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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Atad
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("the floor of the thorn".) A trodden space for threshing, beyond Jordan, where Joseph and his brethren and the Egyptian retinue made for seven days "great and very sore lamentation" over the body of Jacob, whence the Canaanites called the place Abel Mizraim, "the mourning of the Egyptians." Canaan being the central standpoint of the sacred history, the E. of Jordan is naturally called "beyond Jordan." The same route by which Joseph had been led captive was that by which the grand Egyptian procession doing honor to his deceased father proceeded. Grove however makes Atad W. of Jordan, as Jerome identifies it with Beth Hogla (the house of gyratory dances, or movements attendant on the funeral ceremony), known to lie between the Jordan and Jericho. The Canaanites, "the inhabitants of the land," were on the W. of Jordan (compare ; ). "Beyond Jordan" will thus be from the standpoint of the E. of Jordan, where Moses the writer was (-11).