Reference: River
American
This word answers in our Bible to various Hebrew terms, of which the principal are the following:
1. Yeor, an Egyptian word signifying river. It is always applied to the Nile and its various canals, except in Job 28:10; Da 12:5-6,7.
2. Nahar, applied, like our word river, to constantly flowing streams, such as the Euphrates. In our version this word is sometimes rendered "flood," Jos 24:2-3, etc.
3. Nahal, a torrent-bed, or valley through which water flows in the rainy season only, Nu 34:5, etc; frequently rendered "brook," Nu 13:28; Job 6:15, etc. Such streams are to the orientals striking emblems of inconstancy and faithlessness. Flowing only in the rainy season, and drying up when the summer heat sets in-and some of them in desert places failing prematurely-they sadly disappoint the thirsty and perhaps perishing traveller who has looked forward to them with longing and with hope, Job 6:15-20; Jer 15:18.
In some passages in our Bible the word "rivers" seems to denote rivulets or canals, to conduct hither and thither small streams of water from a tank or fountain, Eze 31:4. Such conduits were easily turned by moulding the soil with the foot; and some think this is the idea in De 11:10; "where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs." See also Pr 21:1.
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Only, the people are strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, very great; moreover we saw the children of Anak there.
And the border shall turn from Azmon unto the torrent of Egypt, and shall end at the sea.
For the land, whither thou enterest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs;
And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith Jehovah the God of Israel: Your fathers dwelt of old on the other side of the river, Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river, and led him throughout the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed and gave him Isaac.
My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a stream, as the channel of streams which pass away,
My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a stream, as the channel of streams which pass away, Which are turbid by reason of the ice, in which the snow hideth itself: read more. At the time they diminish, they are dried up; when heat affecteth them, they vanish from their place: They wind about in the paths of their course, they go off into the waste and perish. The caravans of Tema looked, the companies of Sheba counted on them: They are ashamed at their hope; they come thither, and are confounded.
He cutteth out channels in the rocks, and his eye seeth every precious thing.
The king's heart in the hand of Jehovah is as brooks of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.
Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable? It refuseth to be healed. Wilt thou be altogether unto me as a treacherous spring, as waters that fail?
The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high; its streams ran round about his plantation, and it sent out its rivulets unto all the trees of the field.
And I Daniel looked, and behold, there stood other two, the one on this side, on the bank of the river, and the other on that side, on the bank of the river. And he said to the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, How long is it to the end of these wonders?
Easton
(1.) Heb 'aphik, properly the channel or ravine that holds water (2Sa 22:16), translated "brook," "river," "stream," but not necessarily a perennial stream (Eze 6:3; 31:12; 32:6; 34:13).
(2.) Heb nahal, in winter a "torrent," in summer a "wady" or valley (Ge 32:23; De 2:24; 3:16; Isa 30:28; La 2:18; Eze 47:9).
These winter torrents sometimes come down with great suddenness and with desolating force. A distinguished traveller thus describes his experience in this matter:, "I was encamped in Wady Feiran, near the base of Jebel Serbal, when a tremendous thunderstorm burst upon us. After little more than an hour's rain, the water rose so rapidly in the previously dry wady that I had to run for my life, and with great difficulty succeeded in saving my tent and goods; my boots, which I had not time to pick up, were washed away. In less than two hours a dry desert wady upwards of 300 yards broad was turned into a foaming torrent from 8 to 10 feet deep, roaring and tearing down and bearing everything upon it, tangled masses of tamarisks, hundreds of beautiful palmtrees, scores of sheep and goats, camels and donkeys, and even men, women, and children, for a whole encampment of Arabs was washed away a few miles above me. The storm commenced at five in the evening; at half-past nine the waters were rapidly subsiding, and it was evident that the flood had spent its force." (Comp. Mt 7:27; Lu 6:49.)
(3.) Nahar, a "river" continuous and full, a perennial stream, as the Jordan, the Euphrates (Ge 2:10; 15:18; De 1:7; Ps 66:6; Eze 10:15).
(4.) Tel'alah, a conduit, or water-course (1Ki 18:32; 2Ki 18:17; 20:20; Job 38:25; Eze 31:4).
