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Bible Dictionaries
Goshen
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or GOSHEN. 1. An unknown city in Judah ( Joshua 15:51 ) 2. An unknown territory in S. Palestine, probably the environs of No. 1 ( Joshua 10:41 ). 3. A division of Egypt in which the children of Israel were settled between Jacob’s entry and the Exodus. It was a place of good pasture, on or near the frontier of Palestine, and plentiful in vegetables and fish ( Numbers 11:5 ). It cannot with exactness be defined. Jdt 1:9-10 is probably wrong in including the nomes of Tanis and Memphis in Goshen. The LXX [Note: Septuagint.] reads ‘Gesem of Arabia’ in Genesis 45:10; Genesis 46:34 , elsewhere ‘Gesem.’ Now Arabia is defined by Ptolemy, the geographer, as an Egyptian nome on the East border of the Delta of the Nile, and this seems to be the locality most probably contemplated by the narrator. It runs eastwards from opposite the modern Zagazig (Bubastis) to the Bitter Lakes. There seems to be no Egyptian origin for the name, unless it represented Kesem , the Egyptian equivalent of Phacussa (the chief town of the nome of Arabia according to Ptolemy). It may be of Semitic origin, as is suggested by the occurrence of the name, as noticed above, outside Egyptian territory.
R. A. S. Macalister.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Goshen'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/g/goshen.html. 1909.
