"East"

[cizz]

http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/docs/39_brown-time.pdf

The ancient Hebrew words that are used to describe distance and direction are also used to describe time. The Hebrew word for east is qedem and literally means "the direction of the rising sun.?

The implications of this statement are astounding. This is because time, as defined as the distance between two physical events, is not a physical measurement in and of itself. Yet in ancient Hebrew, time and distance refer to the same thing and literally to ?the direction of the rising sun,? (which we as human beings call the east direction). One implication of this association would be that the origin of all things could have come, does come, and will come from the east.

The word qedem is also the word for ?the past.? In the ancient Hebrew mind the past is in front of you while the future is behind you, the opposite way we think of the past and future.

H. W. Wolff likens the Hebrew conception of time to the situation of a man rowing a boat. He sees the past as before him (qedem); the future is behind his back (aharit).

qedem. East, antiquity, front. The noun qedem has either a geographical meaning, "east," or a temporal notion "ancient time, aforetime." This noun occurs sixty-one times.

The "East" may have either good or bad connotations - on the one hand it is the location of Eden, but on the other hand, it was the habitat of the men who built Babel (Gen 11:2). When denoting the dwellers E or NE of Canaan, it frequently refers to tribes hostile to Israel (Num 23:7; Jud 6:3, 33). But the prophets envision a day when they will be subject to Israel (Isa 11:14).


qedem - East. This noun may be simply qedem plus a final he expressing direction toward (GKC sec. a, c,) with which it always occurs. This noun occurs twenty-six times. It should be compared with mizrah (where the sun rises), which emphasizes location rather than direction.


qadam - Antiquity, former estate. This is the abstract noun form of the derived meaning (ancient, former) of qedem. Our word occurs five times.

Qadim - East wind, east. This noun denotes the desert wind which brings feared destruction (Job 27:21; Psa. 48:7 [H 8]), and which is, nonetheless, absolutely controlled by God (Job 38:24; Psa. 78:26) even for good (Exo. 14:21) when he so desires. Occurring in Ezekiel fifty-two times, the most frequent usage is "east" (cf. Hab. 1:9) perhaps a dialectical variant for qedem. The word occurs sixty-nine times.

Qadmoni - Former, ancient, eastern. This is the adjectival form of qedem. It occurs ten times.