the region or side across from where you stand: the far side, the opposite quarter, or simply a side or edge
This word answers the question "which side?" by pointing to the side away from the speaker. Its root idea is crossing over, so the noun names the place you reach when you cross: the far bank of a river, the country across a sea or valley, the quarter an object faces. Everything it means grows out of that one picture of an over-there.
Most of its uses are geographic. It marks the far side of the Jordan, the far side of the sea, the far side of a wadi. Because the far side depends entirely on where the speaker is standing, the same phrase can point to opposite territories: someone west of the Jordan means the eastern country by it, while someone in the east means the western country, and only the surrounding story tells you which.
Two of these phrases hardened into fixed place names. The country on the far side of the Jordan became known simply as the Beyond-Jordan, the region later called Transjordan. In the same way, the lands across the Euphrates became the Beyond-the-River, a name the Persian empire kept as the title of its western province that included Judah.
The word also works on a smaller scale. It can name the side or edge of a built thing, such as the two sides of a lampstand or the facing edges of a priest's garment, and it can mark the direction a creature or a wind moves, the way ahead that it is set toward.