north: the northern direction, the northern quarter, and the lands that lie that way
At its core this word names one of the four points of the compass, the direction a person faces on their left hand when looking toward the sunrise. Most of its uses are simply geographic: a side of the tabernacle, a border running along the north edge of a tribe's land, a city or army positioned to the north.
From that plain direction the word grows two charged uses that share the same point on the compass. In the prophets the north becomes the quarter from which disaster marches on Israel and Judah, because the great empires came down that road; over and over the threatened or promised movement of peoples is reckoned from the north. And in the oldest poetry the far north names the towering, cloud wrapped mountain where the gods were imagined to gather, so that to reach for the heights of the north is to reach for a throne above God.
These are not different words but one direction seen from different angles: the map maker's north, the watchman's north, and the poet's north. The reader should let the surrounding verse decide which is in view, since the same word carries all three.