Nile – Nymphas

Nile

The celebrated river of Egypt. It takes this name only after the junction of the two great streams of which it is composed, namely, the Bahr el Abiad, or White River, which rises in the mountains of the Moon, in the interior of Africa, and runs northeast till it is joined by the other branch, the Bahr el Azrek, or Blue river, which rises in Abyssinia, and after a large circuit to the southeast and southwest, in which it passes through the lake of Dembea, flows northwards to join the White river. This Abyssinian branch has in modern times been regarded as the real Nile, although the White River is much the largest and longest, and was in ancient times considered as the true Nile. The junction takes place about latitude sixteen degrees north. From this point the Nile flows always in a northerly direction, with the exception of one large bend to the west. About thirteen hundred miles form the sea it receives its last branch, the Tacazze, a large stream from Abyssinia, and having passed through Nubia, it enters Egypt at the cataracts near Syene, or Essuan, which are formed by a chain of rocks stretching east and west. There are here three falls; after which the river pursues its course in still and silent majesty through the whole length of the land of Egypt. Its average breadth is about seven hundred yards. In Lower Egypt it divides into several branches and forms the celebrated Delta; for which see under EGYPT. See also a view of the river in AMMON, or NoAmmon, or No.

As rain very seldom falls, even in winter, in Southern Egypt, and usually only slight and infrequent showers in Lower Egypt, the whole physical and political existence of Egypt may be said to depend on the Nile; since without this river, and even without its regular annual inundation’s, the whole land would be but a desert. These inundation’s, so mysterious in the view of ancient ignorance and superstition, are caused by the regular periodical rains in the countries farther south, around the sources of the Nile, in March and later. The river begins to rise in Egypt about the middle of June, and continues to increase through the month of July. In August it overflows its banks, and reaches its highest point early in September; and the country is then mostly covered with its waters, Am 8:8; 9:5; Na 3:8. In the beginning of October, the inundation still continues; and it is only towards the end of this month that the stream returns within its banks. From the middle of August till towards the end of October, the whole land of Egypt resembles a great lake or sea, in which the towns and cities appear as islands.

The cause of the fertility which the Nile imparts lies not only in its thus watering the land, but also in the thick slimy mud which its waters bring down along with them and deposit on the soil of Egypt. It is like a coat of rich manure; and the seed being immediately sown upon it, without digging or ploughing, springs up rapidly, grows with luxuriance, and ripens into abundance. See EGYPT.

It must not, however, be supposed that the Nile spreads itself over every spot of land, and waters it sufficiently without artificial aid. Niebuhr justly remarks, "Some descriptions of Egypt would lead us to think that the Nile, when it swells, lays the whole province under water. The lands immediately adjoining to the banks of the river are indeed laid under water, but the natural inequality of the ground hinders it from overflowing the interior country. A great part of the lands would therefore remain barren, were not canals and reservoirs formed to receive water from the river, when at its greatest height, which is thus conveyed everywhere through the fields, and reserved for watering them when occasion requires." In order to raise the water to grounds, which lie higher, machines have been used in Egypt from times immemorial. These are chiefly wheels to which buckets are attached. One kind is turned by oxen; another smaller kind, by men seated, and pushing the lower spokes from them with their feet, while they pulled the upper spokes towards them with their hands, De 11:10.

As the inundations of the Nile are of so much importance to the whole land, structures have been erected on which the beginning and progress of its rise might be observed. These are called Nilometers; that is, "Nile measures." At present there is one, one thousand years old and half in ruins, on the little island opposite Cairo; it is under the care of the government, and according to it the beginning and subsequent progress of the rise of the Nile were carefully observed and proclaimed by authority. If the inundation reached the height of twenty-two Paris feet, a rich harvest was expected; because then all the fields had received the requisite irrigation. If it fell short of this height and in proportion as it thus fell short, the land was threatened with want and famine of which many horrible examples occur in Egyptian history. Should the rise of the water exceed twenty-eight Paris feet, a famine was in like manner feared. The annual rise of the river also varies exceedingly in different parts of its course, being twenty feet greater where the river is narrow than in Lower Egypt. The channel is thought to be gradually filling up; and many of the ancient outlets at the Delta are dry in summer and almost obliterated. The drying up of the waters of Egypt would involve its destruction as a habitable land to the destruction as a habitable land to the same extent; and this fact is recognized in the prophetic denunciations of this remarkable country, Isa 11:15; 19:1-10; Eze 29:10; 30:12.

The water of the Nile, although during a great part of the year turbid, from the effects of the rains above, yet furnishes, when purified by settling, the softest and sweetest water for drinking. Its excellence is acknowledged by all travelers. The Egyptians are full of its praises, and even worshipped the river as a god.

