Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yaakov Stein" <yaakov_s AT rad.com>]

> And  departed from there Abraham to the southern region of, and he
settled between,  Kadesh and Sur, and he sojourned in Gerar.

It is certainly hard to translate "southern region of ..."
Note that the expression is 
  )RCH to the land (directive H) 
  HNGB "the south"
which is the directive of )RC HNGB, itself a possesive (smichut).

The bible does not usually allow a double possesive,
although they are prevalent in modern Hebrew.
Perhaps others here can try to come up with counter-examples to this
rule.

So if you want to make your identifications, you have to make a case for
southern Lebanon
being called "the land of the south" to someone previously living in
Hebron.
Not an easy case to make.

However, it must be admitted that in the bible, NGB overwhelmingly means
the direction south,
rather than the modern connotation of "south of Israel".
And in the places where NGB is used as a proper noun meaning the south
of Israel, 
there is usually an additional descriptor (the NGB of Caleb, the NGB of
the Kreiti, etc.)

Y(J)S