chan´el ( אפיק , 'āphı̄ḳ (root אפק , 'āphaḳ , "to hold or contain," "to be strong"; compare Arabic 'afaḳ "to overcome" and 'āfiḳ , "preëminent"); שבּלת , shibbōleth (שׁבל , shābhal , "to go," "to go up or grow," "to flow"; compare Arabic 'asbal , "to flow," "to rain," "to put forth ears"; sabalat , "an ear of grain"; sabı̄l , "a road," "a public fountain")): In Job 12:21; Job 40:18; Job 41:15 we have 'āphı̄ḳ in the sense of "strong" (but compare Job 40:18 , the Revised Version (British and American) "tubes" (of brass)). Elsewhere it is translated "river," "brook," "stream," "channel" or "watercourse." Shibbōleth (in the dialect of Ephraim ṣibbōleth (Judges 12:6 )) means "an ear of grain" (Genesis 41:5; Rth 2:2; Isaiah 17:5 ) or "a flood of water" (Psalm 69:2 , Psalm 69:15; Isaiah 27:12 ). In 2 Samuel 22:16 (compare Psalm 18:15 ) we have: "Then the channels of the sea appeared, The foundations of the world were laid bare, By the rebuke of Yahweh, At the blast of the breath of his nostrils." This is reminiscent of "fountains of the deep" (Genesis 7:11; Genesis 8:2; Proverbs 8:28 ). It is a question how far we should attribute to these ancient writers a share in modern notions of oceanography, but the idea seems to be that of a withdrawal of the water of the ocean, and the laying bare of submarine declivities and channels such as we know to exist as the result of erosion during a previous period of elevation, when the given portion of ocean floor was dry land. The fact that many streams of Palestine flow only during the rainy season seems to be referred to in Job 6:15; and perhaps also in Psalm 126:4 . See BROOK; RIVER .
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source-manifest/isbe— ISBE (PD)