the Berasit Hebrew Dictionary

קדמ

'Qedem' appears to refer to an ancient civilization or the ruins thereof; a remnant of a previous iteration of culture or technology.

Genesis 13:14, Psalm 68:33

The qedim are the ancient people of that civilization.

Genesis 15:19 refers to the 'qedim' people specifically, along with a couple other people groups.

According to Nehemiah 12:24, the character isoy(Jesuah) was descended from these people, as he is referred to as a “son of qedem”.

There are several instances that explicitly link 'qedem' to an earlier (already ancient) period in history.

• Isaiah 23:7 speaks of “a joyous city from days of ancient antiquity”.
• The book of Ezekiel¹⁾ refers to the “former state” of Sodom and Samaria and promises to make them inhabited “as in former times”.
• Ezra 5:11 tells of the Semim who served the Alehim and rebuilt an ancient temple that had stood in ancient times.
• Daniel 6:10 uses 'qedem' to indicate that Daniel followed either ancient prayer customs, or at least his own long-established customs.
• 1 Samuel 24:13 recalls a “proverb of the ancients”, while Isaiah 43:18 warns not to consider “ancient things”.
• 2 Kings 19:25 asks “Did not you hear long ago it how I made from ancient times that I formed it?”
• Psalms 68:33 speaks of a mighty-voiced rider of the ancient legends.
• In a more poetic vein, Psalms 129:6 refers to the former state of green grass before it withers.

In these cases and many similar instances, there is clear indication of former time, and zero basis for suspecting any implication of an eastward direction.

'qedem' also appears in Daniel 7:13 which speaks of a mysterious character named “the Ancient of Days”. The book of Daniel makes extensive use of the word, but many of these references are typically rendered into more mundane interpretations.

In this context, a certain phrase is repeated which seems to reference an ancient King.

The ancient qedem culture may have been centered somewhere east of the Levant. This is evidenced by strong contextual correlations between 'qedem' and mezereh meaning “east”.

Because of this fact, most traditional translations misinterpret “qedem” as “east”, but this oversimplification disregards another important aspect of 'qedem'. 'mezereh' is “East”, and 'qedem' is something more than simply “east”.

Some contextual instances do superficially appear to refer to directions. There are a number of instances in the book of Ezekiel which seem to contrast the west and east sides of a building. Particularly Ezekiel 45:7 might seem to contrast the west and east sides of a temple, but in this case, both directions are highly dubious, the westward direction seemingly derived from a misinterpretation of im as referring to an ocean, which is then falsely assumed to be the Mediterranean sea. The same mistake is repeated a dozen times in Ezekiel 48.

there are still 90 instances of 6924 to analyze further

Traditionally, Exodus 10:13-19 is interpreted as a strong wind that blows a massive swarm of locusts into Egypt. The word 'qedem' is interpreted as indicating that the wind comes in from the east. Does this interpretation make sense?

According to traditional translations, in verse 13: “Moses stretched out his staff over Egypt, and Ihoh made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night. By morning the wind had brought the locusts;”

Then in verse 19, Ihoh “changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea so that not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt.”

The geography here is an important feature in the narrative. The east wind brings the Locusts and the west wind takes them away and dumps them into the Red Sea. According to this narrative, the locusts came from the Red Sea, and then are put back in the Red Sea. Of course, there is a problem with this. How could locusts come from the Red Sea? Locusts are a terrestrial insect. Technically, locusts are one lifecycle phase of grasshoppers. Grasshopper live on land. During no part of the grasshopper lifecycle are they waterborne.

If locusts were blown in from the direction of the Red Sea, then they would have had to have originated east of the Red Sea in the Saudi Arabian desert. This means that in order to reach Egypt they would have had to be blown across the entire Red Sea, which is 200km wide, plus whatever distance they ended up and were picked up in the desert on either side. If the locusts were all just sitting at the shore waiting for the wind to come along, and if the wind put them down immediately upon reaching the opposite shore in Egypt, the minimum flight distance would be 200 km.

Amazingly, this type of journey is well within the scope of possibility and similar insect journeys are well documented. According to a 2016 British study, “The travel speed of (certain) insects indicated that they weren't simply passively riding the wind. They reached speeds of between 30 and 60 kilometers an hour, which suggested that they were actively flying along with the wind. The authors note that, in just a few hours, these insects would be able to cover over 200km.”²⁾

It is unclear if there might be any etymological linkage between qedem and qedes, since the presumed root 'qed' is unattested. explore this.