the Nile, the great river of Egypt; by extension its branching channels, and now and then any large river or watercourse.
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This is not a homegrown Hebrew word. Israel borrowed it from Egyptian, where it simply meant "the river," and to an Egyptian there was only one river worth naming: the Nile. So when the word shows up in the Bible it almost always means the Nile, the slow, flooding river that made Egypt the breadbasket of the ancient world. That is why it dominates the story of Joseph (Pharaoh dreams of cattle coming up out of it) and the plagues (Moses turns it to blood, and frogs swarm out of it), and why the prophets reach for it when they pronounce judgment on Egypt: dry up the river and the whole country dies.
From that one river the word stretches in two directions. First to the Nile's own system: the Egyptians cut its water into a web of canals and side channels, and the same word names those too, usually in the plural and often as "the canals of Egypt." Second, more loosely, to other great watercourses far from Egypt: the river beside which Daniel stands, the broad streams pictured around a restored Jerusalem, even the shafts and galleries that miners cut through rock. In every case the underlying picture is the same, a channel that carries water (or, for the miner, that he carves as if cutting a watercourse). The Nile is simply its home and its first meaning.
the word is not a proper name; it is the common word for "the river" that happens to point at the Nile, so it can also stretch to the Nile's canals and even to rivers outside EgyptExo 7:19Job 28:10
Both
in the great bulk of its uses the two line up exactly: this is the Nile of EgyptGen 41:2Amo 8:8
Only Nile
the English name "Nile" is a fixed proper noun for one river only and cannot bend to mean a canal, a mining shaft, or the Tigris, all of which this word covers
“stream”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“canal”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How ye'or differs from similar Hebrew words
נָהָרthe ordinary Hebrew word for a perennial river (the Euphrates, the rivers of Eden); this borrowed word, by contrast, points first and foremost at one river, the Nile.
Names the Nile of Egypt in particular: the river Pharaoh's land depends on, where Moses is set adrift and where the plagues fall.Exo 2:3Exo 7:20Gen 41:1
Extends to the Nile's branches and the dug canals of Egypt, the man-made channels that irrigate the land rather than a single natural stream.Exo 8:5Isa 19:6Ezk 29:3
Both
Both can name a major river under judgment, drying up or running with blood as God acts against a nation.Isa 19:6Isa 19:5
Both stand for the proud waters of Egypt in oracles against it, the two words paired for the same swelling flood.Jer 46:7
The default word for any river, used freely of rivers far from Egypt, such as the streams of Eden and the rivers of Babylon and Damascus.Gen 2:10Psa 137:12Ki 5:12
Names the Euphrates as "the River" without qualification, the great northern boundary of the promised land.Gen 31:21Gen 15:18Deu 11:24
נַחַלa wadi or seasonal stream-bed that runs only after rain; this word names a steady, water-carrying channel, above all the Nile and its canals.
Names the Nile in particular: the one great river of Egypt, so it is bound to Egypt and almost never used of any other waterway.Gen 41:1Exo 7:20Ezk 29:3
Describes a river that flows all year long and is fed from far upstream, so when it fails or dries it is read as a sign of catastrophe rather than a normal season.Isa 19:6Isa 19:8Amo 8:8
Stretches to the man-made channels and canals branched off the main river, the irrigation network of a settled land.Exo 7:19Exo 8:5Isa 7:18
Both
Both name a watercourse cut into the land, a channel that water runs through.Exo 7:18Num 21:14
Both can be made to run dry as an image of judgment, the water failing where life depended on it.Isa 19:61Ki 17:7
Names a seasonal streambed that rushes with water in the rains and lies dry the rest of the year, so the same word covers both the flowing torrent and the empty channel.Deu 8:7Jdg 5:211Ki 17:7
Serves as a fixed boundary line between territories, the natural edge that marks where one land or tribe ends and the next begins.Num 34:5Deu 3:16Jos 15:4
Widens to mean the whole valley or ravine the streambed has cut, the low place itself and not only the water in it.Num 13:23Num 13:24
What scholars say about ye'or
An Egyptian loanword (from Egyptian itrw/jtr, "river, Nile, canal"), recognized as such by HALOT, BDB, and the major studies of Egyptian loanwords in Hebrew (Lambdin, Muchiki). Its primary referent is the Nile, with a well-attested extension to the Nile's canals and side-arms (frequently the plural, often with the construct "of Egypt" or "of Mazor"), and a smaller group of uses for non-Egyptian watercourses: the river of Daniel's Tigris vision (Dan 12:5-7), the figurative streams of Zion (Isa 33:21), and the mining channels or galleries of Job 28:10. Lexica treat these as one word with a widening range rather than as homonyms; the disputed cases are the precise referent of individual verses (notably Nah 3:8 and the boast of 2 Kgs 19:24 / Isa 37:25) rather than the word's core sense.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. יְאֹרlexicon
BDB, s.v. יְאֹרlexicon
Thomas O. Lambdin, "Egyptian Loan Words in the Old Testament," Journal of the American Oriental Society 73 (1953): 145-155article
Yoshiyuki Muchiki, Egyptian Proper Names and Loanwords in North-West Semitic (1999)monograph