Genesis 13:1 — Directions Named from the Land

Genesis 13:1 says Abram went up out of Egypt “into the south.” A reader with a map is right to stop there. Egypt sits below Canaan, so leaving Egypt for Canaan means walking north. The answer is in the word. Moses did not write the direction “south.” He wrote negeb (H5045), the dry country, and that is the name of a real place: the Negev, the desert at the bottom of the promised land. The English translators chose “south” because that is where the Negev lies, but Abram was not walking a compass heading. He was walking into a place.

The other directions work the same way. West is yam (H3220), the sea, because the Mediterranean lies on the west side of the land, and the “west wind” of Exodus 10:19 is a sea wind in the Hebrew. East is qedem (H6924), what is in front, and the Mount of Olives stands “before Jerusalem on the east” (Zechariah 14:4). The Hebrew directions are the land itself: the desert, the sea, and the mountain in front.

North is the one that reaches past the land. The word is tsaphon (H6828), from tsaphan (H6845), to hide or to treasure up. North is the hidden place, and Scripture puts the throne there. Mount Zion stands “on the sides of the north, the city of the great King” (Psalm 48:2). The boaster of Isaiah 14:13 plots to “sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north,” because that is where the seat of rule is. Job 37:22 says it plainly: fair weather comes out of the north, and “with God is terrible majesty.” When Scripture says north, it is often pointing to where Yahuah sits.