seventy:
"Seventy souls went down with Jacob into Egypt, that they might restore the seventy
families dispersed by the confusion of tongues. For these seventy souls were equal to all
the families of the whole world" (Zohar).
"How good is thy love toward Me, O thou congregation of Israel! It is more than that
of the seventy nations" (Targum on the Song of Solomon).
So conscious was Israel of this high place, and so equally conscious that the Gentile
nations would be provoked should they realize it, that we find the LXX reads `according
to the number of the angels of God', for the Gentile world would not know that to each
nation had been appointed an angel, as is indicated in Dan. 10: `the prince of Grecia', `the
prince of the kingdom of Persia' and `Michael your prince'.