(5.) Peleg, properly "waters divided", i.e., streams divided, throughout the land (Ps 1:3); "the rivers [i.e., 'divisions'] of waters" (Job 20:17; 29:6; Pr 5:16).
(6.) Ye'or, i.e., "great river", probably from an Egyptian word (Aur), commonly applied to the Nile (Ge 41:1-3), but also to other rivers (Job 28:10; Isa 33:21).
(7.) Yubhal, "a river" (Jer 17:8), a full flowing stream.
(8.) 'Ubhal, "a river" (Da 8:2).
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And a river went out of Eden, to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four main streams.
On the same day Jehovah made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates;
And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed, and behold, he stood by the river. And behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, fine-looking and fat-fleshed, and they fed in the reed-grass. read more. And behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, bad-looking and lean-fleshed, and stood by the kine on the bank of the river.
Turn and take your journey, and go to the hill-country of the Amorites, and unto all the neighbouring places in the plain, in the mountain, and in the lowland, and in the south, and by the seaside, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, unto the great river, the river Euphrates.
Rise up, take your journey, and pass over the river Arnon. Behold, I have given into thy hand Sihon the king of Heshbon, the Amorite, and his land: begin, take possession, and engage with him in battle.
And to the Reubenites and to the Gadites I gave from Gilead even to the river Arnon, the middle of the ravine and its border, as far as the river Jabbok, the border of the children of Ammon;
And the beds of the sea were seen, The foundations of the world were uncovered At the rebuke of Jehovah, At the blast of the breath of his nostrils.
and with the stones he built an altar in the name of Jehovah, and made a trench round about the altar, of the capacity of two measures of seed;
He shall not see streams, rivers, brooks of honey and butter.
He cutteth out channels in the rocks, and his eye seeth every precious thing.
When my steps were bathed in milk, and the rock poured out beside me rivers of oil! ...
Who hath divided a channel for the rain-flood, and a way for the thunder's flash;
And he is as a tree planted by brooks of water, which giveth its fruit in its season, and whose leaf fadeth not; and all that he doeth prospereth.
He turned the sea into dry land; they went through the river on foot: there did we rejoice in him.
Thy fountains shall be poured forth, as water-brooks in the broadways.
and his breath as an overflowing torrent, which reacheth even to the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction, and to put a bridle into the jaws of the peoples, that causeth them to go astray.
but there Jehovah is unto us glorious, a place of rivers, of broad streams: no galley with oars shall go there, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby.
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out its roots by the stream, and he shall not see when heat cometh, but his leaf shall be green; and in the year of drought he shall not be careful, neither shall he cease to yield fruit.
Their heart cried unto the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a torrent day and night: give thyself no respite; let not the apple of thine eye rest.
and say, Mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Jehovah: thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the mountains and to the hills, to the water-courses and to the valleys: Behold, I, even I, do bring a sword upon you, and will destroy your high places.
And the cherubim mounted up. This was the living creature that I saw by the river Chebar.
The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high; its streams ran round about his plantation, and it sent out its rivulets unto all the trees of the field.
And strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off and have left him; upon the mountains and in all the valleys his branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken in all the watercourses of the land; and all the peoples of the earth are gone down from his shadow, and have left him.
and I will water with thy blood the land wherein thou swimmest, even to the mountains; and the water-courses shall be full of thee.
And I will bring them out from the peoples, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land; and I will feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the water-courses, and in all the habitable places of the country.
And it shall come to pass that every living thing which moveth, whithersoever the double river shall come, shall live. And there shall be a very great multitude of fish; for these waters shall come thither, and the waters of the sea shall be healed; and everything shall live whither the river cometh.
And I saw in the vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I was in the fortress of Shushan, which is in the province of Elam. And I saw in the vision, and I was by the river Ulai.
and the rain came down, and the streams came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell, and its fall was great.
And he that has heard and not done, is like a man who has built a house on the ground without a foundation, on which the stream broke, and immediately it fell, and the breach of that house was great.
Fausets
A river in our sense is seen by few in Palestine.
(1) Nahar, "a continuous and full river", as Jordan, and especially "the river" Euphrates. The streams are dried up wholly in summer, or hid by dense shrubs covering a deeply sunk streamlet. When the country was wooded the evaporation was less.
