Marsh
Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types [1]
Ezekiel 47:11 (b) This word describes the lives of certain people. They live in the lowlands of life where the stinging, crawling, evil varmints of sin make their habitation, and where dirt abounds in the life, the soul and the words of those who live there. The Gospel never reaches them. The light of Heaven is shut out. The story of GOD's grace is not permitted. They live in the mire and the muck of filth, sin and wickedness, and are never changed, except by the Spirit of GOD.
Holman Bible Dictionary [2]
Job 8:11 Job 40:21 Ezekiel 47:11
Webster's Dictionary [3]
(n.) A tract of soft wet land, commonly covered partially or wholly with water; a fen; a swamp; a morass.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia [4]
marsh ((1) גּבא , gebhe' , the American Standard Revised Version "marsh," the King James Version and the English Revised Version "marish" ( Ezekiel 47:11 ); the King James Version "pit," the Revised Version (British and American) "cistern" ( Isaiah 30:14 ); compare Arabic jaba' , "reservoir," "watering-through"; (2) בּץ , bōc , "mire"; בּצּה , biccāh , "mire," "fen"; compare Arabic baḍḍa , to "trickle," baḍaḍ , "a little water"; (3) טיט , ṭı̄ṭ , "mire" "clay"; (4) חמר , ḥōmer , "mire," "clay," "mortar"; (5) האדמה מעבה , ma‛ăbhēh hā - 'ădhāmāh ( 1 Kings 7:46 ), and האדמה עבי , ‛ăbhı̄ hā - 'ădhāmāh ( 2 Chronicles 4:17 ), "clay ground"): In the vision of Ezekiel the saltness of the Dead Sea is "healed" by the stream issuing from under the threshold of the temple, "But the miry places ( biccāh ) thereof, and the marshes ( gebhe' ) thereof, shall not be healed" ( Ezekiel 47:11 ). Gebhe' occurs elsewhere only in Isaiah 30:14 , where the King James Version has "pit" and the Revised Version (British and American) "cistern." Bōc , "mire," is found only in Jeremiah 38:22 . Biccāh is found also in Job 8:11 ,
"Can the rush grow up without mire ( biccāh )?
Can the flag grow without water?"
and in Job 40:21 (of the behemoth),
"He lieth under the lotus-trees,
In the covert of the reed, and the fen ( biccāh )."
In 1 Maccabees 9:42,45 ἔλος , hélos , but in 9:42 Codex Vaticanus reads ὄρος , óros , "mount."
Marshes are found near the mouths of some of the rivers, as the Kishon, about the Ḥûleh (? waters of Merom), at various places in the course of the Jordan and about the Dead Sea, especially at its south end. For the most part Palestine is rocky and dry.
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [5]
( גֶּבֶא , Ge'Be, a Collection of waters, Ezekiel 47:11; elsewhere a cistern or Reservoir, rendered "pit," Isaiah 30:14; Jeremiah 14:3), a swamp or wet piece of land. The passage in Ezekiel speaks of the future blessings of the Jews after their restoration under the figure of drainage of land useless by its dampness: "But the miry places thereof, and the Marishes thereof, shall not be healed: they shall be given to salt" (47:11); that is, the part in question shall be reserved for the production of salt by the evaporation of the waters (see Henderson, Comment. ad loc.). It is supposed that the "valley of salt" in the neighborhood of the Dead Sea is here referred to, for there the Kedron, the course of which the prophet describes the holy waters as following, empties. This plain or valley has been traversed and described by captains Irby and Mangles in terms appropriate to the prophecy. Lieut. Lynch, in coasting around the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, found not only the Ghof to be an immense marshy flat, but the bottom of the lake itself a muddy shoal, scarcely allowing the boat to be rowed through it. The salt hills around presented a scene of unmitigated desolation (Expedition, p. 310).
