in the Bible, and but one of Shihor of Egypt, or Sliihor- mizrairn. In 1 Chron. xiii, 5 it is mentioned as the southern boundary of David's kint^dom : "'David gath- ered all Israel, from Shilior of Kgypt even unto the en- tering of Hainath." At tliis period the kingdom of Is- rael was at the highest pitch of its prosperity. David's rule extended over a wider space than that of any other monarch who ever sat upon the throne; and, probably, as an evi<lenee of this fact, and as a recognition of the fultil- ment of the divine promise to Al)raham (_(len. xv, 18) — " Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the rirer of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates" — the sacred historian may here have meant the Nile. Yet, in other places, where the northern boundary is limited to the "entrance of Hamatb," the southern is usually '• the torrent of Egypt," that is, Wady (3n3, not in:) el-Arish (Numb, xxxiv, o; 1 Kings viii, G5). There is no other evidence that the Israelites ever spread westward beyond Gaza. It may seem strange that the actual territory dwelt in by them in David's time should thus appear to be spoken of as extending as far as the easternmost branch of the Nile-, Iwt it must be remem- bered that more than one tribe, at a later period, had spread beyond even its first boundaries, and also that the limits may be those of David's dominion rather than of the land actually fully inliabited by the Israelites. The passage ni ,bxsh. xiii, 3 is even more obscure. The sacred writer is describing the territory still remaining to be conquered at the close of his life, and when about to allot the conquered portion to the tribes: "This is the land that yet remaineth; all the borders of the Philistines and all Geshuri, from Shihor which is before (i:S~b", 'in the face of,' not 'east of,' but rather 'on the front of) Egypt, even mito the borders of Ekron northward." Keil argues that Wady el-Arish, and not the Nile, must here be meant (Comment, ad loc.) ; but his arguments are not conclusive. Joshua maj' have had the Lord's covenant-promise to Abraham in view ; if so, Shihor means the Nile; but. on the other hand, if he had the boundaries of the land as described by Moses in Numb, xxxiii, 5 sq. in view, then Shihor must mean A\'ady el-Arish, It is worthy of note that, while in all the other passages in which this won! is used it is anarthrous, here it has the article. This does not seem to indicate any specific meaning ; for it can scarce- ly be doubted that here and in 1 Chron, xiii, o the word is employed in the same sense. The use of the article indicates that the word is, or has been, an appellative — rather the former if we judge only from tlic complete phrase. It must also l)e remembered that Sliibor-niiz- raim is used interchangeably with Nalial-niizr;iim, and that the name Sbihor-libnath, in the ntirtb of Palestine, unless derived from the Egyptians or the I'lKcnician colonists of Egypt, on accoimt of the connection of that country with tl)e ancient manufacture of glass, shows that the word Shihor is not restricted to a great river. That the stream intended by Shihor un(|nalified was a navigal)le river is evident from a passage in Isaiah, where it is saitl of Tyre, " And liy great waters, the sow- ing of Shihor, the han-est of the river ( Yeor, "iX"') [is] her revenue" (xxiii, 3). Here Shihor is either the same as, or compared with, Yeur, generally thought to be the Nile. In .leremiah the identity of Shihor with the Nile seems distinctly stated where it is said of Israel, " .■\nd now what ha.st thou to do in the way of Egypt to drink the waters of Shihor? or what hast thou to do in the way f)f Assyria to drink the waters f)f the river?" i. e. Enjihrates (ii, 18). (Jesenins (iit sup.) considers that Sihor, wherever used, means the Nile; and upon a care- ful consideration of the several passages, and of the ety- mology of the word, we are of the opinion that it can- not appropriately be applied to Wady el-Arlsb, and must therefore be regarded as a name of the river Nile (see Jerome, ad Isn. .r.ri'u, 3; Keland, Pahest. p. '28G). — Kit- to; Smith. See Riveh ok EoYi-r.
Shi'hor-lib'nath (lleh. Shickor'%ihnath', "liniia ns^b, literally, black of ichiteiiess ; Sept. 6 "S-tniip [v. r. 2(n>)'] Koi Ai/'Jrti'a^; Vulg. Sichor et Labanatli), a local- ity mentioned only in .Josh, xix. 26 as one of the land- marks of the soutliern boundary of Asher in the vicinity of Carnnd and Bcth-dagon, By the ancient translators and commentators (as I'eshito-Syriac, and Eusebius and Jerome in the Onomasticon) the names are taken as be- longing to two distinct places. But modern commenta- tors, beginning perhaps with Masius, have inferred from the fact that Slnhor alone is a name of the Nile, that Shibor-lil)nath is likewise a river. Led by the mean- ing of Libnalh as "white," they interpret the Shihor- lil)nath as the glass river, which they then naturally identify with the Belus (q. v.) of Pliiiy {H. N. v, 19), the present Nahr Xaman. which drains part of the plain of Akka, and enters the Mediterranean a short distance below that city. This theory, at once so ingenious and so consistent, is supported by the great names of IMicbae- lis (Suppl. No. 2462) and Gesenius {Thesavr. p. 1393); but the territory of Asher certainly extended far south of the Naman. Keland's conjecture of the Crocodile Eiver, probably the Nahr Zei'la, close to Kaisarij-eh, is, on the other liainl, too far south, since Dor was not within the limits of Asher. The Shihor-libnath, if a stream at all, is more likely to have been the little stream (marked on Van de Yelde's Jilap as Wady MUheh, but as Wady en-Xehru on the specimen of the Ordnance Surveys in the Pid. Exjilor. Quarterly for Jan. 1S75) which enters the Mediterranean a little south of Athlit. The .sand there is white and glistening, and this, com- bined with the turbid character of a mountain-stream, agrees well with the name.