(2) Nahal, "a winter torrent," flowing with force during the rainy season, but leaving only a dry channel or bed in the wady in summer. "Brook" in the KJV has too much the idea of placidity. "Valley" or wady (Nu 32:9), e.g. "the bed" (or, in winter, "the torrent") of Arnon, Jabbok, Kishon. Some of these are abrupt chasms in the rocky hills, rugged and gloomy, unlike our English "brook." Translated Job 6:15, "deceitfully as a winter torrent and as the stream in ravines which passes away," namely, in the summer drought, and which disappoint the caravan hoping to find water there. The Arab proverb for a treacherous friend is "I trust not in thy torrent." The fullness and noise of those temporary streams answer to the past large and loud professions; their dryness when wanted answers to the failure of friends to make good their professions in time of need (compare Isa 58:11; margin Jer 15:18).
(3) 'Aphik, from a root "to contain"; so "the channels" or "deep rock-walled ravines that hold the waters" (2Sa 22:16); so for "rivers" (Eze 32:6) translated "channels."
(4) Yeor, "the river Nile" (Ge 41:1-2; Ex 1:22; 2:3,5). In Jer 46:7-8; Am 8:8; 9:5, translated "the river of Egypt" for "flood." The word is Egyptian, "great river" or "canal." The Nile's sacred name was Hapi, i.e. Apis. The profane name was Aur with the epithet act "great." Zec 10:11, "all the deeps of the river shall dry up," namely, the Nile or else the Euphrates. Thus the Red "sea" and the Euphrates "river" in the former part of the verse answer to "Assyria." and "Egypt" in the latter.
(5) Peleg (compare Greek pelagos), from a root "divide," "waters divided", i.e. streams distributed through a land. Ps 1:3, "a tree planted by the divisions of water," namely, the water from the well or cistern divided into rivulets running along the rows of trees (See REUBEN on Jg 5:15-16, where "divisions" mean "waters divided for irrigation"); but Gesenius from the root to flow out or bubble up.
(6) Yubal, "a full flowing stream" (Jer 17:8).
(7) "A conduit" or "watercourse" (2Ki 18:17); tealah.
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And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed, and behold, he stood by the river. And behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, fine-looking and fat-fleshed, and they fed in the reed-grass.
Then Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, but every daughter ye shall save alive.
And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of reeds, and plastered it with resin and with pitch, and put the child in it, and laid it in the sedge on the bank of the river.
And the daughter of Pharaoh went down to bathe in the river; and her maids went along by the river's side. And she saw the ark in the midst of the sedge, and sent her handmaid and fetched it.
they went up to the valley of Eshcol, and saw the land, and discouraged the children of Israel, that they should not go into the land that Jehovah had given them.
the princes of Is'sachar came with Deb'orah, and Is'sachar faithful to Barak; into the valley they rushed forth at his heels. Among the clans of Reuben there were great searchings of heart. Why did you tarry among the sheepfolds, to hear the piping for the flocks? Among the clans of Reuben there were great searchings of heart.
And the beds of the sea were seen, The foundations of the world were uncovered At the rebuke of Jehovah, At the blast of the breath of his nostrils.
And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rab-shakeh from Lachish, with a strong force, against king Hezekiah, to Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come up, they came and stood by the aqueduct of the upper pool, which is on the highway of the fuller's field.
My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a stream, as the channel of streams which pass away,
And he is as a tree planted by brooks of water, which giveth its fruit in its season, and whose leaf fadeth not; and all that he doeth prospereth.
and Jehovah will guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and strengthen thy bones; and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a water-spring, whose waters deceive not.
Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable? It refuseth to be healed. Wilt thou be altogether unto me as a treacherous spring, as waters that fail?
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out its roots by the stream, and he shall not see when heat cometh, but his leaf shall be green; and in the year of drought he shall not be careful, neither shall he cease to yield fruit.
Who is this that riseth up as the Nile, whose waters toss themselves like the rivers? It is Egypt that riseth up as the Nile, and his waters toss themselves like the rivers; and he saith, I will rise up, I will cover the earth; I will destroy the city and the inhabitants thereof.
and I will water with thy blood the land wherein thou swimmest, even to the mountains; and the water-courses shall be full of thee.
Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? And it shall wholly rise up like the Nile; and it shall surge and sink down, as the river of Egypt.
And the Lord Jehovah of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it melteth, and all that dwell therein shall mourn; and it shall wholly rise up like the Nile, and sink down as the river of Egypt.
And he shall pass through the sea of affliction, and shall smite the billows in the sea, and all the depths of the Nile shall dry up; and the pride of Assyria shall be brought down, and the sceptre of Egypt shall depart away.
Hastings
For the meaning and use of '
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And a river went out of Eden, to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four main streams.
On the same day Jehovah made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates;
On the same day Jehovah made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates;
And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, and departed; now all the treasure of his master was under his hand; and he arose and went to Aram-naharaim, to the city of Nahor.
And he fled with all that he had; and he rose up and passed over the river, and set his face toward mount Gilead.
And Jehovah said to Moses, Say unto Aaron, Take thy staff, and stretch out thy hand upon the waters of the Egyptians upon their streams, upon their rivers, and upon their ponds, and upon all their reservoirs of water, that they may become blood; and there shall be blood throughout the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.
And Jehovah said to Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy hand with thy staff over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up on the land of Egypt.
Turn and take your journey, and go to the hill-country of the Amorites, and unto all the neighbouring places in the plain, in the mountain, and in the lowland, and in the south, and by the seaside, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, unto the great river, the river Euphrates.
because they met you not with bread and with water on the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt, and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor, of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee.
Are not the Abanah and the Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them and be clean? And he turned and went away in a rage.
And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rab-shakeh from Lachish, with a strong force, against king Hezekiah, to Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come up, they came and stood by the aqueduct of the upper pool, which is on the highway of the fuller's field.
And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made the pool and the aqueduct, and brought the water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
And I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek of him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance.
When my steps were bathed in milk, and the rock poured out beside me rivers of oil! ...
Who hath divided a channel for the rain-flood, and a way for the thunder's flash;
Lo, the river overfloweth he startleth not: he is confident though a Jordan break forth against his mouth.
And he is as a tree planted by brooks of water, which giveth its fruit in its season, and whose leaf fadeth not; and all that he doeth prospereth.
There is a river the streams whereof make glad the city of God, the sanctuary of the habitations of the Most High.
There is a river the streams whereof make glad the city of God, the sanctuary of the habitations of the Most High.
Thou hast visited the earth, thou hast watered it; thou greatly enrichest it: the river of God is full of water; thou providest their corn, when thou hast so prepared it:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.
And Jehovah said to Isaiah, Go out now to meet Ahaz, thou and thy son Shear-jashub, at the end of the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the highway of the fuller's field;
therefore behold, the Lord will bring up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, the king of Assyria and all his glory; and he shall mount up over all his channels, and go over all his banks:
and his breath as an overflowing torrent, which reacheth even to the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction, and to put a bridle into the jaws of the peoples, that causeth them to go astray.
And the king of Assyria sent Rab-shakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, to king Hezekiah, with a strong force. And he stood by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the highway of the fuller's field.
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
Oh that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! Then would thy peace have been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea;
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out its roots by the stream, and he shall not see when heat cometh, but his leaf shall be green; and in the year of drought he shall not be careful, neither shall he cease to yield fruit.
Who is this that riseth up as the Nile, whose waters toss themselves like the rivers?
Thus saith Jehovah: Behold, waters rise up out of the north, and shall become an overflowing flood, and shall overflow the land, and all that is therein; the city, and them that dwell therein: and the men shall cry, and all the inhabitants of the land shall howl,
Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth of the month, as I was among the captives by the river Chebar, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.
The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high; its streams ran round about his plantation, and it sent out its rivulets unto all the trees of the field.
And I saw in the vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I was in the fortress of Shushan, which is in the province of Elam. And I saw in the vision, and I was by the river Ulai. And I lifted up mine eyes and saw, and behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns; and the two horns were high; and one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last.
And he came to the ram that had the two horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and ran upon him in the fury of his power.
And on the four-and-twentieth day of the first month, I was by the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel:
but let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as an ever-flowing stream.
