סִינִים

From the study of Isaiah 49:12

Range of meaning

A place or people name found only here. Proposals have included: (1) Syene, Egyptian Swn, modern Aswan, at the First Cataract of the Nile and Egypt's traditional southern border; (2) Sin, i.e. Pelusium, in the eastern Nile Delta (Ezek 30:15–16); (3) the wilderness of Sin or Sinai; (4) China, from the classical Sinae; (5) a region to the east, following the Greek 'Persians'.

Against the English

KJV, WEB, YLT and NASB keep the bare transliteration 'Sinim', which tells the reader nothing. BSB and NIV say 'Aswan' and ESV says 'Syene'. These follow the Qumran reading and give the place its known name.

How it drifted

The name sounds like Latin Sinae and the prefix Sino-, both meaning China. That resemblance led some 18th–19th-century scholars and many missionaries to read 'land of Sinim' as China. The phrase became a missionary slogan before the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947.

Used elsewhere in the period

1QIsaᵃ, the Great Isaiah Scroll from about 125 BCE, reads סוניים, 'Syenites'. Ezekiel calls the same city סְוֵנֵה, Seveneh/Syene, and uses it to mark Egypt's southern limit: 'from Migdol to Syene' (Ezek 29:10; 30:6). The Elephantine papyri of the 5th century BCE record a Jewish military colony with its own temple to YHW on the island opposite Syene. Jeremiah 44:1 already lists Judeans living in 'the land of Pathros', which is Upper Egypt.