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Bible Dictionaries
Irrigation
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or IRRIGATION . Owing to the lack of a sufficient rainfall, Babylonia and Egypt have to be supplied with water from their respective rivers. This is conveyed over the country by canals. The water is conducted along these canals by various mechanical devices, and at a cost of great labour. In Palestine the need for artificial irrigation is not so great, as is indicated by the contrast with Egypt in Deuteronomy 11:10 . As a rule the winter rainfall is sufficient for the ordinary cereal crops, and no special irrigation is necessary. The case is different, however, in vegetable and fruit-gardens, which would be destroyed by the long summer droughts. They are always established near natural supplies of water, which is made to flow from the source (either directly, or raised, when necessary, by a sakiyeh or endless chain of buckets worked by a horse, ox, or donkey) into little channels ramifying through the garden. When the channels are, as often, simply dug in the earth, they can be stopped or diverted with the foot , as in the passage quoted. Artificial water-pools for gardens are referred to in Ecclesiastes 2:6 . A storage-pool is an almost universal feature in such gardens.
R. A. S. Macalister.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Irrigation'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/i/irrigation.html. 1909.
