South
South is a region mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Egypt in modern-day Egypt. Known today as Alexandria. It appears across 12 verses in Scripture.
Biblical History
"The South" (Hebrew: Negev or Teman) as a directional and regional designation appears throughout the Old Testament, functioning both as a geographic indicator and a symbolic term. In the prophetic literature, "the South" (often rendered Teman) can refer to Edom or to Egypt, pointing to the regions that lay south of Israel along major trade and military routes. In Daniel 8 and 11, the King of the South figures prominently in a sequence of eschatological conflicts between rival powers, widely understood as referring to the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt in the Hellenistic period. The "South" as a region thus moves in prophetic texts from a general directional term to a coded designation for Egypt and its rulers, reflecting the political realities of the intertestamental period. In other contexts, the Negev itself, the arid southern region of Canaan, represents the frontier territory of Israel's inheritance, through which the patriarchs traveled and where Abraham, Isaac, and the early Israelites settled. The "queen of the South" whom Jesus cites in Matthew 12:42 (the Queen of Sheba) invokes this southern orientation as a symbol of seeking wisdom from afar.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
The Negev and the broader "South" region of the biblical world have been intensively surveyed and partially excavated by Israeli archaeologists since the mid-twentieth century. The Negev Highland Survey documented hundreds of Iron Age I sites, suggesting significant pastoral settlement during the early Israelite period. Major excavated sites include Tel Beersheba, with its well-preserved Iron Age II city plan including a famous horned altar, and Tel Arad, which yielded a remarkable archive of Hebrew ostraca (the Arad Letters) providing unparalleled insight into Judahite administrative and military organization in the late seventh century BCE. Kadesh Barnea (Tell el-Qudeirat) has produced evidence of Israelite fortresses. The broader designation of "South" as Egypt corresponds to Alexandria and the Nile Delta region, extensively documented through Ptolemaic-era archaeological finds.
Verse Appearances (12)
References
- Orr, J. (ed.) (1915) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Chicago: Howard-Severance Company. [Public Domain]
- OpenBible.info (n.d.) Bible Geocoding. Available at: https://www.openbible.info/geo/. [CC BY 4.0]
- Bagnall, R. et al. (eds.) (n.d.) Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places. Available at: https://pleiades.stoa.org. [CC BY 3.0]
- Wikidata contributors (n.d.) Wikidata. Available at: https://www.wikidata.org. [CC0]
- Lawrence, D. et al. (2025) Villages to Empires: a settlement dataset for the Southern Levant. doi:10.5281/zenodo.15111732. [CC BY 4.0]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]