The Hebrews sometimes gave both to the Euphrates and the Nile the name of "sea," Isa 19:5; Na 3:8. In this they are borne out by Arabic writers, and also by the common people of Egypt, who to this day commonly speak of the Nile as "the sea." It is also still celebrated for its fish. Compare Nu 11:5; Isa 19:8. In its waters are likewise found the crocodile or leviathan, and the hippopotamus or behemoth. See EGYPT, and SIHOR.

Nimrim

See BETH-NIMRAH.

Nimrod

Rebellion, impiety, a son of Cush and grandson of Ham, proverbial from the earliest times as a mighty hunter, Ge 10:8-10; 1Ch 1:10. He seems to have feared neither God nor man; to gather around him a host of adventurers, and extended his conquests into the land of Shinar, where he founded or fortified Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh. According to one interpretation of Ge 10:11, he also founded Nineveh and the Assyrian empire; though this is usually understood to have been done by Asshur, when expelled by Nimrod from the land of Shinar, Mic 5:6. Nimrod is supposed to have begun the tower of Babel; and his name is still preserved by a vast ruinous mound, on the site of ancient Babylon. See BABEL.

Nineveh

Dwelling of Ninus, the metropolis of ancient Assyria, called by the Greeks and Romans "the great Ninus;" situated on the east bank of the Tigris, opposite and below the modern Mosul. Its origin is traced to the times near the flood. See NIMROD. For nearly fifteen centuries afterwards it is not mentioned. In the books of Jonah, and Nahum it is described as an immense city, three days’ journey in circuit, containing more than one hundred and twenty thousand young children, or probably six hundred thousand souls. It contained "much cattle," and numerous parks, garden groves, etc. Its inhabitants were wealthy, warlike, and far advanced in civilization. It had numerous strongholds with gates and bars; and had multiplied its merchants above the stars: its crowned princes were as locusts, and its captains as grasshoppers. With this description agrees that of the historian Diodorus Siculus, who says Nineveh was twenty-one miles long, nine miles broad, and fifty-four miles in circumference; that its walls were a hundred feet high, and so broad that three chariots could drive upon them abreast; and that it had fifteen hundred towers, each two hundred feet high.

Nineveh had long been the mistress of the East; but for her great luxury and wickedness, the prophet Jonah was sent, more than eight hundred years before Christ, to warn the Ninevites of her speedy destruction. See also Isa 14:24,25. Their timely repentance delayed for a time the fall of the city; but about 753 B. C., the period of the foundation of Rome, it was taken by the Medes under Arbaces; and nearly a century and a half later, according to the predictions of Nahum, Na 1:1-3:19, and Zep 2:13, it was a second time taken by Cyaraxes and Nabopolassar; after which it no more recovered its former splendor. Subsequent writers mention it but seldom, and as an unimportant place; so complete was its destruction, that for ages its site has been well-nigh lost, and infidels have even denied that the Nineveh of the Bible ever existed. The mounds which were the "grave" of its ruins, Na 1:14, were covered with soil as to seem like natural hills. But since 1841, Layard, Botta, and others have been exploring its remains, so long undisturbed. The mounds chiefly explored lie at three corners of a trapezium about eighteen miles long, and twelve miles wide, and nearly sixty in circumference, thus confirming the ancient accounts of its vast extent. The recent excavations disclose temples and palaces, guarded by huge winged bulls and lions with human heads. The apartments of these buildings are lined with slabs of stone, covered with sculptures in basrelief, and inscriptions in arrow-headed characters which have been in part deciphered; and these sculptured memorials of the history and customs of the Assyrians, together with the various articles made of glass, wood, ivory, and metals, now brought to light after a burial of twenty-four centuries, furnish invaluable aid in the interpretation of Scripture, and most signally confirm its truth. Our surprise is equal to our gratification, when we behold the actual Assyrian account of events recorded in Kings and Chraonicles. Not only do we find mention made of Jehu, Menehem, Hezekiah, Omri, Hazael, etc., and of various cities in Judea and Syria; but we discover Sennacherib’s own account of his invasion of Palestine, and of the amount of tribute which king Hezekiah was forced to pay him; also pictures representing his capture of Lachish, 2Ki 18:14, and his officers, perhaps the railing Rabshakeh himself, presenting Jewish captives to the king, etc. (See cut and details in SENNACHERIB.)

