Читать книгу The Book of Gratitudes - Pablo R. Andiñach - Страница 8

The needles of our current day compasses point north and south in the same direction as our maps place north on top and south in the bottom. However, it hasn´t always been this way. One of the words we still use today reveals this: to “orientate oneself” means to find the orient.

The oldest maps we know to date were “orientated,” that is, they placed the orient upwards. The Assyrians did so fifteen centuries before Christ, and the Hebrews and all the peoples of that region followed this tradition. This fact should not come as a surprise, as it derives from one of the most elemental of all human experiences: waiting for the sun to rise. Thus, “orientating one´s self” meant watching where the sun came up and calling that place “the front,” and the opposite—sun down—“behind.”

Thus, our East (qedem, front, in Hebrew) and West (aharon, behind, past) have those names in the Bible. North is called tzafon and means “hidden” or “concealed,” probably because Israel always felt more comfortable going south toward the desert, than towards the lands of the north, which were inhabited by more powerful cultures. When they faced the east, the right hand pointed to the south. In Hebrew, south is iamin, which means, the right. That is why Benjamin, the name of Jacob’s last son, means “son of the right” or “son of the south,” which is where that tribe was located on the map of Israel.

Several things were orientated at that time. The door of the temple of Jerusalem faced east, so that the sun would enter through it very early. The Garden of Eden was located in the east (Genesis 2:8) and Jonah camped east of Nineveh. From the East will come He who will free the Israelites from the Babylonian captivity (Isaiah 41:2) and from this same East He will take them to restore their land in Judah.

Much later, the wise men who sought the newborn Jesus, would also come from the Orient.