place
Nile
יְאֹר
- verses
- 38
- first named
- Genesis 41:1
- last named
- Zechariah 10:11
- feature
- river
- coordinates
- 31.47°N · 30.37°E
Nile River (OpenBible)
Scholarship offers 3 identifications for this place. The leading one is shown; the others are recorded in the gazetteer.
Description
Nile in the text
The Nile is the longest river in the world and played a crucial role in the history and culture of ancient Egypt. It is mentioned numerous times in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. In the story of Joseph, the Nile and its canals are the setting for Pharaoh's dreams about the seven years of plenty and seven years of famine (Gen. 41:1-3, 17-18). During the Israelites' bondage in Egypt, the Nile was the site of the miraculous plagues, such as the turning of the water into blood (Exod. 7:17-21) and the emergence of frogs from the river (Exod. 8:3-11). The Nile also played a role in the early life of Moses, who was placed in a basket among the reeds of the river as an infant (Exod. 2:3-5).
The prophets often used the Nile as a symbol of Egypt's power and pride, which would be brought low by God's judgment (Isa. 19:6-8; Jer. 46:7-8; Ezek. 29:3-9; 30:12; Amo.8.8; 9:5; Nah. 3:8; Zech. 10:11). The Nile was also a source of economic prosperity for Egypt, as it provided water for irrigation and served as a major transportation route (Isa. 23:3, 10).
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
The pattern
Where Nile is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
38 verses across 9 of 66 books; 57 write the name nowhere. Named in Genesis (5), Exodus (17), 1 Chronicles (1), Isaiah (5), Jeremiah (3), Ezekiel (3), Amos (2), Nahum (1) and Zechariah (1).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 38, across 9 books. The name is written 51 times in them.
Onward
Where this page goes
Not the direct relations above — these are one hop further out, ranked so that a rare shared connection outweighs a common one. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
What happened here
Atlas's reading of each chapter this place appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
- Genesis 41The Nile is where Pharaoh stands as the seven well-fed cows and seven thin cows emerge from the river.
- Exodus 2The Nile receives Moses in a papyrus basket and brings him within reach of Pharaoh’s daughter.
- Exodus 4The Nile supplied water which Moses was told to pour on dry ground as a sign.
- Exodus 7The Nile was struck with a staff; its water became blood, its fish died, and its smell drove the Egyptians to dig around it for water.
- Exodus 8The Nile teemed with frogs, and the frogs remained there after the others died.
- Isaiah 19The Nile dries up, leaving fishermen mourning and fields, reeds, and rushes to wither.
- Isaiah 23The Nile’s harvest crossed the great waters as the revenue of Tyre.
- Ezekiel 29The Nile is claimed by Pharaoh as his own, with the boast that he made it himself.
4 more chapters, from Amos 8 to Zechariah 10
- Amos 8The Nile in Egypt swelled and surged, then subsided, as the land was compared to it.
- Amos 9The Nile supplies the chapter's image for land that rises and sinks.
- Nahum 3The Nile is described as surrounding Thebes with water.
- Zechariah 10The depths of the Nile dry up as the people pass through the sea of distress.
Sources