SOUTH. The problem of defining directions in a community which did not possess the compass must always have been a difficult one. East and W could be related to sunrise and sunset, but the intermediate direction of S produced a number of different Heb. concepts, e.g., תֵּימָנ֒, H9402, the right hand of a person facing, by convention, toward the sunrise. Most commonly, however, the Heb. adopts negeb, “parched,” describing the region of semi-desert and desert lying in this direction, when viewed from the Israelite heartland. This term Negeb has now become firmly attached, as a regional name, to the southern extension of the modern Israeli state. The NT Gr. has νότος, G3803, for both “south wind” (cf. Luke 12:55) and “south.”

For Israel, the S must have had a significance not unlike that of “the Wild West” in American 19th-cent. thinking and its modern representations. This southern border of the kingdom was an uncertain and fluctuating affair, unmarked by any clear topographic feature. Beyond it lurked the warlike desert tribes, e.g. the Amalekites, and Israel learned to anticipate from this quarter both unpleasant climatic effects (see Storm) and also military attack. Thus Elihu’s comment that the whirlwind comes out of the S (Job 37:9) could also be said to indicate the unsettled, military character of the frontier, across which sudden attacks might always occur (1 Sam 30:1). The parallel with the Indian tribes and Indian wars in the American W is obvious.