These mural tablets also furnish a graphic comment on the language of the prophet Ezekiel; and as he was a captive in the region of Ninveh, he had no doubt heard of, and had probably seen these very "chambers of imagery," as well as the objects they represent. We there find reproduced to our view the men and scenes he describes in Eze 23:6,14,15, etc.; Eze 26:7-12: "Captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously," "portrayed with vermilion," "girded with girdles upon their loins," "exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads." The "vermilion" or red color is quite prevalent among the various brilliant colors with which these tablets were painted, Eze 23:14,15. Here are "horsemen riding upon horses," "princes to look to" in respect to war-like vigor and courage; and their horses of high spirit, noble form, and attitudes, and decked with showy trappings. Here, in fine, are the idols, kings, and warriors of Nineveh, in various scenes of worship, hunting, and war; fortresses attacked and taken; prisoners led in triumph, impaled, flayed, and otherwise tortured; and sometimes actually held by cords attached to hooks which pierce the nose or the lips, 2Ki 19:28; Isa 37:29, and having their eyes put out by the point of a spear, 2Ki 25:7. For other cuts see NISROCH, SENNACHERIB, SHALMANEZER, and WAR.

The Christian world is under great obligations to Layard and Botta for their enterprising explorations, and to Rawlinson and Hincks for their literary investigations of these remains. To the student of the Bible especially these buried treasures are of the highest value, and we may well rejoice not only in this new accumulation of evidence to the truth of the history and prophecies of Scripture, but in the additional light thus thrown on its meaning. How impressive too the warning which these newly found memorials of a city once so vast and powerful bring to us in these latter days and in lands then unknown, to beware of the luxury, pride, and ungodliness that caused her ruin.

Nisan

A Hebrew month, nearly answering to our April, but varying somewhat from year to year, according to the course of the moon. It was the seventh month of the civil year; but was made the first month of the sacred year, at the coming out of Egypt, Ex 12:2. By Moses it is called Abib, Ex 13:4. The name Nisan found only after the time of Ezra, and the return from the captivity of Babylon. See MONTIS.

Nisroch

A god of the Assyrians, in whose temple, and in the very act of idolatry, Sennacherib was slain by his own sons, 2Ki 19:37. According to the etymology, the name would signify "the great eagle;" and the earlier Assyrian sculptures recently exhumed at Nineveh have many representations of an idol in human form, but with the head of an eagle, as shown above. Among the ancient Arabs also the eagle occurs as an idol. The other accompanying cut, representing a winged figure in a circle, armed with a bow, is frequently met on the walls of ancient Nineveh in scenes of worship, and is believed to be an emblem of the supreme divinity of the Assyrians.

Nitre

Not the substance used in making gunpowder, but natron, a mineral alkali composed of several salts of soda. It effervesces with vinegar, Pr 25:28, and is still used in washing, Jer 2:22. Combined with oil, it makes a hard soap. It is found deposited in, or floating upon, certain lakes west of the Delta of Egypt.

No Or No-Ammon

See AMMON, or No-Ammon, or No.

Noah

Rest, comfort, the name of celebrated patriarch who was preserved by Jehovah with his family, by means of the ark, through the deluge, and thus became the second founder of the human race. The history of Noah and the deluge is contained in Ge 5:1-9:29. He was the son of Lamech, and grandson of Methuselah lived six hundred years before the deluge, and three hundred and fifty after it, dying two years before Abram was born. His name may have been given to him by his parents in the hope that he would be the promised "seed of the woman" that should "bruise the serpent’s head." He was in the line of the patriarchs who feared God, and was himself a just man, Eze 14:14,20, and a "preacher of righteousness," 1Pe 3:19,20; 2Pe 2:5. His efforts to reform the degenerate world, continued as some suppose for one hundred and twenty years, produced little effect, Mt 24:37; the flood did not "find faith upon the earth." Noah, however, was an example of real faith: he believed the warning of God, was moved by fear, and pursued the necessary course of action, Heb 11:7.

His first care on coming out from the ark was to worship the Lord, with sacrifices of all the fitting animals. Little more is recorded of him except his falling into intoxication, a sad instance of the shame and misfortune into which wine is apt to lead. His three sons, it is believed, peopled the whole word; the posterity of Japheth chiefly occupying Europe, those of Shem Asia, and those of Ham Africa.

Numerous traces of traditions respecting Noah have been found all over the world. Among the most accurate is that embodied in the legend of the Greeks respecting Deucalion and Pyrrha. We may also mention the medals struck at Apamea in Phrygia, in the time of Septimus Severus, and bearing the name NO, an ark, a man and woman, a raven, and a dove with an olive branch in its mouth. See ARK.

Nob

A city of priests, in Benjamin, near Jerusalem; its inhabitants were once put to the sword by command of Saul, for their hospitality to David, 1Sa 21:2; 22:9-23; Ne 11:32; Isa 10:32. Its site is unknown.