And it is decreed: she shall be uncovered, she shall be led away, and her maids shall moan as with the voice of doves, drumming upon their breasts.
And there went out to him all the district of Judaea, and all they of Jerusalem, and were baptised by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
Morish
The three principal rivers referred to in scripture are the Nile, the Jordan, and the Euphrates. The word employed for the Nile is yeor, 'a fosse or channel'; for the Jordan and the Euphrates the word used is nahar, 'a river' always supplied with water. The other streams in Palestine, though called 'rivers,' as the Arnon, are torrents running in valleys; for the most part they have water only in the winter, and are then often impassable: these are described by the word nachal. For the symbolical river that Ezekiel saw issuing from the house this latter word is used. Eze 47:5-12.
God will make His people drink of the river of His pleasures, Ps 36:8; here the word is nachal. In Ps 46:4 it is nahar. "There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God." It will never run dry.
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They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou wilt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.
There is a river the streams whereof make glad the city of God, the sanctuary of the habitations of the Most High.
And he measured a thousand: it was a river that I could not pass through, for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. And he said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen this? And he led me, and brought me back to the bank of the river. read more. When I returned, behold, on the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other. And he said unto me, These waters issue out toward the east district, and go down into the plain, and go into the sea; when they are brought forth into the sea, the waters thereof shall be healed. And it shall come to pass that every living thing which moveth, whithersoever the double river shall come, shall live. And there shall be a very great multitude of fish; for these waters shall come thither, and the waters of the sea shall be healed; and everything shall live whither the river cometh. And it shall come to pass, that fishers shall stand upon it; from En-gedi even unto En-eglaim shall be a place to spread forth nets: their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many. But its marshes and its pools shall not be healed; they shall be given up to salt. And by the river, upon its bank, on the one side and on the other, shall grow all trees for food, whose leaf shall not fade, nor their fruit fail: it shall bring forth new fruit every month, for its waters issue out of the sanctuary; and the fruit thereof shall be for food, and the leaf thereof for medicine.
Smith
River.
In the sense in which we employ the word viz. for a perennial stream of considerable size, a river is a much rarer object in the East than in the West. With the exception of the Jordan and the Litany, the streams of the holy land are either entirely dried up in the summer months converted into hot lanes of glaring stones, or else reduced to very small streamlets, deeply sunk in a narrow bed, and concealed from view by a dense growth of shrubs. The perennial river is called nahar by the Hebrews. With the definite article, "the river," it signifies invariably the Euphrates.
Ge 31:21; Ex 23:31; Nu 24:6; 2Sa 10:16
etc. It is never applied to the fleeting fugitive torrents of Palestine. The term for these is nachal, for which our translators have used promiscuously, and sometimes almost alternately, "valley" "brook" and "river." No one of these words expresses the thing intended; but the term "brook" is peculiarly unhappy. Many of the wadys of Palestine are deep, abrupt chasms or rents in the solid rock of-the hills, and have a savage, gloomy aspect, far removed from that of an English brook. Unfortunately our language does not contain any single word which has both the meanings of the Hebrew nachal and its Arabic equivalent wady which can be used at once for a dry valley and for the stream which occasionally flows through it.
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And he fled with all that he had; and he rose up and passed over the river, and set his face toward mount Gilead.
And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the river; for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, that thou mayest dispossess them from before thee.
Like valleys are they spread forth, like gardens by the river side, Like aloe-trees which Jehovah hath planted, like cedars beside the waters.
Watsons
RIVER. The Hebrews give the name of "the river," without any addition, sometimes to the Nile, sometimes to the Euphrates, and sometimes to Jordan. It is the tenor of the discourse that must determine the sense of this vague and uncertain way of speaking. They give also the name of river to brooks and rivulets that are not considerable. The name of river is sometimes given to the sea, Hab 3:8; Ps 78:16. It is also used as a symbol for plenty, Job 29:6; Ps 36:8.
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When my steps were bathed in milk, and the rock poured out beside me rivers of oil! ...
They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou wilt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.
And he brought streams out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.
Was Jehovah wrathful with the rivers? Was thine anger against the rivers? Was thy rage against the sea, That thou didst ride upon thy horses, Thy chariots of salvation?