Ascent, Descent
See also Ascent
ASCENT, DESCENT. The trs. of two Heb. terms often applied to footpaths or roadways. It is the nature of the structure of Heb. that correlative terms and terms with similar semantic relationships cannot be simply developed by adding a suffix or prefix as in Eng. (e.g. “scent” to which are prefixed “a-” or “de-”). Hebrew uses two totally different and unrelated roots for the two ideas of direction. Hebrew עָלָה, H6590, “to go up,” “to ascend,” “to bring up” is common. Several nouns are developed from this verbal root, and these hiphil feminine participles are often combined to yield place names. These terms usually take the form “ascent of (place name),” as in
The Heb. root, מורד, is a similar form of a participial derivative from the common verbal root, ירד, “to go down,” “to descend,” but on rare occasions to “go up.” However, occurrences of the term “descents” as compounds of place names are much fewer than “ascents.” It is probable that in most cases the “ascent” served for both up and down traffic and only rarely, as along a stream bed, was the major impetus toward “descent.” The LXX uses another form of the same noun, κατάβασις, G2853, “going down of (place name),” and such a determination appears in the NT in