Bible Dictionary

Channel

Agriculture & Daily Life • Both

A channel is a riverbed, stream, watercourse, or sea trench. The term can also refer to a shaft or collarbone in an older translation.

Definition

A channel is the bed or watercourse of a river or sea. The term may also translate an older expression for a tube, shaft, or collarbone. Biblical usage includes channels, streams, brooks, and watercourses, as well as a poetic reference to the channels of the sea.

Biblical Usage

Scripture uses channel language for flowing water and for the sea’s depths being exposed under God’s rebuke. It may also refer to the collarbone in Job. The word can describe seasonal streams and the occurrence of water after the rains.

Historical Background

Several Hebrew terms translated “channel” can also mean river, brook, stream, flood, or watercourse. Many Palestinian streams flow only during the rainy season. The language about the channels of the sea portrays the withdrawal of ocean waters and exposure of submarine channels.

Scripture References

Psalms 18:15 Isaiah 8:7 Job 31:22

Historical Bible Dictionaries

Easton's Bible Dictionary

(1.) The bed of the sea or of a river (Ps. 18:15; Isa. 8:7). (2.) The “chanelbone” (Job 31:22 marg.), properly “tube” or “shaft,” an old term for the collar-bone.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)

chan'-el ('aphiq (root 'aphaq, "to hold or contain," "to be strong"; compare Arabic 'afaq "to overcome" and 'afiq, "preeminent"); shibboleth (shabhal, "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"; sabil, "a road," "a public fountain")): In Job 12:21; 40:18; 41:15 we have 'aphiq in the sense of "strong" (but compare 40:18, the Revised Version (British and American) "tubes" (of brass)). Elsewhere it is translated "river," "brook," "stream," "channel" or "watercourse." Shibboleth (in the dialect of Ephraim cibboleth (Jud 12:6)) means "an ear of grain" (Ge 41:5 ff; Ru 2:2; Isa 17:5) or "a flood of water" (Ps 69:2,15; Isa 27:12). In 2Sa 22:16 (compare Ps 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" (Ge 7:11; 8:2; Pr 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 Ps 126:4.See BROOK; RIVER.Alfred Ely Day

Back to Dictionary Search