Nod

Wandering, a region east of Eden so named on account of wanderings in it of the exiled Cain, Ge 4:16.

Noph

Sometimes called also, in Hebrew, MOPH, Ho 9:6, the ancient city of Memphis in Egypt. The ruins of it, though not to any great extent, are still found a few miles above Old Cairo, or Fostat, Isa 19:13; Jer 2:16; 44:1; Eze 30:13,16.

Memphis was the residence of the ancient kings of Egypt till the times of the Ptolemies, who commonly resided at Alexandria. Here, it is supposed, Joseph was a prisoner and a ruler, and here Moses stood before Pharaoh. The prophets, in the places above referred to, foretell the miseries Memphis was to suffer from the kings of Chaldea and Persia; and threaten the Israelites who should retire into Egypt, or should have recourse to the Egyptians, that they should perish in that country. In this city they fed and worshipped the sacred bull Apis, the embodiment of their false god Osiris; and Ezekiel says, that the lord will destroy the idols of Memphis, Eze 30:13,16. Memphis retained much of its splendor till it was conquered by the Arabians in the eighteenth or nineteenth year of the Hegira, A. D. 641; after which it was superseded as the metropolis of Egypt by Fostat, now Old Cairo, in the construction of which its materials were employed. The pyramids, in which its distinguished men were buried, still survive; but the magnificent city, that stretched along for many miles between them and the river, has almost wholly disappeared.

North

See EAST. The Babylonians and Assyrians are represented as coming from "the north," because they invaded Israel by a northern route in order to avoid the desert, Jer 1:14; 46:6,24; Zep 2:13. "Fair weather," says Job, or golden weather, "cometh out of the north," Job 37:22. This is as true in Syria and Arabia now as it was three thousand years ago. A traveler there remarks, "Our friends, who have been long residents, informed us that we should have fair weather for our start on the morrow, as the wind was from the north."

"... And so we have found it come to pass that the clouds of a golden hue always followed upon a north wind, and indicated a clear day; and as in the times of the Savior, we could always say when it was evening, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’" Mt 16:2.

Nose

Several expressions in Scripture grew out of the fact that anger often shows itself by distended nostrils, hard breathing, and in animals by snorting, 2Sa 22:9; Job 39:20; Ps 18:8. Gold rings hung in the cartilage of the nose, or the left nostril, were favorite ornaments of eastern women, Pr 11:22; Eze 16:12. Rings were inserted in the noses of animals, to guide and control them; and according to the recently discovered tablets at Nineveh, captives among the Assyrians were sometimes treated in the same way, 2Ki 19:28; Eze 38:4. See NINEVEH.

Novice

Or neophite, one recently converted and received to the Christian church, 1Ti 3:6.

Number

Isa 65:11. See GAD 3.

Numbers, The Book Of

So called because the first three chapters contain the numbering of the Hebrews and Levites, which was performed separately, after the erection and consecration of he tabernacle. The rest of the book contains an account of the breaking up of the Israelites from Sinai, and their subsequent wanderings in the desert, until their arrival on the borders of Moab. It was written by Moses, B. C. 1451, and is the fourth book of the Pentateuch. See EXODUS.

Nurse

The Bible contains various allusions to the tender and confidential relation anciently subsisting between a nurse and the children she had brought up, Isa 49:22,23; 1Th 2:7,8. See also the story of Rebekah, attended through life by her faithful and honored Deborah, the oak under which she was buried being called "The oak of weeping," Ge 24:59; 35:8. The custom still prevails in the better families of Syria and India. Says Roberts in his Oriental Illustrations, "how often have scenes like this led my mind to the patriarchal age. The daughter is about for the first time to leave the paternal roof; the servants are all in confusion; each refers to things long gone by, each wishes to do something to attract the attention of his young mistress. One says, ‘Ah do not forget him who nursed you when an infant;’ another, ‘How often did I bring you the beautiful lotus from the distant tank. Did I not always conceal your faults?’ Then the mother comes to take leave. She weeps and tenderly embraces her, saying, ‘My daughter, I shall see you no more; forget not your mother.’ The brother enfolds his sister in his arms, and promises soon to come and see her. The father is absorbed in thought, and is only aroused by the sobs of the party. He then affectionately embraces his daughter, and tells her not to fear. The female domestics must each smell of the poor girl, and the men touch her feet. As Rebekah had her nurse to accompany her, so, at this day, the aya (nurse) who has from infancy brought up the bride goes with her to the new scene. She is her adviser, her assistant and friend, and to her will she tell all her hopes and all her fears."

Nymphas

A Christian at Laodicea, whom Paul salutes, together with the company of believers wont to worship at his house, Col 4:15.