Nile

The lifeline of Egypt, along which all the major cities of Egypt were founded. 'The Nile' most frequently translates haye'or in Hebrew, which is mentioned 26x in the OT.

The Hebrew word is believed to be derived from Egyptian which means the Nile river and its various branches and channels. The river has its sources in the highlands and Lake Victoria of Tanzania and Ethiopia where they converve into the White Nile and Blue Nile respectively. The two rivers meet Khartoum to become the Nile proper. About 320 km north of Khartoum it is joined by the Atbara, and from it the Nile makes its 2,700 km to the Mediterraneans Sea, passing over six major cataracts along the way.

About 30 km north of Cairo, the river splits into three branches to form the delta. Of these the eastern Pelusiac (named after the ancient stronghold of Pelusium) branch is mentioned 5x in the OT ( the Shihor, Jos 13:3; 19:26; 1 Chron 13:5; Isa 23:3 & Jer 2:18).

In ancient times the Nile was flooded and its banks inundated every year by the heavy rains in the Ethiopian and Sudan, leaving behind an annual renewal of rich alluvial sediment that made the Nile so proverbially wealthy in its agricultural produce; so abundant was its produce Egypt became "the bread basket" of the Roman Empire. When this rain fails, famine results as witnessed in the figure of the seven ugly and gaunt cows in Pharaoh's dream (Gen 41). The drying up of the Nile became a figure in the OT of Yahweh's judgment (Isa 19:7; Eze 30:12; Zec 10:11). Probably the best known events in Israel's history relating to the Nile have to do with the command of Pharaoh to the Hebrews to throw every male child into the Nile, the miraculous survival of Moses thereafter (Exo 1-2), and the miracles performed by Moses and Aaron in the runup to the exodus of Israel from Egypt (Exo 4-8).

In its drive to become a modern nation, a dam was constructed at Aswan in the 1960s. Not only has the dam failed to realize the promises of wealth planned for it, it ended the annual re-deposition of the fertile silt that had made the river's banks so rich in the past and has also resulted in other serious ecological problems for the river. As usual, the people most affected by these consequences are the poor (esp. the fishermen) whose livelihood are entirely dependent on the river.